iWork iRulez

I was chatting with this old buddy of mine living in LA. She's finishing her Master degree in Communications, and needed a job in the PR / Marketing field. She asked me to proof-read her cover letter for a position as Marketing Specialist in Apple, and I jokingly suggested her to use iWork to write the resume to get a better impression.

Ben Liong: it might help if you send your resume with Apple Pages in iwork. ;-)
y********2: hahaaa
y********2: it's suppose to be a joke
y********2: hahaaa
y********2: iwork
y********2: you are obssessed ben
y********2: they should hire you
Ben Liong: dude,
Ben Liong: http://www.apple.com/iwork/

That just cracked me up. Because so many people are putting "i" in front of general terms to make fun of Apple, anything starting with "i" would automatically deemed Apple related. Want some example? How about "iBox", "iSound"?

You can see how this works out. My apple-iliterate-PC-user friend simple though I was putting "i" in front of everything, because of my Mac Geekiness. This naming scheme is a great, great way to strengthen the brand. People just know now what to expect from Apple: good quality, intuitive interfaces, and a name with general terms and either an "i" or a "x" in front.

So I wonder, what was the reason behind the name iRiver?

But from this, you can see that Apple does have some work ahead of them. Switchers or potential switchers from the god-forbid windows world need to know that there's an alternative to MS Word in Mac OS X, and also a Mac version of Office there. From what I see, a lot of people (this friend included) still worry about not being able to work with friends / co-worker who uses Windows.

And before I go, same IM session, same buddy:

y********2: fuck ben