Long time readers will know that we like to talk about semantics from
time to time, like the value (or lack thereof) in the word
"fragmentation" or whether the word "smartphone" is even necessary.
However, it's rare for there to be a story about execs at a big company
like Apple taking on grammar. Today is that rare exception, because Phil
Schiller apparently has strong opinions about how to pluralize the
names of Apple products.
The pluralization discussion
isn't even the more obvious one that you might expect, as in: How do
you refer to more than one iPhone 6s? Are the iPhone 6ses? Instead,
Schiller took exception to the pluralization of general products like
the iPhone or Mac. Ask any normal person and we're quite sure that most
people would say plural would be iPhones or Macs. However, Schiller is
not a normal person, it seems. According to Schiller, "One need never
pluralize Apple product names." Schiller asserts that Apple product
names occupy the strange space as the words deer, scissors, or pants,
which are the same whether singular or plural.
This means, Schiller said, that it would be correct
to say, "I have 3 Macintosh," (as though anyone in the word doesn't call
an Apple computer a Mac). This means the sentence "The school has 25
iPad" would be completely acceptable. However, if you can't bring
yourself to say it that way, the official Apple style guide suggests the
correct way to do it is to add a descriptor, like "5 iPad tablets" or
"69 iPhone devices".
Of course, the whole
argument is ridiculous, because not only are these just the ways Apple
would like you to say it (which has no bearing on how normal people
actually talk), but CEO Tim Cook himself has broken the rules by saying
the words "iPhones" and "iPad Pros" in the most recent earnings call.
So
basically, just say what you want. The Apple Style Guide isn't the
dictionary so the rules don't really matter to anyone outside of Apple
itself.
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