Lots of discussion about "Why 'MacBook' is a weak name"
There's a lot of discussion (like this via Dave Winer) about the consternation among some in the Mac user community about the branding of Apple's first Intel processor based laptop as the MacBook Pro.
Below, I repeat (slightly altered for clarity) the comment that I left on Dave's blog, with my own opinion on the subject. In a prior blog comment, someone had suggested "xBook", which is what had initially stimulated my reaction.
I don’t like MacBook either, let alone MacBook Pro.But xBook??? Can you say xBox? I don’t think so.
I think it’s time to lose the “book” as well as the “Power”. The “Pro” to me is dated, old, lame. There are too many PC-industry “Pro” artifacts out there. That said, I would have rather seen the MacBook Pro come out as the iBook Pro, clearly implying that the iBook will continue on as the iBook, yet with entry-level (iBook) as well as professional (iBook Pro) models. I don’t think “Mac” is needed in the name.
This way, you have all these i[apps] (where apps = life, work, tunes, photo, movie, dvd, web) running on i[things] (where things = mac, book, pod).
As we say in the Mac world, “it just works”.