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A comment on Apple: Back to the Mac Media Event 20-Oct. Parent comment

Re:Apple: Back to the Mac Media Event 20-Oct by philwelch on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @03:42PM (#1788561)
Cat names Apple has used/will use:

  Cheetah (10.0)
  Puma (10.1)
  Jaguar (10.2)
  Panther (10.3)
  Tiger (10.4)
  Leopard (10.5)
  Snow Leopard (10.6)
  Lion (10.7)
Cat names left unused:

Cougar, Ocelot, Bobcat, Lynx, Serval

Apple still has quite a few years to go before running out of cats. Lynx and Cougar are both already trademarked by Apple. http://www.macrumors.com/2003/07/24/apple-trademarks-lynx-co...

Semantically, Cougar might be problematic (Cougar and Puma are the same animal) but it doesn't really matter--for instance, there's no actual cat species called "panther", it's just a generic name for big cats, and the black panther is just a subspecies of jaguar. (However, interestingly enough, snow leopards are a completely different species than leopards.)

There's other synonyms for "Cougar" you can put in there ("Mountain Lion") to extend the queue. In fact, Mountain Lion might be a minor upgrade on Lion just as Snow Leopard was a minor upgrade on Leopard.

EDIT: Fixed taxonomical error.

EDIT: Turns out "black panthers" can be melanistic jaguars OR leopards.

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Re:Apple: Back to the Mac Media Event 20-Oct by raganwald on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @03:45PM (#1788577)
Black Panther has some serious semantic baggage to overcome, I can't ever see it is a product name.
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Re:Apple: Back to the Mac Media Event 20-Oct by philwelch on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @04:03PM (#1788647)
I didn't suggest it as a product name; I just said "Panther" and "Jaguar" both describe the same animal, so it shouldn't be a problem for "Cougar" and "Puma" to describe the same animal.

Incidentally, "Panther" was the first Mac OS X to be released in a black box instead of a white box, and they used shots of black panthers (the cat, not the political group) to promote 10.3. I think they were obviously playing with the allusion even then.

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Re:Apple: Back to the Mac Media Event 20-Oct by bkyle on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @03:50PM (#1788600)
Similarly with Cougar.
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Re:Apple: Back to the Mac Media Event 20-Oct by sudont on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @04:04PM (#1788651)
"Pad" was met with extreme derision by female tech journalists, their "me too" male counterparts and anyone on Jezebel.

I'm sure Apple's brand is strong enough to overcome the current connotations.

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Re:Apple: Back to the Mac Media Event 20-Oct by philwelch on Wednesday October 13, 2010 @05:29PM (#1788972)
So go with Lion, Mountain Lion, Lynx, Serval. Then it'll be 5-6 years from now and either the slang usage of "cougar" will fall out of use or at least the novelty will be gone and people will interpret it as an allusion to the cat itself.
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