Ever wondered what the ‘i’ in your iphone stands for?
According to The Independent, most people assume the ‘i’ stands for ‘internet’ — but that’s not the whole story.
Apple started naming products beginning with ‘i’ when it launched the iMac in 1998.
The iMac was launched just as the internet was taking off, and Steve Jobs wanted his device to better serve the consumers who said that surfing the web was their number one use. So it made sense to represent that in the name. But that’s not all it stands for.
During the launch of the iMac, Steve Jobs revealed the five words ‘i’ stands for: internet, individual, instruct, inform, and inspire.
He said: “‘i’ also means some other things to us… We are a personal computer company, and although this product is born to network, it also is a beautiful stand-alone product. We are targeting it also for education. They want to buy these. And it is perfect for most of the things they do in instruction.”
And although Apple would go on to brand many of its products with ‘i’, the recent trend for new devices such as the Apple TV and Apple Watch has been to drop the prefix.