Adventures In Product Renaming

Back in March, Adobe was making lots of noise about a new piece of technology they were pushing then called Apollo. To avoid drowning you in buzzwords: Apollo lets you create desktop apps using web programming. Kind of neat.

But Apollo was always just a code name, and we were threatened told that the project would be renamed sometime later.

Today, Adobe announced the official name: AIR.

This is problematic for handful of reasons.

One: "AIR" is a fairly generic word. It's the stuff we breathe. It's a quality or manner. It can be a musical composition. It's also a terribly popular French electronic music act. Best of luck to Adobe as they try to make page 1 on Google.

Two: Despite the acronym expanding to "Adobe Integrated Runtime", it is being referred to repeated on the web page as "Adobe® AIR™". That's right: Adobe Adobe Integrated Runtime. Rolls off the tongue as easily as automated teller machine machine.

Three: I would argue calling it a runtime. Perhaps a runtime enviroment, like Java. But this is a geek quibble.

Finally: You would think "Adobe AIR" was a unique name. It's not.

A golf clap for the renaming team. Brav-o.

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About Dan

Dan Dickinson is a 29 year old living in Jersey City, New Jersey. He works at the strange intersection of collaborative technologies, education, software development, and medicine. His passions include finding unexpected paths and connections, music/rhythm video games, interesting food, and backchannels. This has been his primary (vivid) weblog since February of 2000.

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