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25.01.2007 | iWant an überPhone

Last week iSaw the iPhone announcement by Apple, and it awoke in me iLust. At first iThought it was a true iNeed that I felt, but let’s be iReal, it’s just another iWant: to add this to the iStuff iHave. iLove my iPod, my iTunes, my iPhoto, my iMovie, and my iDVD. iStock, iCam and iTV are on my iHorizon. The iPhone supports iCal which basically controls my iDay. Unfortunately, Apple’s iGreed has already resulted in a lawsuit by Cisco over the iPhone name. My office will remain iDog-free, of course, but where is iGod when you need Her? At least Apple can’t claim the iChing.

But what is there after iLife anyway? We already used up most vowels in the alphabet in the neverending search for exciting prefixes. Let’s review:*

“a-” made its appearance decades ago, I’d give it at best an 80s tag. “A-List”, “A-Team”, “A-Share” — it’s got that old-fashioned ring to it. It’s so old it’s almost ready for a retro revival.

“e-” is so 90s, people. Remember eTrade? And of course “e-mail”, “e-venture”, “e-news”, “e-business”, “e-commerce”, “e-book”, “e-cash” and “e-zine”, among many others. This vowel has gone completely stale with B.O. from overuse.

“o-” is still fairly fresh. It is sometimes used as a derivation of “ob-” which is a prefix meaning “toward”, “to”, “on”, “over”, “against”, and is also used as an exclamation interjection in many languages. This overlooked vowel has potential.

“u-” is not bad, since it’s a nice counterpoint to “i”, but has been quite busy for a while referring to universities, such as “York U” or “Pitt U”, or making illegal “U-turns”. It also has accepted substandard employment in low-cost services that you have to provide for yourself, which usually means they're low-quality. This is how the "u" finds itself getting stranded in broken down “U-Hauls” not making their destinations or having border troubles (not that I would be speaking from personal experience), and having to put its stuff in a “U-Store-It while-U-wait” for pickup months later, after immigration problems have been sorted out.

“x-” and “y-” have been roughed up by two successive generations, and longer prefixes, mostly from the Latin and Greek, such as “alpha-”, “beta-”, “extra-”, “hyper-”, “infra-”, “intra-”, “super-”, and “ultra-”, have been ridden hard.

We could borrow from other alphabets such as the German one and appropriate the lovely “umlaut” vowels “ä”, “ö”, and “ü”. The “ä” tends to be mostly buried deep within long, pseudo-Danish high-fat-ice-cream franchise names where admittedly it provides a strong flavour. The “ö” somehow smacks of mental disturbance to me, but the “ü”, yes, the “ü” still has untapped potential. It has a nice, German-industrial-crazy-scientist-almost-not-Nazi-anymore, alluringly hip and distinctly techno vibe to it. It has made its appearance in the English language in the word “über” which is German for “over” or “beyond” and can be used instead of “hyper” or “super”. E.g. an “ÜberFrau” would be a Superwoman. “Über” is also used in gaming and information technology to designate players or servers with special powers.

We could also borrow elements from Chinese. Words such as “feng shui” which denotes the study of balance in nature, and is based in part on principles of the aforementioned I Ching, have already been successfully incorporated. So much so, that they have even been spotted two-timing as a verb: “She recently had her home feng-shui’d.”

All of these are just iMusings. But iPredict that with iConsumers’ ever-shortening attention span, Apple will feel the pressure to offer something iFresher. Inevitably, the iBranding will get a rebranding. iGive it five more years, iMax.

* Researched with the help of dictionary.reference.com