Apple is known for harbouring a bunch of design freaks, but did you know that you’re never meant to speak of iPhones, just “multiple iPhone devices?”
Phil Schiller, Apple’s marketing chief, revealed the proper grammatical style to be used with regards to iDevices in a brief tweetstorm the other day. In response to a tweet referencing “iPads Pro” (puke), Schiller appended the following:
@parks @Gartenberg @BenedictEvans @stevesi @macintux @reneritchie 1. Really! Words can be both singular and plural, such as deer and clothes
— Philip Schiller (@pschiller) April 29, 2016
This brief lesson in grammar was a preparation for the following clarification:
@parks @Gartenberg @BenedictEvans @stevesi @reneritchie 2. It would be proper to say “I have 3 Macintosh” or “I have 3 Macintosh computers”
— Philip Schiller (@pschiller) April 29, 2016
People then (rightly) assumed that Schiller meant all Apple product names should never be pluralised. Alas:
@Gartenberg @BenedictEvans @stevesi @macintux One need never pluralize Apple product names. Ex: Mr. Evans used two iPad Pro devices.
— Philip Schiller (@pschiller) April 28, 2016
You might be (somewhat correctly) be assuming that semantics dictated by a company over the description of their fondleslabs is the most first-world issue ever encountered by mankind. But there’s actually an unfortunately serious point here. Apple is — just — the most valuable company in the world, and the iPhone its most profitable device. Given that we’re all going to be slaves to some form of iDevice in the near future, it probably matters how we refer to our new lords and master.