According to Kevin Segall, the man behind Apple’s iconic “Think Different” ad campaign, Apple’s products of the last 15 years could’ve had different branding altogether had Steve Jobs stuck with his original name for the iMac, “MacMan.”
Segall describes the computer’s unveiling in his upcoming book, writing, “The group let out a collective ‘holy cow’ and simply tried to absorb and appreciate what we were seeing—because it shattered every idea of what computers were supposed to look like.” He recounted a later meeting when Jobs said to his employees, “We already have a name we like a lot, but I want you guys to see if you can beat it. The name is ‘MacMan.’”
To avoid similarities to Sony’s Walkman and PacMan, Segall came up with “iMac,” with the “i” standing for the computer’s intended use on the Internet. Jobs wasn’t immediately impressed, until he silk-screened the name onto a prototype.
[via Mashable]
