A strange neuroticsim I’ve had since lucidity has made my brain thob in pain everytime someone used a brand name to refer to a generic product. I grew up throwing fits everytime someone misapplied the titles “Nintendo”, “Vaseline”, and “Kleenex”. I’m glad two out of three of those are basically dead, (nobody rants about their kids playing “Nintendo” all day anymore due to the speed of technology, and age has killed off the generation old enough to witness the emergence of disposable hankerchiefs and thus grant the industry’s initial leader the loyalty of a generic product titling, but sadly people still refer to any old jar of petroleum jelly as Vaseline), however, there have been too many new annoyances that took its place:
Speedos: Speedo makes all types of swimwear, including googles, trunks, and caps. They even make generic athletic wear. Also, they don’t hold any monopolizing patents on men’s swimming briefs, so describing someone as wearing Speedos means NOTHING.
PalmPilot: When’s the last time anyone has seen a PalmPilot? They’re before my time, at least - Palm doesn’ t mention them at all on their website. Palm has moved on to Zires and Tungstens, people, and Sony and HP, while having plenty of PDA models, have never sold PalmPilots in their lives. In fact, I think those things died when Palm became its own company independent of U.S. Robotics (the original PalmPilot merchant).
Tivo: This one holds the double annoyance of becoming a verbed brand name. Basically, there are more time-shifting services and PVRs besides Tivo, and Tivo didn’t even debut alone (remember ReplayTV?)
Photoshop: Another verbed product. At least we don’t say MSPainted though.
Actually, if you want to be precise and nitpicky(like the whole of your post), U.S. Robotics sold to 3COM. 3COM sold the Palm Pilot for many years until they spun the company off as “Palm” and started pushing the Palm.com name and what not. Only for the last 2 or 3 years have they dropped the Palmpilot line(which included the Palm 3, 3i, 3x, Etc, Palm V, Vi, Vx, the Palm VII, Etc.), and have now replaced it with the Palm Zire and Tungsten models.
They’re still “Palm Pilots”, though and they still run PalmOS, use the Palm.com portal, Etc.
Obviously this doesn’t include any offering by Sony or HPaq, or any other hardware manufacturer that uses PocketPC OS from Microsoft or WinCE, but a palm is a palm is a palm pilot. If you wanted to broaden your definition of “palm pilot” to “a piece of technology using the PalmOS”, that would include the Handspring(which surpassed palm in their hardware), and others.
Wow, what a pathetic rant. As someone who knew a guy in college who used to do this, let me tell you how annoying most of the known universe views this attitude/behavior. “Speedo” may be a brand name, but 95% of the western world knows EXACTLY what is being described, and so do you.
Yay, it’s time for Pizzabrat’s weekly attention-whoring thread!
Your life must be pretty darn pleasant if this is the only thing you can find to rant about. Nitpicking at it’s finest. Unless you’re trying to be humorous. In that case: damn, dude. Even when you’re trying to be funny you’re arrogant and condescending. That takes a special level of skill, I am officially impressed. Although I am missing your usual willfully obtuse act. That one is a personal favorite of mine.
And a Palm Pilot is before your time? Unless you’re in pre-school (which is entirely possible as you’ve yet to display debating skills above that of a 5 year old) I find that rather hard to believe.
Has “Speedos” even confused anyone? It’s not like we’re using it in place of some other easy word. The closest is probably “swimming briefs”, and that’s still pretty crappy.
Junkie: Mary Mother of God, I cut my hand on a rubber band! Do you sell Band-Aids?
Randal: Band-Aids is a brand name. The proper term is “adhesive strips”.
Dante: The man is bleeding to death, and you’re getting into sematics arguement?
Oh yeah. Jello. I remember reminding my elementary school peers that they were enjoying a “gelatin dessert”, and not necessarily “Jello”.
Of course not. And interestingly enough, when I was introduced to photocopies en masse, the fogies who populated the staff of my Middle and High schools refered to them as “dittos”.
About 10 seconds ago. I still carry my Palm V with me wherever I go. It does all I need it to do, so I’ve never seen any point in spending the money to upgrade to a newer model.
