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by Retric 5840 days ago
Company's rarely change the name of a well liked product. Consider a 1976 Honda accord vs a 2010 Honda accord. They are vary different cars targeting different markets but as long as people think product X = quality the name tends to stick around.

(1976 68hp ) http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3d/1977-1982...

(2010 177-hp to 271-hp on a v6) http://automobiles.honda.com/accord-sedan/exterior.aspx

1 comments

On the other hand, consider PowerBook--a strong brand since the early 90's that was still phased out.
Having been named after the PowerPC architecture probably accounts for that one.
No, that's the Power Mac. The PowerBook predates the PowerPC by years--the first PowerBook was in 1991, and the first PowerPC-based PowerBook was in 1995, while the first Power Mac was in 1994.
You're right, the first was released in October of 1991. But look at what else Apple joined in the same month:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AIM_alliance

Looks to me like they were just establishing the brand in advance of the first chip.

That makes absolutely no sense--the "Power Macintosh" wasn't unveiled until the PowerPC chips were actually shipping, because the brand denoted the presence of the new processor. Why would you name a computer brand after a processor it doesn't have? It's like calling a 386-based 486-era laptop a "Penta" because you anticipate that future versions of it years in the future will have Pentium processors.
Well, branding is about many things, but making sense is not among them.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brand_management#Functions_of_b...