They're treating "MacBook Air" as a proper noun. It's to personify their products, presumably with the idea that people will "connect" to them, for some hollow, tech-oriented definition of "connect".
Even they find it hard to keep up this stupid convention. Ppl who work there of course say “the iPhone” but you even see it slip out frequently on stage at the big events. Even Steve Jobs, the originator of this convention and supposed stickler for detail used to say “the iphone” quite a bit.
This comment makes me sigh. I know you will defend yourself with "what? I'm just stating a fact!" but saying stuff like this makes me really dislike you. I really like Apple products, does that make me a part of a cult? If yes, why? I wouldn't die for them, I wouldn't go through pain for them.
One thing apple does very well is marketing. Just ask an average person what company they think does phones/laptops the best and they would say apple. Most people don't care about the specifications tech details but just the ease of use and looks, which apple (arguably) does well to optimize for.
If you think this is changing up English, you may not be speaking English as a first language? Referring to products as a proper noun is very common. E.g. Ford will tell you "Mustang offers a powerful engine... blah blah blah" not "The Mustang offers..."
> Hear the roar of a Mustang as the ground starts to tremble and your legs start to shake. As always, Mustang draws upon its performance roots with features for enhanced handling, high-powered engine options and a classic Mustang design. For 2022, the soul-stirring Mustang Mach 1 and Mach 1 Premium stand at the pinnacle of 5.0L performance. The personally customizable Mach 1 continues its legacy, engineered specifically for quick turns and spirited drives.
Confusingly, they use Mustang both with an article and without.
Maybe it's just that I'm a car guy, and I watch a lot of presentations about cars. They constantly refer to their models like this. Like it's a person, not an object.
-- doesn't the imply there are others of similar? maybe what apple is saying is that there is no other iPhone except the iPhone so the is redundant? - just a guess - i agree it's odd --
It's deliberate. I guarantee that it's about building a "brand mindset." They've been playing with text copy for decades.
If you say "iPhone," instead of "The iPhone," you've turned "iPhone" into a pronoun. That has a different "connection" to people that hear it.
Branding seems to be something that a lot of tecchies (including Yours Truly) have difficulty with. There's a lot of subtle psychological games that aren't easy to quantify.
It's already a proper noun (not a pronoun!), but it's being treated almost as though the name of every individual Apple device is the product brand name, which is weird. Using a product brand name without an article is normally only done for uncountable/mass noun things like "gorilla glue" or many food/drink products.
I think of it as a “pronoun.” It makes it into a “person,” or some kind of major deal, like we call localities (usually) by their single pronouns. Sometimes, “The” becomes part of the pronoun, like “The Netherlands,” or “The Bronx.”
Usually, though, we assign pronouns (I’m not an English major, though, so the proper term may be different).
Like, you can’t have “a brooklyn,” or “an amsterdam.”
They want to make it so we can’t have “an iPhone.”
Only if you don't pay much attention to PR. Lots of manufacturers talk this way when referring to their own products. Apple isn't blazing a new trail here.