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by rmbyrro 731 days ago
I think you misinterpreted OP's comment. Apple makes it sound like there's smth new, but there isn't. They don't have to innovate, but it's good practice to credit who've done what they're taking and using. Also to use the names everyone else is already using.
2 comments

The strange thing is Apple did mention (twice) in the article that their adapters are loras so I don't understand OP's comment.
I gathered from OP's "huge development" comment he was talking about others people's popular perception that it wasn't a lora.
> Also to use the names everyone else is already using.

That would be a very un-Apple thing to do. They really like to use their own marketing terms for technologies. It's not ARM, it's Apple Silicon. It wasn't Wi-Fi, it was AirPort. etc. etc.

> It wasn't Wi-Fi, it was AirPort. etc. etc.

FWIW the term “airport” predated the name “wifi” — in those days you had to otherwise call it IEEE 802.11.

And the name as great: people were buying them like crazy and hiding them in the drop ceiling to get around the corporate IT department. A nice echo of how analysts would buy their own apple II + visicalc to…get around corporate IT.

I’m OK with Apple using “apple silicon” as the ARM is only part of it.

Just commenting on your two examples; in general I agree with your point.

As far as I know, both the AirPort trademark and the term Wi-Fi got introduced in 1999 (could be that AirPort was a couple of weeks earlier)
Airport came out in the beginning of the year, maybe January, at Macworld. WECA renamed themselves the WiFi Alliance a few years later, but the name (and trademark) had to exist for it to be worth them doing so.

WECA reminds me of other "memorable" names of the era, my favorite being PCMCIA, though VESA is another fave.

Thanks for the info. That was pretty much around the time when I started out in IT. And yes PCMCIA, what a mouthful! I remember Ethernet cards in this format.
People Can’t Memorize Computer Industry Acronyms
> It wasn't Wi-Fi, it was AirPort.

Except in Japan, where it's AirMac. And China, where it's WWAN not Wi-Fi.

See also: FireWire, iSight, Retina, FaceTime, etc.
None of these really fit the pattern. Apple invented FireWire, called it FireWire, and other companies chose to call it different things in their implementations (partly because Apple originally charged for licensing the name, IIRC). iSight is an Apple product. FaceTime is an Apple product. Retina is branding for high-resolution displays beyond a certain visual density.
"Apple invented FireWire" is maybe not fully accurate (but actually a good example of the point here).

Wikipedia: FireWire is Apple's name for the IEEE 1394 High Speed Serial Bus. Its development was initiated by Apple[1] in 1986,[3] and developed by the IEEE P1394 Working Group, largely driven by contributions from Sony (102 patents), Apple (58 patents), Panasonic (46 patents), and Philips (43 patents), in addition to contributions made by engineers from LG Electronics, Toshiba, Hitachi, Canon,[4] INMOS/SGS Thomson (now STMicroelectronics),[5] and Texas Instruments.

What might be interesting in this regard is that Sony was also using its own trademark for it: "i.LINK".