RE: REAL Studio: About the Name Change
Paul has an excellent blog post on the new name change of REALbasic to REAL Studio at http://www.rbdevzone.com/2010/02/real-studio-about-the-name-change/.
I don’t have a whole lot to add because I agree with most of his suggestions. I do have one bone to pick with the use of ‘Enterprise’ as the top of the line REAL Studio product. REAL Studio isn’t big in the ‘Enterprise’ market and naming it such doesn’t give you an automatic ticket into it. If anything, it limits the current Pro owners who say, “I’m not an enterprise developer so why should I pony up the money?” Perhaps, ‘Premier’ or ‘Ultimate’ might have been a better term.
Thinking back over the years at all the of the ‘hot’ programming languages, they’ve all had interesting names. Java, Python, Perl, Ruby on Rails all have one thing in common: They don’t say a damn thing about what they are or do. But, boy, do the names stick with you and sound cool when you talk to a group of people. ‘REALbasic’ not so much. Like BASIC would be anything but real?
Enough griping. Changing the name of the product or company is a huge gamble it’s not one to be done lightly. One would hope that a name change with the product could invoke images of coolness, power, imagination, something hidden slightly out of view, and something mysterious enough for folks to check it out just because it sounds like those things.
Maybe something that gives you a hint of the cross-platform capabilities of what it can do. How does “Crossbow” sound? I can see the marketing campaigns now. “Hit your cross-platform targets with Crossbow!”, “Crossbow is powerful enough for three platforms, but easy-enough for the mere mortal to use.” The IDE icon changes to a Crossbow or Arrow sticking out of a target. “Introducing Crossbow by REAL Software” sounds better (to me) then saying, “Introducing REAL Studio by REAL Software”. Too many ‘reals’ in there for my taste.
Anyway, random thoughts on a Friday. What say you?
