Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Wired 14.11: The Perfect Thing:

And, of course, the Apple people had full-contact sessions with Jobs. He would pick up the device and say what he liked and didn't like, and he would fire questions at everyone, pushing hard: "What are you going to do about it?" It was Jobs who told everyone what the device would be called. "He just came in and went, 'iPod,'" says one team member. "We all looked around the room, and that was it. iPod. And we're like, 'Where did that come from?'" (Excellent question, and one that proved increasingly elusive the more I pressed people at Apple. I was finally able to corner Jobs on it, and he said that to the best of his knowledge the name sort of emerged, not exactly in a form of immaculate conception but in a lengthy back-and-forth between him, his marketing people, and TBWAChiatDay. "The ad agency loved it," he told me. But I get the distinct impression that the iPod moniker won out not because of its brilliance but because Jobs had had enough of the naming process and the hour was getting late.)