I'm not a fan of MacBook Pro, its quite a mouthful, as with Pro Macbook. I suspect that there will be another flavor of Macbooks, the will replace the ibooks. It kind of makes sense beause MacBook is fine name stand alone, tack on Pro its a little awkward.

Mike

Frankly, I'm not even satisfied with my own explanations of why Apple might have done this.

The only thing Steve Jobs mentioned in his keynote regarding the name change was that "Mac is now part of the name". That leads me to think about where consumers encounter the name "Mac". I'm not seeing any ads on TV for Apple's notebooks or desktops... but iPod ads seem to be everwhere, and those ads all have an Apple logo plus "Mac + PC".

Perhaps consumers are currently seeing "Mac" on ads and making a connection with "Mac" and "computer". Customer awareness of branded product names counts for a lot, and when one name drops low enough on the consumer awareness charts it's not unheard of for that name to be expendable.

Just a thought. Don't really know for sure.

We'd have to get data on a lot more broad sampling than what's represented here.

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I guess my question is then though, were consumers really confused that Powerbook's weren't Macs?

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My hunch, which is totally unsubstantiated, is that a broad enough sampling of consumers were tested to see what were the the main notebook brand names that came to mind for them. From the very limited reports I've seen lately, conducted by an Apple competitor, "PowerBook" wasn't very high on a long list. "Mac", however, scored well not only when consumers were asked to name several computer brands, it also scored well when asked to name several notebook brands.

This isn't significant, though, because the questions to consumers are frequently re-asked in slightly different ways to see if the responses change. They frequently do change for brand names/product names that don't have depth and breadth of consumer awareness.

Apple, which has a track record over the past few years of making slam-dunks with products, also has the resources and desire to learn as much as it can about consumer behavior and those consumers' wants and needs. A very few companies (like Walmart... ugh) make it a core part of their business to know as much as possible about their customers and to know exactly why they buy what they buy. I think Apple is one of those few companies, too.

In the past I noticed Apple spending a lot of energy cultivating the already-converted. My own opinion of the "Think Different" campaign was that it stoked the egos of Mac owners beyond Apple's wildest expectations... yet offered no compelling reason to Windows users to switch. I mean, after all, being proficient in Windows means knowing how to think different... why switch to Mac and have to keep doing the one thing you no longer want to have to do? A company needs to make its current customers feel good, but going overboard distracts from opportunities to win new customers.

I don't believe that current PowerBook owners who are seeking a new notebook will switch to Windows because they don't like the name "MacBook Pro". I think they'll stick with Apple because, for them, it's primarily about the "Mac experience".

If Windows users have an idea that a Mac is an experience that would benefit them, then adopting the name MacBook Pro for a notebook line could help Windows users seeking a new notebook keep a Mac at the top of the list.

I, for one, am willing to live with a so-so name for the notebooks if it means increasing marketshare for Apple. Conventional wisdom says that if Mac marketshare grows then current users will benefit from new opportunities.