More photocopying from Cupertino

Microsoft, September 2011:

reimagined-1

Apple, February 2012:

reimagined-2

I guess the hyphen makes it OK. What I find most astounding is that in two full pages of promotional material, Apple never once uses the word revolutionary. At the old Apple, everything was revolutionary.

Both Microsoft and Apple call their current releases Developer Previews:

reimagined-3

Microsoft will release its Consumer Preview on February 29.

You’ll be able to pay $29 for the Mountain Lion Consumer Preview (OS X 10.8.0) later this summer. Apple has not announced a timetable for release of the final, production-quality OS X Mountain Lion (10.8.2).


Update for wannabe grammarians who think Apple is right to use a hyphen. Uh, no.

From the AP Stylebook:

When Not to Use a Hyphen

Prefixes. The following prefixes are not usually hyphenated: "anti-, bi-, co-, contra-, counter-, de-, extra-, infra-, inter-, intra-, micro-, mid-, multi-, non-, over-, peri-, post-, pre-, pro-, proto-, pseudo-, re-, semi-, sub-, super-, supra-, trans-, tri-, ultra-, un-, under-, and whole-."

And from the Chicago Manual of Style (PDF):

Words Formed with Prefixes

Compounds formed with prefixes are normally closed, whether they are nouns, verbs, adjectives, or adverbs.

[…]

re – reedit, reunify, reproposition

Manuals of style? Yes, I know them.

5 thoughts on “More photocopying from Cupertino

  1. I don’t think Microsoft ever trademarked “reimagined” or “Developer Preview”. But if anyone deserves to be sued overusing someone else’s proprietary information, it’s Apple. Good catches, Ed.

  2. Ed,

    Apple’s used Developer Preview for years. I still have a copy of Mac OS X Developer Preview 4 hanging around here somewhere. They’re living with my Windows 2000 MSDN developer copies somewhere…

    Re-imagined is the grammatically correct term, though. 🙂

  3. Ed, I’ve been reading your stuff for over fifteen years since the dead tree days. I’m not trying to get on your case, it was just a gentle poke. No malice intended. So I’m sorry if I came off as smarmy.

    I’m just not a big fan of the tit-for-tat Apple/Microsoft stuff. I’ve been using and developing for both platforms for years and I just think people get a little too into trying to prove who did what first or who’s copying whom. We’ve got bigger fish to fry. But that’s just my opinion.

    So, I apologize for trying to poke you. The only reason I pointed out the re- versus re thing is that Microsoft Word flagged reimagined as misspelled, while allowing re-imagined as the correct spelling. The style guides are not detailing the endless individual exceptions to these hyphenation rules, hence why they say not usually hyphenated. In most cases eliminating hyphenation is a good thing, as it makes things easier to read, which is why a lot of style rules are trying to cut down on hyphenation. This is something that could be discussed at length, since hyphenation rules are a frequently changing beast and have a long history.

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