We fear change, and so these rumors that Apple is looking to jettison its whole iNaming convention fills us with dread. Faithful viewer dzhim informs us that the dirt-digging elves over at Mac OS Rumors claim to have gotten their mitts on "internal Apple documents" indicating that the era of iMacs, iBooks, iTools, iCards, iDisks, iMovie, iTunes, iDVD, iServices, iSchool, etc. might be drawing to a close. Why? Well, somebody at Apple feels that "the 'i' naming convention is too watered down." Say what? That's preposterous! Why, we can think of at least a half-dozen words that haven't been prefixed with an "i" yet!

Instead, we prefer to blame this potentially life-altering change on the giant smoking hole in the middle of Wall Street we've dubbed "Dotcom Crater"; sticking an "i" in front of a word is just begging people to start thinking about the plunging NASDAQ, and that's probably not a good strategy for getting consumers into a spending frame of mind. For whatever reason, though, iNames are "losing their appeal in the marketplace," and so Apple is reportedly scrambling to come up with a new naming scheme for its consumer-oriented products and services. New naming schemes like what, you ask? Sorry, Mac OS Rumors has no answers-- bar a half-hearted mention of "EasyMac," which "just doesn't roll off the tongue well."

We tend to agree, and we bet that's a huge relief to Kraft Foods, since their Easy Mac product is supposed to go into mouths, not come back out of them. Heck, why not go whole hog? Faithful viewer Nina Tovish votes for "CheezyMac," instead, since she digs "anything with orange food coloring in it, especially if it's microwavable." Sure, Tangerine was never a blisteringly hot seller, but just wait until Apple unleashes a cheese-colored Mac upon the world. Sales to junk food addicts and Wisconsin alone will break all known records. (Will these things come in blue boxes?)

In any case, MOSR reports that Apple will be retaining the names "iMac" and "iBook" for at least one more product revision, so we'll all have time to make the adjustment. If you ask us, though, now that the market has flushed most of the non-Apple iStuff out to sea (well, with the exception of Compaq's deliriously original iPAQ), we figure the company should hang on tight and make the "i" its own again. But as resistant to change as we are, we're not going to adopt a "you'll take our iNames when you pry them from our cold, dead iFingers" attitude. Hey, here's an idea... what if they dump the "i" and start using an "e" instead? Someone get Steve on the horn!

We admit it: when the titanium PowerBook G4 first shipped, we were more than a little worried. Yes, it pulled in a truckload of rave reviews, but so did the Cube, and we all know how that went down. Just like the Cube, supplies of the PowerBook G4 were very constrained to start. And also just like the Cube, early PowerBook G4 models had a few "glitches"; instead of "flow lines" and spontaneous on-and-off behavior, the 'Books had battery contact trouble and a DVD-ROM drive that occasionally refused to spit out discs. We couldn't help but wonder if we were watching history repeat itself.

Well, our worries are over. Faithful viewer Neoyeti pointed out that CNET has an article on the PowerBook G4's first full month of availability, and the news is all good; in February, Apple's retail sales of laptop systems increased a whopping 31% year over year. To understand how huge that is, consider that notebook sales across the entire industry only grew 2.3% in the same time frame. In fact, this whole situation is straight out of a Twilight Zone episode, because not only did CNET run an article primarily about how well Apple is doing, but it also quoted an analyst (one Matt Sargent of ARS) as saying, "with the retail notebook market darker than expected, the one bright spot was Apple Computer." (Rod? Rod, is that you?)

Incidentally, if you're wondering how Apple's notebook sales performed on a month-to-month basis, February's numbers were up 23% from January. Furthermore, Apple's latest portable accounted for a full 16% of overall Mac sales. That means roughly one out of every six Macs sold last month was a wide-screen-sportin', slot-loadin', DVD-playing', drool-inducin' titanium sex machine. So apparently it is possible to offer a classy, design-heavy high-end computing device without it tanking like the Cube did. We feel much better now. Of course, before we can really relax, we're going to have to find out how Flower Power is selling...

We continue to have fun with Mac OS X, its remaining "issues" notwithstanding. However, while we're still amazed at the way in which Classic does an admirable job of running lots of older software in a pretty darn transparent manner, we find ourselves itching for more software-- native software. Software that uses all that cool lickable Aqua stuff and that doesn't require us to wait for The World's Longest Minute while Classic starts up for the first time. We want Carbon apps. We want Cocoa apps. And while they continue to trickle in at a respectable pace, we still want Apple to crack the whip or offer the bribes or do whatever it needs to do to get us our Mac OS X software faster.

Ain't it a bummer, then, that Apple's vice president of worldwide developer relations just bailed? According to MacCentral, Clent Richardson is vacating Apple's lush, translucent fields in favor of a position at some bigwig UK cellular outfit called One 2 One. Note that this isn't official news, yet, and that MacCentral is citing "industry sources," not Apple's PR department (who refused to comment), but being trusting souls, we see no particular reason to doubt the assertion. What this means is that the guy responsible for getting all those developers to write the applications, drivers, and various other bits of software we need to build a home in Mac OS X is skeedaddling for the cellular world. Just bad timing, or a nasty hint at the state of Mac OS X developer affairs?

We suppose we'd still be riding the angst train if The Register didn't hint that Clent wasn't being all that he could be. One unnamed Apple developer goes so far as to say, "I think [the new guy] would fill Clent's role the way it should be done. Or should I say, the way it should have been done." Verrrry interesting. In that case, perhaps Clent's departure is a good thing-- although, if he really was as ineffective as the unnamed Apple developer implies, then maybe we should be mourning the fact that Apple hadn't replaced him ages ago. Maybe then we wouldn't still be trying to run Photoshop in Classic...