MobileMe: bad name, worse logo
There are so many wrong things about the branding of MobileMe, Apple’s latest product announcement, that it’s distracting me from seeing how good it could be.
From .Mac to MobileMe
First, the name. MobileMe is a new spin on .Mac, but its new name shows clear focus—mobile. Okay, fair enough, but it’s like no effort was put into coming up with the name. Apple is supposed to be hipper than that. MobileMe has this bad dot-com naming vibe surrounding it. You know, all those names filled with pronouns (I, me, my, you, your, we, our) that stroke the ego.
Then again, Apple is the poster child for that naming strategy. But they could have gone the tried-and-tested “iRoute”. From iMac to iTunes to iPhone, why stop prepending i’s now?
Me vs. ME
Here’s something more disturbing. Why does the MobileMe logo look so strikingly similar to that of Windows ME?
Whether or not this is a coincidence, Apple should be criticized for allowing itself to be associated with an operating system people considered crappy. It’s the last thing you want to do when building your brand.
For those who want to defend Apple by saying “but the handwritten me of MobileMe does not look like the one on Windows ME, it looks better”, I’m not hearing you. They still look too much alike.
Microsoft is too much of Apple’s competition to have this similarity. If Apple drew inspiration from, say, Starbucks, Disney, or Nike, we probably wouldn’t mind—except that you’d think Apple had enough creativity to do more groundbreaking design to take a cue from someone else. Since when does this company listen to anyone else? If Apple is doing this on purpose, then it’s an even lower blow.
Any designer worth his salt would not want to be mistaken for plagiarizing something, much less something not worth copying in the first place.
Attention to detail, lost
No matter how you look at it, the choices made with MobileMe’s branding just aren’t right. They’re sloppy at best. Apple is known to pay painstaking attention to detail, but I can’t see it with MobileMe.
Related reading:
I don’t like it either , but i think the “me” rerefernce is to insist on the fact that it’s “exchange for the rest of us” – personalising it. The mobile bit is lame. Obviously it’s mobile. So was .mac. I mean, the dot was the best bit of branding possible. Using anything “i”, i think be a bit out of place. Mac Book, Mac Book Pro. AppleTV. It’s not all “i” any more.. Also i tink they were worried about it looking like a mac-only service. In short, i havent a clue what they should have done, but what they have done was prob a rushed decision, that does look crappy – esp for apple. Quite honestly, i think that Windows Live sounds better (just a shame that Microsoft botched the implimentation of that brand!)
By William on June 20, 2008 9:33 am
I kinda agree the “me” is a little close to the border line on taking inspiration from Windows Me, but in honesty I don’t think the average non-techy consumer will have *that* strong brand recognition for the original Windows Me. Heck, a lot of people didn’t notice the similarities until bloggers started pointing it out.
Also, “me.com” is a killer domain, and given the chance I think any site would love to have that in their bag of domains.
I am surprised Apple decided to permanently append “mobile” to the “me” name – I probably would have kept it at just “Apple Me”.
And obviously, the move from .Mac was needed to encompass all areas of the Apple brand including iPod, iPhone, TV (one day), and OS X.
A well written article, thanks for a good read.
By Jimmy G on June 20, 2008 3:40 pm
I think people are being too critical of this logo – though I do agree it seem below the well known Apple standard for quality. The service is about all your stuff in the cloud. Though the name and logo may seem a bit lame, I think it works.
I am convinced that it’s on purpose. The only difference (other than the new presentation of apps) between .Mac and Mobile Me is that you can sync all your stuff to your Windows PC as well. Apple is attempting to bridge all computer users data through Safari and Mobile Me. So, the had to dump all the “i” and “Mac” from the name.
If you stop and think about it, with SproutCore in the back, this could really explode into something really ground breaking.
By Eric Anderson on June 21, 2008 4:28 pm
I disagree. Every logo out there can be compared to some other logo and similarities found. Just because two logos have the same word in a semi-cursive font doesn’t mean one borrowed from another. Anymore, it’s virtually impossible to create a logo that doesn’t contain some element (color, font, style, lean, height, etc. ) of someone else’s logo.
The MobileMe logo looks nothing like the Windows Me logo. Except they share two letters – ME. That’s a horrible comparison! Besides, the ME in Windows ME stands for “Millennium Edition” and the “ME” in MobileMe actually stands for the self. Do you how many logos and names have ME in them?
MobileMe has a bad-sounding “.com naming vibe” to it? What about Apple putting “i” in front of EVERYTHING? Is “i” not that far from “me”? You even go on to admit Apple’s all over the “i” thing, but oh yeah right, it’s OK when Apple does it.
This logo reeks of Apple (and very popular right now) design: it’s called Web 2.0. Google “Web 2.0 logo” and you’ll see all kinds of them; the gradient-filled, highlight on the top but semi-transparent, bright as the sun graphics.
I smell a fanboy. And someone who clearly missed Marketing 101.
By callisto9 on July 25, 2008 4:04 am
You are correct! The World is kinda weird nowaday I notice a strange trend of ugly and unsustainable designs. Eg. Google’s favicon, Mac OS X Leopard, Windows Live Messenger 8.5 etc. Something’s wrong | : o
By paradromr on July 30, 2008 11:18 pm