I had this shower thought earlier and I actually wanted to post it in that community. The name I came up with was SmartWalkman, but later I realized that Walkman is Sony specific, so I doubt other companies would’ve gone for that name, but I didn’t want to let this shower thought slip so here I am now asking you guys.
And here I was wondering why podcasts are still called podcasts when they barely had anything to do with iPods in the first place.
iPods had an 82% share of the US market at the time the term was first used.
https://www.theregister.com/2004/10/12/ipod_us_share/
At the time a “broadcast” to you iPod made the name podcast pretty understandable.
And there’s not much else I could think of to call it given technology at the time.
MP3 player was the generic term. But MP3 cast feels clunky.
I did hear audioblog used. But they weren’t all blogs.
It really comes down to the fact that at the time everyone knew “pod” meant “iPod” and that’s it.
Bricks.
PDA - Personal Digital Assistant.
That’s what they were called in the before times (Palm Pilot) before they got merged with the cell phone. Lots of old timers called a smartphone a PDA until they got really popular.
PDA was probably the most common during the 90s and I think until iPhones and android, black berry phones were considered PDAs.
A lot of stuff in the 80s/90s used the suffix “dex” (after rolodex) so I could also picture something like “mobidex” or “pocket dex”. Or there was netbooks so we might just call them netdex…
Duuuude, mobidex has such a cool sound to it. Real star trek vibes. I wish.
“pocket dex”
Nintendo would sue so quickly
Depends on the timing but Pokedex is clearly itself derivative of rolodex so im not sure that would actually work in Nintendo’s favor
It’s a Pokemon Index.
Pocket monster index
PPC: Personal Pocket Computer
Computer phone. I mean, it is a combination of a computer and a mobile phone so why not?
TinyTellies ©®™
Fuck you that’s mine
Pocket Ad Machine
Sellfone
Social Distorter
Dynamic Uniform Radio Receiver (DURR)
PITA from the article “Is that a PITA in your pocket?”. It was written in 1999 and was a literally perfect prediction of what smartphones would be. Even down to PITA being an acronym for both “Personal Information Telecommunication Agent” and “Pain in the Ass” since the overwhelming connectivity would destroy our privacy.
You could legitimately make a conspiracy theory from how accurate his prediction and article was.
Here to point out Personal Electronic Terminal was very much on the table at one point
Terminals
they were called Pocket PCs right up until they started putting cell network chips in them.
Telescreen. Term coined in 1949 by Eric Blair.
It’s always on, always listening, always notifying you when you should do things. Algorithmically telling you what to hate, in two minute videos. Not having one is akin to exile from society. What was really a stroke of brilliance was making them portable and convincing us to pay for them, rather than making them mandatory and provided by the State.
Absolute genius, I could not have done it better! My telescreens are Xiaomi/Huawei – I would feel lonely if only the West was listening. They are quite wonderful little things.
Handy (as we do in Germany).
Every time I’ve gotten a handy, it has been by some dude in a store. That’s why I keep coming back once every year or two; he knows how to provide a good handy.
For a brief period of time, they (mostly journalists) tried calling them App Phones to differentiate from other phones with touch screens. There was also the rumor leading up to the iPhone that it would be called the iWalk.
