bongo_x wrote:banish the unicorn.
1. It's just plain silly. Unless you're a 10 year old girl.
2. VERY dated, that's why MOTU is embarrassed by it and is trying to distance themselves from it. It's hard to take anything seriously with the word unicorn in it. There's a shop in Tucson called Rainbow Guitars. I bet they wish they had chosen a different name now.
3. If MOTU drops it then it means nothing. It will just confuse people, and probably already does. I bet most people (who aren't hardcore MOTU fans) wouldn't know what MOTU stands for. ESPN doesn't mean "entertainment and sports programming network" anymore, because they say it doesn't.
4. unicornation is a really awkward name, doesn't exactly roll off the tongue.
5. My wife likes to tease me, saying "are you reading about unicorns again?" or "are you looking at your unicorn club page?".
It seems like some people are very enamored of the cliquish aspect of DP and Unicornation. In that case, I'm sure the unicorn thing helps keep people away.
That's obviously just my opinion, but I also thing Digital Performer is not a great name. I'm sure it made sense at the time, but now no one even knows what Performer is, so the distinction of "Digital" Performer doesn't meant anything to most people. Someone younger does not look at it as the audio version of Performer (which also made sense a long time ago since it played MIDI performances). They think of it just as a product with a weird name, like Mark of the Unicorn. Who the hell is Mark? Of course it's digital, what else would it be? And performer? How about "Byte Dancer" or something completely 80's?
You end up just saying "DP" because the name is so awkward, but if people don't know what it is they just look at you weird.
All the bad naming just helps make MOTU look like a small market company stuck in the past. MOTU is a fine word by itself, even if it doesn't mean anything.
bb
Please, everyone, re-read the above post. It is profoundly true, every last word.
The unnecessarily awkward, dorky nomenclature around this program needs a fresh coat of paint. I know we can't change the name "Digital Perfomer" (boy, I wish we could) but let's at least start with a cooler name for this website.
If there's anything you can learn about the story of Apple's marketing victory, it's that
cool is important.
- c
p.s. ...Although it's also worth noting that DP isn't
the only software with a terrible name that everyone's gotten used to.