For you youngsters just tuning in, welcome! Today we are going to learn how marketers misuse terms to sell you shit. For folks my age, it was words like “space age” and “turbo”. The very first episode of the original Battlestar Galactica had the character Starbuck using the “turbos” in his spacecraft. Those unaware might not know that turbines compress air, which outer space is sorely lacking. But it sounds cool, huh?
Today your generation has to deal with abuse of “pro”. Same shit, different generation. Difference is, back in my day we shrugged it off as salespeople doing what salespeople do, went on about our day. Now we can write indignant blog posts, but frankly I don’t know that it’s worth getting that worked up about it.
> The very first episode of the original Battlestar Galactica had the character Starbucks using the “turbos” in his spacecraft. Those unaware might not know that turbines compress air, which outer space is sorely lacking.
It’s pedantic, but rockets do have “turbos” actually. They use turbo-pumps to feed fuel and lox from the tanks into the combustion chamber.
I will grant you one Pedantry Credit to use, as it sounds familiar and I have no reason to not believe you. But in return I will point out that I doubt that’s where Starbuck was going with that. :-)
(And for the second time, auto-correct, the character’s name is STARBUCK, singular. FFS, Apple, Moby Dick is a default book included in the Books app, did no one there read it?)
People seem to forget that words can have multiple meanings and those meanings can shift. You can still use the abbreviation "pro" to refer to professionals - a pro tennis player, for example. At the same time, "pro" has been used as an adjective meaning "very good" for a long time, and not just for tech systems, but for people as well (eg, "they're very good, they're a pro").
I've seen so much controversy the last couple days over the Airpod Pro for this "reason" that I'm wondering why it took people this long to learn the basic life skill of not taking marketing at face value. I suppose 2019 is better late than never for these people.
I don't think I've ever actually seen professional equipment marked as being 'pro' or 'professional'. Usually actual professional equipment is the the stuff you buy out of catalogs that lack prices or from manufacturers that focus their marketing towards business or professionals, which, from what i've seen, tends to consist of mostly just listing features and capabilities. I always assume if the marketing is geared towards average consumers or can be bought readily in many places, it's likely not something professionals actually use.
No, Pro and Enterprise are different directions. Usually Enterprise requires communication or interconnection or scalability, Pro is just fine for single user mode. For example you can have a Pro digital camera (like DSLR was initially), but not an Enterprise one; in the same time you can have the Enterprise license of a tool that is just a mass version of the regular tool with a license manager added on top.
I mean, with Porsche the "Turbo" just means "the faster model" nowadays. After all, even the non-Turbo badged ones usually have a turbocharged engine in them.
They always did something; the Turbo button was switching the CPU frequency on older PC's that ran software with no speed auto-dectection and adjustment. On IBM PC XT the turbo button was switching between 4.77 and 9.54MHz, on AT it was 8-12 or ever 16 MHz. They were needed on faster computers because some games were otherwise unplayable at the higher frequency.
You may have had a turbo button on a PC case that was not connected to anything, that is a different story. If you put a 486 in a case from a XT the turbo button "not working" is your fault only.
I had a Turbo button on a 80386, I believe it brought it down from 25 MHz to 12 MHz. I think they were still common on 486s too though, it wasn't until Pentiums that the option stopped being included.
So the question is.....why weren't those machines running at the higher frequency in the first place? Why would you only enable the turbo mode to play games but no to work in Excel?
On AT computers you had to go to low frequency to play games built for XT's. For example M1 Abrams tank simulator was a slideshow on a XT at 4.77, slow but almost playable on 9.54, fine on a AT at 12 MHz and unplayable on a 386 at 40 MHz (it was like a movie played on 10x speed). On the 386 with turbo off (16 MHz) was playable.
It's actually the other way around. You'd have to disable the Turbo to play the games. Because they where synchronized to the slower cpu clock frequency. For your spreadsheets you would use Turbo. Marketingwise it mirght make more sense to have a button to make your computer faster instead of one that makes it slower.
The games were unplayable at the higher frequency, presumably because they made some sort of assumption about the relation between clock speed and play speed. Typically the computer was on "turbo" all the time.
Did people forget about Prosumer? Pro markets are ridiculously niche and have the price to match (Mac Pro). Most of the areas people complaining about pro I don't get. Not everyone wants to have "professional grade" everything at all times. I use to be a professional photographer, but I couldn't justify 2k+ and all my dev budgets at the same time so most of these "pro" products hit my sweet spot. Not over the top where I'm now learning how to use the tool, but just more than enough to be dangerous if i want to take some quick photos to see if I kept my "eye." So far most of this angst is from professionals who don't speak on their own "pro" tools but will in an instant shit on anything mass marketed with the term. Sigh.
The difference between this and the hundreds of other products using the "Pro" moniker is that this is Apple and it generates controversy (and clicks) better than most other brands. It's a label to differentiate product lines, like "Turbo" on an electric car.
It's enough to do a search for "Pro" on the very same website above to see how many not-so-Pro products they covered over the past 20 years (like phones, cheap SSDs, or consumer cameras).
I do appreciate the article tag is "Humor" though.
Pro has been added to the name of sports equipment for decades although 99 percent of the pro rackets, pro swimwear and pro boots are bought by amateurs.
Nope, I'll bet that many, many professional consultants and lawyers will now use these to take conference calls in even more comfort than the originals. Seriously, if you spend all day on the phone (aka, a professional), they're awesome.
Yes, and if quality is better than AirPods 1, they can replace pro wireless microphone kits from Røde, Sennheiser etc., just like iPhone Pro can replace many cameras.
Tech products have a long history of misleading names, though. In the 1980s and 1990s, a very popular compiler was called "Turbo Pascal" and computers often had buttons to change the clock speed marked "Turbo". Obviously, these products didn't have literal turbochargers in them.
Where and when I grew up pro was an abbreviation for prostitute. No one would ever have described themselves as a pro with the possible exception of a golfing professional.
At least people aren't telling me that they are also not made of air or shaped like pods.
That would warp my sense of reality to such a degree that I wouldn't know what to do with my life and I would have to write a 7,500 word essay on why everything should be named literally and post it to medium.com, thus bringing shame to myself, my ancestors, and my descendants.
Today your generation has to deal with abuse of “pro”. Same shit, different generation. Difference is, back in my day we shrugged it off as salespeople doing what salespeople do, went on about our day. Now we can write indignant blog posts, but frankly I don’t know that it’s worth getting that worked up about it.