Apple: You're saying it wrong -- iPhones is not a word!
Apple's marketing chief Phil Schiller has taken to Twitter to set the record straight about the nomenclature of the company's product names. Specifically, he takes umbrage with just sticking an 's' onto the end of product names to pluralize them.
Yep -- iPhones is, apparently, not a word. Someone might need to speak with Tim Cook to get him on the same page though, as he doesn't seem to have seen the memo.
Schiller goes as far as saying that there is simply no need to ever pluralize the name of any Apple product. If you've been referring to iPhones, you've been saying it incorrectly. You need to be referring to iPhone in the singular (kind of like 'sheep' or 'fish' -- although 'five iPhone' just sounds plain weird), or tack a qualifier on the end -- 'two iPhone devices' or, insanely, 'two iPhone phones'.
The style guide pointers put forward by Schiller will likely cause some debate, but in practice it's fair to say that most people are going to ignore him and continue to say 'iPhones'. He made the declaration on Twitter:
@Gartenberg @BenedictEvans @stevesi @macintux One need never pluralize Apple product names. Ex: Mr. Evans used two iPad Pro devices.
— Philip Schiller (@pschiller) April 28, 2016
When questioned further by Twitter users, Schiller had the following to add:
@parks @Gartenberg @BenedictEvans @stevesi @reneritchie 2. It would be proper to say "I have 3 Macintosh" or "I have 3 Macintosh computers"
— Philip Schiller (@pschiller) April 29, 2016
We've heard Tim Cook refer to 'iPad Pros' and 'iPhones', so apparently he's wrong too. Of course, things get a bit confusing when you have more than one iPhone 6s, but we'll leave that debate to the good people of Twitter.
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