Am I the only person who gets really annoyed with vendors' desire to treat their products' names like personal names with no articles in front? Microsoft: "you can see more, do more and share more with Surface." Apple: "The Retina display on iPad makes everything look crisp and lifelike."
It's weird and unnatural, and -- here I may just be being eccentric -- it gives me the feeling that the companies are trying to manipulate me, hoping that if I keep seeing "Surface" instead of "the Surface" and "iPad" instead of "an iPad" some bit of my brain will start treating those product names like personal names and feel warm and fuzzy and friendly towards the products.
It's weird the way that Anand goes along with this in his article when he's talking about the Microsoft device ("After living with Surface however, I understand the appeal") but not when he happens to mention the Apple one ("I wouldn’t say that it looks better or worse than the iPad, it’s simply different"). So much so that I almost wonder whether Microsoft made it a condition of providing a review device that the review had to avoid ever saying "the Surface" or "a Surface".
As a measure of how unnatural the locution Microsoft's marketing people are trying to push on us is, notice that almost everyone here on HN, commenting on Anand's review that consistently uses MS's preferred form, none the less says "a Surface" or "the Surface" when referring to a particular instance rather than to the brand. [EDITED to add: I am not suggesting that he's showing some kind of deliberate favouritism or that MS asked him not to do the article-dropping thing when referring to competitors' products. I think he says "the iPad" instead of just "iPad" because by now everyone's stopped indulging Apple's marketing department's whims.]
context aside, the phrase "the surface" may be meaning a generic surface or a Surface. When I read to myself without the "the", the reading voice reinforces that it's the "MS Surface" product that's being referred to. That's the pro/con of using generic words for products (vs ipad, for example).
When reading, and you see the capital, it's easier to determine what is being referred to, but I often hear it being read in a voice as well, and the lack of articles 'helps' in some way.
they can be read differently, but what is the default for most people? I honestly don't know, but have an idea that MS/Apple/Google others have people who study this sort of stuff and do it for a particular reason. I may be way off there though.
It's weird and unnatural, and -- here I may just be being eccentric -- it gives me the feeling that the companies are trying to manipulate me, hoping that if I keep seeing "Surface" instead of "the Surface" and "iPad" instead of "an iPad" some bit of my brain will start treating those product names like personal names and feel warm and fuzzy and friendly towards the products.
It's weird the way that Anand goes along with this in his article when he's talking about the Microsoft device ("After living with Surface however, I understand the appeal") but not when he happens to mention the Apple one ("I wouldn’t say that it looks better or worse than the iPad, it’s simply different"). So much so that I almost wonder whether Microsoft made it a condition of providing a review device that the review had to avoid ever saying "the Surface" or "a Surface".
As a measure of how unnatural the locution Microsoft's marketing people are trying to push on us is, notice that almost everyone here on HN, commenting on Anand's review that consistently uses MS's preferred form, none the less says "a Surface" or "the Surface" when referring to a particular instance rather than to the brand. [EDITED to add: I am not suggesting that he's showing some kind of deliberate favouritism or that MS asked him not to do the article-dropping thing when referring to competitors' products. I think he says "the iPad" instead of just "iPad" because by now everyone's stopped indulging Apple's marketing department's whims.]