The name doesn’t have to sound intelligent, it only has to feel right to the customer. And it’s easier to achieve this when application name goes along well with its purpose. No company should ever require its customers to be attracted to a name that doesn’t say anything (like Apollo), or them to prefer unclear names like Dreamweaver over Web Expression.

So, Apollo is maybe the last name (is it?) that got out of Macromedia, and I think it’s fortunate for Adobe that it’s easy to replace it… o:)

I would agree with Peter. though…I can’t possibly imagine anyone saying “Apollo? That’s a dumb name. I’m not buying that.”

There may be a point, though, in the amateur market; those that don’t really know what these products do in the first place. It’s hard for me to remember, because I’m so entrenched in this stuff these days, but when I was first starting out I had to figure out what “Go Live” did and what “ColdFusion” meant. However, at the same time, I had to figure out what Illustrator did that was different from Photoshop…

Every product has only limited reach to customers, so its name should serve to extend it. Quality is the most important factor, of course, but the branding in whole (which starts with the name) also counts..

They more than made up for this by building community around these brands though.

What I do strongly disagree on is that they would’ve sold even a single license less because of product naming. I simply don’t know anyone that bases their decisions for purchasing software on product names.

You could argue that FrontPage is a better product name under your rule of thumb than Dreamweaver, yet you’ll be hard pressed to find a web professional that would choose to go with FrontPage because of that.

In as far as branding creates hype (see Apple), and hype drives revenue this might hold true but I don’t see it applied to the Adobe products.

Now there are many smart people at this new company who don’t have to continue using any existing trademarks here. Let’s see what will they come up with. It probably won’t be Apollo, but nobody should be disappointed with a good new name anyway…

Application names are anything from simple one-or two-word creative descriptions of the product (”Photoshop”, “Illustrator”), or possibly allusions or metaphors to something related to the purpose of the program (”Lightroom.” “After Effects”), to seemingly random words put together (”Dreamweaver,” “Acrobat,” “ColdFusion”) or possibly extremely uncreative descriptions of the product (”Flash Video Encoder”, “Macromedia Extension Manager”).

I’m not an Adobe/Macromedia fanboy, I just used all Adobe product names as an illustration that there are a range of methodologies for name an application, even in one company.

My point being is that if an application’s name HAD to say something, then we’d be living in a rather bland world of Microsoft-inspired software titles.