The Cupertino Effect

Cupertino [1]. It’s a city of 55,000 people 45 miles south east of San Francisco [2] – towards the southern end of what’s called Silicon Valley. Wikipedia says it’s named after St Joseph of Cupertino who in turn was named after the Italian town of Copertino [3]. These days Cupertino’s best known as the location of the world-wide headquarters of Apple Inc (pictured). Today I write of it in another, but still computer-related context, i.e. the Cupertino Effect [4]. Though the CE appeared and was named years ago, I became aware of it only 1-2 weeks – via the intro to a Radiolab podcast [5]. What is the CE? A computer spellchecker’s tendency to suggest inappropriate words to replace misspelt words. The CE originated due to older spellcheckers changing the word ‘cooperation’ to ‘Cupertino’ – as their dictionaries contained only the hyphenated form, i.e. co-operation. Users sometimes clicked ‘Change All’ without checking the spellchecker’s suggestion, resulting in even official documents with phrases like ‘valuable experience in international Cupertino’ and ‘presentation on African-German Cupertino’. Whilst modern spellcheckers have all but eliminated the ‘cooperation’ to ‘Cupertino’ error, other incorrect word substitutions ensure the CE’s continuing existence. Following on from yesterday’s Farmdoc’s Blog post, the CE – only a short segue from misspelt signs – may be a nice topic for Jeff Deck’s next project. Ho hum.

farmdoc's blog post number 536

Each year, the AFL Grand Final crowd’s mainly corporate, so the ‘people’s finals’ are a week earlier, i.e. the Preliminary Finals. Like it or not (and I don’t), in western countries large corporations are dominant institutions. Some multinational corporations are more powerful than national governments. Corporations thrive on their imponderable and opaque jargon and code-words. But they also assert proprietorial rights over everyday language. For example in 2000 Ansett Airlines’ slogan was ‘Go Your Own Way’. (In 2001 it did. Into liquidation.) Ignoring this slogan’s banality and speciousness, it’s beyond me how any corporation can trademark commonplace words. But they can. And do. Ditto symbols. The common or orchard apple, say. According to the electronics mob Apple Inc., nobody else can use an apple symbol without risking litigation. Including Woolworths (photo). I relish two corporate monsters fighting each other. I hope they both lose. Here is an illustrated account of Apple Inc’s jousting with several alleged infringers of its self-imposed hegemony over its eponymous fruit. Cor! I hope Apple and its apple symbol both rot. In hell. In contrast, I have no issue with unique corporate words. For example, ‘Xerox’ and ‘Google’ used as verbs. But Google executives prefer ‘Google’ not be used as a verb since doing so threatens its trademark. As sharefarmer Sharon says: ‘Here’s 40 cents – go phone someone who cares’.