What's in a name? FileMaker Pro Advanced

Created , updated 6 minute read

I just read this article at rumor site Think Secret, where they claim that "FileMaker Developer 7" will be renamed to "FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced" in its next version.

I know that some have questioned why I chose to name my new product "Synergy Advance", but this move by FileMaker seems a little bit ridiculous to me. In this short article I want to make some comments about the rumored move and also explain why my own products are named the way they are.

Why so many adjectives?

It’s fairly common in this industry to tape adjectives onto the end of product names to make them sound more impressive; "Pro", "Plus", "Professional", "Extra", pretty much anything which will sound good. In some cases these additions serve to differentiate one version of a product from another with more or less features. You can choose to run the "Pro" version or the "Lite" (sic) or "Standard" versions.

In the case of "FileMaker Pro" there is no "non-pro" version so the "Pro" doesn’t actually serve to differentiate the product from another. In this modern age of minimalism perhaps the name "FileMaker" would be better for marketing purposes, and certainly easier to type.

But adding yet another adjective to form "FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced" when there is already one redundant adjective in the name seems to be going too far. What’s next? "FileMaker Pro MX Advanced XP Plus 2006"? When will it stop?

Here’s my free advice to FileMaker Inc: simplify your naming and center on the FileMaker brand. Dump the word "Pro" from the entire product range. In fact, dump the version number as well. It’s good to know that you’re currently shipping version 7, and that 8 will be coming out in the future, but there’s no need to use the version number on every single page on your website. If you insist on having multiple versions of the same product go with this lineup:

  • FileMaker
  • FileMaker Server
  • FileMaker Developer

No need for "FileMaker Pro Mobile 7" (which runs on Palm OS and Pocket PC); just call it "FileMaker". Hard to see why you have "FileMaker Pro Server 7" and "FileMaker Pro Server 7 Advanced"; these should probably be collapsed into a single product. In fact, I’m not even sure I like the fact that you’ve got that client/server/developer distinction. I think it should be one product with a single name, "FileMaker". If you want to charge more for server licenses then go for it, but keep the unified name (it’s good enough for MySQL, after all).

My own naming policies

If you’ve seen my own products you’ll be quick to point out that perhaps I’m not practising what I’m preaching. But there is a method in my madness, as well as some mistakes and some lessons learned.

Synergy

Originally just called Synergy, now called Synergy Classic, I changed the name to differentiate it from my new product Synergy Advance. In hindsight I probably could have left its name untouched; people are smart enough to know that "Synergy" and "Synergy Advance" aren’t the same thing. I also see that the word "Classic" has confused some users who mistakenly think that means it runs on Mac OS 9. This leads to the cumbersome practice of referring to it as "Synergy Classic for Mac OS X". I chose "Classic" because I wanted to indicate the fact that the program has a lengthy heritage; and words like "Lite" or "Standard" were just wrong because they implied that the product was a cut-down version of Synergy Advance (when it’s actually a separate product in its own right).

It’s probably too late to alter this decision now but I will probably use the word "Classic" less and less in the future. Lesson learned, time to move on.

Synergy Advance

When I started work on this new product I needed a new name. The app works in the same space as Synergy, and the word "Synergy" already has a significant brand built up around it, so I wanted to use that word in the name. I liked "Advance" better than alternatives like "Pro" because it communicates that this is a new product written from scratch and not merely the same old Synergy with some other stuff bolted onto it. It’s also a bit less cliched than "Pro".

WinSwitch

I wasn’t feeling very creative the day I came up with this name. "Wincent" + "Switch" = "WinSwitch". I guess it serves its purpose, even if the name doesn’t have a lot of intrinsic beauty. One downside that I soon discovered was that many people associate the prefix "Win" with "Windows" and for some reason consider it offensive and insulting that I name my product that way… I’ve received angry emails, threats and abuse about it, believe it or not. I guess this is the response of what’s known as the (very) vocal minority.

This wasn’t the first product I’ve made that starts with "Win" and it won’t be the last (if I release this product it will most likely be called WinGizmo), but as a general rule I’ll be avoiding names like this where practical in the future. The Mac audience is very particular about these things…

WinHex

Pretty much the same story as WinSwitch, "Wincent" + "Hex" = "WinHex". Another simple but uninspiring name. In the next version of the software I’ll actually be changing the name to Hextrapolate. Goofy, I know, but memorable. The reason is that there is another product out there called "WinHex" and it’s been around for quite a few years; the makers have asked me to change the name to avoid confusing their customers. Fair enough.

Install

I think I got this one right, as you can’t get much simpler than "Install". I wanted to follow Apple’s trend of giving their apps simple names like "Mail" and "Address Book" (a trend they have clearly departed from with recent releases like Safari, Exposé and Dashboard). The one downside is that you’ll never get your hands on a domain name like "install.com".

Branding

Branding is important, the company brand that is. "Wincent" is not a very pretty name but neither is it a common one so it makes for a good brand. I’m far from famous but it is a name that is relatively well known among Mac users, mostly due to the articles I published before Mac OS X 10.0 came out; in those days my site used to get half a million page views per month (a significant amount in those days, although today a truly popular site would need to rack up that kind of hit count every day). I don’t write those sensationalistic articles any more but wincent.dev still gets well over a quarter of a million page views per month; miles away from the most popular Mac sites but still enough to qualify as a blip on the radar.

"Synergy", although known to a lot of Mac users isn’t so useful as a brand name because its meaning is diluted by use for so many other purposes. Consider that if you search Google for "synergy mac" you’ll get about half a million hits (out of about eight million hits that use the word "synergy"). In comparison "wincent mac" gets you over 50,000 hits out of about 130,000 pages that use the word "wincent". If you compare the ratios you’ll see that the word "wincent" is much more densely/strongly associated with me and my company, which is exactly what you want when you are trying to build up a brand in people’s mindspace.