Apple has a pretty long and storied history naming their products after celebrities. In fact, it goes way back to 1994, when Apple’s engineers code-named the Power Mac 7100 “Carl Sagan” because they hoped to sell “billions and billions” of them. Sagan C&Ded Apple over the codename, which prompted Apple’s engineers to rename the computer internally to the BHA, or “Butt-Head Astronomer.”
Now reports indicate that Apple’s at it again, calling iOS 5’s upcoming Shortcut text-expansion feature after another butthead, Ashton Kutcher.
The revelation comes, bizarrely enough, in the latest issue of TV Guide:
“It’s Week 3 of work on the Two and a Half Men set, and Ashton Kutcher is still getting to know his costars. Conversation drifts toward mobile phones, and Kutcher reveals there’s a feature on the iPhone 5 that Apple internally calls “The Kutcher.”
What’s “The Kutcher”? “An in-mail editable text expander,” the actor explains. Jon Cryer and Angus T. Jones are dumbfounded. “Jon, how many times did we have this same conversation with Charlie?” jokes 17-year-old Jones. Cryer quips back: “All the time. He was always talking about the new spellcheck on the iPhone.”
The feature in question is iOS 5’s Shortcut, which works like TextExpander and allows iOS users to expand certain shortcuts into larger chunks of text just by entering them. For example, [add] might expand to your full address.
No word on why they are calling Shortcut “Kutcher,” but the simplest explanation is probably the most likely and it all has to do with Kutcher’s prolific Tweeting, which probably could make use of some baked-in text expansion options.
[via The Next Web]
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
17 responses to “Apple Engineers Have Baked Ashton Kutcher Support Right Into iOS 5”
wait, carl sagan isn’t a butthead…
Just became much less excited about iPhone 5…
Your source is the TV Guide? Did it occur to anyone that it was a joke?
And with this post… It is now officially a very slow news day on nearly all tech sites
You’re right. He was a hack. So is Kutcher.
“No word on why they are calling Shortcut “Kutcher,” but the simplest explanation is probably the most likely and it all has to do with Kutcher’s prolific Tweeting, which probably could make use of some baked-in text expansion options.”
Or it could be because he always looks baked.
I am sure that iOS5 will be a hit Kutcher or not – Two Half Men – well it is off my TiVO recording list.
What? It has a douche button?!
Wow! Comparing Carl Sagan to Ashton Kuthcer… One’s a (deceased) brilliant scientist and the other’s a dull , boring, and bad actor.