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GeneralRe: Absurdity of the Day Pin
David O'Neil27-Aug-19 11:38
professionalDavid O'Neil27-Aug-19 11:38 
GeneralRe: Absurdity of the Day Pin
Member 916705727-Aug-19 20:54
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GeneralRe: Absurdity of the Day Pin
grralph127-Aug-19 23:37
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GeneralRe: Absurdity of the Day Pin
Slow Eddie28-Aug-19 3:04
professionalSlow Eddie28-Aug-19 3:04 
GeneralRe: Absurdity of the Day Pin
#realJSOP28-Aug-19 3:33
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rnbergren28-Aug-19 4:48
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rnbergren28-Aug-19 4:34
rnbergren28-Aug-19 4:34 
GeneralRe: Absurdity of the Day Pin
Member 289602029-Aug-19 7:50
Member 289602029-Aug-19 7:50 
Seems you have lived under a Rock.

Microsoft has changed lots of products names just to fit the current trend.

For example, Office 365 was once called Office Live and the domain still exists (live.com) and it's been used by what used to be called Office Online Apps.

A long time ago, a friend of mine developed a quasi game for NeXT computer. As you might not know, all applications in the NeXT and all it's descendants (macOS, iPadOS, tvOS, etc) are really a Unix folder with the extension *.app and inside you'll find several executables which are simple chmod 755 files.

Long story short, he crated the Nap.app which would a screen saver like system which would allow you to fly above the clouds, like in a dream.

Several friends of mine tested it and wanted a port to Windows 3.11, so he worked hard to change everything from Objetive C into C++. Regardless to say, he had no sleep for like 10 days, just to have something working in Win32. Rendering on Windows was horrendous and he decided to code using a DOS lib which triggered full screen and draw directly into the hardware using CGA or VGA. The end result was waay worse than in the NeXT but the market was waaaay bigger, kinda like today doing things for iOS on Obj-C or Swift or going the Electron route for Android.

In the end, the Application was still named Nap.app but installed itself into a NAPAPP folder and inside there was the NAP.EXE executable, which behaved like a DOS program.

When he started testing everybody complained that the name sounded like NAPALM and NAP.EXE sounded like a gas chamber (you know they make you sleep before they EXEcute you. Ironically you could run the program with just NAP, but still people complained.

He then realized that you could the name the program folder NAP.APP as DOS allows extensions on names, but when he made the change, people start confusing the installed folder with a document and tried to open it on Windows Notepad or WordPro, to a very big error.

So he decided to change the name to WLKINCLD after the 1995 Movie "A Walk in the Clouds". Nobody got the reference but that's when Windows 95 got Long File names so he packaged everything with InstallShield and changed the name (again) to "Your Walk in the Clouds" so it can appear that way on the Start Menu and on c:\Program Files and promptly got a 20th Century Lawyer "cease and desist". Bummer.

By that time and having spent 5 years working on his dream, that's when I met him. I suggesting calling the thing "DreamSaver" and turning it into a Windows 95 screensaver, but apparently it would have meant recoding the whole thing, and the domain name was already in use.

In the end the guy became a Linux fan and converted the whole thing to OpenGL and released it as a XScreenSaver for Linux and then he did work on GNOME Screensaver. Don't remember the name that GNOME gave to his contribution, but it was definitely not called Nap.

So that's a long story, of how you can endlessly cycle through a name and never quite get it.

Or you can just call your app Whats.app and the rest is history.

modified 29-Aug-19 13:59pm.

GeneralRe: Absurdity of the Day Pin
#realJSOP29-Aug-19 8:02
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Maximilien27-Aug-19 1:16
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Richard MacCutchan27-Aug-19 1:29
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