“Apple, Thursday last week, surprised nearly everyone and unveiled Mountain Lion, the next major release of OS X due out at the end of this summer. Of Mountain Lion, Apple says, “’Inspired by iPad. Re-imagined for Mac.’ With this motto, Apple is taking a new approach to the entire definition of what an ‘app’ is on the desktop,” Matthew Janssen blogs for My Internet. “Gone are the days when one app serves many different functions; with Mountain Lion, Apple has re-evaluated many of the base OS X apps and stripped them down to their core functionality.”

Along with this new approach to apps you may have noticed a pattern with the names of them as well. Apple keeps names simple, descriptive, and overall effective: Mail, Messages, Calendar, Contacts (previously Address Book), Reminders, Notes, and so on,” Janssen writes. “These two ideas, Apple’s new approach to apps on the Mac and Apple’s naming convention along with the iCloud ecosystem give a great credence to the idea that Apple is finally going to tackle and get a handle on iTunes.”

Janssen writes, “With the single-function approach, Apple can create a much more enjoyable media experience on the Mac by splitting iTunes into 5 apps: Music, Videos, Books, iTunes U, and iTunes Store just like on iOS.”

Read more in the full article – recommended – here.

MacDailyNews Take: Just how much sense do the names “iTunes U” and “iTunes Store” make, either? Beyond the branding, not much. “Tunes” are a mere subset of what you can get at the iTunes Store and “tunes” have precious little if anything to do with the vast majority of the content found on iTunes U. Just as iTunes should have been renamed “iMedia” or something that effect years ago, so should the store and the educational content component get names the reflect what they really offer.

MacDailyNews Note: Today is Washington’s Birthday in the U.S.A., a federal holiday and, as such, the U.S. markets are closed for the day. We will resume our normal posting schedule tomorrow.

Washington’s Farewell Address, September 19, 1796