It's universally acknowledged that Apple is one of the best companies in history when it comes to marketing, and that Steve Jobs is a very detail-oriented man. An example of these two things is a tiny, but great marketing gimmick that Apple uses. Even though they use it nearly every day, we bet you haven't noticed It's both extremely smart and extremely annoying (at least to us).

Here it is: Apple refers to its products grammatically as persons and not as objects.

If Steve Jobs is talking about an iPod, an iPhone or an iPad, he will say "iPhone does this" or "iPad does that", instead of "the iPhone does this" and "the iPhone does that." You would use the former version to refer to a person, and the latter to an object.

It's extremely smart because it's so subtle. We'll bet most people haven't noticed it. And yet it's exactly the kind of thing that works. It sends a bunch of powerful subliminal messages about Apple. Our products are unique and very valuable. Perhaps as importantly: We don't speak about our products in the same way as our competitors.

Once you pay attention to it, you see it everywhere. Steve Jobs does it in his keynote speeches, Apple does it in its ads. And of course in the Mac vs PC ads the products are represented by actual people. There's no way they're not doing it on purpose -- and there's no way it doesn't have an effect.

But why is it so annoying? Well first of all, maybe we're alone, but there's something just faintly creepy about a giant corporation who wants you to buy their products talking about them as if they were persons. But more importantly, it's annoying because we tend to be sticklers for grammar, and Apple is one of the most egregious companies on this front ("Think Different"?!).

And yet, we can't stop admiring Apple's attention to detail and marketing savvy.