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Apple Trademarks 'iWrite' -- New Application?

Monday December 15, 2003 6:15 pm PST by Arnold Kim
As noted briefly on ThinkSecret, Apple appears to have trademarked a new name... "iWrite" with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.



"iWrite" was filed for trademark on September 12, 2003 and is categorized under "Computer hardware; computer software".



Interestingly, the trademark is registered under "Appple Computer, Inc." (with an extra 'p') so will not come up on a routine search for "Apple Computer". The Attorney of Record, however, is consistent with an attorney that has filed previous trademarks for Apple. "iWrite" is also a pending trademark under the Australian trademark office and European Union (and listed properly under "Apple Computer").



There have been many long-standing rumors of a new Apple-branded word processor and office suite. Earlier rumors have labeled the word processing component as "Document".



Perhaps the most intriguing past information, however was Apple's recruitment of three developers from Gobe Software. Gobe developed an innovative office suite for Windows, Linux and BeOS, and -- after a brief disappearance -- seems to have returned.



Add to this recent reliable rumors of a new Apple application due as early as January. Any connection, however, is simply speculative. "iWrite" may not be a word processor at all.



Readers should also remember that Apple has trademarked a number of terms in the past, not all resulting in shipping products.

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pimentoLoaf
107 months ago
If the price is write then I'll buy it.

sorry about that pun...
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swissmann
107 months ago
Bring it on to compete with M$ and bring on the rest of an office like suite!
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Phobophobia
107 months ago
OMG. No more word X!!!!
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Doctor Q
107 months ago
I'm going to go to the Apple home page and click Reload every few seconds until they announce it, so I can order it as soon as it's announced. ;)

Of course, I'm assuming it will be what we previously called Document. Maybe iWrite will turn out to be a new handwriting recognition program, in which case never mind.
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jasonpaul75
107 months ago
Sure would love to see Apple hammer away at the competition with further innovation of the word processor. With the isight's fantastic microphone it would be forward thinking if the "app" would focus as heavily on voice based input methods. We have all heard that its impossible to be accurate with speech to text conversion. Still, one can certainly hope. If it was even 90% accurate in its processing and used a grammer / spell checker type utility to clean it up it would be very useful to me. Combine that with the input of tracks off of the ipod voice recorder attachment for transcription and you have what many students and professionals would consider to be a truly killer app. Add consistant output and input of word documents and another winner we would have.
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Sabenth
107 months ago
this is getting reall intresting if its a word killer bring it on iam sick of it..
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Interiority
107 months ago
Assuming that this is a word processor, it is strange that it is branded as an i-App, whereas Keynote is not? Part of an entry level AppleWorks replacement perhaps?
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uhlawboi80
107 months ago
wellll, unless it has flawless compatibility, unlike Safari which still doesnt, im hoping they dont piss of MS and have them stop making Office X.

now before you all freak out on me, i dont like M$ anymore than the rest of you. BUT, i cant use the reply button or several other functions of exchange online. I also have trouble downloading attachments in hotmail and yahoo mail, though i typically use Mail and my .Mac account. but again, i hate getting .wpd documents that i cant open in Word X, i dont want that kinda crap happening with Word files in some new Apple program...just a thought.
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SiliconAddict
107 months ago
Woo hoo bring on rampant speculation.
Folks reality check here. The day Apple brings out Office competition is the day Microsoft shrugs, says screw it and effectively kills any chance of Apple entering the enterprise environment. People NEED to realize that MS Office is THE standard when it comes to office productivity suites. People will not compromise compatibility.
Now this doesn’t mean Apple won’t bring out some neutered version that is a step up from Microsoft’s Wordpad. Maybe they are looking for basic compatability. What else would you need? I mean OS X natively reads PDF's so add Word Docs and you have a good majority of the doc files on the planet covered.
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zellin
107 months ago
It is classified under "Computer hardware; Computer software." HARDWARE. We have no idea that it is even software let alone a word processor. It could be anything, like a PDA. For all we know it could be a Wacom-like tablet, although that is pretty unlikely. But honestly, Microsoft is releasing a new version of Office for Mac at Macworld. Therefore, it would not be a good time to launch a brand new word processor. Another possibility is the rumored (and, apparently, confirmed) 5th application to iLife. iWrite could be for writing web pages. Or writing some other digital-media. And the fact that it is put under "Appple" is a bit odd. Any loser sitting at home could make a company called Appple Computers and file all the trademarks they want. Not that I am saying that that is the case, but we just have no idea.
EDIT: Oh and btw, I heard somewhere that the next version of Office/Mac would be the last... I'm probably just crazy but does anyone know what I'm talking about?
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