You should never name a tech product Bob in the UK, because the moment it isn't perfect, it'll just get called "Bobbins" [0], especially where I'm from.

I wish IBM got better at product again, and took themselves off the services and consulting morphine they've been on for ~35 years now since OS/2 Warp flopped. Their 1980s/1990s hardware was great. Their software actually was great until Win95 took their lunch money. They've just slunk off into a corner hugging their old architectures they have a moat around, and thrown out some audacious nonsense like Watson now and again, but nothing has stuck. When is somebody in that organisation going to try and innovate properly again?

I'm not sure this is the answer I'd be rooting for.

[0] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/bobbins

We did a deal with IBM back in the day to adapt our tech as the code generation for enterprise java beans.

The commercial guy I dealt with made it very clear that a primary concern was IBM not being humiliated and shafted like their MS dealings. It colored our commercial arrangements, which had to include "break glass" arrangements for them to gain full access to our source code.

They left the consumer market decades ago, as you mentioned, but they've been thriving in the enterprise and government sectors.

They have been expanding their portfolio through acquisitions: Red Hat, HashiCorp, Confluent...

OS/2 was the only thing I remembering being great. If they practically gave it away I think we'd be living in a different world. Pre-emptive multitasking long before OSX/Windows. I mean Microsoft essentially had to force windows (eg. 3.1) down our throats until it become tolerable.

You should also never name your faulty/flaky Dell server Bob when Bob is also the name of your company president (though the president came after the server).

Calling Bob (the server) a piece of shit ("Bob is a piece of shit") because it crashed again was a very risky move that we often didn't fully think through.

tbh - my first thought, especially with that figure and marketing, is "Bob the Builder"...

[Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bob_the_Builder_(character) ]

Speaking of UK, I was immediately reminded of the Blackadder episode where the men-servant calls herself “Bob”. Rowan Atkinsons pronunciation is how I imagine this Bob to pronounced, with the same look of course!

I had thought that in the UK, Bob was everyone's uncle.

Also in the UK and never heard of this in my life. Guessing this is very regional?

Never enough Frank Sidebottom on here