Comment by pbhjpbhj
15 days ago
Gimp would have to be the extreme example of this. I used to recommend Krita to people, despite it being less appropriate for photo editing, just to avoid using 'Gimp' in work/polite scenarios.
I agree - "Birdy" is the name used with infants when talking about birds, or is a bird toy that photographers use to distract people ... which is a bit too close to the truth, perhaps.
To me it also suggests 'a toy version of Twitter'; and Twitter already had enough negativity around it for me.
Somehow I feel like GIMP's lack of popularity has more to do with its reputation for having a horrendous and impenetrable interface than its name.
At one point in the recent past there was a fork of GIMP named "Glimpse," yet weren't a sudden influx of users who were waiting for a more polite name.
I would say both.
BUT, lack of users might just be that it's too late, now. People use web-based tools like Figma, I wouldn't think a lot of people are looking for a Photoshop alternative.
Krita is doing just fine. It has the subjectively "better" name, but also the improved UX.
We're missing the last part of this quadrant with a Krita-like app that has great UX but a bad name, but the preponderance of the evidence thus far tells me that it is more likely than not that the name didn't matter, or at the very least that the UX definitely did matter while the name might not have.