For quite some time, appending “Pro” after a product was a great way to highlight the new hotness of a product. Believe me, I’m guilty as charged! But the new product name is “Studio”.
- Mapbox Studio
- Google Earth Studio (not to mention Data Studio)
- Azure Data Studio
- ArcGIS AppStudio
- Oracle Developer Studio
- Visual Studio
I mean I could go on, but Studio seems to be the new method of naming authoring tools. I’m not here to make fun of this, just state that I love the name studio used in this sense. Having worked with Architects most of my life, Studio has a great connotation for workspace. All those apps above are used as a workspace to create something else. The concept of a studio, used this way, really helps define what a product is used for. I think the term, hackspace, has taken on a modern connotation for studio but the core concept is just so sound on this part.
Pro or Professional probably harkens back to the early days of software and hardware, where you’d create consumer and professional products. These days, professional is usually used to show a higher end product, vs a professional product (or at least used inconsistently). But appending “pro” to an end of a product name doesn’t signify the same purpose as studio does.
One could almost call ArcMap or QGIS a studio since that is what people are doing with it. My personal studio is my office with this computer I’m writing this blog post on. That thought makes me smile.