This isn't a 'journal' in any sense of what the word implies when referring to published materials. There's no peer review, probably no editorial board. Blog is appropriate.

Nobody called it scientific journal.

http://www.dictionary.com/browse/journal:

1. a daily record, as of occurrences, experiences, or observations[...]

3. a periodical or magazine, especially one published for a special group, learned society, or profession[...]

4. a record, usually daily, of the proceedings and transactions of a legislative body, an organization, etc.

The phrase "machine learning journal" strongly implies academic journal to most machine learning researchers though, in part because that is actually in the name of several journals in the field. I don't think Apple is unaware of that either. This reads to me as quite deliberately playing on that association, to upgrade the prestige of the stuff published here vs. what it'd have if it were just a blog.

The first post is actually a summary of a CVPR paper by Apple employees. For those not familiar with it, CVPR is a top conference in computer vision.[0] Recall, of course, that "conference" for much of computer science implies the same length and degree of peer review as "journal" does in non-CS fields.

[0] http://cvpr2017.thecvf.com/

I don't think that really matters. If I only post really worthy articles in my blog it doesn't become a scientific journal. I'm not saying that I believe peer-reviewed journals are the end-all-be-all for science but it does seem like Apple is being misleading with this.

edit----------

Although, a company publishing a peer-reviewed scientific journal like Nature would be surprising. So maybe that isn't the common interpretation when they see the title. Maybe it isn't totally misleading. I guess I'm split on it. :)

It's not common, but also not unheard of for companies to organize properly peer-reviewed journals for their internal research. The two most famous are probably the Bell System Technical Journal and the IBM Journal of Research and Development. From the title I was expecting Apple to be continuing in that tradition, but it seems they aren't.

I should have quoted. The person I was replying to originally said that "apple won't let it's researchers publish in real journals", and then stealth-rdited their post.

It isn't 1: They're not publishing their ML researchers' daily activities and experiences.

It isn't 2: This isn't what would be generally understood as a 'periodical' or 'magazine'. It doesn't even resemble the trade publications that are often published by larger businesses.

It certainly isn't 4 - Apple isn't giving away terribly detailed accounts of their research activities.

The meanings of words isn't set in stone, rather they change over time. As long as people generally interpret the message close to how it was intended to be interpreted, it's fine.

If nobody called it scientific journal why it has volumes and issues? I think Vol. 1, Issue 1 simply suggest they see it as a scientific journal.

From a historical perspective, so is "Journal" -- it harkens back to the days of things like the Bell System Technical Journal (published from 1922 to 1983), the IBM Systems Journal, etc.

Bell System Technical Journal really was run like a scientific journal though, with the exception that it was "internal" to Bell. It had an editor in chief, an editorial board, papers had to be submitted for review and possibly revised before publication, etc. And the Bell Labs scientific community was large and diverse enough that I'd be comfortable calling their process peer review even though it was all done internally.

Journal does not imply peer reviewed. The word originates from Latin and simply means "daily". I.e. a periodical publication. An academic journal can be peer reviewed but that's not always the case.

It's interesting to understand the roots of words but in this case I think the relevant information to be considered is how the word is generally understood today in the context that it is currently presented.

It's a journal in the sense of a scientific diary/notebook. That is also my first association.

The word "journal" comes from french "jour" which translates to "day".

The word blog comes from log which original comes from tabular record-keeping of ship speed.

The proper name I think would be "Technical Reports." Not terribly catchy. But journal does make it sound like they are pretending to be science-y.

I agree. I think the closest word from the nondigital era to a "blog" would a "bulletin".

Have you heard of the Linux Journal?

Not even a DOI.

I mean, yeah if it's a personal thing about your life, the word journal might work. But blog means a lot more than that. Businesses use blogs to highlight products and upcoming events. Journalists use blogs to publish their stories. Bruce Schneier and Brian Krebs use a blog to publish research and articles they've written. 37Signals uses a blog to advertise their particular way of doing business.

"Blog" is not short for "journal on the Internet", it's short for "web log" and means something far broader than "diary" that you seem to associate it with. It's not just a log/journal on the web, it's a newsletter, a flier, a classified ad, a newspaper, a document repository, a knowledge base, an event calendar, and a ton more use cases. It's all of those rolled into one. And since "journal/newsletter/advertisement/diary/repository online" is too long, we just shorten it to one four letter word: blog.

The weirdest thing to me is when people say they hate specific words when no other commonly-used word exists to describe the same thing. You can't hate a word. It's the most fundamental concept of communication, that we all agree what various scribbles and noises actually mean. "Journal" has a meaning. So does "blog". They don't always overlap.