iSlate, iTablet, or iPad?
Increasingly likely Apple will announce their oft-rumored Apple Tablet come January 27, one big niggling detail is what to name the thing. Three likely contenders are the iSlate, iTablet, or iPad.
I’m no fan of iSlate, which conjures up images of Fred Flintstone’s boss whacking people over the head with a large stone tablet.
For similar reasons, iTablet sounds similarly arcane, plus medicine-y things you swallow are called “tablets.” Not that we’d have the same problem with the iPod Shuffle (recall the warning, do not eat iPod Shuffle) due to the rumored 10 inch size, but still. I don’t want an appetizing Mac product; had enough lick-avoidance with a fruit-colored iMac.
So I’m partial to iPad: it’s similar in spelling and pronunciation to “iPod,” differing in one letter only, plus it’s short with only four letters and two syllabus, perfect for our ADD culture or 140 character tweets.
Any of these names are far better than what Steve Jobs originally wanted to name the iMac. Yes, the truth finally came out. the original Jobs-o-vision was… “MacMan.”
But ultimately, what’s a name. Even if this Apple Tablet is called the “iPadMan” – I’m still getting one.
I'm not at all surprised that Apple is venturing into this. They have become the leaders in brand extension over the past few years, and I'm interested to see what else will come out of their extensions.
iPad is far too similar to iPod to be good for branding. Confuses people. I agree with many who feel it's time to drop the whole “i” thing already.
I'd cite AppleTV as an example of an Apple consumer product that doesn't have an 'i', but then again, they wanted to call that one iTV before “EyeTV” from Elgato made that impossible.
Some have said going back to iBook would be a good thing. Personally, I think not. First off, this thing won't be “book” like at all. It's a flat piece, not a folding computer. The reason PowerBook and iBook worked was because they were book-like devices, in a sense.
If you're going to go back to an old defunct brand name, why not call it Newton again? Though, technically, the OS was called Newton, while the device was called MessagePad, which doesn't work. They could bring back eMate, the other Newton device that came out just before Jobs killed the platform. That would certainly sound better than iSlate.
I really hope they come up with something completely new that no one else has guessed yet. But like you said, I'm buying one no matter what they call it, so I guess it doesn't really matter all that much.
I am falling on the side of Apple Canvas myself…..
Interesting thought… if so, there's got to be a paint app.
There's likely much precedent for dropping “i”, as several recent products didn't use it (Time Capsule, Magic Mouse, Apple TV). I definitely agree returning to “iBook” would be silly and needlessly confusing.
Well, only a week left until the truth is known. The safest guess is it will be a name that sounds odd at first but eventually we get used to it.
so funny people spend so much time guessing what the next apple thing would be called. it's ridiculous…. to think about it there is so many other more valuable things to do.