"iPad"

Okay, so I'm late to the party on this one. Sue me - I was 'afk' for a month or so... it happens. Anyway, for me, the most noteworthy thing about the name of Apple's new I-don't-care-what-it-is-exactly-as-I'll-never-own-one is not merely its similarity to female hygiene products. More to the point, to me what grates about the name is how it plays into Apple's increasingly ridiculous policy of naming everything it makes with a lower case i out front, regardless of whether or not it makes sense. I guess it all began with the iMac, which was of course a variant of its very successful Mac(intosh) line of computers. So instead of coming up with some name like 'Mac XQW' or 'Mac 21', they put the identifying marker before the name. Clever. There was also, apparently, an 'eMac'. Yay. Apparently, the Wiki page tells me, the 'i' was meant to stand for 'internet' or 'individual' - that second one being particularly iRonic, as they've spread that letter all across the place.

It's probably the iPod that's most famous among non-Apple-geeks, and its virus-cum-computer-programme twin iTunes. But the iPhone is well-known too. Among things you've probably never heard of, there's iSight, iLife, iWork, iFund and, connected with the iPad, iBooks and iBookstore. All overseen by Mr. iJobs. iThinkitsridiculous.

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