Evidence points to Apple's ownership of iSlate.com domain - Page 3

Point taken, though I don’t think my comment in post #61 was making fun of him so much as using hyperbole to make a clear point about a product name being unimportant if it fits my needs.


PS: There are at least 5 posts on this thread from a poster in Coventry.

It's only a matter of time before the actual name leaks. With so many people and shops in on the marketing, packaging, manufacture, testing, etc., the name will out. Someone will talk. I predict this will finally happen a couple of weeks before the event.

My $.02:

iSlate is terrible. What's a slate? If you have to justify it by looking it up in the dictionary/thesaurus, it's a bad name.

Newton is good, but already used. Perhaps another famous scientist/artist/philosopher?

Someone said Palette. I like that. Like a blank canvas or a bunch of colors ready for you to make something beautiful. Pal for short... like a friend.

iPad=tampon.

iBook is good too, but also already used. Maybe? Instead of an eBook get the iBook. Eh.

iTab. No. Reminds me of guitar tabs. iTablet=too long.

Anything with Mac in it is a no-go. This is meant to be sold to everyone (like the iPhone/iPod), not just MacAddicts. "Mac" has negative connotations to loyal PC users. They'll immediately think it's incompatible/childish/whatever.

Although not my favorite, I bet $5 that it'll be the new iBook.

iPod, iPhone, iBook.

It won't be 2 words. It will be a single word. A single noun. An object wholly itself.

"Dude, hand me my iBook Touch".
"Dude, hand me my Mac Touch".

Sounds like you are in a commercial. Same thing annoys me about anything made my Microsoft. "Microsoft Windows". "Windows Explorer". "Windows Media Player". "Windows everything". Of course it's Microsoft and of course it's Windows. Adding those words just makes it redundant and advertising. I don't want to be in a commercial for free.

"Dude, hand me my iBook".

Much better.

But what is a pod? Marketing isnt necessarily about a name that makes the most sense or has the most definitions that fit the term.

I thought slate was slate was commonly known as something you write on and a clean slate was a common analogy for erasing the past to start anew.


Newton is associated with an apple but dont know of anyone else in those areas who is. Any ideas?


I like it, too, but since palette is already commonly used in computing with software I dont think it makes for a good name and Id wager that Apples marketing would find the term unpalatable fpr that reason.


iBook was in use but there has no product of that name for several years. The problem I have with the term is that a tablet device likely wont fold like a book and using the term book might pigeon hole it into a mental classification that doesnt serve multimedia well. Then again, the MacBook and McBook Pro have book in their name and are known for their multimedia capabilities.


Palette is just as long.


I agree with your initial statement, just not your reasoning. I think if you call it Mac it has to run a full version of Mac OS X, which means it can run all my Mac apps just as easily as me porting my apps from one Mac to another. I think calling it an Apple Name or iName automatically gives the user the impression that its not full fledged PC but a complementary device for your PC. I expect this to sync via iTunes like all the iDevices and AppleTV.


PS: Perhaps we need a tabula rasa for our preconceptions. (See what i did there?)

Dude, "books" fold, tablets do not.

A touchscreen iPod is called an iPod touch, a touchscreen Mac (which I see it being) should be called Mac touch. K.I.S.S.

This is untrue. The difference here with Newton is that there are millions of iBooks still in use. There is a product with that name in widespread use today. It will not be called iBook.

Pod = "POrtable Device, sometimes referred to as "pod," a partial backronym constructed from digital media". I think the shocker at the time was it didn't have the word "Mac" in it. Pod itself isn't bad. What did it originally do? A music player, portable hard drive, and basic utilities. Not exactly a PDA, but a POD.


OK you got me; I just don't like the name iTab or iTablet or Tablet Anything. Tablets have been a failure in the market. Do they really want to call this device one? Isn't this going to be a new and different device? Ta-blah!


Yes, all that too.

It won't be a Mac. It won't run Mac OS X software. If I'm wrong I will eat my hat.

Not for long.

One observation: Bill Keller is dryer than burnt toast as far as presenters go.

Im sure there are a more iBooks in use than there were Newtons sold, but I think iBook could work. I agree that its still too early for that name to be recycled but my comment was to the name actively being marketed by Apple, not a device that is still used but will have stopped being sold 4 years before this mythical tablet is rumoured to launch.



That is a good answer but that is clearly a backronym. Its interesting that acronyms and initialisms were virtually non-existence prior to the 20th century.

Love your posts. Every time I have to do a Google/Wikipedia search to figure out what you're talking about. I learn a little, even if I still disagree, and it passes the time while I'm at work!

Not chalk. That is what you get if you lightly scratch a piece of slate with a sharp object - in this case the pointy enfd of a sharp stone.

iSlate.com might have been more of a problem when Microsoft owned Slate (via MSNBC)...

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/6741936/

iPad sounds too much the same as iPod. Not going to happen.

And someone above belittled people who called the iPod touch the ITouch when he/she called it the iPod Touch! lol

iPod touch
iPod nano
iPod shuffle
iPod classic

I have no idea what the new "tablet" will be called. Do we even know if it's going to BE in a tablet form factor?

A lot of people are putting emphasis on it being a book reader. I believe this will do everything we need done that can't be done easily by an iPhone or iPod touch, or by a MacBook or MacBook Pro.

And what is that? Ask Steve. He knows. And I'll bet that it will sell well. The MBA hasn't sold as much as some would have liked, but it fills a niche that those who buy it have wanted in a long time.

So might this mythical tablet. It could sell like the iPhone or be a nice niche product for those who want/need it.

iPod? I think it's a great name. New and unique when it came out.

So, whatever the name, it is the product that counts.

I'll have a good laugh when NOTHING comes out in 2010 that resembles anything like the "tablet" and no one has come up with the iWhere?

Cheers and happy holidays!

*

They should just call it "Ta-Dah"

*

Just like paper died yeah?

Yeah, but now introducing Chalko-touch!

What legal problems? And no confusion that couldn't be solved with the same question for any other of Apple's product: "Which model iBook do you own?" "Oh, the G4 one".

Done.


Right, because a hardware product with the name Slate that is expected to support magazine subscriptions wont be at all confusing with Slate the online magaine. Who were you calling idiot?

Mac Touch or Macpad.

This device will certainly help.

You don't think, unless we blow ourselves up in nuclear war, that the use of paper will continue to decline to a point where we rarely use it?

I can imagine a time where it's only used as an art medium or for fancy nostalgic books (however, most literature will be in e-version).

Imagination always existed, so what.

As good a guess as any, including mine. It seems likely to be using the iPhone OS, so is part of that family of products. As such I expect some name linkage to either the iPhone or iPod Touch. I doubt it will be linked to any laptop family name--products that use Mac OS X. Or, as others have speculated, it'll have a completely new name, as the progenitor of an entirely new line of products.

IF this is indeed the name, I think it is a good one. My first reaction wasn't overly enthusiastic, but after a moment, I realized it would be very suitable...

For those thinking it is a crap name or that "a slate is a rock" then think again. For one thing, "A slate" isn't "a rock", though slate is a type of rock. But the primary thing I thought of before thinking of slates like those tiling my roof, is the little individual blackboards that every child carried to school a hundred years ago.

A book you open, hence iBook. A pad you would flip open too, so iPad wouldn't work. A slate you would scrawl right on top of, always interacting with the outer surface -- even flipping it over and using the other side.

There's always the apple variety series: Macintosh, Newton, Pippen (all used). Any thoughts on which apple variety implies the new device's function?

If not function, then as a marketing appeal? Fuji might cater to the Japanese market. Gala to our gay brothers and sisters. Jonathan has a nice friendly ring to it. But Adam does too. ;-). Winesap for substance abusers? Delicious might be covered by that software maker's patents, but Golden Delicious might not. Crab? Well, it's little and has a hard shell. Granny Smith might appeal to computer-phobic retirees. Northern Spy for Yankees? Rome, because it will found a new empire of devices? Arkansas Black? Maybe just a little too narrow a sector.

Let's hope Apple's taste isn't as bad as yours. The name is dumb simply because it is. It's an objective truth.

I thought the same at first, but the more I hear it, the dumber and clunkier "iSlate" sounds. I agree that the evidence is pointing towards that being the name, but I think it's a poor choice. Apple has been making some really dumb and déclassé moves lately though so it's not beyond the realm of possibility that they would pick "iSlate."

If they do pick it, it's obviously meant to key into the colonial "school slates" as you mention above, but this is a very particular, very time isolated, and very American reference. For those reasons "iSlate" is as bad a choice for a new tablet computer, as naming a new type of car the "Ben Franklin" would be.


I tend to disagree with you here also as I don't think a "pad" (of paper) is generally flipped open nowadays, most have no front cover.

Given that the tablet is trying to replace things like an artists pad, a writing pad, a steno pad, or any clipboard (usually with some pad or stack of paper attached), I think "iPad" is clearly the best choice. Even a book is really just a pad of paper. It also neatly fits with their mobile nomenclature in that it's a single syllable word that begins with a small "i" and big "P."

- iPod
- iPhone
- iPad

Despite the unfortunate menstrual pad reference that people keep bringing up, "iPad" rolls off the tongue a lot easier and actually references the tools and the media that the device is purporting to replace.

"iSlate" is probably what they are going with, but IMO it's a mistake. It's a clunky old-timey name that references an era of American history that most Americans are unaware of, let alone anyone else.

Believe it or not, children used slates in schools at other times and in other places than colonial America. They were in persistent use everywhere until the early part of the 20th century, at least.

The reason why this is a bad name for the Apple product is because it denotes heavy, primitive, and very limited function. The only reason it seems anyone is even talking about this name is because so many media writers don't seem to know what other name to use to describe a product they haven't seen, and have no idea how it will look or function. It's caught on by default -- otherwise, it makes no sense at all.

Who cares about the name. Have credit card, will purchase. Hurry up Apple and drop this thing. I will be in the States during Feb and March. Hopefully just in time to pick up one or two.

Names matter.

Well granted it wasn't just the USA, but only the USA seems to remember the things fondly at all. Culturally, the term mostly references the little red schoolhouse kind of era of American History.

Anyway, I would still argue it's a horrible choice to name a product after something that no living person can remember using. You might see a slate in a Norman Rockwell painting, and in the 1950's the name would have some nostalgic appeal, but most people alive today have no idea that a "slate" was a thing you used in school to write on.

You only have to look at forums discussing the name to see that half of the posters don't understand where the reference comes from. Worse, some are looking it up in the Thesaurus and coming up with the wrong meaning, because it's a term in such disuse that it only rates as the third or fourth reference in the online Dictionaries and Thesauri being used.

Show me one instance where the name of something affected its functionality. So if an iPod suddenly becomes aeöwlqjr9queq, it will no longer function as an iPod? Second, my post was based in humor more than anything else. Third, I could not care less what it is call because I try not to be a pedantic whiner (not saying you are) who bitches and moans about everything (again, not saying you do) that Apple does and does not do.

Hey guys! I saw the apple tablet appearing in the movie Avatar.
(maybe it wasn't the first generation of the tablet)

Functionality is not the point. Almost everybody knows what a MacBook is (one word tells you it is by Apple, it is a laptop, you want it). Who knows what a VGNZ55X is? No, it is not the device Ike Willis plooked in "Joe's Garage" - it is actually a 13" Sony laptop that can cost you as much as 4.2k when ordering all the options... just, you won't, because less than 20 words later you can't even recall it. How many articles will you see featuring "VGNZ55X" in the headline - and if, who (except Sony staff and Engadget addicts) would look at them? Even if a name is dull... as long as people can remember it and it conveys a picture - it is good. "iSlate" tells me it is by Apple and I can write on it. Enough to make we want more information. Try that with any other combination of six letters (assuming "free t&a" does not count)...

I really hated the move from "PowerBook" to "MacBook" and thought it was dull. Of course, I was wrong. Not even 3% of the world population knew that a PowerBook was a Mac...

I agree with this completely. It makes the most sense but is too disgusting.



Well I'm finally off work. Time to jump on my horse and ride home.

I agree. For me, it's still Mactouch ftw! Anything just doesn't fit. I have a feeling "iSlate" is Steve Jobs idea. Steve is brilliant at tech design but SUCKS at marketing. That's why he surrounds himself with brilliant people. What was the name of the guy in Apple marketing who came up with the name "iMac"? That is the guy who should come up with a name for the tablet.

I hope it's not the same person that came up with the name "iSlate". We will all find out soon enough.

MacTOUCH FTW!

Fine then no "MacTouch".

But I agree that the "i" moniker has run it's course. We need something new, thrilling and groundbreaking that will coincide to what this product will most likely be like.

macpad/ipad/magicpad/magictouch/magicSlate/magicbook

i'd love to see it !