iPad: What is wrong with you people?!

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Friday, 29 January 2010 00:49

Opinion and Analysis

The web has been filled with bad jokes about Apple's new iPad and the fact that women's sanitary products are known as pads, maxipads and their alternative, the tampon, yet no-one sniggers about maxipads when talking about a pad of paper, a notepad or the iPod.

Ever since the name iPad was mooted as one of the names for Apple's tablet computer, now known to be the iPad since Steve Jobs launched it yesterday, the web has rushed to compare it to women's sanitary pads.

Many have now seen Mad TV's fake iPad ad, something that was actually cooked up way back in 2006, so the joke certainly isn't new, and it certainly hasn't gotten any better with age.

Let's face it: few ever start making crude jokes about tampons and sanitary pads when talking about a pad or a notepad of paper, but just because Apple calls its new tablet PC an iPad, this is the first thing everyone thinks of?

Clearly, MadTV was thinking along these lines back in 2006, insightfully seeing the possibility of changing the o in iPod to an a, but few if ever gave it a second thought until more recently considering the possibility an Apple tablet would be called an iPad, like an electronic pad of paper, or the modern day successor to Apple's own Newton MessagePad handheld from more than a decade ago.

While some in the tech world indignantly rush to declare the iPad a load of iMeh because of a range of typical Apple restrictions, most of which Apple will likely dispense with in future versions when the time is right (as they see it), most seem to immediately discount that the iPad is imbued with the same characteristics that have made the iPhone and iPod Touch market leading devices in their fields in the first place.

Although most loved the iPhone when it was first announced in January 2007, and even more upon its launch six months later, there were still plenty of naysayers who have clearly fallen on the wrong side of history as we look back over the last three years here in 2010.

The strengths that have made the iPhone such a rip-roaring success are mostly all included within the iPad, and yet this is not good enough for many.

Naturally, Apple has already internally planned what it will do with the iPad 2.0, and it's quite clear that there'll be plenty of features added with each new iPad incarnation.

So, why didn't they include ALL the features they possibly could have with this initial version, like those cameras for photos, videos, video conferencing and much more? Please read on to page 2...