Women Horrified by iPad's Ridiculously Inappropriate Name
Posted on January 27, 2010
Is there not one woman on the Apple iPad marketing team? Because right up until today we absolutely refused to believe that Steve Jobs would actually name a cool new tech device after a feminine hygiene product. Every woman we have talked to, tweeted with or gotten email from today -- and we mean every single one -- is in shock that the new Apple tablet device has a name that is inextricably linked with monthly periods. When a woman's pad fails, she doesn't call tech support: she head to the nearest restroom.
There is another terrible association for the word "pad" which no man under 40 seems to have heard of: urinary incontinence. Nurses and caretakers of the elderly think "Depends" when they hear the word "pad." This is why the marketing teams at major tech companies should not be composed by men under 40 who don't -- generally speaking -- spend a lot of time thinking about menstruation. Or elderly people who are incontinent. There is nothing even remotely cool about a product called a "pad."
We absolutely love our iPod and our iPod Touch. The iPad (just writing that term is annoying) has all the features we wish our iPod Touch had: it's big enough to use the keyboard and you can get a 3G wireless plan for cheap (even if it's on on AT&T -- but eventually Verizon will get it.) But the name is a disaster. The jokes just write themselves: "But will it have wings?" In fact, Twitter is jam-packed with them today. But guess who was ahead of the crowd on this one? Mad TV. Here's a skit from 2006 called "the Apple i-Pad."
If only Steve Jobs had used his prototype iPad to Google the word "iPad" before the name was finalized....