By SCOTT DEWING
Published: March 2010

BY THE TIME you’re reading this, Apple’s iPad, which was unveiled last month, will probably already be available for purchase. In the meantime there has been something like a billion words written about the iPad by thousands of technology columnists, pundits and assorted hacks like yours truly. Most all of this stuff falls in the usual category of Crummy Reviews of Apple Products, or C.R.A.P. as it is referred inside the close-knit tech writers’ community. I know this stuff is C.R.A.P. because I’ve read most of it so that you don’t have to waste your time. (Hey, no problem. You’re welcome.)

The headline for one of the C.R.A.P. articles I recently read about the new iPad was “How Apple kills hardware innovation”. Geez, are you serious? Did you drop a quaalude before coming up with that one? Apple doesn’t kill hardware innovation. Apple is hardware innovation. How many times does Steve Jobs have to go kick everybody else’s digital ass and set the bar for the rest of the tech industry before people stop making stupid statements like that?

Just for the record, I’m not an Apple “fan boy” nor an “iHater”. I’m a fan of innovation who hates tech companies that are fans of just maintaining the status quo. So I’m a fan of Apple not because of some blind brand loyalty, but because of what Apple consistently does: make innovative, cool stuff.

As I’ve been wasting my time reading all the copious quantities of craptastic commentary that’s been written about the iPad thus far, including ignorant and snarky reader comments, one thing has become clear: most people don’t seem to understand the iPad. They keep trying to shoe-horn it in amongst the status quo. Some have ridiculously referred to it as an over-sized iPhone that can’t make phone calls. Others have hastily likened it to a netbook without an integrated webcam or USB ports or enough storage space, and so on. The complaints have rained down. Never before has a product received so much attention and criticism before it was even available in the marketplace. I think these iHaters are having a problem understanding the iPad because they live in the here and now. Steve Jobs, on the other hand, lives in another place, a place that most of us only daydream about. That place is called the future.

I won’t waste your time with more C.R.A.P. about the iPad’s features. (You can find plenty of that out on the Web if you like.) The technical specifications of the iPad are somewhat irrelevant to describing what the iPad really is. In short, the iPad is a game-changer that will redefine the technology landscape and set the bar just like the iPhone did for a stagnant smartphone market that had become saturated with dumb products in 2007.

In that place where Steve Jobs lives called “the future”, there are no netbooks with cramped keyboards and tiny trackpads. These have been replaced with a touchscreen. There’s no colorless and constrained Amazon Kindle.

In the future, you will read your digital content—books, magazines, newspapers—in full color while at the same time having the ability to surf the Web and compose email with a touchscreen keyboard (or dictate it using speech-recognition software). In the future, you will be able to download and watch videos in HD on this same device and have access to thousands of specialty applications, many of which will be free. In the future, you will do all of this on a sleek device the size of a book but only .5″ thick and weighing in at 1.5 pounds. The iPad is the beginning of the end of the classic computers we’ve all become accustomed to.

Meanwhile, back in the present, I think that Apple has only made one mistake with this latest product offering: calling it the “iPad”. Surely they discussed the obvious and problematic connection with another well-known product called Maxi Pads? Geez, are you serious? Did you drop a quaalude before settling on that as the product name? You didn’t have to do an exhaustive market study to figure this one out. MADtv did a skit back in 2007 called “The iPad” that featured a female office worker with the recognizable white USB connector leading from her computer and up her skirt to the so-called “iPad”. The skit went downhill from there. (YouTube it if you must.)

And the problems with the product name don’t stop with sophomoric and homonymic comparisons to feminine hygiene products. Apple has a legal battle brewing with Fujitsu over the name “iPad”. Apparently, Fujitsu owns the international trademark for “iPad”. This could get interesting because there’s other companies out there that have used the iPad name as well, including the global electronics giant Siemens AG, the much lesser-known secure card reader and PIN pad manufacturer MagTek and a Canadian lingerie company that offers a breast-enhancing “iPad” bra. Apple probably knew about these other “iPad” products already in the marketplace (perhaps with the exception of the iPad bra) but decided to go with the name anyway and settle any trademark issues later.

It wouldn’t be the first time Apple has forged ahead with a litigious product name. In 2007, Apple and Cisco went to court over the “iPhone” trademark, which was owned by Cisco. The two companies eventually settled their dispute out of court. Apple will likely end up having to engage in some legal jujitsu with Fujitsu over the rights to the iPad name. Personally, I think that Apple has established the “i” brand so well that they should own the trademark on anything with an “i” at the beginning of the product name. Selling 250 million iPods, 30 million iPhones, millions of iMacs, and soon millions of iPads should at least get you that. But hey, that’s just what iThink.