Which Tablet Name Is Worse: JooJoo or iPad?

By On January 27, 2010 · 7 Comments · In Product, Tech News

With the revelation of Apple’s tablet moniker, I’m left to wonder why it is that beautiful tablets are getting such unfortunate names.

First we had the JooJoo, which inspired a rash of ethnic jokes best left unsaid. Now comes the iPad, which has already been subjected to various feminine hygiene jokes with more still to come.

Was iSlate not sexy enough? Did iTablet not occur to anyone? One thing is for sure, there probably weren’t too many women involved in the development of that tablet, as they would have pointed out the consequences long ago.

Which moniker do you think is worse, JooJoo or iPad? Vote in the poll below (you may have to click the permalink, depending on where you’re reading this). If you’re a comedian, you should probably choose which one is best for you.

Which tablet name is worse?

  • iPad (59%, 20 Votes)
  • JooJoo (41%, 14 Votes)

Total Voters: 34

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On a related note, kudos to MADtv for making what is likely the very first iPad joke over two years ago:

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  • http://matthewdaly.dreamwidth.org/ Matthew Daly

    I’m going to disagree with you on this one. I don’t think there is anything funny or embarrassing about the word “pad” (or menstruation for that matter), and Apple shouldn’t have to be afraid to use it if they feel that they are selling an internet version of a notepad. I just Googled to double-check my memory, but I don’t recall ever hearing a mouse pad joke in my life, which is so much more ubiquitous than the mouse ball jokes that did come out.

    Maybe Apple could have foreseen the twitterstorm of juvenile menstrual humor, but then again maybe they did and don’t mind the extra chatter. It doesn’t seem to have hurt the Wii’s sales that people were acting like six year-olds when the name was unveiled.

    • K T Bradford

      You know, I’ve been trying to figure out for myself why it is that iPad automatically brings to mind maxipad while other instances of Pad do not. I think it has something to do with it being just Pad all by itself without something substantive to go along. (For instance, no one was making this kind of stink about the CrunchPad).

      Appending the lowercase i to random things has long been a joke, and I guess iPad just reeks of that. The iPad is not a digital notepad, though. It’s a tablet. A slate tablet, to be precise. So I suppose it seems more plausible to some that iTablet or iSlate would be the name.

      iPad has long been batted around and long considered too silly for a real product, so that didn’t help Apple’s cause. Aside from the maxipad jokes, I just don’t think it’s a particularly good name. I guess they wanted some synergy with iPod but Pad is too flimsy a word to go after the little i.

      There’s no doubt that eventually people will stop giggling about it, concede that it’s not a great name but cease to truly care, just as they did with the Wii.

    • Jonquil

      Your context is different. You’re a guy.

      A New York Times story talked to a naming expert, the guy whose firm helped come up with “TiVo” and “Kindle” among others. The guy said that women, as a group, will always recoil at any product whose name includes “pad” or “flow” or otherwise reminds them of menstrual advertising.

      Companies have spent over 75 years teaching women to associate “pad” with menstruation; it’s a bit cocky of Apple (big surprise!) to assume they can override that.

      I’m actually more annoyed that they once again used somebody else’s copyright, and this time for a product that is actively being marketed and used, the Fujitsu Ipad, on sale since 2002. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/29/technology/companies/29name.html

      • bemusedoutsider

        Lots of products got named __pad anyway, and seem to have sold okay….

  • Len

    iTablet was taken by another company, and from what I hear, Apple didn’t want their product associated with the “Tablet” concept anyway because up till now Tablet PCs have basically been a failure in the marketplace.

    Personally, the things they used in Star Trek were called PADDs, and the Apple device reminds me of those more than anything else, so the name doesn’t bother or amuse me. For my money Kindle is far more random and head scratchy.

  • Michi

    What would be a sexy name for such a pad?

  • http://jesse-wright.com jesse van halen

    Love it. But that’s cause I’m a nerd. In college I didn’t even have textbooks. I had techsbooks.