With every dribble of information that slithers out about Apple's purported tablet, we drool with an anticipation normally only reserved for a Charlie Sheen relationship story.
The whole world now assumes that Apple's "latest creation," to be unveiled in San Francisco January 27, will be a multifarious, multitalented, multimedia tablet. But what will it be called? While some digital espionage agents are still in the highly imaginative iTablet camp, there is a relatively new naming rumor from the whisperers at MacRumors.
Having no doubt worked their iPhones to within one step of the mortuary and their fingers to within one step of amputation, they have found some trademark database evidence that all the previous rumors-- iTablet, iSlate, iGuide--might be bunkum.
For the new machine that will change your life might well be named the iPad.
MacRumors' quest for predictive immortality began at the Canadian trademark database, where the iPad name was apparently registered by an Apple dummy company. This was July 2009, a full three years after Apple had taken iSlate. The sleuthers then followed a trail that led them to Hong Kong, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand.
As the pursuers themselves admit, they still haven't linked iPad directly to Apple headquarters. But, seeing as we're passing the time together here, try these versions of the same sentence out for sighs: "I've got The New York Times on my iSlate/iTablet/iGuide/iPad/iDoodleyDoo."
Which of those feels most real to you? Which of these makes you breathe more deeply and exhale more sonorously? This iPad thing just might have something to it, no? It's another "P" after iPod and iPhone. And it's at least slightly more intimate than "tablet."
Perhaps this is, indeed, the Holy Grail. Though iDoodleyDoo doesn't sound all that bad either.