Comments on: The iPad’s Name

By: Butter Police

Butter Police — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 23:35:03 +0000

@Josh: It’s actually “pat of butter”, not “pad of butter”; a common mistake.

By: MrJack

MrJack — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 02:42:25 +0000

See, I call a pad of paper a notebook. That could really cause all kind of technological confusion. The only cause for serious confusion with the name iPad is when a dog says it, though this eventuality is unlikely.

By: josh

josh — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 21:52:07 +0000

pad must be one of the most heavily overloaded words in the English language. Just guessing.

I was chair of an organization until last week – we gave away an iPad in a drawing. The winner wasn’t present, but he lived in Houston (even though the drawing took place in Ft. Worth) – I had the pleasure of chasing him down via voicemails (“you just won an iPad!”). All I needed was his bank account number to make the transfer… Anyway, he eventually drives by my office where I’m waiting on the street to hand off the rectangular shape with relatively thin depth box, and I make the transfer.

By: Myrna

Myrna — Mon, 17 May 2010 00:29:37 +0000

the metaphor
IPod < IPad
the 1st and only thought came to my mind !

By: John

John — Sat, 15 May 2010 18:21:17 +0000

A pad of butter, got it…

By: Jeff

Jeff — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:52:09 +0000

Rectangular shape with some relatively thin depth; as in pad of paper or pad of butter. I’m sure the “paper” part of the “pad of paper” is also a nice association for a device they hope to become a core reading device. Pad is a word not in much use, but that may be seen as a plus to them.

To answer your #1 question above, no it doesn’t seem that weird, if not common.

By: John

John — Sat, 20 Mar 2010 08:26:57 +0000

you people are missing the point

WHY IS IT CALLED THE IPAD

WHAT IS THE METAPHOR?

By: Jeff

Jeff — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 20:42:40 +0000

I’m digging the new look/feel elements in the blog page. Haven’t been to the webpage in a bit.

Uses I’ve actually heard the term pad used in real life:

- pad of paper / sticky notes
- music (drum pad)
- mitigating social interaction (pad the conversation)
- place to stay (as per thomas – also used in the 80s, though not much after).
- web design? (padding)

I have never heard a girl refer to personal items as pads, not that it’s a big topic of conversation.

There also was a short time when a non-stop running commercial for Stridex Medicated Pads (for teenage acne) made everyone think of that commercial when they heard the word “pad.” Perhaps that commercial helped kill common use of the word.

While I’m very much not happy with the product name iPad (terrrrrible choice, but mostly because anything that starts with a lowercase i will sound as dated as bell-bottom pants in about 2 years), it’s only cute / unfortunately that it has some vague association with feminine hygiene products for some people (which would have been lost on perhaps all guys had some quality mockery not popped up even before that name was actually used by Apple).

Perhaps in 2 years all you will think of is electronic hardware when you hear the term pad.

By: Thomas Nephew

Thomas Nephew — Tue, 16 Feb 2010 21:39:42 +0000

1. No.
2. used to be “place to stay” back in the linguistically embarrassing 60s and 70s: “I’m going over to Suzy’s pad, man, we’ll get stoned and groove.” Or something like that.

By: josh

josh — Sun, 07 Feb 2010 03:43:07 +0000

attenuator for an audio signal – usually preceded by a decibel value, e.g., 15db pad

also see it used for commercial real estate, but never figured that out.