Name jokes aside, the iPad has been criticized a lot since its unveiling on January 10, 2010[1]. But people don't seem to realize, even in Steve Jobs' absence, Apple has always been deliberate in its actions in terms of product design and in terms of corporate strategy. The seemingly poor name choice may in fact be deliberate and revealing. And as such, we have yet to see the true potential of this device.
In 2001, Apple opened its first retail store. Compare with Gateway, which opened its first retail store in 1998[2]. There are now over 294 Apple Stores around the world to Gateway's 0. In 2005, Jobs announced that Apple, Inc. would make the transition from Motorola PowerPC CPUs to Intel chips. The transition, which by itself has apparently warranted its own wikipedia article, has been extremely successful and well-timed. Sales of portable Macintosh computers were increasing but not impressively so in the early 2000s. But, according to the wikipedia article, sales saw a ridiculous upward curve after that. "In January 2006, Apple's market cap surpassed that of Dell."[3] Apple's current stock price (as of Feb 8, 2010) is $194.12 per share - not bad for a company that sat at $6 per share in 2003. In short, with Boot Camp, iTunes, iPhones, Macs, and more recent environmentally conscious actions, Apple takes tremendous care when it comes to its products and to how the world perceives them[4][5].
So why would Apple be so careless? Within moments of Steve Jobs uttering the product's name onstage, the insults began to appear all over the internet: iTampon, MaxiPads, iPeriod Tracker, and so many more [6]. The iPad is targeted at a specific market and at specific tasks. Supposedly, the device is much more ideal for browsing the internet, handling email, and reading books than the iPhone or the MacBook or Amazon's Kindle. And while the world of competitors is already busy on replicating all of the iPad's features, the competitors are likely to be missing out on the iPad's true purpose until it is too late. The product's name and the target applications are misdirection in Apple's long-running magic show, they are distractions to keep you from looking at what is really going on.
In the mid-nineties, a young Wayne Westerman, a doctoral student at the University of Delaware, suffered repetitive stress injuries to his wrist in response to years of working in front of a computer. Rather than cope or quit, he fought back[7]. He and his PhD advisor, John Elias, developed what would eventually become the basis for the multi-touch technology found in MacBooks, iPods, iPhones and ultimately the iPad[8]. Their product was a flat keyboard that could support any combination of fingers and gestures - it required almost no stressful force to use and it allowed the user to switch from keyboard to mouse in the same area. It also recognized gestures like cut & paste using very elegant and memorable movements. It was an evolved input device. Just like the iPad.
The iPad is an input device. That may seem overly trite or uninteresting but imagine a network of machines that you can control while you walk with almost the same typing speed as you could get on a real keyboard. Or don't walk. Sit, lie down, jump, run - anywhere you want to be. Sure, you could do these things (or attempt to do these things) with a laptop or a netbook, but neither of those have full screen multitouch that can support point-to-point cut-paste or the ability to turn pages as if you were turning a real page. The iPad will completely replace the traditional keyboard and mouse interface... at least until Project Natal is finished. As for the name... perhaps its not as bad as the Wii.
[1] (1/10/10) Binary dates are ftw.
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Intel_transition
[4] http://www.hulu.com/watch/94300/macheads
[5] I have no idea where they were going with AppleTV. I'm going to pretend that doesn't exist.
[6] http://jezebel.com/5458338/that-time-of-the-month-the-best-period+related-ipa...
[7] Now he can cope alright... from inside his Aston Martin. Tehehehe.
[8] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FingerWorks
Thanks to Bao Nguyen, David Chen, and Ryan Richards for feedback on this essay.