How Intel, Not Apple, Came Up With The Name iPad First

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Everyone knows Apple didn’t come up with the name iPhone. Cisco owned the trademark on what they called I-phone long before Steve Jobs unveiled the smartphone that would change the world back in 2007. But did you know that Apple didn’t come up with the name iPad? In fact, Intel was hawking a device they called the I-pad — or “information pad” — way back in 1994.

At Paleofuture, Matt Nowak dug up an article from 1994 describing Intel’s vision for a home of the future that would come with an “information furnace.” And one of the devices that would be part of that home would be the I-pad.

From the article, it sounds like Intel even acknowledge Apple had already created something similar to an I-pad in the Apple Newton!

“One of the devices that’s interesting, we call it an I-pad, an information pad,” [Avram] Miller said. “It would be a device that has a flat-panel screen. You can write on it, touch it. You might be able to speak into it and it might speak back. It would be wireless, cheap and have different forms in the house.”

Some early forms of an “I-pad” are Apple Computer Inc.’s Newton, Motorola Inc.’s Envoy and IBM’s Simon devices, which have both computing and communication features.

Intel didn’t drop the idea there. They actually showed an IPAD at CES in 2001.

Of course, eventually, Apple released the iPad, and it wasn’t the name that made it successful: it was the design excellence of the device itself. Still, if Intel had its way, we might all be reading the web on I-pads now, basking in the glow of the information furnace of tomorrow!

Source: Paleofuture

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