Intellect Wireless sues Apple in ND Illinois

Robin Wauters at TechCrunch wrote:

The complaint [filed by Intellect Wireless in ND Ill on 28 Jan 2010] states that Apple infringed on the company's patents when it provided wireless portable communication devices (you know, like the iPhone) that "receive and display caller ID information, non-facsimile pictures, video messages and/or Multimedia Messaging Services."

Separately, Erik Sherman on the iPad (fka tablet):

Habit and the desire to control things seem to have driven Apple into some critical design errors that will mitigate what might have been possible and leave the iPad as something for the Faithful.

Start with the name. It seems minor at first, but I cannot count the number of women I know, and many additional ones on Twitter and elsewhere online, who have asked, “Don’t they even talk to women out there?” Among a big portion of the computer buying public, iPad might as well be iTampon (...)

Apple had an enormous hurdle to clear, because Steve Jobs wanted to create a new product category, as he said. Only, I’d argue that the company’s innovative streak, clearly strong, has always been in building on existing categories. It added a GUI to computers, but only after XEROX had. It created the iPod after there were already many MP3 players on the market. The iPhone is hardly the first smartphone. Inventive and innovative? Yes. But Apple’s success has been in expanding on categories, not creating them.

When you’re creating a product category, you have to design the item to reduce the potential adoption problems, and so that you’re delivering what you claim to offer.

Helen A.S. Popkin at msnbc hammers away at the name iPad:

So why, Apple? Why? Why did you go with “iPad?” How could you not have seen this coming? “MADtv” saw it a couple of years ago when it satirized your MP3 player commercials — and that show’s totally canceled! (...)
“The new iPad from Apple — can set you up with fast uploading without all that water bloating,” confides one lady to another in the vintage “MADtv” sketch.

IPBiz notes that usually one has lawsuits by the product maker against later satirists using the tradename. Here, the satirists used the name BEFORE the product maker did!!

Matt Rosoff suggests possible improvements to the iPad:

Even if the iPad had wireless sync, the most affordable model has only 16GB of storage. This isn't enough for most music lovers' digital collections, especially if they're going to use the iPad for other functions like electronic books and photos. So how about taking that Lala acquisition and using it? Instead of having to load music onto the iPad itself, I could sync it from my computer to Lala's online music locker service, then stream it over the Web directly to my device. (...)

Naturally, the first thing I did with the iPad was check out its music playback. I could barely hear it, even with the volume maxed out. It's true that the room was crowded with gadget fans scrambling for their first look at the device, but even so, the speakers sounded no louder than the iPhone's. But this isn't a phone. It's also not a Mac, where music isn't the primary focus for most users. It's a consumer electronics device. It would be great if I could set it up in my living room or bedroom without having to attach it to another device.

Also

http://www.aolnews.com/nation/article/with-ipad-does-apple-have-an-idud-on-its-hands/19337415?icid=main|compaq-laptop|dl1|link1|http%3A%2F%2Fwww.aolnews.com%2Fnation%2Farticle%2Fwith-ipad-does-apple-have-an-idud-on-its-hands%2F19337415

The iPad got a little free advertising during the Grammys on 31 January 2010.