As you know unless you live under a rock (and it would have to be a particularly heavy rock), Apple announced the “New iPad” yesterday. I’m not saying this won’t be a big success; after all, inertia is such a tremendous factor, and Apple certainly has enough to make “New iPad” a runaway success. I just don’t know if it’s something Steve Jobs would have done.
Steve Jobs did lend more than a fair share of intrigue to all of his product launches, particularly the more recent ones. However, Jobs did one thing well that didn’t happen yesterday: he didn’t distract from the product launch itself. When I look at news stories today, while many of them are talking about the “New iPad” features, many are also talking about why the naming convention was a bit odd, which isn’t the conversation that increases initials sales of the new device. Why isn’t it iPad 3? Or iPad HD? Would a name like that have proved less of a distraction? I’m pretty sure those names would have allowed the social media chatter to be focused on the technical specs as opposed to the name.
If you’re going to launch a new edition of an existing product, don’t you want 100% of the conversation to be about why you need the new edition, as opposed to 80% about the new technical specs and 20% about why the new name is a bit odd?
