There is lots of buzz going around about Apple’s imminent tablet. I’m going to go way out on a limb and re-assert my hope/off-chance-but-who-cares-prediction regarding the name:

The New iBook™

WHY I THINK THEY SHOULD

iBook is just a great name. Easy to say. Easy to use. “Slate” & “Tablet” just don’t feel quite right (to me). Especially since they are words that Microsoft has used on their pathetic attempts at this THING. iBook was a hugely popular and instantly recognizable name — that stuck. People continued calling MacBook’s “iBooks” for years after Apple changed the name. Plus, they have redefined names before. iMac has been drastically changed, twice, but retains the iconic and classic name it was given. iPod has seen many iterations and the name hasn’t lost it’s punchiness. This new iBook could simply be the quantum leap forward from the lightweight, trusty, fun, and very portable computer that begat its name.

And more practically speaking…

Apple has cultivated two “tracks” of computers in the last few years. The Mac products, and the “i” products. It’s not nearly as simple as pro and consumer, but it’s along those lines. On the Mac side you have the MacBook, MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Mac Mini, Mac Pro. Notice a common naming theme? Mac. Which is short for Macintosh, which is the name of the Operating System, which harkens to these grand days of the traditional personal computer that we’ve been living in for a number of years now. Even aside from their names, these devices are all, fundamentally, computers as we know computers to be. They have keyboards, ports, drives, mice, etc. They also share very common physical characteristics (mainly aluminum, glass, etc.)

Then you have the “i” products: iPhone, iPod, iMac and iLife (software, but is still very relevant to this discussion), etc. These products have come to embody the “new” Apple in many ways. They are not, for the most part, conventional computers (the exception being the iMac, more on that in a second)… They are entirely original computing devices that abstract away nearly all of the parts of the interface that that the user doesn’t need and which make the computing experience easy, fun, ultra-portable, and still very powerful.

(Here’s the note on the iMac: I see it as just what its name suggests: straddling the line between these two very different concepts of what a computer is. It is BOTH. An “i” and a “Mac”. It cannot get any simpler physically, yet its software is still fully Mac.)

If the rumors are true (and it only makes sense), that this new tablet will be in the same abstracted-interface, multi-touch vein as the iPhone, then I think the “iBook” moniker makes perfect sense. In fact, it seems a natural and easy choice. It is a brand that Apple created, owns, and could resurrect and re-sculp to represent whatever this new thing is. It also could bear extra significance in light of the publishing industry implications that seem to be nearly certain to be a big part of this device’s appeal.

WHY THEY PROBABLY WON’T

It’s been used. By them. And although they do have a deep respect for where they have been, Apple has never been afraid to murder it’s darlings or just plain leave stuff behind. They may not want to compete with their own history, or run the risk of in any way conjuring up a sensation of “old” or “nostalgic”, when this thing has the potential to be The Future. And physically, the “book” part seems to imply “something that folds to close”… which is almost certainly not going to be the case.

So what do they call it then? The iTablet? Meh. The iSlate. Yuck. Sounds like “isolate” if you say it more than once. The Apple Tablet? Not bad, but not likely if you ask me. The MacSlate? dumb. MacPad? hm, not the worst ever, but a little cheesy.

I think the name that rings true and sounds like it fits just right is simple: iBook. Here’s to hoping.