I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together. Beatle Walruses aside, is there really that much difference between “i” and “we”? There is if the next three letters are “pad”. Unless you died over 3 months ago, you are aware of Apple’s newly launched iPad. Now a German company with the delightfully apropos and Onion-like name Neofonie (“New Phony”) will be launching in June an iPad competitor tablet computer called…(pay attention trademark attorneys)… WePad! As in, “We have a Pad too.” Yep, iPad, meet WePad:
Geek.com picks up the story:
It’s everything the iPad was meant to be, according to German-based Neofonie GmbH that designed the device. WePad sports a large 11.6-inch screen and is fitted with a webcam and two USB ports, the two features sadly missing from Apple’s device. WePad runs Intel’s chip and a Linux software that supports both Flash content and Android apps. It’ll come preloaded with an open-sourced office productivity suite, too.
In case you’re wondering, yes – WePad will also do digital magazines. Neofonie teamed up with Europe’s largest magazine publisher Gruner+Jahr that promised to bring its flagship magazine Stern on the WePad.
It gets even better, as the company puts its indelible spin in the power of “We” (perhaps Nintendo might like to jump in here and Wii all over Neofonie as well), which is just so much more awesome than “I” (or “i”):
And if all of that wasn’t enough, Neofonie is dragging the Cupertino rival through the mud with its unapologetic marketing talk. For example, here’s how they defend the name choice:
Some people seem to think life is all about the I, and the Me, Me, Me. We beg to differ. To us, the power of many beats the power of one.
“Some people”, indeed. Unfortunately for Neofonie, “some people” also have an army of lawyers standing by to slice the “Pad” right off of their “We”. So if Apple sucessfully keeps them from using “Pad”, and Nintendo jumps in and says they can’t use “We”, they might be left with WePad, or eeP, at least until Asus’s legal eagles claim a risk of confusion with their Eee PC, and take away their “e”.
I think this padacious upstart should just go with truth in advertising, and call it the Neofonie. Ask any “Expert, texpert”. I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all Neofonie… And here are some major recently-granted Apple iPad patents that Neofonie would do well not to tread on:
- Methods and apparatuses for operating a portable device based on an accelerometer (3.30.10)
- Multipoint touchscreen (2.16.10)
- Electronic device having display and surrounding touch sensitive bezel for user interface and control (2.2.10)
- User interface gestures (2.2.10)
- Proximity detector in handheld device (1.26.10)
- Automatic detection of channel bandwidth (1.26.10)
- Systems and methods for color managing content elements on a display device (1.26.10)
- Identifying contacts on a touch surface (11.17.09)
More: Here are 82,212 ‘tablet computer’ related patents for your viewing pleasure.
Read more: accelerometer, Apple, Asus, bandwidth, bezel, channel, color, display, Eee PC, electronic, handheld, iPad, Neofonie, Nintendo, surface, tablet computer, trademark, user interface, WePad, Wii
