The iPad’s a confirmed success. Apple can’t make the things fast enough, and they’re vanishing from shelves worldwide. Another thing that’s vanished is the ‘pad’ jokes, comparing Apple’s device to sanitary products. This sort of thing tends to be the case when a device is successful—the same thing happened to the Wii.

What’s more interesting is how ‘pad’ now might become a generic term over ‘tablet’ for similar devices. Engadget reports that HP’s filed for the PalmPad trademark and Pocket-lint notes that RIM’s grabbed Blackpad.com.

These might be defensive moves, but perhaps these companies are bright enough to take advantage of Apple’s branding success, using names that would immediately get consumers thinking of the iPad, but selling devices that are more ‘open’ or more geared towards enterprise. That said, don’t expect Microsoft to reveal the Windows PhonePad 7 any time soon.

Sometimes I read about the US legal system and despair. Quite often, in fact. Ars Technica reports that three iPad users are now suing Apple over the iPad, and have filed a class-action lawsuit to “redress and end [Apple's] pattern of unlawful conduct” regarding promises Apple made.

The problem, apparently, is that the iPad, like all electronic goods, has the sheer audacity to shut down when a critical operating temperature is reached—typically around 35°C. This is common among similar products—Kindle does the same, although you might get another couple of degrees out of it.

The idiot claimants argue that because Apple said “reading on the iPad is just like reading a book,” the company is a big, fat liar, because a real book can be used in “the sunlight or other normal environmental conditions” without shutting off.

I wonder if there’s the possibility in law for Apple to sue these people for being cretins? As Ars asks, do Apple’s claims really make the company “guilty of fraud, negligent misrepresentation, deceptive advertising, unfair business practices, breach of express or implied warranty, intentional misrepresentation, or unjust enrichment?”

Maybe these opportunistic dimwits should have gone the whole hog:

• “I made a note in biro in the margin of a book on my iPad, and when I turned the page, it was still there! APPLE LIED TO ME!”
• “I tried folding the page to keep my place in a book on my iPad, but the page wouldn’t fold. In the end, I had to put the iPad in a vice and bend it, but then the entire thing shattered! THIS DOESN’T HAPPEN WITH REAL BOOKS!”
• “When I decided I’d had enough of reading, I opened Safari and surfed the internet and also downloaded my email, while listening to my favourite album, and then it dawned on me: this isn’t like a book at all! I DEMAND APPLE GIVES ME MONEY!”

My advice to Apple: make a ‘special’ iPad for these ‘special’ people—nip into the local stationary shop, scrawl ‘iPad’ on a couple of paper pads and mail them to the claimants. It won’t be quite as magical as the real thing, but at least these idiots won’t be able to complain about it being unusable in the hot sun; nor will they be able to say it doesn’t work exactly like a paper-based object.

Engadget’s report Toshiba shows off Smart Pad tablet prototype, promises launch before October highlights succinctly everything that’s wrong with pretty much every PC manufacturer bar Apple. It talks about Toshiba’s exciting response to the iPad, the so-called ‘Smart Pad’; it looks nice enough (in fact, it looks pretty much identical to an iPad), but there the ‘smart’ ends. This is because the tablet’s due to launch “before October” and run either Android or Windows 7.

That’s right: Toshiba is a few months away from releasing its iPad rival and hasn’t decided which operating system it will run. Clearly, it’s sure to beat the tightly integrated, user-friendly experience of the iPad. That said, you can put money on loads of tech hacks citing it as an ‘iPad killer’, due to some random specs that most users won’t care about.

Depressingly, Engadget also reports that HP’s Slate is no longer a consumer product, and will instead be deployed for enterprise. HP’s acquisition of Palm made me think it was the one company that was about to play the game right, taking on Apple in an Apple-like fashion, by being able to develop a fully integrated computing solution. There is speculation that HP will appease Microsoft by still releasing Slate with Windows 7 but then offer the consumer version with PalmOS, but that makes little strategic sense. That would keep Microsoft somewhat happy, but also fragment the platform and irk geek consumers who somehow think that having Windows 7 on a tablet is a good idea—as opposed to an operating system that was actually designed to have on a tablet.