> Think about it, if Apple had a woman's input, do you think it'd be named iPad?!? For f*ck sake, it's the most ridiculous name ever, reminding half the population of the embarrassing trip to the drug store.

I'm sorry, what? Do women get "embarrassing reminders" every time they pick up a note PAD, or use PADmapper, or discover that someone has PADded their resume?

I don't but I do cringe whenever I see the world "niggardly" regardless of how objectively irrational that is. There is a lot of nuance that goes into product branding. The parent is not making as absurd a point as you think she (?) is.

your sentence made me cringe. thanks.

I have never understood why buying tampons or pads was considered embarrassing, for either men or women. It's like being embarrassed because you're buying toilet paper, or kleenex, or condoms, or bandaids.

Maybe it's awkward when you're a teenager, but once you're an adult?

These are all policy statements and intuition-based speculations. I don't doubt for an instant that many people have speculated about why diversity might be good for software. What I doubt the existence of are empirical studies showing that diversity benefits open-source software in some measurable way. The original article seemed to be under the impression that such studies are common, and that their interpretation is so thoroughly beyond dispute that the point needn't be considered further.

Yes, it's better to base one's actions on empirical studies than on intuition. Yet we all have to put our pants on one leg a time, and it's far, far better to be out of the house in time for work than to sit there paralyzed and unable to make a choice between "left" and "right" simply due to lack of definitive statistical analysis.

As a tangenial but relevant point, there are empirical studies that show the inverse correlation between the number of programmers on a given project and code quality. Nevertheless, I have never seen anyone argue for hard limits on the number of contributors per OSS project. Methinks all the calls for hard data, while seemingly all about science, are really about emotion on your part.

(Sorry about the ad hominem - I am really not trying to attack you personally, I promise - I just don't know how to make my point without it).

I'm not criticizing your broader point, but I'd love to see your source that the entire marketing department at Apple is male.

She (?) is hardly the only one who'd noticed:

http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/01/27/the-ipads-name-make...

http://articles.cnn.com/2010-01-27/tech/apple.ipad.reaction_...

Sample comment: "Are there any women in Apple marketing?" asked Brooke Hammerling, founder of Brew Media Relations, a technology public relations firm. "The first impression of every single woman I've spoken to is that it's cringe-inducing. It indicates to me that there wasn't a lot of testing or feedback."

(google iPad + feminine hygiene for lots more examples)

Generally, I think your comment, while perfectly sensible, highlights one of the main problems touched upon in the article.

The author is trying to tell us is that it's important accept the reactions of those who have first-hand experience at face value. No need to apply a rigorous is-this-a-100%-rational-reaction test every time someone says they feel a certain way.

Finally, it is absolutely not necessary for Apple's entire marketing department to be male. The parent could be talking about focus group input, not employee input. In fact, it's likely that iPad's cringe-worthiness was immediately apparent to the women at Apple but they didn't speak up simply because it's embarrassing to talk about periods at work.

So, assume that Apple's marketing dept. is all dudes.

Doesn't that run contra to the idea that diversity is necessary/good by definition? Apple's marketing dept. has done a pretty damn good job, what with helping propel the company to the heights that it's gotten to.

I am having a hard time making a connection between my post and your response.

>Think about it, if Apple had a woman's input, do you think it'd be named iPad?!? For fck sake, it's the most ridiculous name ever, reminding half the population of the embarrassing trip to the drug store.*

Really? Because women in the eighties for example didn't seem to have any problems with, say, shoulder-pads, on the contrary, they were VERY popular.

That lame argument was played a lot in some news sites when the thing was introduced. It died in like 1-2 weeks, as 99.9% of the people don't make the BS mental connection between the two things.

Not to mention there isn't much of a connection in the first place. Not much more than notepads, shoulder-pads, launchpads, trackpads or touchpads have...

Plus, wasn't one of the most popular laptop brands the ThinkPad from IBM?

(Oh, and that said, it's only "half the population" of US (and/or UK). In Europe, L.America, Africa or Asia the name doesn't not mean anything at all).