The iPod Touch gets hit hard, too, by people calling it the “iTouch”. These are often knowledgeable people — even Don Norman called it that in this great talk about design and attention to detail.
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Maybe these common, consistent mistakes are like a mental “snap to grid” feature, because people are wired to remember names in certain ways. When something is misaligned according to our norm, we have a very hard time getting it right and will predictably screw it up in the same way at a large scale. And these norms seem largely disconnected from education levels or demographics, suggesting more universal traits of how we remember and process names.
I like Marco’s supposition, but I’ll offer my own:
“iPod Touch” is simply a horrendous name.
Iconically, people know what an iPod looks like: a taller-than-wide rectangle with screen on top and scroll wheel on the bottom. Apple even rejects iOS apps that present such an icon, on the grounds it violates Apple’s iPod copyrights.
The iPod Touch does not look like an iPod. Its “Touch” modifier fails to override the well-earned association in people’s mind.
What we’re witnessing is massive tacit cognitive resistance.
That sounds cooler than it is. There’s no drama involved – it’s mostly Normals being normal.
It’s a comforting thought to some of us in the industry to discredit the general population as ignorant and/or confused instead of confronting the more-likely fact that we’ve devoted too much of our scarce attention to what Apple marketing wants us to think.