Stefan Mileschin

Ken Segall, Apple's former advertising head who coined the iTerm for its product naming convention, told students at the University of Arizona that they could be pocketing a "TelePod" right now instead of an iPhone, according to 9to5Mac. That was among the now-strange-sounding names Cupertino pondered for the device, since one of the early concepts was a phone based on Apple's star product at the time, the iPod. Other names considered were "Mobi" and "TriPod," which was bandied about due to the device's three separate functions (phone, internet and iPod), along with iPad -- perhaps because we now know that the original iOS testbed was a tablet. In retrospect, it seems like a good thing that Apple rejected those choices ("let me show you that video on my TriPod"), but we can imagine some fur flying during marketing meet-ups to choose the ubiquitous name.

http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/05/i...-mobi-telepad/