So nearly all of the expectations about the third generation iPad essentially came to pass. The most significant new feature is the Retina Display, followed, perhaps, by LTE support, as if that’ll make much of a difference since most iPad users aren’t apt to want to download huge files; you’d be streaming (rather than downloading) movies, I expect. It’s nice to see Apple add all that stuff, retain decent battery life, and only make it a tiny bit thicker and a tiny bit heavier.

But there is the naming of the product that seems to be subject to endless discussion. One person posted a curious comment on a social networking site that, by calling it “The new iPad,” Apple made a multibillion dollar mistake. Well, it takes all kinds.

Until the iPad (third generation) arrived, the media, and no doubt customers around the world, expected it to be called the iPad 3. That seemed reasonable enough, given how the previous versions of the iPad, and the iPhone, were named as new models appeared. In the days ahead of Wednesday’s media event, some suggested it must be an iPad HD. But Apple boasts that The New iPad actually has a higher resolution than a high-definition TV set, so that label simply doesn’t apply. And in keeping with Apple’s minimalist virtues, calling it the “iPad Retina Display” is a non-starter.

I suppose the best way to understand Apple’s product naming conventions is to look at the company until the second coming of Steve Jobs in the mid-1990s. It had gotten to the point where Apple had so many similarly named products, even the executives couldn’t tell the difference. Indeed, some Mac Performas were named in a certain way that was unique to a single store chain, even though the specs were no different from one bought elsewhere that carried a different model designation.

It made loads of sense for Jobs to kill that policy, and it’s interesting to see most of the other consumer electronics companies still doing the very thing Apple was criticized for back then. But sometimes being simple ends up being complicated. So there’s the iMac, but there have been many models of various shapes and sizes during this all-in-one desktop computer’s nearly 14- year lifetime. After the original pear-shaped design expired, Apple went to a flat panel configuration with an articulated and complex metal stand that rose up from a domed base. The second generation product, however, didn’t do quite as well as the first, and Apple went to a true flat panel, looking for all the world like a traditional computer display with a bit of a weight problem.

Moving from plastic to aluminum, Apple has made the casings slimmer, adding components that have brought performance to the level of a Mac Pro. But it’s still called iMac. About This Mac delivers some additional information, such as the processor speed and the amount of installed RAM. It takes clicking More Info…. to bring up a system profile that presents the full model designation and additional internal specs.

Apple’s current policy is to identify an iMac, and all other Macs for that matter, with the revision date in parenthesis. So the iMac I brought in late 2009 is identified as iMac (Late 2009).

Now today’s iPad is regarded by Apple as a “Post-PC” product, meaning that it intended to be a successor to a traditional personal computer (Mac or PC) in many respects. That the iPad’s sales in the last financial quarter exceeded those reported by any single PC maker, even HP and Dell, clearly demonstrates the success of Apple’s strategy.

So maybe that’s why version three of the iPad is simply iPad, or The new iPad, or just iPad (third generation). You take your choice. I don’t think people are going to want to keep saying “The new iPad” in general conversation.

Imagine me asking Barbara, Mrs. Steinberg, this question: “Honey, where did you put The new iPad?” “Oh, honey, I left The new iPad in the living room.” “Thanks for telling me where to find The new iPad.”

But does that mean we must start calling the iPad 2, “The old iPad,” and the first generation model “The very old iPad”? Or maybe “The ancient iPad? or “The passé iPad”?

All in a name, but you can see where this is heading. What will Apple call the fourth generation model? “The newest iPad”?

How about, simply, the 2012 iPad or iPad ’12? That would immediately convey the year of its release, in the same fashion as the most recent versions of iLife or iWork?

However, I definitely don’t agree with the poster who claimed that Apple made a multibillion dollar mistake. We can stop talking about the thing’s name, can we? That most mean, potentially, billions of dollars of free publicity.

Well, in speaking with Adam Engst, of TidBITS fame, in a segment recorded for the next edition of The Tech Night Owl LIVE, I agreed with him that we just call it the iPad 3 and be done with it. Adam has already begun to follow through on that naming convention. Anyone want to join us?

You just know that when Apple calls on the press to travel to New York or California to attend one of their special events, you can expect a long session with loads of flashy, but often tedious demonstrations. Usually the presentations are 60 to 90 minutes long, and start reasonably on schedule. That was true even when Steve Jobs was master of ceremonies, and he was famous for lengthy introductions with loads of suspense before rolling out the main course.

Well CEO Tim Cook is nothing if not efficient. He hit the stage a few minutes early, briefly recounting Apple’s great sales profile, and how the iPad, all by itself, exceeded the sales of any single PC maker in the last quarter. He then got down to business. First came the third-generation Apple TV, still $99, but with a slicker interface, and 1080p capability. This means you can download newly encoded movies and get picture quality equivalent to Blu-ray, or from such on-demand services as DirecTV. You’ll even be able to download the movies and TV shows you’ve already purchased all over again, assuming the studio has given Apple permission to do so.

Before you could blink a few times, it was over. Version three of the Apple TV will go on sale next week. By 10:15, a little over a quarter hour after the session began, we got to the main event with a surprisingly direct introduction by Tim Cook. But the actual presentation was delivered by worldwide marketing VP Philip Schiller.

The initial details were unsurprising, since the rumor sites and even the mainstream media had most of it pegged correctly. Like the iPhone 4 series, “The new iPad” will sport a Retina Display, offering 264 pixels per inch and designed to provide perfect display of text at a viewing distance of fifteen inches. The iPhone 4’s Retina Display considers ten inches the magic distance. Without actually seeing the third-generation product, I will accept Apple’s logic as correct, based on my experience with an iPhone 4 and iPhone 4s.

The chip is, as the rumors state, the A5X, not an A6. The specs are tricky, though. Although quad-core was mentioned, that’s strictly for the graphics. Apple’s own specs call the A5X otherwise a dual-core chip. Schiller boasted that the enhanced graphics provide four times the power of NVIDIA’s Tegra 3, widely used in rival tablets. The rear camera is now five megapixels, with technology derived from the higher resolution sensor on the iPhone 4s, along with 1080p video recording and image stabilization.

One new feature not previously mentioned is voice dictation. But not the Siri personal assistant, which may be a poor mix for the larger iPad. The iPhone 4s voice recognition scheme actually employs two mics, one for noise canceling, and that might be a key reason for Siri’s superior accuracy in recognizing what you’re saying, even under somewhat noisy surroundings.

Yes, the new iPad comes in versions with LTE cellular technology, but there are separate models for AT&T and Verizon Wireless, since their networks use different frequencies. Battery life is touted as the same as the previous model: 10 hours for the regular model, and nine hours for the LTE edition. All the extra goodies add weight and girth, with the the version three product measuring 9.4 millimeters “thin” and weighing 1.44 pounds for the Wi-Fi version, up from 8.8 millimeters (thinner) and 1.33 pounds for the iPad 2. So if you hoped for more convenient one-handed use, you may do better with an new exercise routine.

Prices are the same as the previous model, and Apple has already opened their store for preorders. The new iPad will ship beginning March 16th in ten countries. But expect supplies to be severely constrained for the first few weeks. Predictably, the 16GB iPad 2 remains in the lineup at $399, plus $130 for the 3G version. The competition is, without doubt, freaking.

Following the introduction, those in attendance endured the usual technology demonstrations, beginning with a presentation from Namco, famous for Pac-Man and other titles. It was all in the cause of showing you the magnificent video quality of the new iPad. Sounds convincing to me.

Anyway, once the demonstration were over, Schiller announced that both iWork and iLife are being updated for the iPad. Updates are free for existing customers.

A key feature: iMovie for iPad adds the ability to create a movie trailer as part of your project. The new addition to the mobile iLife bundle is iPhoto, sporting enhanced photo editing tools, including multi-touch editing, “professional” quality effects, brushes, photo beaming, lots of sharing features and other goodies. It’s a lot more than you’d expect for a simple photo organizing app that costs a mere $4.99. Adobe take notice. This app, also available for the iPhone, got more demonstration time than anything else, other than the new iPad itself.

Oh, and by the way, it’s not called the iPad 3, it’s not called the iPad HD. It’s “The new iPad,” or maybe just iPad, depending on your point of view. I have to get out of the habit of referring to it by that phrase each and every time. Maybe “third-generation iPad” will gain traction.

As to the rest of the rumors, such as a haptic virtual keyboard, which would simulate the “feel” and action of a real keyboard, none of it happened. Other than the updates for iLife and iWork, little in Apple’s media event came as a surprise, except for the peculiar product naming of course. But that won’t stop people from lining around the block to get their hands on The new iPad. There I said it!

Somewhat later Wednesday, an expected iOS 5.1 update arrived, with bug fixes and a few feature enhancements, along with a Japanese version of Siri. As for the tech pundits, as with the iPhone 4s, some are already ranting that this iPad is not such a big upgrade because the case looks nearly the same, as if that would make a significant difference in the user experience. Isn’t a Retina Display and speedier performance for the same price enough?

At the end of the event, with the closing words, “We are just getting started,” Tim Cook left the stage.

When it comes to setting up an email account on your Mac or PC, it ought to be a pretty painless process. Just enter your username, password and incoming and outgoing server information. Your email software, whether Mail for the Mac, Outlook for Mac or Windows, or any of a number of similar apps, ought to be able to figure out the rest without manual intervention.

Only they can’t.

Now if you’re not into the POP versus IMAP thing, here are the basics: When you set up a POP (short for Post Office Protocol) email account, your messages are stored to your personal computer or mobile device. This device-centric scheme can present problems when you want to check your Inbox and Sent messages on different devices. Incoming email may be retrieved all over again, if it’s still on the server; sent messages won’t be there. POP is not the ideal solution if you plan to, for example, send and receive email on both a Mac and an iPhone or a Windows PC and a Droid.

The other popular method is IMAP (Internet Message Access Protocol) that, in essence, stores your messages on the email server, which it’s run by your ISP, your Web host, or by you. That way, you can use pretty much any email client to access your messages and, when properly configured (important!), your messages will be in sync regardless of which device you want to use.

Now none of this matters so much if you just use Webmail for everything. If you take that route, it doesn’t matter what protocol you’re using, since you’ll always be managing your email from the same app, Web-based, regardless of the device. But some Webmail systems just don’t work very well on a mobile computer. Even if there’s a mobile version, it may be feature limited, and you’ll have, at best, rudimentary flexibility in managing your messages.

All well and good, until you’re ready to add accounts to your email software, particularly IMAP. The first part of the process seems simple enough, where you enter your login information, plus the names of the email servers. Supposedly a properly designed email client will test the settings, and decide such arcane factors as whether SSL is on or off, or the proper email authentication method. Usually they do, particularly for Gmail or iCloud email, so you shouldn’t fret unless something goes wrong. Then you’ll want to see if there are any instructions from your email service, or your employer’s IT people, on how to set things up.

But once the installation is done, you may find that something’s wrong. Your Sent messages, for example, aren’t being stored on the server; they are left on your computing device. What’s wrong?

Now in setting up a Gmail or Google Apps account on my iPhone or iPad, I didn’t run into this problem, but it usually exists for email clients on a desktop computer. After the account setup, you have to “map” your local folders to the ones on the IMAP server. They aren’t always labeled the same either. On some systems Sent is really Sent Items or Sent Messages. Junk may be Spam or Bulk. You get the picture.

With Apple Mail, this folder mapping is done via a feature labeled Use This Mailbox For… in the Mailbox menu. Just select the appropriate IMAP folder, and pick the corresponding mailbox to properly associate the two. From then on, the message folders on your Mac will mirror the ones on the server.

Under Outlook for Windows, there’s a Folders tab under Internet E-mail Settings where you choose which folder contains your “sent items.”

This email folder routine isn’t hard to do. In a minute or two, you’ll be all set. But sometimes you have to let the newly configured account go through a couple of email retrieval cycles before all the proper folders appear on your computer.

The real problem is that this extra setup process is often overlooked by many of you simply because it’s not obvious, not part of a Setup Assistant. You have to know about it, for otherwise, you won’t be able to take advantage of the best features of IMAP. But you have to wonder why email clients can’t figure out all this automatically. Is it really that hard for these apps to scan the names of the server’s email folders and find appropriate equivalents? Sure, maybe there’s a variation they wouldn’t account for, but the default settings should cover most email systems.

Now maybe you don’t care about any of this. You aren’t concerned if your computers have different messages in the Inbox or the Sent mailbox, since you rarely recheck older email. But if you have any interest at all in keeping your stuff in sync, don’t you wonder why the email apps you’re using can’t sort this out by themselves?

I wonder too. An automatic IMAP mailbox mapping capability seems to be way off the radar. Even Mail for Mountain Lion doesn’t offer such a feature, and mapping folders on Outlook for the Mac is endlessly broken. In my experience, Outlook seems to create bogus folders, and map mailboxes to them rather than the ones on the server.

But the most important question of all is whether anyone cares. Clearly the folks who design email clients for the Mac and Windows aren’t paying much attention. If anyone knows of some worthy exceptions, do let me know. On the other hand, once the setup is done, you won’t have to visit it again unless or until you want to add yet another email account.

There is a growing amount of speculation that a third generation Apple TV will make its debut during this week’s rollout of the next iPad. A key clue is the fact that stocks of Apple’s “hobby” set top box are drying up, at least at third-party resellers. You can still get them from Apple’s online storefront.

The revision is expected to add a more powerful chip (an A5, A5x or A6), which will allow for 1080p high definition video streaming, the same as Blu-ray. That also means, I suppose, that Apple will begin to offer better quality movies over time, perhaps at a slightly higher price. Compare to DirecTV and other services, which typically offer the higher resolution video-on-demand selections for $1.00 extra. I would expect the movie industry to approve a similar deal with Apple.

But the larger question is whether Apple is, as has been predicted for months, really working on their own answer to the “smart TV” question, as if anyone has really asked. That Steve Jobs has, according to biographer Walter Isaacson, found the secret doesn’t mean that that solution will appear in a TV set. It may just be an updated interface for Apple TV, along with more content offerings.

There’s are also published reports that Apple VP Eddy Cue has been busy negotiating agreements with the entertainment companies, so Apple will be able to offer a subscription service. This will mean that your favorite TV channels will appear as apps on an Apple device, and the content will be streamed to your home.

If you can believe those stories, the media companies are demanding proper respect, and the promise of a lot of money from Apple. In turn, Apple is doing their best to roll such deals into their existing structure, keeping the price to end users as low as possible. Now doubt there will be a compromise, eventually, particularly if the entertainment industry expects huge profits from such a service.

As to the presumed Apple TV set itself, you wonder whether Apple will break the mold of those anonymous thin block boxes that make one TV almost indistinguishable from the next. Some suggest a nearly end-to-end screen, with a very thin form factor. But such a set would still have to offer the same lineup of side or rear hookup possibilities as existing sets, including several HDMI ports, an optical sound port, and all the rest. No doubt there will be built-in Wi-Fi as well, since more and more sets offer that feature. So far, however, such a product doesn’t seem all that unique.

Another way to differentiate itself from the pack would be for Apple to deliver some sort of tricked out surround sound audio system, so you wouldn’t need a separate home theater configuration of separate speakers, or an ugly soundbar with a subwoofer. Bose has already tried this scheme, but the price of their VideoVision is just shy of five thousand dollars. This overpriced set may indeed offer, as The Wall Street Journal says, “…fully convincing surround sound,” but I don’t think there are many takers at that price. If Apple were to offer a similar approach, they wouldn’t get away with charging more than a few hundred dollars over existing sets. The market is too saturated.

But the biggest obstacle to such a product wouldn’t be the technology or the user interface. I’m sure Apple can do a great job with both. I also expect Apple to be able to make deals with the media companies.

Unfortunately, the news media is largely ignoring the biggest obstacle to such a product’s success, particularly a possible streaming TV subscription service. As smartphone customers, and more and more broadband Internet customers have come to realize, the biggest obstacle to 24/7 video streaming to your home is bandwidth.

Claims of unlimited bandwidth have been shown largely to be myths. Deep in the fine print of your ISP’s service agreement will probably be something that addresses excessive consumption. You may even see monthly limits of 200GB or 400GB; the latter represents the limits Cox Communications imposes on my account.

If you come close to their limits, your ISP may, as AT&T does with unlimited customers who use more than 3GB of bandwidth, throttle speed. You may have a package that’s more than sufficient for streaming HD video, but it won’t be sufficient if your ISP deems you’re using too much. If you continue to exceed their limits, they also reserve the right to cut off your service until the next billing period, or give you the heave ho. So much for unlimited streaming video all the time.

And remember that Apple isn’t the only tech company seeking to set up video streaming services.

You may think that a 2o0GB cap is more than sufficient for your needs. But imagine watching HD TV for six or eight hours a day, as many of you do. Imagine, further, that you have a large family, all of whom are spending untold hours a day consuming online content from Apple. The roadblocks will be reached very quickly with that level of use and abuse.

Now I suppose it’s always possible that Apple will seek special deals with ISPs to reimburse them for the excessive use of their pipes. That, of course, would raise the specter of Internet neutrality, and whether an ISP has the right to demand payments from both customer and content provider for unfettered access.

These issues are highly complicated. They need to be discussed, but most members of the media are falling down on the job by ignoring the question entirely.