This term refers to the unhyphenated English word "cooperation" often being changed to "Cupertino" by older spell checkers, with dictionaries containing only the hyphenated variant, "co-operation".
[2] Lack of vigilance in post-spell check editing can result in even official documents containing phrases such as "South Asian Association for Regional Cupertino" and "presentation on African-German Cupertino".
[3] Benjamin Zimmer at the University of Pennsylvania collected many examples of similar errors, including the common replacement of "definately" (misspelling of "definitely") with "defiantly", "DeMeco Ryans" with "Demerol" (in The New York Times), "Voldemort" with "Voltmeter" (Denver Post), and the "Muttahida Qaumi Movement" being replaced with "Muttonhead Quail Movement" (Reuters).
[3] The user need not always select an incorrect word for it to appear in the document.
Smartphones with dictionary-supported virtual keyboards automatically replace possible mistakes with dictionary words.