Cory Doctorow wrote a scathing critique of the iPad. Well, not so much a critique of the iPad as a critique of the future of sealed-box, sealed-ecosystem computing that it portends. We should have seen this coming with the iPhone, but somehow we didn’t grasp the impact of making the screen roughly six times bigger. It all seems obvious in retrospect.
Much of what Cory says resonates with me. But I disagree with his conclusions. My reaction to the iPad went in stages: meh, horror, acceptance.
Meh
The iPad announcement was underwhelming. It suffered from vastly inflated expectations, and so much of the device is derivative of the iPhone. It looked like 2007′s state of the art, except that it wouldn’t fit in your pocket.
Horror
Then I “got it.” This is something that people will use in lieu of a computer, and eventually in stead. I spent a solid day in a state of horror. I grew up with computers that you could open, and fix, and build yourself, and write programs for that would run instantly and you could send to your friends and they could run them instantly. I did all of those things. That freedom to tinker helped me discover a lot about myself, and now I’m a Lead Developer on an Open Source web publishing platform used by tens of millions of people to publish content that is viewed by billions of people. The iPad seems like an attack on the cornerstone of my career and my very constitution.
Acceptance
Not everyone needs a computer they can service, and upgrade, and program. Full stop. This was my first breakthrough. My second was this:
There will always be computers for tinkerers.
Cory calls the iPad infantalized, and talks about its “contempt for the user.” That’s one way of looking at it. I suspect that most people without a programming background or who are not expert computer users will just call it “easy” and “intuitive.” We had a nice couple of decades where we thought that the future was a powerful $3,000 expandable, upgradable multi-function machine on everyone’s desk. We were wrong. People don’t want something that is capable of doing anything. They want something that does what they want to do, does it well, does it reliably, at a low price, and makes them feel clever. General purpose computing devices failed them. We were never going to live in a world where everyone is an expert user of traditional general purpose computers.
That may be cynical, but it’s true. This is the part where you start crying and I hug you and tell you that everything is going to be okay. Queue piano crescendos to mark the emotional turning point. But seriously, it’s going to be okay.
The kids are still tinkering, and if I know anything about tinkerers, it is that they find a way to change their world, no matter what hurdles you put in front of them.
You can also take courage in the fact that the main barriers against fusing the user’s paradise that Apple offers and the tinkerer’s paradise about which we wax nostalgic are legal in nature. Software patents and the DMCA are the real enemy. Apple is only playing the game according to the rules of the board. Bring down those travesties, and Cory may avoid having to pay for an expensive and painful Apple tattoo removal.