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Joel Johnson provides a great critique of the "iPad is anti-hacker" concept. Though the complaint is logically rooted, it's been taken to foolish extremes. Choice quotes: "So what if you can't make iPad programs on an iPad. I don't complain I can't make new dishwashers with my dishwasher." "I'm glad the Apple ][+ came with schematics for the circuit boards. I'm glad it encouraged a generation of kids to tinker and explore. I'm also glad that I don't live in the fucking '70s and have to type in programs from a magazine anymore."
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For years now, I've been following the story of the bioprecipitative relationship between bacteria and rain. There's increasing evidence that rain is not a purely physical process—that it occurs in tandem with, or perhaps because of, the behaviors of vast bacterial colonies. It's possible that rainfall occurs when and where it does because that's when and where bacteria choose to spread, linking the cloud ecosystem to the land ecosystem to the ocean ecosystem to the freshwater ecosystem. The evidence right now is too limited to draw such a conclusion, but there's also nothing ruling it out, and that's a pretty amazing possibility.
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I get that it’s easier to ensure quality assurance with 100% confidence for all of a platforms applications by making everything closed-source and exercising control over application distribution — you don’t have to worry that consumers will hate your platform because of a poorly-conceived core program from a third-party developer.
It’s kind of a strange business model they’re running, though. Microsoft wants to compete for more of Google’s ad revenue, but I’m pretty sure that at the end of the day, they remember that the success of the PC and Windows O/S has been at least partially created by Google — the Internet’s a worthless mess without a decent search engine, and no one was going to invest the time, energy and capital necessary to create a quality search engine unless they saw the light of substantial profits at the end of that dark tunnel. That opportunity brought a lot of developers out to compete for those dollars, and that competition is what fostered the development of Google’s powerful search engine.
I wonder if Google could ever have been developed if they’d been forced to roll out their first search engine through the iStore? What other ideas and applications might never come to fruition if a developer can’t see a way to make his fortune developing them while Apple remains inserted into the middle of his business model?
I’m reminded of this classic post from http://twitter.com/shitmydadsays
“Son, no one gives a shit about all the things your cell phone does. You didn’t invent it, you just bought it. Anybody can do that.”
I liked that National Geographic story better yesterday, when it appeared on these very pages. :)
“So what if you can’t make iPad programs on an iPad. I don’t complain I can’t make new dishwashers with my dishwasher.”
Yes, and we all know how millions of us were inspired as children to learn about and tinker with dishwashers, and how that’s why dishwashers and detergents are now a major part of the US economy today.
Argh—looks like a bug in Delicious. I thought I’d seen that twice. :)
:) I do think that the objection is valid, though, insofar as we regard these sorts of computers as being appliances, rather than computers in any traditional sense. It’s just a different thing, and as nobody was inspired by dishwashers in the way that you describe, neither will anybody be inspired by the iPad.
Oh, James, thanks for the @shitmydadsays reminder. I read that a couple of weeks after it started, and then just forgot about it. I think it’s hilarious.
“It’s just a different thing, and as nobody was inspired by dishwashers in the way that you describe, neither will anybody be inspired by the iPad.”
This lunatic right here looks pretty inspired:
http://www.newstimes.com/mediaManager/?controllerName=image&action=get&id=143774&width=628&height=471
(I was amused that Apple pays people to stand outside their stores to applaud people as they walk out with their iPads; I was more amused to see that they accidentally gave the middle finger to the AP’s photographer)
You have a market out there that’s ridiculously, stupidly excited about their little pads or phones in a way that doesn’t extend to their toasters or hair dryers. All of that enthusiasm would attract a corps of third-party developers who’d want to leverage that technology and take it in new and exciting directions. It’s perplexing that Apple wants to make it as hard as possible for those people.