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Apple's Trend Away From Tinkering
theodp writes "Having cut his programming teeth on an Apple ][e as a ten-year-old, Mark Pilgrim laments that Apple now seems to be doing everything in their power to stop his kids from finding the sense of wonder he did: 'Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world. With every software update, the previous generation of "jailbreaks" stop working, and people have to find new ways to break into their own computers. There won't ever be a MacsBug for the iPad. There won't be a ResEdit, or a Copy ][+ sector editor, or an iPad Peeks & Pokes Chart. And that's a real loss. Maybe not to you, but to somebody who doesn't even know it yet.'"
What makes computers great are their flexibility - it's an entire world to discover to someone young and new. Are we going to be in the insane situation where our children will need to dust off the old C64 from half a century ago just to learn the basics for themselves?
If all you've got is locked content on locked machines, you end up with mind firmly locked shut.
Scientists point out problems, engineers fix them
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The iPad will get hacked, just like the iPhone. Cydia and all your friends will be there too!
But Mac OS X comes with development tools right on the install CD. How expensive (or difficult, back before bit torrent) it was to get a development environment up and running on Windows was what drove me to Linux and I'm pleased that Apple make it so easy to get programming tools on your Mac.
For a long time I was on the fence about Apple. I liked their strong sense of making sure everything works
But then I encountered their users, snobby idiots really. Although it was not because they used Apple, more that those with a specific profession tend to use Macs
Recently I havent liked Apple because of their DRM and crazy control they have over their products and markets. I mean IPods that you cant change the battery in? WTF!
Now yet another reason I dont like Apple, these guys dont seem to realize what they are doing, stagnating their own products by being jackasses about their products.
I have distantly wanted a Mac, just to toy with it... but why? No reason anymore.
I'm someone else who cut my teeth PEEKing and POKEing on Commodore and Sinclair machines. Hell, there were even magazines with "tricks-n-tips" for useful locations and what values would create what effects. Nowadays I suspect they'd just get sued under DMCA provisions for reverse engineering :-(
Yes, a sad time indeed.
It was nice to be able to tinker with early Apples because there were few alternatives. But as much as I enjoy a good rant against Apple, I fail to see the problem. Buy your kids something else. Either he thinks the latest Apple SHINY is more important than his child's opportunity to get under the hood or he doesn't, and there are (or soon will be) numerous alternatives that are not as tightly locked. Life is about decisions and trade-offs.
I think this is just a natural evolutionary process for most new technology. When personal computers were new, they were mainly purchased and used by hobbyists. Now they are mainstream and most people just want to use them to get things done, they don't care how or why they work. Cars were the same when they were first introduced. You had to know how to tinker just to keep them working. Now cars are everwhere and they are computerized and automated so much, it's hard to do the kind of tinkering that used to be common.
It's sad to see things change, but there will always be room for those who like to tinker. We still have Linux and *BSD, after all. I love my Mac, but sometimes it's nice to play around with Linux.
They just separate that audience and give them OS X. Let them play with the iPad through the SDK on it, instead of on the iPad itself.
iPads are meant for people that DON'T care about computers, but about real world activity.
It's something hackers could learn from Apple: how to make a massively technical device usable.
My kids use Linux. But sadly, even under Linux, there's no dead-easy kid-friendly way for them to learn programming the way I learned BASIC on my TRS-80 CoCo. I've introduced my one daughter to Tcl, but even that has advanced concepts compared to 1980s-era BASIC.
I've also ordered a 130-in-one electronics kit for my daughter because I remember how much fun I had with mine. Alas, Radio Shack no longer sells them... they've given up on tinkerers and hackers too.
Everybody knows that Apple computers are for creative people and that creative. You just have to think creatively. Think OUTSIDE the box. For example, I bought a PC.
That was the spirit Steve and Woz began with: empower the hacker.
Why is Woz not in charge of his own high-power company? The world is not fair, I suppose.
Woz was the tinkerer, who brought the spirit of the tinkerer to Apple. Steve Jobs is the anti-tinkerer; he just wants you to shut up and buy cool looking gadgets from him on a regular schedule.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
I was 1 when the Apple II came out and grew up around them for a bit. Honestly, they never really struck me as a tinker's machine. I also had the impression that Apple was about trying to prevent people from tinkering with their stuff. It always seemed like a generic computer to me. I know that those who owned them will disagree and you are right too, I'm just sharing my opinion from my point of view.
So while you are saying that Apple has changed, I just don't see that.
I fail to see why a kid today can't learn programming on an Apple II or a C-64 or whatever simple computer form the 80s.
Reading the forums alot of the apple fans don't seem to like it. They can't figure out what to use it for or they don't like the restrictions. A lot of tablets are coming out this year that are more open.
Tens of millions of people play farmville or watch hulu and you can't do any of that on the ipad. You can only buy more content from apple. I'm wondering if apple did any market research before they crippled it.
I agree, it is sad that things are changing in this regard, but the world has changed. It is more hostile, and almost every avenue for customization is also a path for malware and viruses. And most users are not savvy, and become victim of external attacks.
Unfortunately, no matter what the root cause, the vendor ends up getting the blame.
However, it would be nice if there was a switch that could be thrown, perhaps as part of the XCode install...
Harald Striepe
While this is certainly true for the iPad, iPhone etc, it's really not true at all for OSX. OSX comes with a bunch of dev tools on the install disk, in a way that was not true way back when. Those kinds of utilities existed, but getting ahold of them was non-trivial for someone out in the boonies.
The iPad isn't a general purpose computer, although it seems like it's blurring the line a bit. Certainly no reason for doom and gloom.
I always find it a little sad when I read something like this, though. Part of the joy of those days was exploring something new and interesting, finding terra incognita... the problem is that your kids probably won't get that joy in exactly the same way, and very well may not be interested in those things at all... they are actual individuals with individual tastes and interests, not a bunch of little clones running around. It seems like every time someone goes to great lengths to recreate his precise childhood for his kids, it's just doomed to failure, just because they're kids. Unpredictable.
You catch enchiladas by picking them up behind the head and holding them underwater until they don't kick anymore -VeGas
in machine language...
Few people want to play at that level any more and few need to. Most want to create really cool apps and for them access to the GUI is enough. Heck, C isn't taught in many schools any more.
But if a kid wants to play at low level, there are $25 or less offers on the web for the computers of yore. Or they can start reading code..it isn't like lots isn't available. And even for most OSS, the docs are so much more than the manufacturers manuals were in the 60s.
In the 50's and 60's hobby electronics was a huge thing - it was common to see people tinkering in their basements. It might still exist now in some manner, but it's far, far less popular and most people just want to come back from the store with an amplifier or radio that "just works".
It's the same with computers. We're going through the phase now where hobbyists are lamenting that they're being "locked out of their own computers", but no more than the electronic tinkerers are locked out of their consumer electronics unless they're very good with surface mount soldering and miniaturization.
The simple fact is that 98% of people out there just want their computer to work. They don't care about getting under the hood. If it plays their youtube videos, netflix streaming content, and lets them send some emails and play the latest game they bought from Steam or Best Buy, they're happy. That's all that's needed. So a company catering to that market instead of the 1 or 2 percent who want to tinker under the hood is just good business.
Yes, it means that the kind of computing we all grew up with in the 70's and 80's will either die or come close. But that's just the standard life cycle of technologies - it happened with radios just like it's happening now with computers. It's a mistake to extrapolate our interest to the general public, which doesn't share it. Since there are 50 or 100 of them for every one of us, they form a FAR larger market, and that is the direction things will inevitably shift over time. It's a lost cause trying to argue things like "but you're locked out of your own system!!". They don't *care* - that's not what they want out of a computer. The sooner computer nerds realize that, the easier it will be to adjust to the direction the market will be moving over time.
Apple isn't out to fight people that want to 'tinker', they are just going after a different market now, the 'consumer market'. Its where the real money is to be made, and the side effect are shiny closed boxes that 'just work'.
If you still want to 'tinker', you still can, just you do it elsewhere. Give your kid a FPGA board and some books on basic logic.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
I have a copy of the original "red book" with hand-written notes on shape tables, etc. I also had a plethora of other sources of information - the Wozpack, Disk Doctor, early copies of call-apple and coutless others which were hard to come-by in the UK at the time.
Kids of today, get off my lawn, etc.
So what we have now are "appliances" and lawyers.
And as they say; If you can't open it, you don't own it.
I too grew up with the Apple IIe. I fondly remember the days of the computer problems being solved by ensuring all the chips were firmly seated. Ahh those were the days.
As I'm sure most folks are on this site, friends and family always come to me asking for computer purchasing advice. My advice is if the person still has a brain capable of learning--get a PC based computer. If the computer is for someone not willing to learn the in's and out's of computing--get them the Mac.
The Ipad with it's overgrow screen is not targeted for the young, is an iTouch targeted for the elderly. When do those people start to tinker?
If they are already tinkerers they don't need that outlet, they have a computer.
If all you've got is locked content on locked machines, you end up with mind firmly locked shut.
Bollocks. Bullshit. Hyperbole.
I.T.'s loss is the rest of the world's gain. The less time people spend fucking around with irrelevant I.T. wheels the more time spent on the real problems and solutions of the world.
Deleted
Smash Linux onto a slapper or tablet and tinker away.
Windows and Apple are all about control - just think what the world would be like id the big studios *did* get their way...
Even if you're not a Linux fan you better be glad it's there - it keeps the rest honest(ish)
Dual boot, virtualise run Synergy - whatever it takes.
Keep your data on your server in your database then Google have to stay honest.
fin.
Even Linus readily acknowledges that the world needs more than the Linux model, that the Windows and OS X can all co-exist.
And I hear people talking all the time that OS X is a joy to program for, and not particularly hard.
The iPod/iPhone/iPad is in the form factor that's best suited to appliance. That is, most (90+%) just want them to work. Where even the most polished desktop is too complicated for their tastes and task at hand. Shouldn't their demands be met? BTW, I'm not covering for DRM or the like which only serves the content provider -- just that the appliance view of things is really useful to some people.
Do we complain how the Kindle or past Nokia phones are essentially closed to the average person the same way? Why is this reserved for Apple?
Really. I taught my 45 y/o uncle how to use a computer (Windows 7), his experience to computers limited previously to ATMs. It was painful. There is so much to learn that us geeks take for granted. The computer's behavior is so seemingly arbitrary at times, as are the solutions sometimes. These people don't want a "sense of wonder", they found it in other areas already and they want to have something easy to learn and use - should they be denied entrance into the digital world because they're not geeky enough? Geez, I'm glad when I don't have to fuck around with yet another relatives beige box for once.
I hope that the open PC never goes away. But there should be room for other solutions without the endless complaining. (And yes, the steps Apple does to clamp down their devices from the users themselves, who want to explore and not through misuse, absolutely sucks and should be called on it every step of the way).
The Apple II was a computer. You cans till tinker with Apple computer.
Apple also sells Appliances. More difficult to tinker with, just like your TV.
You want a computer for tinkers? the Macs work great. OSX on BSD.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
At least as far as ipods and iphones go, tinkering isnt really anything they any interest in, and for good reason. While tinkering and unrestricted access is great for the geek community, it tends to create a bloated confusing mess for the average user and also makes it more likely for the device to be exploited by those wishing to do harm. Geeks tend to forget that they arent the majority...they are a tiny fraction of a minority most end users just want their stuff to work and be easy to use and thats who Apple is marketing towards at the moment and is pretty successful with it.
This is reminding me of the arguments hardcore gamers make about the Wii and how it sucks because most of the games are geared towards the casual and family gamer, its in first place by a mile and they are happy there, there are other products that fit the bill but instead of just using those they would rather whine about what they cant do on a product that isnt aimed at them.
and your childhood will always be something remembered as a time that was 'just better' CAUSE YOU WERE A FREAKING KID WITH NO WORRIES OR RESPONSIBILITIES.
You can still hack away on your Apple II, if you have one. You can also use any number of other computing products that are more closely matched to the Apple II than the iPad.
Not every product is well suited to what you want to do with it. How much tinkering do you do with your TV? Changed the firmware in it lately? Mine has a SD card slot for upgrades, but I have absolutely no inclination what so ever to screw with it. I have other devices for that.
Go buy a cheap netbook or a regular Mac if you want to hack. Stop this bullshit of complaining about how the product isn't what you want, go use a product that IS what you want.
There are alternatives to the iPad already on the market that are far more 'hacker' friendly. There are also regular desktop machines (Apple or otherwise), Laptops, the Apple TV, and all sorts of other crap you can tinker with.
Heres what you need to understand ... the world doesn't revolve around you or what you want. You are part of a bigger picture, and as such, not everything is going to bend to your whim.
There are plenty of other products to tinker with, Apple even has some, there are also products that are DESIGNED for tinkerers, why are you ignore them?
This is just another whiner remembering yesteryear, unfortunately tunnel vision and childhood memories are blocking out the fact that there were plenty of hacker-unfriendly devices back then too. You just didn't use those, you used the one that was hacker friendly. It may have just been by chance that you got the hacker friendly device rather than one that wasn't, or maybe it was by choice.
Either way, there are FAR more options for tinkering today than there were then. Times change, people change and so do product lines. The funny part about this post is that if you paid attention over the last week, you'd have already seen a device thats kind of like the iPad that is open to all sorts of hax0ring, but instead, you've decided to be a lazy bastard and not look, just whine, moan and bitch.
Finally ... someone will manage to turn the iPad into something hax0rable for hard hacks eventually, and for those who just want to do software hacking, if you can spend the money for an iPad, you can spend the money for a developers license and hax0rs to your hearts content without even messing with hacks for the OS. Hell, I'm tinkering and hax0ring with the iPad and its not even available yet thanks to the simulator.
In short, nothing has changed, except now you're old and bitchy.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Nobody has held the device in their hands, so only speculation on how hard it will be to hack.
I suspect that their own ARM based CPU is going to be pretty close to the Cell PPC (IBM: Sony PS3) in terms of security.
It looks really cool, but I'm not going to wait 3+ years to do whatever I want with it.
I don't really see the iPad as a "personal computer", but an appliance, a bit like a washing machine or a microwave oven (although that may be pushing it because the iPad does a bit more than "just wash clothes" or just "toast" or whatever). But it's clearly pitched as a consumer appliance, rather than a general purpose computer.
And no, I won't be getting one.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
The APPLE ][ was much more a tinkerers machine than the PET or the TRS 80. Having 7 slots for expansion cards was a lot in those days - a cool apple was one with an after market perspex lid so you could see the cool expansion cards. No ofense this is not a insightfull comment just lame
The iP* products are consumer electronic devices, not general purpose machines. It makes perfect sense that these are locked down for the sake of reliability and performance. Not to mention the Apple business model is based on the closed nature of these products.
The desktop versions of OS X are incredibly flexible and powerful tools, with the usability bonus of a well thought out graphical shell. There is a reason programmers and IT people are migrating en mass to Mac--they are way ahead of the competition when it comes to power and flexibility compared to Windows, and reliability and usability for an end user compared to Linux.
When you purchase a Mac, you are getting a full featured development environment and sys admin toolkit out of the box.
Pay $100 for a developer's license and you can do whatever you want to you iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.
XCode and Applescript come with every "real" Mac for no additional charge.
What is the problem here? That you can't program the iPad on the iPad? Sorry, but that is hardy worth the energy of his rant.
Yes, I read the article. Well, I tried. It's a poorly written, confusing rant.
obviously no deficiencies vs. no obvious deficiencies
There are also emulators for such systems. Google brought this site up for Apple ][ stuff: http://www.thefreecountry.com/emulators/apple-2.shtml
You have to find a ROM, but that's not a big hurdle. :)
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
What we should be doing is trying to get the DMCA overturned; It is the bane of the tinker. It's ironic because I'm guessing many of the people working on this stuff over at Apple got interested in computers because of the creativity they could express by hacking away at computers.
I should say though, that Apple is not the only company in town creating hardware, I mean honestly a lot of these articles seem to make some leap at some point about how Apple is representative of all hardware manufacturers, when I think that's just not true. They create some stylish products, people buy them, and then they miss out on hacking the hardware. If people really want the option to hack the hardware, don't buy this locked down crap. It's not like Apple is the only game in town, they live off this spotlight everyone creates for them. Just get that less stylish piece of hardware that offers tons of customization and hopefully at some point Apple will have to learn what they should be doing.
Meet new people, and kill them.
I like the spirit of this conversation. Apple would be doing the next generation a great service to allows us to amateurs to develop in a scripting language right on the iPad.
Back in the day, a generation of tinkerers cut their teeth on radio and television sets. They would test the functioning of vacuum tubes in the drugstore, and buy souped up parts to improve the picture.
Nowadays, the kiddies can't do anything with these newfangled OLED tv sets! How are you going to learn about repairing broken TVs if the TV never breaks???
Conformity is the jailer of freedom and enemy of growth. -JFK
Maybe it's not the best computer to learn on, as you don't seem to learn very much when everything is supposed to be so intuitive and so task focused, but as a tool to get certain types of work done, it's great, because you don't have to worry about anything but the job you want accomplished.
Twinstiq, game news
by definition, anyone who is "hackign" an apple is an artistic type, for whome electronics is secondary, or a hacker wannabee
When I was in grade 7-12 school, we had mainframes to learn how to program as well as the Apple. We did Fortran and C and Basic. On the Apple we burn EEPROMs for our embedded computer.On my Apple and peripherals I hacked the hardware and soldered in new functionality. In college we used every machine under the Sun to control experiments and analyze data. Such things taught me the difference between GPC and embedded devices and taught me that software is not all there is to computers.
There is nothing I did back then that I cannot do on the Mac. About the only thing that is missing is PLD software. The only difference is that software is much more sophisticated, so the learning curve is steeper, but the process is simpler.
Comparing an Apple][ to a iPod or iPhone is also silly. The later are embedded devices. It is like complaining one can't software hack a thermostat. Given no mention of Forth in the article(BTW forth was built into Macs until the Intel Mac) I suspect the writer could not hack it anyway.
If the writers wants to teach kids about tinkering, then most hardware is simply too complex anyway. There are too many levels of abstractions between the hardware and User. I suggest a subscription to circuit celler. In this issue we have a teletext based tv interface.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The reality is that life is much better than when I was a kid hacking on TSRs, Commodores, and Apple ][s, because we have internet and open source. We have all the source code and device drivers for Linux, the world's best operating system that runs on virtually any platform. We have the source code for many great programming languages, python, java, etc, etc.
Screw Apple. They're a shiny gewgaw company and have been for years. You couldn't pay me to buy something from them.
I think python may fit that bill better than Tcl
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
Frickin' Macs with Frickin' laser beams on em... that would solve the problem.
ResEdit was always my argument in Mac vs. PC arguments! (This was back in the good old System 7 days.) My PC friends could bring up right-clicking, software availability, etc., etc. all day. Then I would show them some of the stuff I'd done with ResEdit (e.g., remake Oregon Trail into a parody version of itself), and I would win the argument hands down. (OK, maybe you could do the same stuff on a PC, but none of us knew how.) These days, I'm a Linux guy, but it's sad to me that Macs are getting more locked up all the time. I guess someone has to satisfy the demands of the just-do-it-for-me consumers, but I'm sad that it turned out to be Apple.
If you want to do this kind of hacking go get an Aurdino. There's a whole world of home brew stuff cooler than we could have imagined when we were kids.
http://www.arduino.cc/
Apple's days are numbered...they will go the way MS has gone.
That niche is well populated these days with the the number of lowpriced development boards like the Arduino, Beagle board, and so on. You can get these kind of things for MIPS, ARM, x86, and so on. You can even get FPGA boards and tinker with hardware level stuff. We have opencores now. Things are much more interesting, cheaper, and more wideley available than when I could even dream of when I was a kid. All of this stuff starts at less than a couple hundred bucks, and the amount you can do with them is pretty impressive. We have kids today soldering BGA parts and doing SMD work.
Seriously, I remember being impressed with myself as a kid when I learned to etch my own boards, learned x86 assembly(mode X was awesome), and Motorola 680x stuff. Kids have much cooler toys these days from what I see.
Of course there won't be hacking tools for the iPad. It's not going to be on sale long enough for hackers to get one. It's the new Apple Newton with less flexibility. Only hardcore iFags are even looking at it, and they think it sucks. I suppose someone will tear it down and start reverse-engineering it with a logic analyzer, but it's not going to be worth the effort. Even Apple has much better hardware already shipping. They should have made up a MacBook Tablet or some such.
In the USA, we like stuff watered down, like beer, television, and freedom.
The Apple ][ came with manuals that had the ROM listings. The ][+ (at least) had a mini-assembler built right in (Sweet-16, baby!). It had full schematics right there in the box. The default "shell" was a BASIC interpreter, fer cryin' out loud!
The Apple ][ was most definitely a tinkerer's machine.
There's a huge difference between the Apple ][ and pretty much any mainstream computer available today. The Apple ][ (and to a certain extent, the Commodore 64) was simple. Almost everything you did was related to the hardware. If you wanted to do anything but launch programs, you pretty much had to learn something about the computer, and how computers operate in general. Anyone nostalgic for those days is nuts.
Don't get me wrong. I really loved the Apple ][. (This was before the ][+ or ][e, you puppies.) I believe I am a much stronger computer geek because of it. I'd wager those who learned computing on the Apple ][ make up a good percentage of the alpha geeks today.
Computers today are far cooler than they were back then. Part of the reason is, they no longer resemble "computers" so much as they are now communications devices, or information handling devices. The downside is that kids starting out these days aren't learning about the true fundamentals of how computers work. Also, they're shielded from even the ability to tinker with them.
That's not as much of a loss as you might suppose. It's not like it'd be the old Apple ][ experience anyway.
Microsoft is to software what Budweiser is to beer.
System design lies on a spectrum, with powerful, flexible functionality on one end, and user-friendly but inflexible functionality on the other. Apple chooses to build their systems closer to the user-friendly-but-inflexible end of the spectrum. That may not be what all their users want, but it's the market they've been targeting for years. And at least they do choose a side; Microsoft typically tries to offer both (i.e., to provide powerful solutions that will allow advanced users to do whatever they want, while at the same time attempting to anticipate what those users will want to do and doing it for them) and ends up with neither.
I also cut my teeth on BASIC (slightly later, I used Q-BASIC on Windows machines), and now habitually tinker in python. For starting to program, you can use it in much the same way as BASIC, minus GOTO (and that's not a habit you want to teach them, anyway!). And it's much more powerful if they do want to carry it on.
No, wait, BASIC did have one thing over Python for children: dead simple, low-res graphics painting. The joy of setting the screen mode and then doing a series of drawing commands. Sadly, DOS emulation in XP didn't include the graphics modes, so all those programs (which I still have, somewhere) are useless.
And that will never be a problem.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Can't resist the nitpick -- the twee's name is spelled Apple //e. The square brackets are for the Apple ][ and Apple ][+.
It's definitely true though -- ever since the original Mac (with its hard-to-open case and lack of expansion slots), Apple totally turned its back on hobbyists, which is bizarre because the Apple ]['s success was entirely because of its easy-to-interface-to expansion bus and the fact that the commented ROM listings were available in a manual that high penniless high school kids could afford. IBM copied both ideas and mopped the floor with the Mac market, until IBM themselves got lost in the woods with MCA and the PS/2 (but at least they came to their senses later after the clone market taught them some respect).
At the same time it seems like it would be hard for present-day geeks to follow in the exact footsteps of us old codgers. One of the nice things about an Apple ][ or a Commodore PET or a TRS-80 was that it was entirely possible for a suitably nerdly high school kit to understand pretty much every single detail about it, if they read the ROM listings and marked up the schematics and traced through the OS with a debugger or whatever. Even minis and mainframes had wonderful documentation (cheap too) and often some access to source code. These days all the important stuff is hidden inside undocumented ASICs and vendor-supplied drivers and it's just not possible for one person to understand the entire system with the kind of detail that was possible with the little toy computers we used to have such fun with. Well at least there are PIC CPUs!
Apple, way back when, made it easy to get into the inner workings of its systems.
This strikes me as extremely selective memory. I had Macs and PCs available to me as a kid and found the PC WAY easier to tinker with because it ran DOS. The command line is a natural entry into the idea of programming and it was very easy to hack together pseudo-programs in the form of BAT files.
Until OS X, the Mac OS had no command line access at all! It had no text configuration files. It was the essence of a closed box. The Army even ran their Web servers on Macs specifically because there was no shell access built into the OS. The original Mac OS was supposed to be interacted with via the GUI and that's it. The iPad is no different in that regard.
When people complain about how Apple used to have a culture that was more open to tinkering, I have to wonder how long they've been using Apple products. OS X is BY FAR the most tinkering-friendly product they have ever produced. It has a good shell, uses mostly text configuration files, incorporates many open-source projects, and ships with full developer tools by default. The iPad is not as open, but no more so than the original Mac OS.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
In their defense, personal computer programming is much more complicated than it was in 1982. The machines and the hardware is several orders of magnitude faster and denser than it was then. The basics do change.
Don't forget that the primary reason for the existence of Apple Inc is to facilitate the orderly and systematic transfer of money from the bank accounts of bored yuppies to the account of Steven Jobs. The toys and the technology is a means to an end. Home computers started in the 1970s as toys for hackers, became business office tools in the 1980s, design and educational tools in the 1990s, and home-entertainment/communications centers in the 2000s. (..and destroying the previous industry giants in each field in the process)
People wishing to provide for their kids the experiences that they had programming 8-bit home computers should get into Aurdino and other small-scale microcontroller-based systems. The chips are cheap. The programmers are low-cost. The assemblers and compilers are free and open-sourced. Sensors are cheap, as are LCD-character displays. Graphics LCD modules are getting cheaper, but are a long way from being cheap. Gigabyte storage of data is dirt-cheap as SD cards, but they can have a difficult learning curve. In this field, projects are often shared. Tinkering and development is encouraged. Questions, even beginning questions, get answered.
When PCs and Macs get locked down in place, the microcontroller communities sprout up like mushrooms. This is the place for tinkerers. But, please, don't let the people at Microsoft and Apple know!
Now, Apple appears to be more ideologically aligned with the "Big Brother" than the hammer thrower. While it's not quite gotten to the "Information Purification Directives" level yet ...
When Apple issues an update that turns a feature off, they've issued an "information purification directive.
He who controls the present, controls the past. He who controls the past controls the future. - Orwell
Every generation seems to have its own style of tinkering.
Broadly speaking, fifty years ago it was ham radio, thirty years ago it was microcomputers like the Apple, Commodore and Atari, today I think it's microcontrollers like the PIC, AVR or especially the Arduino. (Yeah, I know, there's a lot of hobbies and tinkering I glossed over like chemistry, cars, etc, etc. I sure someone will make a list of everything I missed.)
But my point is, today most tinkering seems to be centered around using microcontrollers in various applications. I think the Arduino has accelerated the trend because of its ease of use. In addition, RF modules like the XBee have made it almost ridiculously easy to create distributed networks of microcomputers for whatever application you can think of.
Because of the proliferation of powerful microcontrollers and RF modules, my predication is that 30 years from now people look back at this as the time hobbiest robotics really took off. (Yeah, I know, people have been doing hobbiest robots for years, I just think that the combination of cheap, powerful computers, microcontrollers, motor controllers, RF modules and GPS modules will accelerate the trend.)
And help them install X code and the SDK. Then they can hack on their iPad all they want.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
It is possible that, at some point, the Macintosh itself will be a locked box, not for general computing, with a controlled licensed developer community.
Now it seems more focus is on disabling DRM, finding vulnerabilities, and exploits. It used to be about extending functionality or modifying devices. Get with the times Apple is just presenting a bigger challange.
Apple's trend away from tinkering predates the company. During the design and building phase of the ][, Woz was building in things which Jobs didn't want. Three specifically that they argued over were color (vs. black and white output), the lid (and by extension, poking around inside) and memory expansion past the max installed 16 K (this is the actual source of the often repeated and rarely correct "Who would ever need more than X-kb of memory?" -- It was Jobs and it was 16K). The second and third are both in the 'tinkering' group of features. In all cases Woz won, and we got a machine that ultimately was pushed to do things which by design it supposedly 'couldn't'.
When Jobs decided to make his own machine, all three of the above limitations were built in. The first Mac was B&W, had no lid, and came with the only memory configuration that it could run. At the time I was senior/technical editor of The Road Apple, a 'zine for Apple ][, // and ]|[ users, created with the specific intention of trying to prevent Apple from dropping the ][ line. (As far as I have ever been able to determine, it was the first computer publication produced simultaneously in the US (Portland OR; Al Martin, Publisher)
and USSR (Moscow, Russia); my co-editor was a member of the Russian Academy of Sciences; Academician Vladimir Fedorov). When Woz left, Jobs prevailed and we lost. Jobs' design choices for the first Mac and his acquiring complete control when Woz left, were the second and third major changes away from tinkering. Both were a direct result of Job's taking back those things he wanted done on the ][ that allowed tinkering (or were just plain neat hacks) but which Woz chose to do his own way. Simply put, this direction was based on the fact that Jobs lost those arguments. resented it, and when he got the chance, he finally got his own way.
References for the historical stuff can all be located if one digs. Support for Jobs' tendency towards management techniques such as tantrums and verbiage bordering on abuse has also been documented up through the point where John Scully took over for 10 years so Jobs could grow up and gain some people skills. Collections of The Road Apple were available on some of the Apple ][ ftp sites. One that has been converted to webby stuff is at http://apple2.org.za/gswv/a2zine/GS.WorldView/Resources/ROAD.APPLE/
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Of course Apple has to lock out the "tinkerers". They'll just screw up the aesthetic.
Look at most open source programs. The icons suck. The fonts suck. The layout sucks. The usability sucks. Few people can get those things right. Open source doesn't have a Susan Kare.
You know what tinkerers will do. "See, if you press here, it pops up a keyboard image and you can use VI commands." Name one open source program that's undergone usability testing.
'Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world. With every software update, the previous generation of "jailbreaks" stop working...
I can't see any reason for Apple to do things any other way. In some ways they're victims of their own success, just like Dell, HP, Microsoft and many other big companies. They've become so absorbed with their own chic they've lost sight of who helped get to where they are today. The artsy types have taken over from the tinkerers.
It's too bad their sense of style trumped everything else, because that used to be a nice bonus with Apple products, the "and they look cool" factor. Now style and marketing have edged out other factors. They're so absorbed protecting their market rice bowls they stopped caring about expanding it.
Tinkerers will always have a home with Linux.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Apple may be worse than others, but there has been an overall change. I grew up in the era of the Commode-Door 64 and Radio Shit Color Computer. In those days I became intensely interested in programming and hacking because I had no choice. Things were really primitive back then. You had to hack your system just to make it to do useful things -- like read double-sided floppies instead of being limited to single-sided.
Over time I lost interest in that sort of thing. And that's mailnly because computers are so much more powerful und useful than they were "back in the day". Why spend untold hours creating an application when there are a hundred of them already out there for free (or cheap). Today, "hacking and programming" tends to involve stuff like getting Linux to run on an Xbox or getting your cellphone to do someting equally pointless.
Every Mac ships with a full development environment (X Code), and the SDKs for the iPhone and iPad are free to download. You can write and install whatever you want on your own machines...it's pretty tinkering friendly.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
"Back in the day" tinkerers used to hot-rod Model A's and Model T's; now cars are too reliant on electronics (ironically) for much "real" tuning or hot-rodding (it's mostly buying engine cpu interfaces, and after-market, bolt-on accessories).
I too miss ResEdit (as in "Zen and the Art of", my copy cost a lot more than US .48, btw), but this seems to be pretty much the way things go.
With any luck your kid will find something even more interesting to tinker with.
While the current OSX has a nice suite of dev tools, it's useful to remember that the original mac was very closed. If I remember correctly, the original mac 128 needed a Lisa to actually write the software. It took a while for Inside Mac 1-3 to come out. And it was reluctantly that they were published (IIRC).
Exactly the sentiment from an Adobe employee who's a big Apple fan & loyal customer:
Dear Apple 1984 Called, They Want Their Video Back
http://www.object404.com
I make a point of favouring for example Linksys products as they even *encourage* tinkering with some of their products!
I'm on the look out for a(n audio) media player at some point but it wont be an ipod, why ? its the principle! it's MY hardware and
if enough people follow suit, companies will be forced to stop their misguided *attempts* to stop people doing what they want to
with their own property. Like DRM which is dying (slowly and painfully but still dying) sooner or later these companies WILL learn
Reading comments, it seems many are claiming that the iPad is not a "computer" but an "appliance", and therefore doesn't need to be opened up (physically or programmatically). Why do people give Apple a free pass on this? Apple is pushing it to be better than a netbook, and those are "computers" that are not locked down. Apple isn't locking the iPad down for any reason other than to sell more stuff (the lock-down is for Apple's sake, not the end-user's).
But hey, let's compare the iPad to some appliances around the house. My washing machine came with an exploded parts diagram (and I have ordered replacement parts to fix it myself). I don't have to buy my food through Whirlpool to put it in my refrigerator or microwave. Panasonic doesn't get to approve all the TV programs I watch, or what devices I plug into my TV. My cordless drill had a battery wear out, so I bought a third-party battery. The drill also came with a parts diagram (which I also used to fix it once).
Why is it "good" that after you pay Apple for the privilege of owning an iPad, you also have to pay Apple for the privilege of loading applications on the device you bought?
is that a computer back then would always boot clean from rom after a power cycle.
today, if you mess up some files on the drive, it will be a lengthy recovery cycle.
with basic back then, if you poked the wrong ram area, you would get some garbage on screen and loose whatever code you had written so far. "Poke" the wrong file today and you may well be badly toast. This especially in a *nix box where the devices are exposed as files, where the right dd command may well fill a drive with garbage.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
Then Apple is essentially trying to seize and destroy the promise of computing.
The iPad is more closed, even than Microsoft's tablet PC platform.
It's insane, and the price of this device is every bit as expensive as real open, cooler PC hardware. When Apple moves the iMac and Mac book platforms to the iPhone OS, I hope there is a mass exodus away from their platform.
Then after that, they might consider opening things back up like they should be...
I don't like Windows, but better than Apple's restricted devices!
Ah yes....ResEdit and FeDit. I remember those. Heh.
I recently caught one colleague crying that the iPad is merely a digital consumption device. He pays more than $120 per month for cable TV. The irony.
eleven plus two / twelve plus one
...don’t buy an Apple product anymore.
That should be a obvious given for real tinkerers anyway.
Get yourself a computer. Not an appliance.
Appliance: Something with a static / rigid programming, that you just use.
Computer: Something that you program, to automate your work and make your like more efficient / empower you.
MacOS X and Windows are appliance OSes.
KDE and Gnome are mostly appliance desktop environments.
Most software calculators are appliance simulations.
Linux, bash scripts, Firefox with extensions and Greasemonkey, Qalculate!, programming languages, Maya (yes!), NI Reaktor, self-built/combined hardware systems... Those are computer things!
Any sufficiently advanced intelligence is indistinguishable from stupidity.
I'd love to see some development tools actually on the iPad. It appears that Apple has relaxed some of their rules with the announcement of the iPad so I wouldn't be surprised to see some user-programmable apps. I doubt you'll directly be able to create new apps die to security issues but maybe something like Scratch or maybe even Java or Python based programming. Also, there is nothing stopping anyone from creating a tool to develop web-based apps for the iPhone/iPad from the iPhone/iPad. You could do quite a lot with that given the capabilities of Safari.
At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
The iphone and macbook freely allow tinkering, so I expect the iPod will be much the same.
If you recall all the peek charts did was give you access to system calls and variables, well... things are a little tighter now thanks to multitasking and you're expected to use an API to access them. Apart from that though, Apple is quite happy with you tinkering with your own computers to your heart's content.
What apple tries hard to control is you sharing those hacks with non tinkerers. Say I wrote an awesome iPad game and distributed the source code over the net for anyone with the SDK (a free download). Well, Apple would not exactly approve but they wouldn't stop me. However, say I distributed the same game in binary form, telling anybody interested to email me their IEMI number... well, I suspect Apple would take action at that point.
I had an Apple II. I didn't write any C code for it because I didn't have a C compiler, so instead I wrote assembly - in hindsight, how dumb is that! I mean, great, I can say I wrote 6502 assembly and sound geeky - but I'm sure I would've been more productive using C. Similarly, I had a Mac Plus and I had to copy someone else's compiler to be able to write software. Piracy because I wanted to write software... Then I got a 6100, and I shelled out I believe $150 of my hard earned student money to buy a compiler (Metrowerks). I couldn't afford the apple suite at the time. As I got a bit older and richer, I signed up for an apple developer account which gave me access to tech support (they were amazingly helpful in the days before you could get similar information off the internet or usenet).
Lets compare that to now, where I can download the SDK for not only my mac but my iPhone completely for free (a colleague of mine would disagree on this point, noting that he wanted to develop for the iPhone but had to buy a mac to do so). Not only do I get an excellent SDK, but I get video tutorials, lots of example code and even a simulator! Sadly, I'm too busy to tinker any more but I do feel that Apple is bending over backwards to make it easy for me, completely unlike how they were twenty years ago.
They could be better - If they embraced open standards a bit more so that say MobileMe could be connected to using LDAP - it would make it easier to do cool stuff in a similar way to how easy it is to do cool stuff in Linux. But to say they're less tinker friendly because they try and prevent jail-breaking is just... wrong.
Microsoft saw sense several years ago and started providing the Express set of dev tools for free.
Most people assimilate tinkerer to Linux users, with an unstable system, hacked up tools, trying to make stuff work together etc.
That's not the point. I've been an Apple user too, "back in the days". The system has never been as open as Linux for sure, but you could tinker and it was *clean* and working good.
Imagine a Linux system today, that is as polished as OSX, including *all* tinkering tools. That would be what Apple felt like before (of course, there was no open source, etc at the time). And no, OSX + darwin under it doesn't cut it anymore of course. It would, 10 years ago.
If you want to tinker, let me suggest a pile of junk to tinker with. Do you buy a new Lexus to mess around under the hood taking things apart? (Please don't nitpick the analogy. It could just as easily be a high-end clothes washer or a new 60 inch plasma TV. They exist to serve a specific purpose, not as a box of Lego parts for you to use to build a crappy combination Lexus/plasma TV/clothes washer. Learn a skill that will be useful in the future, not something that will come in handy in 1987.)
I can answer one thing though:
Why do you feel the need to bitch and moan about every little thing like you are somehow entitled to everything being your way?
I'm sure it worked growing up. When you don't get your way, complain to mom and she'll give you what you're asking for. After they get older (notice I didn't say "grew up") folks think the government is their new mom. I'm sure we'll see a lot of these guys complaining to the government to try to force Apple and other companies to satisfy their latest whims.
Like it says on the box. Apple is the new Sony. Locked down bricks of proprietary hardware. Not even implementing Flash in their 'web browser' tablet is the final straw.
How expensive (or difficult, back before bit torrent) it was to get a development environment up and running on Windows was what drove me to Linux
Right, because something like XAMPP or Cygwin or Eclipse is just plain impossible to obtain without The Bittorrent.
Da Blog
the iDevices are computing as an appliance. They are not meant for you. Why do you feel the need to bitch and moan about every little thing like you are somehow entitled to everything being your way?
The fear is that "computing as an appliance" may make tinkering cost-prohibitive. It happened years ago for single-machine multiplayer video games.
It's the McDonalds-ization of Apple. When the Mac was first introduced (and even with their earlier models) Apple wasn't on what I'd call solid footing. They were shooting from the hip, trying to find something that worked for a business model. That happened. Now a much larger company with shareholders and quarterly earnings to contend with, Apple doesn't want people futzing with its recipe. The expectation is that you buy it and consume it as is (much like you would a Big Mac).
That having been said, we don't NEED Apple for this - the technology market has changed considerably since the days of Apple ][ and early Mac. There are lots of opportunities to learn the foundational stuff - on the hardware side there are sites like nerdkits.com and the home fab (3D printing) stuff. On the software side, there is a wealth of options available - all the way from the conceptually simple, to complete development frameworks that don't cost a dime.
Every jailbreak relies on finding a way to to crash the phone and insert code. This is a bug in the system, which has to be fixed to protect legions of other users, some of whom do their banking on their iPhone -- and remember, Bruce Schneier warned people not to do their banking on Windows, because it's too easy to "insert code" on a Windows computer. The banking apps on an iPhone are inherently more secure than anything on the web, or anything accessed through IE. A jailbreak so you can put on a cool program that Apple didn't pass can also put trojans there, too. Apple isn't being unduly mean to jailbreakers. If they really want to get good at it, they can figure out what to do next. Leave the debuggers to other platforms.
And that's all that Apple's "doing" to jailbreakers. Lots of people who want to do that are still doing that. No lawsuits that I know of.
...a Basic Stamp starter kit. Or an Arduino starter kit. Or any of the other microcontrollers out there. There is plenty of hardware available for tinkering and learning without ever needing to deal with Apple's change of direction.
The author here waxes poetic about times gone by with Apple models that basically came with no pre-installed OS, and therefore it was very easy to "tinker" when starting from damn near ground ZERO. Sure, I do remember the days of screwing with vendors in the mall with Apple products(POKE 214, 255 would disable Cntrl-C and interpret ANY command as RUN), but damn, it's not like we don't have tinkering going on today. Wii homebrew, XBox/PS3 hacking, and yes the fairly new term "jailbreak" would infer that we're still able to "tinker" with newer hardware.
And yes, it makes sense that vendors are starting to get a bit more strict with it. Can you blame them? They're not exactly handing you hardware that powers on to a command prompt these days. It's called "Support". Regardless, people are still finding ways to tinker, and yes, I'm sure that it will only be a matter of time before the almighty iPad is broken too.
Jeez, It's not preventing anyone's opportunity to tinker. It's a product that resulted from tinkering. The logic of this post is like saying "Building schools prevents children from experimenting with wood."
Most awesome phone ever. Completely open, runs a very normal Linux distro, and you can "apt-get install" stuff on it.
No jailbreaking needed, the terminal is one of the applications in the default installation, and you can install SSH.
Sheesh! This thing is a cross between a phone and a PDA. Who cares? it isn't a 'Computer' .. sure it has a computer in it, but so does my BMW and the GPS on my boat, but I don't feel any inescapable urge to hack into my GPS unit. I write software on my PC, my Mac, my Solaris box, and my Kubuntu box all the time, but I have no desire to hack on my Smartphone.
Apple is trying to build a reliable consumer device, and keeping it pretty standard is the best way to do that, so teach your kid to program his computer and tell him not to mess with the ABS system in your Toyota.
the more it was a generational thing. Generations in terms of electronics and generations in terms of users/buyers.
In the 60s, we built our own stereos (Heathkit) and in the 80s the OS of the "home" computer was really more of a loader and the secrets were the functions of the peek/poke locations. The home computers were not much more than a circuit board. The processors and their instruction sets simple. The audience were more the hobbyists who came from the electronics world who were used to schematics and modifications.
Today's computers speak to a different audience. They bought their music players prepackaged. They wouldn't have any interest in a schematic and the appliances they use don't contain resistors and capacitors but ICs. My kids first computer was an Atari 800 and they never ever went to school without a word processor available. Me, I typed my term papers on an electric typewriter if I was lucky.
I used to work with OS writers and their backgrounds and intelligence were far different from the average. Boy were they different and I could relate to them only because I came from a low level background even if I didn't code in their language. But the rest of the people in the corporation didn't relate and the rest of the folks constitute a different and far larger audience.
"should they be denied entrance into the digital world because they're not geeky enough?"
should they be denied entrance into the medical world because they're not willing to do med school?
should they be denied entrance into the world of classic cars because they're not willing to spend their weekends cleaning, fixing and polishing?
should they be denied entrance into the team sports world because they're not willing to shower with other people?
there are a lot of barriers to entry in just about everything we do. And these days the barriers to getting a windows box online and working are very very low. If you haven't been able to get yourself up yourself or pay someone to do it for you, then yes you don't really deserve to be online.
maybe it's because I'm in silicon valley, but a homeless many gave me his email address earlier this week. I dunno if I'm supposed to give him job tips, or just chat with him or what. so the barrier to enter the digital world is not a monetary barrier, at least not in my country where impoverished people live better than the middle class of other nations.
“Common sense is not so common.” — Voltaire
Holy crap this is idiotic.
I learned on an Apple //e. The only language available was Applesoft. It was great I did some neat things with it. But when I wanted to expand and do another language, 6502 Assembler in my case, it was too expensive to get a compiler/editor so I got a pirated one.
For the Mac and iPhone OS Apple now gives away the entire IDE, compilers, simulators, everything FOR FREE.
Sure if I want to load an app I wrote on to my iPod Touch the "official" way I have to pay Apple $99 for the developer membership (there is no need for Apple approval of any app you write to load on your own device.) Or if I can't afford the $99 -- I jailbreak my iPod. Considering the few qualms I had about pirating an Assembler, if i were in a tinkering mood jailbreaking would be a no brainer. Heck, it isn't even stealing like my pirating was.
If anything the tools and capabilties of tinkering with todays devices is WAY cooler than when I was kid. Peek/Poke. Screw that, now you can write Objective-C. And if it turns out really, really cool you can sell it to a world wide audience for only $99.
Bow down to my assembly prowess!!! Merlin and BigMac were the bomb! The geekiest freaking thing I ever wrote...sold at SDSU AppleCorps user group meetings...I think I made a whole couple hundred dollars off that thing. Fond memories of getting up at 5:00am to get to my H.S. business lab where a kind old lady got in early due to her husband's defense dept job. A whole 2.5 hours to hack before Calculus class...which I would sleep thru. Until the arrival of the Apple ][ (no floating point yet) my mom and neighbor buddy used to drag me out of bed minutes before class...my mom was worried about the 'new behaviour' of getting up early and actually thought I may be doing drugs or something...in a way I was "addicted".
The old Apple which you remember so fondly was the Apple of Woz.
The new Apple is the Apple of Jobs.
Woz was a hacker. Jobs is an authoritarian.
All the rest flows from that.
"We're off to hack the Apple! The wonderful Apple of Woz...."
Your just now realizing this? Where the hell have you been?
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
I tire of the “won’t someone think of the children” rhetoric. This article is complaining about “lock-down” on media devices, not on PCs. If I wanted to, it’s even easier to tinker with a Mac today than it was 20 years ago. I’ve got Terminal, AppleScript, Automator, and the Developer Tools. If I want to look at the sort of thing I used to need Resedit for, I just control click an application to show package contents. Sure, I don’t have much access to specific registers of memory, but I don’t really need that to do very exciting things because of the level of horsepower I have at hand on a modern machine. Getting upset over the “closedness” of the iPad or iPod is like getting cranky because you can’t write software for your TV. It’s a device for people who want to passively consume. They don’t even have the most basic input devices of keyboard and mouse. That right there shows you that they’re for consumers, not creators.
You can protect your kids however. Do not let anyone use Windows or iPhone/iTouch/iPad in your house. Buy your kids an Android or N900 phone instead, along with books on Java, Qt, etc.
You know, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that kids under 2 years old not watch any TV and that those older than 2 watch no more than 1 to 2 hours a day of quality programming. A responsible parent would similarly forbid their kids form using Windows or the iPhone/iTouch/iPad.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
Sure, just don't confuse them with personal computers. Put them in the smart terminal tablet category and we are fine.
Apple shipped a full-fledged IDE with every OS in the last many years. It includes example software projects to load up into the tools, and a full programming manual on how to program anything from command tools on up to 3D graphical interfaces with data fed from 3rd party open standard web protocols.
It costs 100 fucking dollars to become an iPod developer, which is less than the cost of the Visual Basic IDE. With that you can load your own apps onto your phone and run them inside of an iPod emulator on your computer.
Steve Jobs never said anything like that. PC manufacturers have their head in the past. The ipad's multi-touch size is at a sufficient size for the human metaphor. Dell and other PC assemblers have shown no real creativity in developing or promoting human computer interaction for the home user. Apple have!
- imagine an ipad app where you could authenticate who you are by your hand-print using the multi-touch pressure sensitive sensors.
And, Apple aren't obstructing you. They're encouraging you by pproviding the ipad sdk.
There are so many possibilities!
There are so many options for would be tinkerers. The OP's premise starts from the assumption that one has to buy Apple products.
Want your kids to learn tinkering? Build a PC with them first, then when they are older start them messing around with simple coding then move on to move advanced things. If they have the interest and aptitude for it there are tons of options for tinkerers. Hell, get them into FPGA prototyping. Maybe the next great CPU will be prototyped by some teenager thinking out of the box.
Calling Apple's products user friendly is pretty obscene. "Dumbed down" and "treats you like the idiot Apple believes you to be" is more accurate.
Tinker away.
I still cannot find the droids I am looking for...
I've not seen exactly these complaints about the Kindle or even the iPhone. People hate how these appliances are closed, but recognize underlying appliance like quality. You'd never make the iPhone your primary computing device ue to the form factor's inherent limitations. An iPad's larger form factor means people will use the device for vastly more activities, like board games, more serious email, etc.
You are of course correct that adults are welcome to use these appliance like computers, adults are also welcome to smoke pot or drink all day long. I'd assert however that these devices are fundamentally harmful to children, by limiting their opportunities for learning more about the inner workings of the machines that dominate our lives.
You know, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that kids under 2 years old not watch any TV and that those older than 2 watch no more than 1 to 2 hours a day of quality programming, and many parents heed this advice.
The Christian religion has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world. -- Bertrand Russell
"Pay $100". Say no more. And there's plenty more that can be said, but it doesn't need to be.
You're almost completely wrong.
I don't think anyone much cares what it's called. Give people something fun and useful with features that are easy to discover and use, something that works as expected every time and doesn't require you to have a bachelor's in software engineering to keep working... they are going to want it and enjoy it. And good for them, I say.
I don't see a future for me where I have no "open computing" device. Like everyone here, I'm too old school for that. But would I get an iPad? Hell yes. I can't recompile the kernel of my television, either, but I still want one.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
The only ones bending over backwards are Apple's customers and fanboys like you.
You really need to do a little soul-searching to see if you've still got one somewhere.
A professor (a Mac head unsurprisingly) wanted to teach a class on iPhone application development. Well of course that needs to run on Macs and we don't have any Mac labs since some of our software is Windows only and we need to purchase budget computers. I don't know what he planned to do about that, maybe buy some Macs for teaching out of his research funds. However the bigger problem, the show stopper problem, was Apple. We needed to get the SDK licenses. They sent over this ginormous contract for us to sigh. That of course had to go to the lawyers, who modified it and sent it back. Apple said "No. No modification are permitted, you sign it as it is now or you can't have it." Well, we have no authority to sign, only the lawyers can do that. They weren't going to sign it as is. So, we had to say screw that.
Now the class is being taught on Android app development. This has proved to be dramatically less problematic. The SDK runs fine on our Windows systems. It would also run on Linux or Mac systems, if needed so if we want to put it on our shell systems as well as our lab system we could. Getting the SDK was not problematic either. No contract to sign, I just downloaded it from Google's site and installed it.
Does this all matter? I dunno, all I can say is there's a class of students being taught how to develop for the Android phones, rather than the iPhone precisely because of the locked down environment. The requirement to use Mac hardware, but in particular the requirement to sign a massive contract vastly in Apple's favour killed any chance that it might be taught. We simply cannot do that.
They give you the full version for cheap or free. All students have access to purchase Visual Studio for cheap. You can get the full retail boxed edition for $99. If your school does licensing, it is $55 for a Pro license, $25 for a standard license. However if your school does MSDNAA, and many do, or if you are a member of an organization that does MSDNAA, like the IEEE, it is free. You simply download it and receive a valid permanent license, that you keep after your graduate.
So students get access to even the high end dev versions for free or cheap. As you accurately point out everyone can have the express editions, which don't have a lot of limits all said and done, for free.
Also, Rockbox (rockbox.org - one of my favourite open source initiatives because I enjoy it daily) can no longer run on any new ipod because Apple is encrypting their firmware and they've prevented any 3rd party firmware from running. It's a shame really...
Mike
I like how the tags on the story say "dontbuyapple buynokia". I wonder if that's intentional...
Back when I was getting my first serious computer (the previous Vic-20 and loaned machines don't count :-), I looked seriously between the Mac and the Amiga. I ended up choosing the Amiga because it seemed to me to be more hacker friendly, and I am a hacker. The Mac seemed much more like a black box that you weren't intended to get inside. So, maybe at Apple II series was a fluke, I really don't know because I didn't get much opportunity to hack on them. It seems to me that Apple has always been targeted at a non-hacker audience. Which is fine, htere are a lot of non-hackers out there.
Sean
I, too, am terribly upset over the ongoing process of locking down anything and everything. The fact that I can't tinker with the contents of my fluorescent lights, that I need a special licence to mess with the contents of the toaster, and am outright prohibited from building my own nuclear reactor in my backyard are all setting the world back 20 years in technological advancement.
In the meantime I'm glad that I have access to the free development environment of XCode on a Mac which lets me emulate devices such as the iPod and iPad, so I can mess around with software projects without actually buying a $800 slate that I don't need.
I'm not saying it's wrong for systems to be locked down. But when they are, it's usually for a good reason. I can't tinker with the electronics in my Toyota because it would be stupid and possibly dangerous to do so.
Apple, on the other hand, is locking down these systems for the wrong reasons. Just as they always have, they lock things down for profit. You can't make an email client because Apple wants you to use theirs. You can't make a video download service because Apple wants to funnel you into their store. Most fundamentally, you can't even by apps from a store other than Apple's.
This is just plain asinine. If Microsoft did this, they would be sued for antitrust. But Apple being the "underdog" goes along merrily while locking people into their systems. If Apple did this for usability alone I wouldn't condone them. However more often than not they do it to lock people into their profit streams.
Ironic that this company once ran an ad based on Orwell's 1984 where Apple decries totalitarian control.
When one understands the nature of projection, which is where we attribute to others the behaviors and characteristics we can't see or can't accept about ourselves, one then starts to be able to see expressions like Apple's famous "1984" commercial as the most revealing indicators of the character of and the most reliable predictors of the future behavior of the speaker.
;-)
Projection isn't an occasional occurrence; it's the way the ego functions. It's always operative. Every ego-driven activity - an observation, a statement, an action - one makes is a projection.
It's true in personal relationships (both on the low side and the high side, it's how people fight and how people fall in love) and in group relationships (read any pronouncement from any country about their enemy and one knows exactly what's true about the country making the accusation).
The important tell is the amount of emotional energy in the statement. The amount of emotional energy, the reactivity, associated with an action or observation or statement is a measure of the energy the thing to which the speaker is reacting has within the speaker. So lots of short-term energy (e.g., a quick, visceral emotional response to something) or lots of long-term energy (a thing on which one spends one's time and energy, over and over) both reveal that the thing to which the speaker is reacting is unconscious to them internally - and thus is actually what runs them. The same statement made objectively and dispassionately indicates the speaker has a conscious awareness and acceptance of, and thus control over, that characteristic within them.
And because human consciousness is self-similar, projection works at every scale. It's really quite beautiful.
Some examples:
Corporations: Google's mantra of "Don't Be Evil"
Politics: Bush's demonization of Saddam Hussein as a "brutal dictator" who "hates freedom"
Nations: Israel's fear that Iran wants to "wipe their enemies off the map"
Religions: The characteristics people project onto their chosen deity (e.g., Christ's compassion and love)
Personal: What you're thinking about the writer of this comment right now.
Of course, knowing about projection is not only useful in understanding others, it's essential for learning the truth about and becoming responsible for oneself. (The classic mistake made when first learning about projection is to see it only in other people, and not apply it to oneself: "Ha! That idiot has no idea they're projecting!" Oooooops....)
I'd say the nature of projection is one of the most helpful things I've ever learned, easily the equal of any of my technical education.
The sadly amusing thing about the "1984" commercial is how much the setting resembles a Steve Jobs presentation.
"On January 24th, Apple Computer will introduce Macintosh. And you'll see why 1984 won't be like '1984'.
Give us until 2009."
Is there anything analogous to Macsbug and Resedit these days? I haven't played around with good utils like those in years.
The microwave on your kitchen counter started out as a magnetron in a lab that someone was tinkering with. Eventually it was packaged into a home appliance, and now tinkering is more or less impossible. Most people would consider this a good thing.
Why then, when the same thing happens to computers, do people proclaim it to be a bad thing? Isn't there space in the market for both appliance-like and general-purpose computers, just as there is space in the market for both microwave ovens and raw magnetrons?
This argument might make sense in a market where it is impossible to tinker -- like cell phones -- but in a market where the vast majority of machines are general-purpose hardware that can be used for any purpose it is simply nostalgic whining from a generation who still sees computers as the one great new technology that will equalize all of humanity.
There is nothing to tinker with, it's magic.
All Macs come with XCode and an extensive set of developer tools = for free!
That's not "free", you pay for it as part of the hardware and software.
I'd love to see some development tools actually on the iPad.
Why not just get an Android-based pad? The development tools are free, nobody needs to give you permission to load things onto it, it's easier to program, and it's cheaper.
"And the sons of Marketing fashioned themselves Suits to wear, the better to lure their customers, and wrote grave and perilous Licenses, the better to bind the Systems."
Gospel of Tux
No sig for you. YOU GET NO SIG!
Mod Parent Way Up!
Apple provides free toolsets to developers. Yes they lock out some features. Features that if opened would prevent cell carriers, content providers, etc from supporting the device. These feature lockouts allow this conversation to occur in the first place.
For those who want to directly access the hardware, we have the *nix distros, jailbreaking, and magazines like Make. Kids will find plenty of wonder, just in different ways.
Only the dead have seen the end of War. - Plato
The only thing Apple is controlling is what you can do to other people's devices.
I think of it this way: Apple is controlling what you can let other people help you do with your own devices.
Want to run firefox instead of Safari? No, you don't need that. Mutt over mail.app? No, you don't need that either. Apple has decided what you need.
having to try and defend an [enterprise's computers] from malicious software, I'm very happy about this.
I'm not sure, but I think this sounds like you trust Apple more than you trust yourself.
Why do I say that? Well, says that someone wants to put malicious software in the App Store.
If Apple didn't interfere, you would have the power to decide whether or not to install that piece of software. If Apple interferes, you only have the option available if Apple lets you.
Why is that better? Do you think Apple's interests are always aligned with your own? Do you trust them to make the calls at least as well as you?
Let's compare with, say, repositories on Linux. You can place your trust in the ubuntu/debian/... repo maintainers about what constitutes good software, and just live by apt-get. Or you can install software from other sources. And you get to review the code yourself if you want to.
It seems to me that the linux-repo model gives you both a set of other people to trust, and the power to override their decisions if you need to. Why would you prefer not having that power?
How come nobody realizes that ChromeOS isn't any different?
For the sake of security, I highly doubt that resources editors and hex editors (in order to patch executable files) would run on ChromeOS.
It's a tradeoff worth making.
Joe Hewitt's post about the iPad is worth a read: http://joehewitt.com/post/ipad/
{{.sig}}
Dtrace? Terminal? The reality is that you can do SO MUCH MORE tinkering in OSX than you ever could. Ever used OS9? Black box magic. OSX, by comparison, is like a playground....
Perhaps if Apple was to release a FOSS version of their OS for hobbyists to tinker with?
Would that help?
Of course, they'd have to hold back on some of the stuff that cost a lot to make, or gave them a special advantage.
Still, I think it would be a good thing, especially if it was available on both PPC and X86 architectures.
Oh, wait...
although i'm not a fan of apple products, apple can't do anything to stop people tinkering with their products. i.e. linux has been ported to the iPhone, and i expect somebody will port it to run on the iPAD as well. People have figured out how to get MacOS running on non-Apple hardware. and people continue to tinker with the underlying iPhone OS as well.
what would be really great is somebody can get the apple "appstore" and applications working on linux
It's pretty clear to me then - if you want your kids to tinker, don't use Apple or other closed/proprietary systems.
Move to OSS solutions.
Transition paths are not horribly painful either.
Switch to OSS apps, Firefox, Thunderbird, OpenOffice.org, F-Spot or GIMP, Audacity, etc. on your current OS (Mac or Windows). Switch one app at a time, don't do anything drastic. Even use non-OSS "pure" apps that are available on all platforms (I don't know the status of these, but they aren't native to Fedora, so they must have some licensing issues): Google's Chrome and Picasa.
Then switching your OS is much less of a learning curve. They can cut their teeth on Ubuntu for the end-user changeover and move on the RedHat family of Fedora and/or CentOS. VirtualBox can provide your link back to the proprietary Windows world (I'm not sure what Mac emulators are available for Linux, if any) in case there are some apps you just cannot get rid of.
There is so much to tinker on in the OSS world, and you have total and complete control to tinker to the deepest levels. Best of all, you'll almost certainly find a community that is interested in what you are, or perhaps you'll start on and others will find you.
Make the switch, and let the tinkering begin!
Do you bitch about not being able to modify the ECU in your car? Do you bitch about not being able to change the picture tube/lcd/plasma screen in your TV? Are you mad that you can't upgrade the firmware in your digital thermostat in your home or office?
It's my understanding that replacing the picture tube in TVs isn't difficult only on, say, Samsung TVs. It's just difficult on TVs. Similarly for thermostats---firmware upgrades are hard on all thermostats, not just the $VENDOR ones.
It's also my understanding that you can replace the battery easily in most non-Apple portable music players and phones, but you can't on the Apple ones.
If you want the things Apple won't let you have---but others will let you have---it makes sense to not like Apple. When no device maker will let you have the features you want, it makes sense to not like the class of device in question.
When you don't care about the freedoms you're denied, it makes sense to like the class of devices, and not dislike Apple more than others (and, potentially, like them on their merits, depending on how much you value what they do well).
Don't like Apple, don't buy one.
I'm with you on this one. Live and let live. I let the Apple fanbois have their expensive and slick boxes, and they let me fiddle with wifi drivers on my linux box until I'm blue in the face, and everybody is happy. At least when the drivers work ;)
Flash kills the battery life on my laptop. You can always tell when a simple flash animation is loaded because the browser's CPU usage goes up to 90% and the fans spin up to their highest speed. Browser crashes are far more likely on pages with flash. Safari even has its own special error message for when flash crashes it.
Apple already has a platform with the hardware necessary to run flash. It's a laptop. It costs twice as much as an iPad.
If Adobe wants Flash to run on the iPad, perhaps they should look into making it run efficiently in operating systems that aren't Windows.
Anon coward due to flame war...
Come on man, do you do nothing but read what others parrot? You bring up a flip the coin and flashlight apps like that is all there are. You must have missed all the medical apps (yep, 10 buck app that will help you learn about arrhythmias). You must have missed streaming music apps, guitar tuning, music theory, complex graphing calculators, sophisticated audio sequencers. For frak sake there's even an enigma machine simulator I found in someone's sig
They don't *care* - that's not what they want out of a computer.
Sure. But one thing they do want: low prices. With a monopoly, you don't get that. With Apple as the gatekeeper to their own walled garden, they could potentially become a monopoly---I seem to recall a lawsuit in France about Apple having and abusing monopoly power in the online music sales space (you can look up the details; the point: I'm not a lone "Apple m0n0pollies!!11" crackpot)
What open platforms offer is richer competition: if I can install any application on my $DEVICE, I can in particular install a non-$DEVICE-maker one. More competition, lower prices.
The sooner computer nerds realize that, the easier it will be to adjust to the direction the market will be moving over time.
I don't want to adjust to a world where I can't call the shots regarding what my computer do, because I don't want that world.
Hopefully I won't have to make do with such a world. I think I've made a case for why openness will survive.
I have no problem with things running on the iPhone in a sandbox as it accesses the public cellular networks. Anyone caught breaking the cellular network by installing unstable software on a jailbroken deserves to have their ass kicked to the point that they are in a hospital eating through a straw for several months. Jailbreak your non-cellular Wifi devices all you want but when you jailbreak a cellphone, you are putting lives at risk.
Devices like the iPhone and iPad are supposed to be networked appliances, not general purpose computers.
PS. Here are a few links for you since you seem to be clueless as to how to use google.
http://www.opensource.apple.com/
http://www.apple.com/opensource/
All I did was type in the following keywords into google: " Apple Open Source". I know, that is so non-obvious *sarcasm*.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
The iPod/iPhone/iPad are consumer electronic gadgets. Although they can be general purpose computers based on hardware, they were not designed for that purpose.
Mac Books and Mac Pro are general computers and are designed for that purpose. I do believe they should leave the newer consumer electronic devices a little more open to allow "hacking" but in the end it is what it is...a device(s) that allows a narrowed purpose and applications to suit that purpose. Because apple is really image driven they do not want any applications that make the device look bad, which is why they have the app store...they try to control what they can and seems like they are quite successful at it.
The C-64 had keys to change the cursor color, but to change the foreground color the manual told you to POKE 53281, 15 (for whatever color code from 0 to 15).
I had a ZX81 which didn't have a good way to save machine code programs. The manual said you could set RAMTOP and put stuff into the top of memory, but it wouldn't make it onto the tape drive. The goofball technique in the Sinclair manual was to write a huge BASIC program starting with a shitload of POKE statements and ending with something like
LET A = USR(...).
What everyone did (anyone remember this?) was to write a short BASIC program starting with a monster comment-
10 REM AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA...
20 PRINT USR(16514)
30 SAVE
40 GOTO 20
Then you started poking machine code instructions into memory starting at address 16514, which was the first A. The REM statement turned into gibberish, and when you finished you entered
RUN 30
That would save everything onto the tape. Then when you LOAD this Sinclair program off the tape (the kind of thing kids today never experience) the execution would resume at line 40 which tried to evaluate USR(16514) for passing to the PRINT command, which never ran because the machine code would start.
What works like that today? Well, there was that Code Red worm a few years back whose attack vector was a huge URL, starting with:
default.ida?NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
NNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN%u9090%u6858%ucbd3
%u7801%u9090%u6858%ucbd3%u7801%u9090%u6858%ucbd3
%u7801%u9090%u9090%u8190%u00c3%u0003%u8b00
%u531b%u53ff%u0078%u0000
Upon receipt of a GET request for this thing, a gets C function in the IIS indexer tried to store the URL into a fixed-size buffer, which this URL overran. When the gets returned, it popped a bullshit return address off the stack and the CPU started executing the machine code instructions that someone had poked into this goddamn URL.
You see, kiddies, this is how computers are supposed to work.
Then you can pay the less then A$400 for Technet or MSDN and get access to a plethora of MS software, if you intend and have a plan to make money from a bit of software then this is trivial. For this you get internal prod licenses for heaps of MS softwarte
Now many people say that Apple development is only US$99 a year (+ the cost of a Mac, they always forget that Mac's cost money) but that's also the cost of learning, if you want to learn Windows or Linux development you can download the tools for free and use your existing (or any cheap) computer.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
I remember the time when home computers came with BASIC interpreters. That was neat. You know what wasn't?
Paying for anything beyond the BASIC interpreter. I paid maybe $60 for my TRS-80 assembler, and that was in roughly 1980 dollars. In order to get into anything beyond that, I had to pay hundreds of dollars.
The TRS-80 Model 4 and 4P ran standard CP/M nicely, and there were lots of language systems available. For hundreds of dollars, and again we're talking about 1980-era dollars.
Right now, any computer you're likely to buy comes with an operating system suitable for serious software development, and you can get all sorts of language implementations for free. Apple's XCode comes with every Mac, and you can download SDKs for the iP*s. Microsoft lets you download VS Express Editions for free. Beyond that, there's hundreds of high-quality language implementations available from third parties, free for the download.
Hardware hacking has become harder, as boards and such have precision requirements that are unlikely to be met by a semi-novice with a soldering iron. Software hacking has never been easier.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I've only just found this out this evening, so the scope of this is still unclear (and hence I am open to been corrected), but it appears that the S60 2nd edition may have had the self sign capability and it may have actually been pulled by Nokia from the S60 3rd edition.
I have a unusual vision problem which the NHS has failed to diagnose. Can you help? More at failedbythenhs.blogspot.com
If someone is curious about computer tinkering these days, I feel like their first toe in the water will be with HTML/JS/AJAX rather than BASIC/ResEdit/Etc. ipad will definitely have a text editor and file sharing... and as many have said, if you REALLY want to get under the hood, they can step up to a linux box (or any other desktop OS).
besides, jquery touch looks much, MUCH more fun than 10 PRINT "VOIDSTIN RULES!" 20 GOTO 10
http://www.jqtouch.com/
If you want to learn the ins and outs of an operating system, although it's *nix based, OS X probably isn't the best choice, at least until you start learning how best to hide all that stuff.
Surely you'd choose Linux, probably something like LFS if really committed, that's one of the things (many things, don't get me wrong) that it excels at. I do like Apple's stuff, but I don't see the obsession with trying to make them what they're not. Tinkerer's machines, is something that they're not. At all.
I don't see how this is quite as evil of Apple as they're making it out to be. If you want to learn the basics of cooking, you don't start by studying the microwave.
http://developer.apple.com/iphone/program/university.html
It's certainly possible that your .edu's lawyers are bigger asshats that most lawyers, but I can't imagine that this EULA is any worse than the one your .edu signed with Microsoft for Windows, or for the other proprietary Windows-only software that you said you use.
I think Mark Pilgrim takes it one too far but he is also correct.
Apple no more kills tinkering than do they sacrifice small children upon every product launch to insure success.
Yet, although I will use an iPad in the near future, I would rather have seen a middle road whereby there is a seamless experience like the iPhone/iPod but is a bit more open.
Then again, OS X is a great choice to learn ins and outs of an OS. Or at least you can do a helluva lot of tinkering since it ships with a decent LAMP stack, python, ruby, perl, etc...
I sure miss the days when the Mac first came out. There were no programming docs at all for about a year, then you could subscribe to them and software supplements for about $5 a month.
And you had a choice of various developer tools over the years, from Lightspeed, Think and finally Metrowerks. And you could buy various debuggers, and there was Resourcerer for editing resources. I'd spend $300-$500 a year on developer tools if I was on a tight budget.
Then marketing an app was a really big deal.
Now all the tools I need come with the system. It's a much less exclusive club of developers. Anyone can write and distribute an app for practically nothing. Way too much competition.
Sadly, by denying the common people access to the inner system, Apple is becoming exactly like that "religion" we all love to hate...
One only has to look at Apples position in particular market to understand the contrasts in their developer policies. Apple's PC market penetration is very low. Apple cannot break 5% market share even after the Vista debacle. As a result, Apple ships the Developers tools free with every Mac, aids Windows installation with Bootcamp, and even takes an open source approach to the core of OS X. In contrast, Apple dominates the iPod market and is a strong contender in the iPhone market. Apples developer policy reflects that position. Apple forces developers through the iTunes and only Cocoa SDK . I also seriously doubt Apple is making any effort to put Android on the phone. This position is less developer friendly than the Mac. The powers that be at Apple must feel thar the developers need Apple more than Apple needs them. I believe this will hurt them in the long run. This policy is extremely short sighted given the rise of Android (think Windows in the 80's). iPhone OS may be better than Android now but Google is very flexible with their developers policy. Google will allow them to take Android devices a lot further than Apple will their developers go. Apple will lose out again just as they did with Windows.
Case in point, I am absolutely in love with the iPhone. I would have one right now and would would pay the full price except for one thing. I have to purchase AT&T data plan for $30/month for as long as I have the phone. I have no need for a data plan. I am around wifi most of the time and I would rarely need to use AT&T 3G. If I were so incline to use 3g, I would probably download a tv show off of hulu with Flash. AT&T network can't handle that and Apple won't let me have flash. Moreover, even if they did, it would run very slowly because Apple is not friendly with it developers. I believe Apple is pushing me to buy content from them and pay for a service I will never use. The forced data plan is the same with Android but at least Flash for Android is around the corner. In the race to my pocket, Google may edge out Apple. That is a shame, I do love my Macintosh and would have loved the iPhone. This is bigger than tinkering and I hope Steve Jobs wakes up.
You don't have to be smart to use a Mac, you just have to be smart enough to buy one
Pay $100 for the iPhone developer program and you can do whatever you want to your own iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.
Just reigister and download the SDK. Unless you want to distribute your apps on the store, there's no reason to pay for the developer program.
Apple continues to get away with their ridiculous locked down, all inclusive, dictatorship business practices... and we all bitch and moan about Microsoft being evil.
True, MS has earned it, but isnt it about time that we look at Apple in the proper light.
Apple makes cool, and great things.... but they also dictate what you can and cant do on their devices, what media formats you can use, what browser, etc...
My Step Father spends 50% of his time tinkering with his PC and then when I visit I spend 100% of my time having to "untinker" it.
If you really want to tinker with an iPad get a Mac and the free SDK.
Richard Stallman already warned us about this threat to liberty 11 years ago in The Right to Read.
Why does the summary mention Macsbug with a link to an article which doesn't mention Macsbug? Macsbug hasn't even been on the Macintosh ever since the move to Mac OS X. (Perhaps there was one in the classic environment, but still...)
.
Oh, give me a break. Tinkerers always find new things to tinker with. I used to tinker with vacuum tube electronics, radios and TVs, before personal computers were even around. Do I blame Sony for preventing me from tinkering nowadays? Absolutely not.
It is the natural progression of humanity to turn new 'tinkerable' technology into 'non-tinkerable' commodities.
So stop trying to hold back the progression of humankind, stop whining, and encourage your kids find something new to tinker with.
And stop blaming Apple for your lack of insight.
It is a testament to how successful Apple has been in its efforts to make computers "for the rest of us" that such poorly-formed and ill-considered thoughts are able to make it out onto the Internet and land on the front page of a popular website. If any more than minimal effort had been required, presumably this article would not have appeared, and we'd all have been spared one more facepalm for today.
If one chooses to step out of one's own personal situation for a moment and look at the company being discussed, it's not difficult to see that the company's entire mission and history is based on doing exactly what the article implies is a recent development: moving technology from hobbyists to mass market. The Apple II, here held up as a paragon of a machine for tinkerers, was, in point of fact, exactly the opposite of that within its historical context: it was a personal computer you bought in a plastic case and did not have to assemble yourself. Yes, its design unintentionally made it ideal for hardware hobbyists who could make peripherals, and for software hackers learning the ropes. That was not its intent; that is a side effect. As such, Apple's recent efforts against iPhone jailbreakers is not a new trend; it is one as old as the company itself. Apple emphasizes design and elegance in trying to produce what it thinks is the single best way to accomplish a task to try and streamline those tasks, and will sacrifice power and flexibility to get it. Most tinkerers would not make that tradeoff; intead they seek to maximize power and flexibility at the cost of ease of use.
Apple does not have a moral obligation to provide for those with an urge to tinker, or to make such devices available to expose people who might have an undiscovered knack for tinkering. That's a phase in the computer industry that is now over, and the fact that it is over says more about the industry than it does about Apple.
And of course, it goes without saying that most people who used sector copiers on the Apple II were doing it so they could learn about the operating system and eventually become programmers. Not, of course, making free copies of games.
Aside from the anti-tinkering policies of Apple, much is made of how the iPhone developer program works:
The implication, of course, is that the distinction between an iPhone belonging to a developer and that belonging to an ordinary user is arbitrary, and that Apple is profiteering off selling access to something that lies dormant in every iPhone.
Presumably then, this would be acceptable if Apple charged a lot more, removed the functionality from every phone, and produced special "dev kit" versions that cost several times what the ordinary version did. Interestingly enough, that's what Sony and Microsoft do with their consoles. Why people should think of a telephone as something that should be inherently hackable while a game console is not is rather beyond me.
One of the foremost complaints *from developers* about the iPhone. Ordinary users, I feel safe in saying, mostly don't give a darn. If you try to make the argument from the developer's perspective relevant to the ordinary users, you have to phrase it in terms of what users might be missing out because Apple's policies disallow certain apps or turn off certain developers. However, the App Store has such an embarassment of riches I can't see that argument going anywhere.
Personally I jailbroke my first two iPhone
Google's mantra of "don't be evil" can't be projection, they aren't projecting it onto anyone (you can argue if its a lie or whatever all you want of course).
A lot of the others are a pretty extreme stretch as well. Seeing Saddam as a brutal dictator who hates freedom was a fairly common opinion, more likely regurgitation of what Bush had been told repeatedly.
The current president of Iran actually *said* that Israel should be wiped off the map (or relocated).
Religions... ok yeah you have it dead on there.
You are also oversimplifying Bias into two categories, there are at *least* a dozen others, off the top of my head.
By all means mod me troll. I'm always happy to see my enemies are afraid to debate me.
I'm sorry but I'm a little confused. The SDK for Mac development is free of charge and rolled into the Developer Tools that come with the OS. If you want to download the iPhone SDK you simply go to Apple, register with them (free but, yes, register) and download the iPhone portions of the SDK. One person, the admin, the prof, can do this and then install these tools on other machines.
I really don't understand what you're on about with lawyers and signing an SDK.
Express doesn't even include an IDE, while Xcode includes everything out of the box for professional Mac development.
In fact Apple's excellent development tools for Mac have been free since at least 1997.
That said, as a Mac hacker for 25 years, like Mark Pilgrim I personally deplore the arrival of "cynical", closed platforms such as the iPhone and iPad.
you had me at #!
I thought you were going to link to this.
you had me at #!
As someone who read the legendary Inside Macintosh (1983 draft; I still have it) cover to cover before even touching a Mac (some time around 1985), I don't understand this contention that the original Mac was "closed" to developers. The *case* was not easy to open, but the programmer model was not locked up in any real way. Almost from the beginning, Apple offered assembler- and compiler-level toolsets. Initially these were Lisa-hosted, simply because the Mac porting hadn't been done yet. I personally used Macintosh Development System (1984) and Whitesmiths C in the very beginning, before reverting to Pascal for a while, using powerful toolchains such as TML and Lightspeed Pascal. Consulair C was available in 1985.
From the first moment, third party developer tools sprang up like kudzu around the original Mac, most of them cutting edge in some way. Many innovative development technologies were pioneered on the Mac: interpreted Pascal with a sophisticated GUI (Mac Pascal), Object Pascal and MVC systems (MacApp), Neon, 4GLs, incremental compilers (Lightspeed/THINK/Symantec C), etc. Does anyone even remember that in the 80s, Apple pushed out several full releases of their own Mac Smalltalk-80 system, which Squeak is now based on? (Harvey Alcabes, I remember you.)
And few now remember that the Lisa itself, despite appearances better described as a "minicomputer" than micro, ran about six different operating systems, including UCSD P-system and XENIX, and had several full-fledged language systems from Object Pascal through COBOL and Fortran.
you had me at #!
It may never happen. The board of the company choices when it is going to split. I recommend that you sell your Apple stock because it is the highest it is going to go. If you sell now you will make a huge profit. Smile White Pro
I've been using Apple machines since I was about 6, and much of my geekiness today is due to the software and hardware tinkering I did with them over the years. I'm pretty disturbed by the direction I see Apple going. iTunes was, I think, the beginning of the end, and the iPad is an unsettling glimpse into the future. Since the iTunes store opened, Apple has gone from being a "computer" company to being a "media" company. The iPad is locked down because of Apple's need to keep the content providers at bay. Now, I know Apple makes a boatload of cash serving all this DRMed content, but really they should have just stuck to geekier pursuits like making nice computers with a slick OS, and left all the intellectual property bullshit to somebody else. I don't have an iPhone, but I wasn't too miffed to learn that it was locked down, because most phones are (I know, I know, the N900). But when I heard they were making a tablet, I pictured a MacBook crammed into tablet form with a cool multitouch version of OS X. So I was disappointed to find that it was this giant iPhone that I'll never be able to run X11 or MacPorts or even Firefox on. I'm hoping that people will realize that they don't need an iPad (despite the reality distortion field that undoubtedly surrounds it) and it will fail miserably, and Apple will go back to the way it was when I was doing Logo on my Apple ][c. Something about Apple's stock prices (like the fact that one share costs about as much as an iPod) tells me that this is unlikely to ever occur.
Apple users aren't geeks! Any Apple user claiming they are a geek should get punched square in the face. No real geek would ever buy a product with that kind of lock-in!
Pretty much any device can be tinkered with, assuming the tinkerer has the right combination of curiosity and determination. Those of you who remember how easy it was "back in the day" are forgetting how rare (and expensive) computers were, and the desire to actually program one? It took a special kind of person to spend hours at home learning Basic instead of playing with the other kids outside.
These days, a kid who's curious about what makes the iPhone tick, can Google the answer in 30 seconds. One Mac Mini, keyboard, and monitor later he can start tinkering. Throw in another $99 for the iPhone development certificate and he can put his applications on his iPhone. Total cost: ~$700. The computer my parents bought me in 1992 to learn C cost over $3000.
Even better, if the kid tinkers for awhile and gets to the point where he can make something halfway decent (or clever), he can throw it on the App Store and have a chance to actually make some money! There's quite a few teenagers hanging out on the iPhone development forums who are doing just that and actually making some decent money (for a teenager). It's pretty amazing actually.
Tinkering is not over, just because you say you can't do it on a Mac. In fact jailbreaking IS tinkering.
If you really want to tinker, move over to GNU/Linux.
The people who use them are generally people who thought the "locked-down" out-of-the-box experience was worth the money they paid, and who find it fun to push it a bit further with a jailbreak.
"The jailbreaker who despises the restrictions imposed by the manufacturer" is a straw man. I'm sure you can find a counterexample (or at least, someone trying to be contrary) if you try hard enough, but in general, "jailbreakers" come in all of these categories but one:
This article is so backwards. It is also sad to see yet another everybody-should-be-a-computer-nerd story.
iPad runs the same apps as Chrome OS. If you're going to say that Apple is anti-tinkerer, then what is Google? Chrome OS is a subset of iPhone OS: Unix core, HTML5 browser. But on iPad OS you get native app development also. So you can run a multitrack recorder and tinker with music. Chrome OS is much more limited than iPhone OS.
There's tons of open source code running in an iPad. Is that anti-tinkerer? Are the people who are making all the iPhone OS apps and games anti-tinkerer? Are the people who make music and movies and books for iPad anti-tinkerer? Just because they tinker with music, not software code?
The development platform for iPhone OS is the Mac, which comes with dev tools, is Unix-certified, and includes Apache2, PHP5, Python, Perl, Ruby, and more. It also has tons of open source software, including Apple WebKit, which enables standards-based Web development for consumers who have iPad or iPhone or iPod or Chrome or Android or Nokia or Palm instead of the bullshit IE-specific Web development Microsoft propagates. Is WebKit anti-tinkerer? The Mac also comes with a multitrack music studio, a video editor, a photo light box. There is a ton of stuff to discover on Apple platforms, not just coding. But if you're into coding, the entire Mac UI can be scripted and so can the Unix shell of course. There are about 10 computer languages built into every Mac.
Some of us get a sense of wonder from writing books or music, not fucking around endlessly with computers. I got my nerd on as a kid in-between a set of headphones, listening to an LP, looking at album art, reading the lyrics. The iPad is the perfect device to provide the 21st century version of that. Many, many kids will discover music, movies, literature, websites on iPad and want to make those things. Hopefully they will also discover the idea of making stuff with some QUALITY which they certainly will not get from running most computing platforms. Making stuff for iPad is as easy as getting a Mac, which is $400 per year including the service plan, and if anything stops you from being able to make music today, you take the Mac to Apple and they fix it. So if you are a music tinkerer, you don't have to take a course in computer science, you take a course in music.
I'm truly tired of this everybody-should-be-a-computer-nerd philosophy of computing. Have you watched most people use a computer? It's like they are sentenced to hard labor.
At the iPad introduction, Steve Jobs said "Apple sees itself at the intersection of technology and liberal arts." The idea is to enhance the entire broad field of human endeavor with computers, not enslave them with computer science tasks. To enable them to enhance their own work (i.e. doctor, musician, architect) with computing, not sit and do various mindless steps to get anything done. What is joyful coding to a computer scientist is grim slavery to 90% of humanity. Many people do not have the kind of memory it takes to find the 15th nested dialog box in Outlook that lets them change their email signature. Me, I can hear any melody once and remember it forever, but I don't say that everyone should have to be able to do that in order to listen to music.
The funniest thing about this everybody-should-be-a-tinkerer idea is that computer scientists are among the most focused people on the planet. The joke is that they don't shower or shave because they're too into the computer. So to have computer scientists say that everyone else should have to learn more about the computer before they listen to music or read a book or whatever they do is outrageous. What if you were forced to learn a musical instrument in order to use a computer? You'd lose your fucking mind.
The switch to digital is not an excuse to force computer science on the rest of humanity.
What company does not try and lock down their appliances? Yes, there is Android. A/V enthusiasts complain about their DVD/Blu-ray players being locked down and hard to hack. Gamers complain about their consoles being hard to hack.
If you want to do stuff in OS X, you know "the wonder of tinkering with an Apple ][", just give yourself root access. Play all you want.
Everyone wants to do what they want to do, and they always have some reason for it. Not saying they are right or wrong, I like to play around with stuff, too. I guess you can hack a Zune since no one complains about that.
Think about this seriously. If you invented some device that made you millions/billions of $s, and was largely based on the software it could run, would you just let anyone do whatever they wanted to it? After the 1st unchecked app downloaded all of the users info to my computer and I start abusing that info, how happy are your customers going to be with you. And how many more sales are you going to get. There goes your revenue. If the answer is "I just want to play around", well, so do hackers.
Vote monkeys into Congress. They are cheaper and more trustworthy.
I'm sorry, did I miss the part where Steve announced they were removing the web browser? How on earth is a device that prominently features a web browser a closed system? Yes, it's less open than a PC or a Mac (which I would argue is more open than Windows as it ships with a development environment.) But it's very silly to claim that it's closed.
I think it's time the EU did something against the practices of apple, just like it did against Microsoft.
I mean, apple is surely showing anti-competitive behavior. Plus, there could be large economical benefits if the apple platform was more open.
If Pandora's box is destined to be opened, *I* want to be the one to open it.
Ever wonder why there's no camera in the iPad? It wasn't ready yet. That's right, it's a mobile Telescreen.
yep, it's the way of things, not just Apple, but all Computers (almost) there are some open source Game Pads and Linux-on-a-stick, but not the same as hacking Photoshop 2 with ReEdit, or building the little mods that did simple things like flashed an LED so that you know that the computer isn't stuck in loop, sigh. I blame large scale integration more than locked software, but that's what stopped me.
There was an unknown error in the submission.
You want to tinker with your iPhone or iPad? Get an Apple Developers account and you can unlock it and write any Objective-C code you want and put it on the device.
So maybe program X won't be available on the App Store, but you can easily compile and install it on your personal iPhone. Oh yeah, it takes a developer account, whine about that. But while you're whining, do agree that the statements made in the summary are simply false to fact.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
It would be funny if Steve's office at Infinite Loop was "Room 101."
:-)
Funny...but not surprising.
Or, you know, they were just depicting IBM as Big Brother. But your explanation is good, too.
Finally! A story pointing this out that Slashdot let slip by. I was starting to think I was the only one who thought "Think Different" was possibly the most untrue and unfitting slogan for Apple. "Think our way, or we'll stop you from thinking different with our next update we force on you."
You can get the kernel source code. Once upon a time I was developing a kernel extension for a research project I was working on (very specialized memory manager). We were trying to figure out how something worked, so we took a look at the kernel source code. We ended up finding an Apple engineer's email address in one of the comments, we asked him a bunch of questions. He was a ton of help. We also discovered a bug, which he entered into their bug tracking system, and he offered a work around.
The reason, of course, is that Apple sucks large, floppy donkey testicles.
Maybe that was a bit harsh. It's the perfect computer for a person who doesn't have the intelligence to, you know... use a computer.
Up next in the Science section, an article on mankind's "trend away from" gills and flippers.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Ah yes - the car fallacy, as often seen in Apple debates: "Porsches are expensive, but better than everything else. Therefore, Apple products which are expensive must be better too".
It ought not to be too hard to see the fallacy.
There are better solutions out there. Many tablets are far more capable than an iPad and they give you freedom to do anything you like with them.
You're missing the point entirely. Many people find it more freeing to use a device which does only a few things reliably and well instead of traditional PC with its impressive list of features, non-uniform experience, requiring more knowledge, etc.
Slashdot is largely populated by a tech elite who, if they had their way, would always choose a phone with a command prompt and who wonder why the rest of the world isn't building robots in their basements. But there's a big world out there and sometimes it's okay for the technology to go to them instead of making them always come to it.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Whatever Apple is selling, they can keep it. Started when I discovered I needed to use their software with their iPod devices compared to a competitor which looks like a standard USB drive whatever system I plug it in to. Then they came up with the AppStore. It's all downhill from there.
stop buying their products. If no one buys it, then it'll flop. Then insist on the forums you would have bought it if you could copy/paste. Every time you spend a dollar you are voting for a company's success. So stop voting for them!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I find your gripes pretty minor UI personal preferences. However, my gripe with Apple software and OS is that often the more advanced options simply DO NOT EXIST. You have to buy another silly shareware program, to get that other feature, and another to get that third feature, ad nauseum. The lack of good free software and CHOICES moved me back to XP on my Macbook Pro.
First off, last time I checked, mac had a market share around 5%. Now if you want to quote a source saying over 10%, be my guest. Secondly, even if it was above 10%, I think that could be considered a fraction of the installed windows user base.
This took all of about 15 seconds:
http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Apple-has-91-of-market-for-1000-PCs-says-NPD/1248313624
Was the last time you checked? 1997?
The market share argument is getting about as dated as the "one button mouse LOL" argument. Try again.
- learn to swim.
Perhaps Apple should offer the following:
- The current approach for the ipod/ipad; closed, Appstore route only if you're not a developer etc. Has it's benefits, e.g. a stable/controlled system
- An 'expert mode' switch (or something similar) in the device configuration which opens up the devices a lot more.. allows you to hack it's internals , etc. etc.
That way, both the ' just offer something that simply works mass' and the 'group of tinkerers' can be satisfied. :-)
But you ~are~ a part of this tech elite. So why would you prefer a restricted device vs an unrestricted (and more capable) one ?
All that stuff still exists ... ... its in the iPhone Simulator and Xcode -- its built in !!!
Speaking of tightly wound hairpieces, might not that be back-translated as "You bun two"? I'll admit precious few of us who cut our teeth on Apple ][+ at the age of 42 are tinkering with the Linux kernel, but as a sandbox Ubuntu does offer plenty of opportunities for non-productive timewasting and golden idleness. BASH was fun, but now we've got Perl and Ruby and just recently I stumbled over Code::Blocks IDE, so C is back in the playpen.
``Tension, apprehension & dissension have begun!'' - Duffy Wyg&, in Alfred Bester's _The Demolished Man_
Yes, I am a card carrying member of the nerd set. I would never be totally without a more "open" computing device, but that doesn't mean I never want to trade tinkerability and "control" for appliance-like reliability and consistency. Sometimes I do. And I think it's just fine--progress, even--if a few internet devices make that tradeoff. it's not like we're looking at the death of open computing.
You like your Macintosh better than me, don't you Dave? Dave? Can you hear me Dave?
Definitely not as long as we draw a line between an unlimited personal computer and a limited internet device (I agree on the name).
Man, I really wish I was a kid now, so that I'd have more time to hack around on the iPhone.
Unlike the Apple //e, where you had to learn assembly language or consult peek/poke charts to do anything cool, Apple has a beautiful, free SDK for the iPhone. And if learning a little Objective-C and finding your way around XCode is too advanced, you can still build great cross-platform apps using HTML and javascript.
The barrier to installing your own software on your own device is still pretty low, and possibly lower (because of XCode and javascript) than it ever has been.
There IS a big barrier to putting your software on *other people's* devices, hence the whole jailbreak routine. But come on, you can still put whatever you want on your own device. So what's the real problem? It's not free, open source software? Ok, then say that! That's valid. But your freedom to tinker isn't being limited.
Computers have only recently become popular devices, and geeks have never been comfortable with the idea--hence all the posts decrying "sheeple just using them to check email and watch the youtube!" All that potential in every computer wasted on lolcats. Most people don't need all that access to what's under the hood, so Apple (among others) has created a device that facilitates watching stupid videos, and greatly simplifies the interactions with the device to make it easier to pick up and play with. This is not some nefarious plot to stop the tinkerer, it's just a good strategy for tapping a new market.
The reasons behind locking down the iPad are many, some obviously having to do with vendor lock-in and security. It's easier to ensure that the user has a consistent experience with a locked-down system, and a consistent experience is everything in the appliance market, where the iPad lives. The iPad does not represent the future of computing any more than the game console. Any criticism applied to the iPad can be equally applied to consoles and vice versa: they are both appliances that have computer guts in them only to support their functions, not to act as a general-purpose computer.
It is not a "problem" to be solved that you don't get to tinker with the currently popular devices (though I'm certain that jailbreaks will surface); it's just the way things have shaken out. I predict that in five years' time, most personal computers will have tactile interfaces that are an improvement on the iPad's, and they won't be nearly as locked down--the reason being that, again, this is just an appliance and does not replace an open, tinker-friendly system.
I dabbled on an Apple IIe as a kid. I decided I'd find a usable beat 'em up for my daughter to learn BASIC on and saved one that was going to be thrown out if there were no takers. It was dirty but I actually had fun cleaning it up. (She gave me a "let me know when it's ready" on that part.) You know what? It didn't take the student long at all to kick the master's butt. She outgrew it but I kept the computer. Even after it got old to her it was still a classic to me. (She's using Python now. Sorry to be unoriginal. ;) Just a couple of nights ago I fired it up and played a bit of Zork. To think that my precious Apple could be rotting in a landfill makes me sad, but glad that I nabbed it.
Go buy the computer you loved as a kid, save it from being destroyed. They take up a four square feet, and you can put them away when you're not playing with them. No excuses, adopt a classic today!
What kind of revisionist history is this? They've NEVER been too cool about people writing their own programs for their machines.
I learned that in the Apple ][ days - back then I had a bunch of detentions to make up in high school my senior year. The principal made me a deal - (I was the star computer geek of my little mid-Nebraska high school) if I'd write software to track detentions, then I wouldn't have to sit for 200+ hours in detention before graduating. (I got one hour of detention originally for taing a "long lunch" with my girlfriend [Yes, I'm a freak of nature - I had both a computer and a girlfriend in high school!], but they had a policy of doubling the number every time you didn't show up. I got to 2^8 and then they realized it was retarded.)
I thought it was a great deal and accepted. Their computer lab at school was based on TRS-80 Model IV's at the time, and I had a C64 at home. Could have done it quickly on either. Then I found out he wanted it done on an Apple ][e as that's what they used in the office. I tried really hard, but could not find any information about doing random access files (The way to store data back in the pre-SQL days.) on an Apple. I called the local Apple dealer, I read everything I could find, and could not get any info other than "Apple doesn't usually give out this information". I was used to the more open C64/TRS-80 world, where tech specs were easily accessible.
So, I didn't get out of my detentions, I went to the last day of school, went the next Monday and took my GED test (Scoring 100% on 3 of 5 tests, and 99%s on the other two), got my GED, went to collge, never looked back, and thus began my detesting of anything Apple.
So FUCK YOU Steve Jobs, your power-mad ways cost me my high school diploma. (Not that it hurt me much, (Probably set me back three years on getting my career going well) but it's the principle of the thing. No reason to withhold tech specs on your shiny toys.) I shall malign your company and products forever! Fuck Apple, fuck Steve Jobs.
At least since Mac OS X has been made available.
As to MacsBug, it's even a couple of years longer.
Anybody remembers HyperTalk, "programming for the rest of us" (as Dan Winkler put it, way back in 1987)?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperTalk
Back then, I especially liked to translate code for things like Mandelbrot and Julia fractal diagrams from languages like C and Pascal to HyperTalk.
I'll always try to keep a Mac running Mac OS 8 or 9 in working order just to be able to write some HyperTalk code (graphics-related) "just for fun" from time to time.
Oh, well.
Walter.
You're suffering from the 'modern' disease that everyone has to 'succeed' and we should dumb down to the lowest common denominator. When I learnt to programme it was using the school's Commodore Pet. I didn't have a computer at home at all but that didn't stop me, because I was interested enough to make the effort.
Bad analogies are like waxing a monkey with a rainbow.
Strange way to define one of the most successful companies of the past decade! I fully predict that the 2010's will see DubLi achieving the same kind of success - you heard it here first!