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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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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.
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.
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
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.
I understand not reading TFA, but at least read the fucking summary. One of his issues is "With every software update, the previous generation of "jailbreaks" stop working, and people have to find new ways to break into their own computers", and I must say, I agree.
"linux is just DOS with a UNIX like syntax" -- Galactic Dominator (944134)
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).
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.
Apple's also lowering DRM in lots of places, and as far as DRM goes, they have about the best system out there to date. Yes, you have to authorize your PC ... ONCE, and assuming it continues to function the same you'll have no problems. You could also, of course, just buy MP3s from somewhere else like Amazon.
Why is that? Macs are still the same way there were 20 years ago from any context relating to this article. If I can run Windows 7 on my Mac, I'm pretty sure you can do just about any sort of tinkering you want. Its not like you can't run Linux on one, its clearly open to screw with however you want. Nothing has changed on the Mac.
Whine whine, moan moan, bitch bitch, nothing to see here, move along. Don't like Apple, don't buy one. 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?
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Isn't that a bit like saying mathematicians should stop focusing on numbers, and instead focus on "real problems"? Calling software development "irrelevant" is pretty ignorant...this stuff doesn't just put itself together (at least, not yet.)
Living With a Nerd
I agree with everything you say except the part about personal computers programming being more complicated today than it was in 1982. You are not remembering what a PITA programing was back in 1982. In 1982, you either programmed a personal computer in BASIC or assembly language. You didn't do anything that needed to run very fast in BASIC, and writing a useful program in assembly with 48K or RAM (if you were lucky) was not trivial. Granted, expectations were much lower back then, and yes, back then I understood the machine down to the gate level. So while computers are much, much more complex today then they were 28 years ago, I actually find them much, MUCH easier to program due to the availability of very powerful programming tools.
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.
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."