The Apple Two

theodp writes "Over at Slate, Tim Wu argues that the iPad is Steve Jobs' final victory over Steve Wozniak. Apple's origins were pure Woz, but the Mac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad are the products of the company's other Steve. Jobs' ideas have always been in tension with Woz's brand of idealism and openness. Crazy as it seems, Apple Inc. — the creator of the personal computer — is leading the effort to exterminate it. And somewhere, deep inside, Woz must realize what the release of the iPad signifies: The company he once built now, officially, no longer exists."

Comments

Re:Apple has made Microsoft look "open".

[codepunk]

I am a developer and the reality is that I can put anything on my phone and actually 100 of my friends phones that I want. I will keep your mindless rant in the front of my thoughts as I collect my app check this month.

My experience with Apple...

[Entropius]

So, through a convoluted series of events, I was offered a free iPod Nano.

"Cool", I thought, "I can play mp3's in my car without hauling around my laptop." So I plug the thing into my computer, and it shows up as a block device. Welp, it's an mp3 player, I'm supposed to copy mp3's to it, right?

I do this, and try to play them, and they're not listed. Huh? I plug the thing back into my computer, and they're there, but I can't play them. WTF?

After some Googling I discover that you can't just copy mp3's to the iStick -- you have to fire up Apple's software, which is labyrinthine and ridiculous, and jump through hoops to transfer them.

Fuck this -- if they can't make a device that works in the easiest way possible, but involves doing things the hard way since they're just trying to pimp their other iShit, I want nothing to do with them. Haven't touched anything else Apple since then, except for that Mac the music library has as a public computer. Turns out OSX sucks, too, although at least it comes with an X server and ssh client.

Re:My experience with Apple...

[pandrijeczko]

I'm glad to see there's at least one other person for which Apple has minimal impact on their lives.

Admittedly I'm in the UK which means that my 25+ of computing experience started with the Sinclair ZX Spectrum through the Commodore Amiga to PCs running Linux and Windows (the Apple II was pretty much unheard of over here). In all that time, the only Apple device I've ever owned is an iPod Touch which my wife gave me when she upgraded to an iPhone (for my upgrade I went the Android/HTC Hero route and don't regret it either).

Don't get me wrong, the Touch is a neat little music player that also plays a few games on flights, but it sits in the same case as my Asus EEEPC running Gentoo Linux and if I fancy a movie on a flight, the EEEPC just plays it without having to reconvert to play on the Touch.

Where the Touch lets itself down is its closed nature and the dependence on Windows or OS X in order to be able to download music to it. (I'm old fashioned, I buy music CDs and rip them myself, I will NEVER pay good money for a lossy digital download direct from the Apple Store.) Still, here's hoping that one day GTKPod in Linux will support the Touch...

Other than that, I keep Windows XP around for a few games and "killer apps", Linux does for eveything else - but never once have I felt the need to buy anything by Apple because there's nothing they make that cannot already be done cheaper and better than the stuff I currently have.

Re:Web Research right at the Store

[Mister Whirly]

Congratulations. You can do that on just about any smart phone without needing a 10 inch screen, or lugging around yet another object of technological panacea. (I was doing both of those exact things over a year ago with my G1.) That is the thing - the iPad doesn't do anything better than anything else that already exists. Apple just takes devices that already exist, locks down the functionality and connection offerings, puts it in a pretty box and charges a boatload for it. I don't see the big deal about an iPhone with a bigger screen that can't make calls and doesn't have a camera. I guess I am not what you would call Apples "demographic".