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Throwing Out Software That Works
theodp writes "Just as the iPhone rendered circa-2007 smartphones obsolete, points out Marco Arment, the iPad is on the verge of doing the same to circa-2010 netbooks. Should this succeed, cautions Dave Winer, we may be entering an era of deliberate degradation of the user experience and throwing overboard of software that works, for corporate reasons. Already, Winer finds himself having to go to a desktop machine if he wants to view web content that's inaccessible with his iPhone and iPad. 'There was no bottleneck for software in the pre-iPad netbooks,' he writes. 'It matters. What I want is the convenient form factor without the corporate filter. It's way too simplistic to believe that we'll get that, but we had it. That's what I don't like — deliberate devolution.'"
It's not even the geek perspective, it;s the apple geek perspective.
As a FOSS geek I'm not interested in apple and have identified a bunch of really nice looking alternatives to the iPad. It's just a shame none of them seem to quite make it to market!
The ubergeek wouldn't have bought an iPad and then bitched about things he knew would happen, or would be reverse engineering it to run linux.
Things that tipped the decision into "spend":
1. I'm going to Vegas. "Easy Vegas" app is good.
2. I'm going to Vegas and I'm going to watch movies on the flight.
3. Amplitube iPad Edition came out - and it's great.
4. Instant on. No need to boot to check weatheror news, or to look up something I'm curious about.
5. The Reuters app is awesome.
6. Camera connection kit deals properly with Nikon raw format.
7. The tools for photo management are really coming along beautifully. Photogene is a good tool for travel.
Since then I've discovered some new things.
1. The 10 hour battery life is both real, and awesome.
2. I have gone to a site that required flash exactly twice, and I found the same content elswehere in a format I could view.
3. I really like reading magazines on it (Maxim with Kaley Cuoco!)
4. On the most difficult setting, the Scrabble app kicks my ass.
5. I haven't turned my netbook on since I got it.
6. The screen gets dirty when I eat cheezies and surf porn.
7. There's a LOT of compatible porn.
8. I've been expecting to have to buy a wireless keyboard, but so far I haven't "needed" to.
Anybody want to buy a used netbook? It has crappy battery life and a screen that semi-sucks, but it has a keyboard.
Do I give a crap that a bunch of nerds online think that it's underpowered compared to stuff that's 18 months away? Not even slightly.
I'm as technical a guy as they come. My workdays are spent writing industrial scheduling and simulation software on Unix. But I'm past the age where I want to screw around with stuff when I get home. Give me something that works well and doesn't give me any grief.
"That's what I don't like -- deliberate devolution."
That is what is going on with VOIP, wireless phones and texting replacing conversation over land lines.
Instead of a human voice in real time, you have a typed message. A step backwards.
With VOIP if your power or your computer goes out, you don't have phone service. Not so with a land line.
With VOIP and wireless calling, call quality has gone way, way down. Problem free phone conversations used to be taken for granted.
On the other hand
It is easier to send written information.
It is also easier to avoid "facing someone" by sending them a text or an email
You have the ability to communicate by phone in a number of places, not just at home, work or wherever there is a pay phone ( remember those? )
Making long distance calls in the US is now dirt cheap. Such calls used to be the subject of heated arguments after the bill came.
If the iPads get flash, or if the flash enabled clones make it, someone will be typing "remember when you couldn't watch a hulu.com laying down on your couch?", while pointing out some things that were lost with the vanishing of laptops.
Exactly.
There are tens (hundreds?) of millions of people out there that are interested in "content" in small chunks (call them the iPod People, which might be a clever analogy, or not). They want music, notes, books, letters to read, maps, phone calls, and a bunch of other little pieces of content. In a digital world, one device can do large subsets of those. Lots of people have recognized that potential; I have memos I wrote over a decade ago, describing the functions that would be attractively served by "Mike's brick-of-plastic portable computer". Jobs not only recognized the potential, but also had the means and the courage to risk a large company's future on that potential.
There are another (smaller) group of people, which includes myself, who need something that lets them create content as well. I need something that lets me write hundreds of pages of text per year, program, generate complex graphs, etc. A device that meets my needs can also do all the things the iPod People want, but not vice versa. Like many in this group, I'm somewhat ticked off that the iPod people got their devices first, but I'm trying to be patient and believe that I'll eventually get something suitable. What I'm not doing is whining that the iPod People would be better off if forced to use the kind of gadget I need.
Hilariously I was exactly the opposite of this. I never even considered getting and iPad, as I saw no possible use i would have for it, and i had absolutely no desire to own one. I'm not even in the market for a computer, and I hate laptops.
2 weeks ago i was in a store and had an opportunity to use an iPad for a little while. I was blown away. It was so intuitive, so easy to use and so *pleasant* to use. I didnt have to fiddle with a little trackpad or mouse nubby thingy. I didnt have to find some annoying way to position it on my lap without burning my balls or sitting in some strange uncomfortable position to give a flat surface for it. It just sat in my hands, and i pointed at what i wanted.
The next day I bought one, and now i sit in the living room with the family to check my email and browse website, even play games. I stopped playing wow because of the iPad. I'm more social, play with my daughter more (she presses the button to turn it off and then starts playing her own games while I'm reading slashdot lol), and am generally extremely satisfied with it. Not only do I like it better than netbooks, but i like it better than desktops for casual usage.
At work of course i still use a 30" monitor and 8 core machine, with a real keyboard :)
Like I posted elsewhere, I have an iPad (through work) because I do accessibility work.
We are going to iPads because they are lighter to take out into the field than a laptop, and come with a good warranty, they are a laptop replacement in some areas.
I don't have an iPad for a web server/ftp server/irc server or USENET leech because I don't need those things running for when I do work.
Its the go to device for accessibly right now, can your Linux install claim that?
http://www.tuaw.com/2010/06/01/the-ipad-could-be-the-best-mobile-accessibility-device-on-the-ma/
I have a Google Android tablet. I can go anywhere on the Web I please and install apps from any site I can download .APK files from. However, I bought it as a development platform for device control applications.
For multimedia, I prefer a netbook (I have an S101) for around the house or a motel room. The keyboard keeps it in one place in an angle suitable for viewing without having to add a stand or a docking device, and netbooks have far better performance than this generation of tablets. If I'm on foot, I'd rather get my content off a small smartphone, hanging a 7" or larger tablet off my belt is a stupid thing to do.
However, the real reason why "the netbook is not going away" is that not all of us are full-time passive consumers of content. Do you write papers for school? Do you create documents for an employer?
Would you rather type a bunch of pages on a real keyboard that does not take up screen real estate or on a virtual keyboard that takes up a third of the screen better used for document? I'm working on a patent application, and I frequently edit it via remote control from my netbook to the desktop where the file is. Speaking as an Android Tablet owner, I regard the idea of editing a 40+ page document on that tablet as a non-starter and creating one on a tablet makes a typewriter sound good.
The tablet will cut into netbook sales because the people who only want to websurf and run a few apps will buy it. But IMO, the "content-only" user is a lot less common than commonly believed.
The fanboys only want to believe that the netbook is going away because Apple doesn't make one. They're irrelevant, Steve Jobs' vision of a userbase solely composed of consumers of content created by major corporations doesn't fit the real world.
Tech Public Policy stuff
Short answer: It depends on what unit you're in.
Long answer: In medical-surgical units (your basic, low-acuity "floor nursing" kind of places), nobody much cares because none of those patients have any kind of fancy monitoring going on, and most of them are stable enough to go home within a day or so anyway. Hence, everybody and their brother has mobile phones, netbooks and the like, and some hospitals even go so far as to provide free WiFi on those floors. That isn't the case in critical care. In ICU and its sub-variants (medical, surgical, neonatal and so forth), since every patient has a pile of invasive care systems (ventilators, arterial lines, Swan-Ganz catheters, Vigileos, CRRT, IABP, ECMO, etc) and half a dozen pumped drips, you will see signage EVERYWHERE warning you not to bring in any active electronics, and the staff will hunt you down if they suspect you might be "carrying." I very nearly got kicked out of a PICU a year and a half ago for having a Palm m515 (!) with my copies of Lexi-Comp, Harriet Lane and Mosby's Critical Care Nursing, and we wrote up a doctor who brought an iPhone to the CV-SICU in my preceptorship.
Emergency is kind of a mixed bag. Some places ban electronics entirely in the fear of compromising critical patients' monitoring and treatment systems, others realize it's a losing endeavor and just try to separate the critical from the walkie-talkies as much as physically possible. (I dare you to walk into a room full of combative drunks and tell them you're confiscating their mobile phones because they're interfering with the Vigileo on the sepsis patient two doors down. Let me know how many stitches you require afterward.)
Does all that rigmarole actually save lives? Probably not. I think a lot of it is throwback to the days of bag phones, when doctors and other big shots routinely walked around with what amounted to unlicensed nuclear accelerators on their shoulders, and the electronics really WERE that sensitive to interference. On the other hand, I've seen monitoring equipment go haywire when patients' family members attempted to make cellular calls, and return to normal function once the offenders were escorted off the unit. In any case, we'll always err on the side of caution - better safe than sued.
First rule of trauma: Bleeding always stops.