Slashdot Mirror
Alan Kay Says iPad Betrays Xerox PARC Vision
harrymcc writes "Over at TIME.com, we've published David Greelish's interview with Alan Kay, the famously quotable visionary whose Dynabook proposal has provided much of the inspiration for advances in mobile computing for over 40 years now. Kay talks about his work, laments that the computer has failed to live up to its potential as an educational tool, and says that the iPad betrays the vision that he and others created at Xerox PARC and elsewhere in the 1970s."
Sometimes I wonder why we are so quick to discard the PC. I certainly hope it won't become a symbol of lost opportunity.
Of course the 70s' vision has blurred to the point that the iPad betrays it !! This ain't your grandfather's Atari !! It is his Oldsmobile !!
What a stupid idea. The iPad was intended to be a portable screen for viewing content. Virtually every app (outside of games) is for viewing pre-generated content of some form or another. The iPad was never intended to be a "dynabook" or to co-opt the idea, so how can it be a betrayal?
I have an idea for Kay... build your own damn hardware and write your own damn software. Don't rely on publicly-traded, for-profit companies to execute your "vision".
As you might expect, his problems with it is the major problem many have with iOS devices:
Apple with the iPad and iPhone goes even further and does not allow children to download an Etoy made by another child somewhere in the world.
The solution is obviously to stop buying devices you don't truly own, but it's difficult when many applications are targeted for that platform first.
Yeah ... 'cuz ... screw ideals. What losers those guys were.
I love his idea of a piano in every classroom. Now we just need a way to get the music out of it.
The interesting thing about this question is that it is quite clear from the several early papers that it was an ancillary point for the Dynabook to be able to simulate all existing media in an editable/authorable form in a highly portable networked (including wireless) form. The main point was for it to be able to qualitatively extend the notions of “reading, writing, sharing, publishing, etc. of ideas” literacy to include the “computer reading, writing, sharing, publishing of ideas” that is the computer’s special province.
This has been absolutely done by the iPad and other tablets. People love to make the claim you can not create content on the iPad but its been proven time and again for the most part to be false beyond a few exceptions you can create just fine. People code on them, people write blogs or even books on them, people record and perform music on them etc. They are still a Gen 2 device atm though regardless of the marketing speek (or maybe Gen 3).
Isn’t it crystal clear that this last and most important service is quite lacking in today’s computing for the general public? Apple with the iPad and iPhone goes even further and does not allow children to download an Etoy made by another child somewhere in the world. This could not be farther from the original intentions of the entire ARPA-IPTO/PARC community in the ’60s and ’70s.
Even this is disingenuous because Apple doesn't in any way prevent a people from creating a good app uploading it to the store for free and let people download it for free. It shows a blatent misunderstanding of the app store, and reasons behind it. It also shows a 60/70's naïvety toward how nasty our computing world has become toward attacking other users for personal and political gain.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Yes those guys are losers. There was nothing successful that ever came out of PARC.
Funny thing is Xerox sold a lot of their stuff to Apple in the 70s.
Seems to me that Xerox got out of the market 40yrs ago and has no right to complain about its path now.
"That's right...I said it."
They don't?
Please show me were I can upload applications for free to the Apple store and without restrictions.
My application is a wireless network monitoring tool, which my understanding is that they are totally banned.
Apple is very successful at turning computers into something their owners do not control.
The only "fanboi" rubbish here is yours, I record my music and administer my servers in SSH perfectly fine on my iPad, and have done the same on my Android.
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
"Hey third world kids - us first world rich kids are going to give you laptops! Well, not real laptops, that might let you actually learn skills that will help you get out of poverty and better your life. They're these tinkertoy bullshit things that you won't really get much use out of... but they look so modern and plastic! And really, it'll help us feel good about ourselves for "doing something," mostly. But we'll console ourselves by telling the world that it's going to 'help you learn how to learn and give you access to the works of Shakespeare,' or some shit like that."
In essence, first world people misunderstand the needs and wants of third world people living in abject poverty, and give them gifts that demonstrate that misunderstanding. I know I'm shocked by this development - aren't you?
I, for one, can't wait to see the Open Source Refrigerator designed for use by native tribes living above the Arctic Circle! And I hear RMS is working on a new brand of super-absorbent white cotton gloves, just PERFECT for protecting your hands while eating ketchup popsicles.
Apple with the iPad and iPhone goes even further and does not allow children to download an Etoy made by another child somewhere in the world.
Even ignoring the fact that Android doesn't seem like it has any limitations that matter in this regard (and to me the question was more "do we have a dynabook yet" rather than "is the iPad a dynabook"), the statement is incorrect when applied to the iPad.
That's because you can share "eToys" within the context of an app. Codea for example, is an app for creating programs on the iPad - you can export code for a game you develop there, and send it to someone. That is in fact doing exactly what he said you cannot do - share an "eToy" you created.
Basically he has fallen into believing the myth that tablets are for consumption and not creation, ignoring a great lot of creation occurring all over.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Of course it betrays his vision. The reality is is that the market is a battle field, and to have a monopoly in the education sector, you'd better not be making much bank off of it. Are either Apple, Inc. or Microsoft Corp. non-profit? No. The next contender could be Google, Inc. but they're not non-profit. Last time I looked at the trading tickers, Google was making more bank than Microsoft.
The Raspberry Pi Foundation is the only one that could deliver on his vision, but it's based in the UK and it's for the UK.
This is the USA. Do we make much sense anymore?
Yes, I think the objection is not that you can't install a text editor on an iPad, but that the ecosystem is mainly aimed at one-way retrieval of content via Apple. As Kay notes, it's not just that you can't get your content into the App Store easily, but by default you can't even install something your friend made who's sitting right next to you— there's no way to install apps from your friend unless either you jailbreak your device, or your friend gets it into the App Store.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
"This has been absolutely done by the iPad ..."
not on the iPad. You need a middle man.
Tel my how I can write an app on the iPad, and then share it with whomever I want. How do I just send it to my friend across the table?
"Even this is disingenuous because Apple doesn't in any way prevent a people from creating a good app uploading it to the store for free"
You are missing his point.
"d does not allow children to download an Etoy made by another child somewhere in the world. "
he is correct. It has to go through Apple. I needs to meet Apples arbitrary corporate 'standard'; which includes many subjective things, such as 'we thing there are enough apps of this type'. Plus, creating an app on an iPad has a much higher barrier to entry then other systems.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
so when you say administer your servers, you mean you have one? Because typing on a tablet, especially technical typing such as using non-alphanumeric characters is quite the pain in the ass in my experience. I can never remember they key to do a tab either so I have to manually type everything or look up what the tab key is. And having to administer multiple servers would make me curl up into a little ball and cry if it had to be done on a tablet.
Sometimes I wonder why we are so quick to discard the PC.
Because the PC is a nightmare in terms of reliability. Here I am using PC in the generic sense; this statement applied not just to Windows but also OS X or Linux or any desktop app compared to a tablet. In every case they are much harder for people to keep running well over time.
The "Post PC" era is a term probably overused at this point but at the core it basically means simply: computers that non-technical users can have over time without someone to help them maintain.
More technical users see this as limiting, but non-technical users see the ability to not rely on technical people to help them as freeing.
And it's not like PC's, or anything like them, will ever vanish. Those threatened by a world where normal people can use a computer too should just chill out and be happy for them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Even this is disingenuous because Apple doesn't in any way prevent a people from creating a good app uploading it to the store for free and let people download it for free.
You either have a different definition of "for free" than I do, or you're purposely using misleading language.
In order for me to start "uploading it to the store for free" I have to pay at least something like $1100 for specialized hardware and the developer account in addition to the tablet. And, yes, I'm counting the cost of a bottom-end, cheapest, entirely unsuitable for development work MacBook in this, because the PARC vision allows you to do development on just the tablet itself.
So, no, I can't just create a good app and upload it for free. I can upload it for $1000+$100/year, and allow other people to download it without cost to them, but if I want to create an app, I have an upfront cost of at least $1100 on top of the cost of the original tablet.
And that all assumes Apple doesn't simply reject the app for no particular reason.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
In the middle of the interview is the most brilliant thought of the whole article:
One way to think of all of these organizations is to realize that if they require a charismatic leader who will shoot people in the knees when needed, then the corporate organization and process is a failure. It means no group can come up with a good decision and make it stick just because it is a good idea. All the companies Iâ(TM)ve worked for have this deep problem of devolving to something like the hunting and gathering cultures of 100,000 years ago. If businesses could find a way to invent âoeagricultureâ we could put the world back together and all would prosper.
This is exactly right. Modern companies are NOT modern companies, they are generally companies as companies have always been. I think in smaller companies we are seeing experiments that show tiny examples of truly different ways to run a company, but I don't know of any that have been able to scale that to thousands of people yet.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Tablets are a tool for consumption not production or creativity. They can be used for it in the same way I can stir my coffee with a pen.
You clearly have no idea what you're talking about.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
"Apple doesn't in any way prevent a people from creating a good app uploading it to the store for free and let people download it for free."
other than sitting in the middle of the whole thing and using state of the art cryptography and software armouring to make sure only that happens from now until eternity, if AAPL shutdown so do all of their customers products functionality, you have to trash it, so perhaps he's pissed because up until the 90s "engineering" used to solve "engineering" problems, now it solves perpetual greed ones.
So fuck Apple, Microsoft, Google and everybody elses patented, trademarked, copyrighted walled garden chinese slave-made shitfest and shame on the developers who enabled it to happen, we will remember you well.
That's a condemnation of Apple's methods, not of the tablet format itself.
The iPad was not technologically revolutionary - but it is hugely significant in that it's ingrained the idea of tablet computing in the mind of the average user vastly more than any product before it. It's essentially set the stage for Android and others to follow on.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
Tonight's top story: An old guy complains that the future doesn't match what his vision of the future was back when he was young.
This, and the rest of the news, coming up at 11.
#DeleteChrome
It also shows a 60/70's naïvety toward how nasty our computing world has become toward attacking other users for personal and political gain.
Yeah, mitigating modern malware techniques, particularly trojans, is a non-trivial problem. Apple's solution, the walled garden, is probably the wrong one, but no-one has come up with another credible security model that works as transparently or effectively for the end user. This is really an area of OS research that needs a ton of attention and effort that it's not getting - anti-malware applications are not cutting it. The solution needs to be baked-in, not bolt-on, and pro-active rather than reactive.
Basic users who have zero need for the features of a PC.
A PC offers more room to grow. Eventually a basic user is likely to become no longer a basic user and will need to spend a significant chunk of change to upgrade from only a tablet to a tablet and a PC. If this no-longer-basic user is a child under legal working age who has been using a tablet that he had received as a gift, it becomes even more difficult to find the money to buy even a used PC. Owning only an iPad is more likely to convince the user that the limits of only an iPad are reasonable, just as a lot of American kids who owned only a game console and not a PC during the third, fourth, and fifth console generations never got the chance to try their hand at learning what makes a game tick by coding a simple game themselves.
Just like society fails to (thankfully) live up to expectations set 2000 years ago in the bible.
I mean really, we are supposed to adhere to a 40 year old vision of the future? I mean, where is they Dynabook today? Yes, that's right, its back in history where it belongs.
Also Apple nearly went bankrupt several times back in the day. Obviously the original vision failed to sustain both Xerox (as an innovative company today) AND Apple until Steve Jobs had another vision for the future.
If you have a vision that fails, then you failed to deliver your vision, it's nobody else's fault.
I haven't thought of anything clever to put here, but then again most of you haven't either.
I'm typing this on a Linux Mint netbook with a Galaxy Note 2 next to me whilst watching a TV show on my PS3 and I have an iMac upstairs. Fanboy I am not.
It's strange, typing on a tablet is identical to typing on a laptop or a desktop for me... don't they have bluetooth keyboards where you live?
Wish I had mod points --- Why would you post this AC? It is spot on and correct - There is not many organizations that are actually doing anything in the 3rd world that will make a difference in the long term for even one person.
+++ATH0 NO CARRIER
by default you can't even install something your friend made who's sitting right next to you
Your friend with a Mac and an iOS developer license can provision several dozen testing devices on his developer account, including yours.
These people are trapped by their own make-believe assumptions about the technology, refuse to acknowledge that apps like Codea exist, and are convinced that using an Apple product somehow takes away their freedom. What freedom? Oh, you know, that freedom that lets you go in and modify the kernel source code to suit your own needs. Or that freedom to use whatever software you like. Or to create new content. Yeah, Apple totally destroys all that and keeps kids from learning! The iPad sucks! Fuck Apple! I want my freedom!
This has been absolutely done by the iPad and other tablets. People love to make the claim you can not create content on the iPad but its been proven time and again for the most part to be false beyond a few exceptions you can create just fine. People code on them, people write blogs or even books on them, people record and perform music on them etc.
I have to respectfully disagree with this to a significant degree. Coding natively on an iPad, for example, is just not feasible - there is no compiler, no debugger, no IDE available for any language. We can't even write shell scripts on un-jailbroken devices. I think that's a big part of what Kay is advocating for: a core focus on easily-developed applications, devices that encourage users to develop the technical skills necessary to create advanced content.
I think the notion of the tablet as a consumption-only device is overblown, but not totally unfounded. It is much more difficult than it "should be" to create many forms of content.
With that said, hopefully Kay will share more specifics on the fundamental choices OS developers could make to increase the security of their products without sacrificing usability.
(Posted from my iPad)
My application is a wireless network monitoring tool, which my understanding is that they are totally banned.
BasilBrush and other iOS advocates on Slashdot are under the impression that nobody needs wireless network monitoring tools. Wireless network monitoring tools are primarily useful for intruders trying to enter someone else's network without permission.
Take a deep breath.
I am an android user and very amateur dev. This is exactly why I don't bother with iOS.
This is like saying: "riding an unicycle is easy, because you can put its wheel into a bike and ride that one instead".
---- MISSING MISCELLANEOUS DATA SEGMENT --- [sigdash] trolololol
You can code on the iPad? This is news. Whats the environment you use? Not talking about scripts or a text editor with basic syntax highlighting tho. I'm talking about being able to code a full project, with all necessary files, and preferably being able to compile it too - but that can be worked around.
I tried this with the Asus Transformer when it came out. Was... KIND OF... doable, but in the end it was a LOT easier to just use a 13" laptop and code on that. No sacrifices were required, completely compatabile with my revision controls, etc.
Also, this is the second time I heard you could write and release iOS apps for free - can you share how this is doable? I admit I don't follow iOS much anymore since I didn't want to spend $100 a year just to write hobby level code, so this change is quite exciting. Unless this post is a day late, then Fool on me...
Even this is disingenuous because Apple doesn't in any way prevent a people from creating a good app uploading it to the store for free and let people download it for free.
Doesn't Apple charge a developers license fee of ~$100USD/year?
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
That's why steve jobs is burning in hell..
He had the chance and the tools to change computing for the better. To improve the world in a major way.
Instead he turned out to be yet another a crazy money grubbing asshole who sold the world disposable plastic crap made by slave labor for high prices...
If theres any kind of final judgement in the universe... Hes one of the epic failures.
There are other ways to share applications outside the Apple App Store. HTML 5 and Javascript apps aren't restricted in a manner inconsistent with their programming paradigm, best I can tell.
Just because you don't get what you want doesn't mean lions are getting frisky with lambs somewhere.
- real hackers don't have sigs -
People love to make the claim you can not create content on the iPad but its been proven time and again for the most part to be false beyond a few exceptions you can create just fine. People code on them
Several years ago, Apple pulled a Commodore 64 game from the App Store when it was discovered that the user could reboot the emulated Commodore 64 into the BASIC prompt. Apple didn't want a BASIC prompt because users could key in programs that Apple had not approved. What caused Apple to change its mind and allow things like Codea?
Apple doesn't in any way prevent a people from creating a good app uploading it to the store for free
How are a Mac and a developer license available "for free"?
and let people download it for free.
Of course it does. If your application falls into one of the banned categories, which you're not even officially allowed to see until you've already bought a $650 Mac and a $99 per year developer license, Apple won't let you distribute it.
What a self-important twit. Why the hell should his "vision" rule what Apple wants to sell 40 fucking years later?
Kind of reminds me of Ted Nelson complaining about how lame the web is because it doesn't live up to his vision for project Xanadu ;-)
Remember the quote "Real artists ship"???
...but Jesus H. Fucking Christ that's lamer than a Thalidomide dachshund.
Jesus Fucking Christ, that comment alone packs 1,000 more humor than all of yesterday's April 1 stupidity combined...
If you're ever worked in a computer lab, tech supported a parent or your boss etc.you'll see that the PC is s still very complicated for most people. People don't know what browser they use.... because a lot of us just rename the shortcut to "internet" and their outlook (or whatever) icon to "Mail" so they would stop calling us and asking which does what. PCs get viruses. People don't really understand folder hierarchy. People would come into the lab, put in their thumb drive... hit save on a paper they've been working on... take out the drive and the file isn't on it. They don't realize the file isn't on it because they keep sitting at the same machine every day. Sometimes photos save in my documents, sometimes in my photos in my documents, sometimes in the folder of the crapware on their computer. Installed programs like to take over everything and compete with each other. Stick a CD in the drive? 8 programs want to do something about it.
And it doesn't mean they are stupid... my boss runs a multi-milliondollar company which requires some smarts... yet if I tell him to go to whatever.com he still types it in the search bar in google (which makes me nuts).
On the iPhone/iPad etc. the photos are all in "photos", the music is in "music" the mail program is called "mail" and so on. All of their program icons are right there in front of them. It doesn't get virused. It practically updates itself. Their stuff is backed up into the cloud for them. (ask a family member if they backup their PC, they'll stare at you blankly) My gf has a pc at work, but at home only is using the iPad now. She has no interest in doing any kind of "computing" when she gets home from work. I got my mom a Kindle HD and she hasn't called me for tech support since. It can do email, web, I put a weather app on there and she can read books and skype the grandkids. Done!
tl;dr: 40+ years later, PCs still haven't gotten it right.
HTML 5 and Javascript apps aren't restricted in a manner inconsistent with their programming paradigm
Yes they are. Apple intentionally refuses to let HTML5 applications use WebGL; iAds can use it but not anything else. Apple refuses to allow the user upload any object stored on the device other than pictures and video through <input type="file">, and even that didn't work for the first five years of iOS. Nor does Safari implement getUserMedia or any similar API to use the device's microphone and camera. This appears odd especially in relation to the fact that when introducing iOS 1 on the original iPhone, Apple intended to make web applications the only kind of application that one would need. How would a barcode scanner work without support from Safari?
I had to go look up what he was talking about by "EToy". It wanted to install a plugin. I didn't install it. He seems pretty bent out of shape about the whole thing. If you want something different, you're welcome to build it or pay to have someone else do it for you. All this whining gives me a headache.
So don't buy one, and don't use one. Build your own or whatever. Really, we don't care.
People used to be able to make actual useable software on their own as Hypercards stacks which they could then share freely (or for cost) with others. There was no restriction on how to share or requirement for approval and okey-dokeys and blessings from the Mother-ship in order to be allowed to do so. You could install software from whatever sources you wanted. It's that type of freedom to tinker that I believe Mr Kay is talking about and not seeing in the way the iPad money-sucking and "closed up" walled garden which is specifically designed by Apple.
No, it's like saying "riding a unicycle is hard, if you need a vehicle to get around, why don't you put a second wheel on it, and stop whining about how hard it is to ride a fucking unicycle?"
Totally true. Unless...
In other words, not true.
He had his vision, others had different visions. It doesn't mean he's right and they're wrong.
Apple's solution [to trojans], the walled garden, is probably the wrong one, but no-one has come up with another credible security model that works as transparently or effectively for the end user.
The proper solution is to model what damage a trojan can do, figure out what privileges it would need to do that damage, and make sure that a program lacks those privileges without the user's knowledge. OLPC Sugar implements this using Bitfrost, and Android implements it using the permissions framework. Yes, I'm aware that Android's model needs refined. For example, the "phone state" privilege to read whether or not the application should stop playing audio because the phone is ringing is conflated with the privilege to read certain personally identifying information such as the IMEI, and the "Internet" privilege can't be limited to a set of domains.
there is no compiler, no debugger, no IDE available for any language
Not even Lua? When you bought Codea and tried it, what did you find lacking?
Well technically it's not true. If the friend has a developer account he can add your device and then deploy to it. It's not a great solution though.
Well, it has never been successfully tested.
I think what keeps being over looked here is what Apple brought to the scene with the iPad; an actual tablet computer. Prior to the iPad tablets were laptops without keyboards: heavy, buggy, hot, slow, clumsy, kludges that kept trying to force a desktop UI into a pseudo-touch/stylus interface.
Apple broke away from that and their success in being the first to understand what a tablet needed to be and _finally_ getting the rest of the world to understand what tablet computing _should be_ can be seen not only in their sales but also in their imitators. Every other single tablet on the market now is merely a variation on Apple's success without any additional innovation in the concept.
Or "if you're going to be always adding a second wheel, why not buy a bicycle in the first place?"
FTA:
"Apple with the iPad and iPhone goes even further and does not allow children to download an Etoy made by another child somewhere in the world. This could not be farther from the original intentions of the entire ARPA-IPTO/PARC community in the ’60s and ’70s.
Apple’s reasons for this are mostly bogus, and to the extent that security is an issue, what is insecure are the OSes supplied by the vendors (and the insecurities are the result of their own bad practices — they are not necessary)."
How is it an OS issue if a user downloads an app and grants an it full access to an iPhone and the app takes a copy of the contact list and the entire archive of phone calls and messages and beams them to a host somewhere in Russia without any further user interaction?
If the answer is the user must act as the software warden, how is a child supposed to guarantee this Etoy won't do any harm to the machine he or she is using?
In short, if the wall garden isn't the app curator then who is? The OS? The app developer? The child?
Evoking a poster which graphed efficiency / speed of locomotion for various animals --- humans are in the middle of the pack, until one puts the human on a bicycle, then they move way out and up.
It kills me that I've yet to find a computing environment as elegant and as productive as a NeXT Cube running NeXTstep w/ Altsys Virtuoso, Lotus Improv, NoteBook.app, TeXview.app, TouchType.app and WriteNow.app (though WordPerfect gave the latter a good run for its money). While LaTeXiT, LyX and TeXshop meet most of my document-processing needs (and InDesign is pretty nice as well), I'm dreading the day when my Mac at work has to be replaced by one which can't run Mac OS X 10.6 and Macromedia FreeHand/MX --- even so, Services integration isn't as nice, I've never found a replacement for poste.app, &c.
Sadly, the next best environment I could put together now would be a Microsoft Surface Pro running Macromedia FreeHand MX and a bunch of other programs. Things I'd miss, and which I really wish the iPad had:
- Display PostScript
- PANTONE licensing at the OS level
- movable main menu, tear off sub-menus
- Command= in any app to get a definition in Webster.app rocks
- having all of your man pages, the sysadmin refs, and the works of Will Shakespeare and anything else you wish to add in Digital Librarian ensures one can look up what one needs at will.
- Being able to improve the functionality of _any_ app by installing a Service or an app which provides a Service provides a synergy one doesn't get in Mac OS X where it's hit-or-miss whether or no an app supports Services (Cocoa apps do, Carbon and Java apps have to be specially coded)
- having total control over the screen (you can drag off-screen and hide all but one pixel of the vertical menu, one tile of the Dock)
- The vertical menu makes tear-off sub-menus make sense, which allows effortless customization of one's working environment for a given task w/o inscrutable toolbars
- the pop-up menu means that the menu for the current app is always instantly available --- some commands can even become gestural in one's access to them, e.g., ``Punch'' in Altsys Virtuso, right-button-menu click, down a bit and straight over and release
- TeX provided by default and supported by the nifty TeXview.app
- inspector-provided sort options for Miller-column filebrowser view
- re-sizeable Shelf which can store multiple file selections as a single icon
- nifty apps which made use of Services and Display PostScript like beYAP.app, Altsys Virtuoso, poste.app &c.
- Dynamic run-time binding means that installing a filter service affords said capabilities to any other app, w/o recompiling.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
Indeed, everyone knows you stir coffee with a pencil!
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
It's actually more like saying, "buy a Bluetooth keyboard and it's practically identical to your desktop typing experience". If you're doing that much typing I can't imagine NOT having a dedicated keyboard.
I don't even think it's really doing much to displace PCs. People shortsighted enough to think solely in terms of new sales certainly feel that way, but it ignores reality.
Basically, PC market with or without tablets was destined to plateau. PC sales for a couple of decades were driven by more demanding applications and use cases. Now, the products have, largely, caught up to the applications people use. A new purchase was formerly driven mostly by the current owned product being 'too slow'. Now a new purchase is driven more and more by when the thing wears out beyond warranty rather than new capability not previously available.
Tablet and mobile are really a distinct market that PC didn't really penetrate. Sure, occasionally you'd see someone pretty dedicated lug around a laptop out and about, but those were pretty rare. Most everyone that had a PC 3 years ago still uses their PC, even if they have no need to buy a new one.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
If you're so upset about it, build your own. Make it do exactly what you want. Whatever.
It's like buying a white BMW for your kid and them getting whiny because it's not red. Grow up and quit bitching already.
Sometimes I wonder why we are so quick to discard the PC.
Companies that made 10" laptops stopped making 10" laptops because tablets and Ultrabook laptops had a higher profit margin.
So Apple prevented Kay from executing his vision for the last 40 years by tying him up in court?
Maybe if Kay had actually tried to do so. Or if anyone had actually tried to do so.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
Codea
Initially, Apple rejected anything that would even remotely resemble Codea.
I think the paradigm is more akin to using the onscreen keyboard with a mouse... how is it different than adding a SEPARATE keyboard *except in the case of a laptop of course*
There Can Be Only One...
Above all though, the iPad really needs AppleScript.
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
You either have a different definition of "for free" than I do, or you're purposely using misleading language.
In order for me to start "uploading it to the store for free" I have to pay at least something like $1100 for specialized hardware and the developer account in addition to the tablet.
You could also buy the low-end Mac Mini, for $600.
The point wasn't if it was a good deal or if it was expensive; Apple doesn't let you do it for free.
As in, Apple does "prevent a people from creating a good app uploading it to the store for free."
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
I don't possess the powers of deduction and logic that you do. Could you explain to the rest of us how you arrived at that authoritative conclusion?
I know!
Finding apps for Linux/PC is impossible! Everyone just creating things willy-nilly. If only there were a way to search for things!
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
If the device in their hand does what they want it to do then there is no 'upgrade' (I'd argue: downgrade) path to a PC.
That's the real problem right there: a locked-down device makes people want less.
Actually, any development is going to require a device to develop on. Apple does require the developer license, but to suggest that developing for Android or Linux or Windows does not require a computer and cost is incorrect.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
Don't know about you, but I hardly ever use my laptop keyboard. I have the same keyboard at home and at work. I much prefer the full size keys, numeric keypad, more ergonomic layout, and I don't feel bad when I throw it away and buy another when it gets worn out. My laptop screen is at eye level which means fewer headaches.
Yes, I think the objection is not that you can't install a text editor on an iPad, but that the ecosystem is mainly aimed at one-way retrieval of content via Apple. As Kay notes, it's not just that you can't get your content into the App Store easily, but by default you can't even install something your friend made who's sitting right next to you— there's no way to install apps from your friend unless either you jailbreak your device, or your friend gets it into the App Store.
Everyone (including Kay) seems caught up in how Apple limits what can run directly on iOS. But with the original DynaBook, the entire Apple Store contents could be considered a configurable operating system -- under this view, it becomes exceedingly simple for someone to write software and share it with friends -- if the software is HTML5 compliant (or even using Apple's well-documented version). Looking at it this way, Safari is the platform, and you can write all sorts of things to run on it.
I think we've come so far since those early days and now take so much for granted that we make assumptions (both ways) in what we should and shouldn't be allowed to do on our devices. The original DynaBook was fully open, allowing anyone to share anything with friends, in a C64 push-poke kind of way. It never imagined that devices would not just be wirelessly connecting with each other and peripherals locally, but would be doing the same thing globally, with all the security repercussions that entails.
Amazingly, most of what people would want to write and share could be done via a web server and an HTML5-based Scheme interpreter. Kay likes Scheme, right?
What complete bullshit. Do you complain because your PC/Server/Whatever has a DETACHABLE keyboard? What if the keyboard isn't there? What if somebody took it? What if you just don't keep the keyboard attached because it doesn't need to be attached all the time? Have you really ever run a server? Or a lot of servers? Sometimes you have to carry around a small SCREEN, for pity's sake. In point of fact, a tablet--ANY tablet, Android, Windows or Apple--has a built in advantage because you're never far away from a keyboard, even if it's kind of crummy for administering UNIX servers.
I've SSHed into plenty of things on my tablet, and if all you need to do is get a process listing or run a script, it works just fine. If you're writing an email, it works just fine. I have a colleague that can put his iPad on his lap and touch type at about 80% of what he normally gets on a normal keyboard. Do try to get with the times; a physical keyboard isn't strictly necessary anymore, even if you don't like using one much.
And, incidentally, it's clear you've never seen a unicycle either, since you CAN'T just jam that wheel into a bicycle or attach another wheel to the unicycle--they're fundamentally incompatible devices. You may as well suggest adding a bicycle wheel to a Ferrari. Even your metaphor is abjectly terrible.
If you're so upset about it, build your own. Make it do exactly what you want. Whatever.
That's almost a copy-paste from this post. I'll answer both: Apple has sued and continues to sue companies that build their own.
It's like buying a white BMW for your kid and them getting whiny because it's not red. Grow up and quit bitching already.
Or like BMW suing anyone who makes a red car.
Actually, I find the GP's post very insightful
Momento Mori
There's a TON of junk apps on both platforms. Windows is the worst for it. Thanks you bolstered my point.
Where is a high school student who owns an iPad that he received as a gift going to find $600 for a Mac mini?
And yet Kay could have been out there addressing both.
Instead, he sits here bitching.
His concept predated Apple Inc., and he did NOTHING to further it.
There are two types of people in the world: Those who crave closure
So what? MSDN is how much?
MSDN documentation is available on the Internet without charge, as are Visual Studio Express and third-party developer tools such as MinGW.
And surely if you're developing Windows apps professionally you have an MSDN subscription.
Not everybody who develops Windows apps does so for a living. Some are learning to do it, and some do it as a hobby.
If you can't afford it, you probably aren't selling any apps, which means you probably aren't doing a great job with your app.
So you claim that people learning to program aren't doing a great job with their learning. In that case, everyone who plans to do a great job in the future has to do not a great job before a great job.
Speaking of "douche", wow, it must be your monthly.
Different people have different needs and different desires, and if I want to use a disposable keyboard with my laptop and throw it away when the keys get Cheetos in them and the letters worn off, that's my fucking prerogative. If I want to do that with my iPad, again it's my money, not yours.
Can you dig it?
I also read that interview last week; that was one of the very companies I had in mind.
They seem to have come closest to making alternative ideas scale. It's interesting that success outside of traditional frameworks seems to correlate to the ability to shed managerial layers...
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
On the contrary, without a leader to challenge people by setting the bar high
That does not have to be one person. In fact even at Apple it is not, there were and are a lot more people at Apple saying "No" other than Jobs.
I think it's entirely possible that the person "setting the bar high" can be as low as EVERY individual working at a company. Even if it can't work at quite level it could just be a more natural leader within a group. But there's no reason why it must be one guy out in front of everyone.
What companies need is not so much people who shoot down bad ideas as employees smart enough not to push bad ideas to begin with!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The solution is not to prevent applications from running entirely as much as to run each application in a sandbox, with access to shared resources such as the contact list controlled by privileges attached to the package and disclosed to the user upon installation. To an extent, the Bitfrost security platform in OLPC Sugar does this, as does Android. Lack of easy sandboxing is an operating system problem that deserves an operating system solution.
Even at my own business I use it.
Honestly, that is such a short sighted argument it does not deserve arguing with. I did not complain when they banned wireless tools, for I did not use them......
Trying to price the Mac Mini gets screwy, because you need to factor in the cost of a monitor and keyboard and mouse.
If you go with the cheapest options Apple provides for these when you order a Mac Mini, you'll balloon the price up to $1700. No, seriously, because the only monitor they offer bundled with the Mini is the $1000 27-inch Thunderbolt display.
Of course, you might have a display lying around, but it needs to support DisplayPort, so you might need to add an adapter...
Rather than play that game, I'm just sticking with the cheapest MacBook on their site, the $1000 one.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Initially, Apple rejected anything that would even remotely resemble Codea.
And now they don't.
People also used to have to get dinner with spears. And now they don't So you pointing out how hard it is metaphorically speaking to hunt with spears is as stupid as it is pointless.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Tel my how I can write an app on the iPad, and then share it with whomever I want. How do I just send it to my friend across the table?
Step 1: Create a new text document in your text editor of choice on the iPad
Step 2: write your HTML5-compliant* code (including JavaScript if needed -- plenty of sample code you can use for free to get a boost)
Step 3: share it with your friend via WiFi, Bluetooth, or just host it with an HTML server App and let them browse your device
Step 4: Your friend uses it.
* Use Apple's HTML5 extensions to make it even more app-like on iOS
No, I am saying it is totally true.
Yes, I recognize that you are saying it is totally true, but I am pointing out that your statement is false.
The original statement was not "the only way to... is not acceptable to me", nor "the only way to... is morally reprehensible", nor "the only way to... is not practical for many"--it was "there is no way to...", which was blatantly wrong--it was a statement that was either designed to deceive, or was simply misinformed. But your statement that it was "totally true" was not misinformed; it was false, and knowingly so.
The unless part means you assume something that is not the case. Meaning you are twisting the truth using that.
This statement does not even make sense: the unless part does not mean I assume anything, I am not assuming anything, indeed it is you making an assumption (that what is not acceptable to you does not count, as though it doesn't even exist), and what you seem to mean I assume is in fact the case.
Simple logic for you: 0 != 1, "no way to..." is not the same as "only 1 way to...". I am not twisting the truth, I am pointing out the complete truth where you have twisted it by eliding that part which you don't like. Saying "there is no way to..." could be said to be twisting the truth, on the premise that it's shorthand for "there is no way acceptable to me to..." but that would be an understatement, the fact is: you were lying.
Apple has sued companies that copied their product. So you can't copy it.
Even if you don't copy the whole thing, you could still wind up in legal trouble, as Apple holds exclusive rights in even small pieces of the product, such as some basic multitouch gestures. So please clarify what you mean by "copy it".
The fact that there are dozens of different models available today from multiple vendors shows that it's possible.
Actually it shows one of two things: either A. that it's possible, or B. that Apple just hasn't got around to suing the other vendors yet.
I read that and the first thing I thought is just because its not good enough for Apple does not mean it has no value and should not be put out there.
Access to less than ideal software can be a great thing!
I have over the years run across tons of scripts, small basic programs, little C snippets in the back of magazines, than on bbs, finally on blogs etc that were just terrible. Hardly worked, did not consider not so uncommon corner cases, were in efficient etc. Still they offered a great an useful idea, and more important one I had not had. If you can get something like that a little spit and polish and you may have something really great.
Apple though would say its to buggy, has quality problems or whatever and it would never see the light of day.
Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
Apple does require the developer license, but to suggest that developing for Android or Linux or Windows does not require a computer and cost is incorrect.
I'm not trying to suggest that. Android tablets also doesn't fit the "PARC vision" because the vision as described in the article was being able to create new apps on the device itself. Although in the case of Android, I expect it would at least be theoretically possible to create an app for creating other apps, while such a thing is flat-out impossible on "official" iOS.
What I'm questioning is the claimed ability to "upload apps to the Apple app store for free" which, as far as I can tell, can only be true if you mean "priced at $0" and not "at no extra cost to the developer." In the PARC vision, all you need is the original device, nothing extra.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Wow. So, what made you think of penises? Do you think of them a lot, or was it the first thing that popped up?
So nothing for say C or it's variants?
This is because lots of people are short sighted and stupid.
There is nothing we can do about that. It has always been that way and likely always will.
Maybe one day we can have another BBS/early internet that excludes these folks. Maybe one day september will end.
Tel my how I can write an app on the iPad, and then share it with whomever I want. How do I just send it to my friend across the table?
Enterprise Provisioning.
http://developer.apple.com/library/ios/#featuredarticles/FA_Wireless_Enterprise_App_Distribution/Introduction/Introduction.html
Yeah, I know, you have to pay up a few hundred to Apple. But it let's you distribute apps among your friends/colleagues with no device registration simply by sending a link to your app (or attachment) to iOS devices. It's not meant for public distribution, but I use it for private apps all the time, and it totally bypasses the app store review process (which is an intended consequence.)
Again, what you've described is users as a software warden, in which in the context of the Dynabook vision are "children of all ages".
Then the parent who owns the device would put controls on a child's account to require parental consent before installing any third-party application package that uses certain privileges. It would not restrict applications that the user himself develops.
Please tell me how using safari I can make a wifi scanning tool. I will wait.
Assumptions with what we should be allowed to do on our devices? I SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO DO ANY FUCKING THING I WANT, IT IS MINE!
Please tell me how I can make my wifi scanning tool using scheme running in safari.
the Ipad is an extension of apple's methods, so you don't get one without the other.
This disturbs me, personally. Your statement is synonymous with "disposable".
This is TOTALLY OPPOSITE of reality and my point.
You want disposable? Try the traditional computer where we were always casting off bits over time, upgrading ram and video cards and hard drives and so on. Sure you kept the case; so what?
The iPad and other "post-PC" devices are things you can use for YEARS because they are maintained and updated for you, and ever after that part ends they continue to be useful for years. There's no reason someone could not easily keep using an iPad for four to five years, far longer than any PC would last without changes.
ASUS did this with the first Transformer, they dropped all support for it in under 2 years
But did that render it useless? I don't think so. Also I would argue that just because something is a tablet does NOT make it a post-PC device - the very fact that updates even mattered indicates this. An original iPad is still extremely useful to this day even if you had kept it on iOS4 without upgrading further.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
If you truly don't understand what copying means regarding to patent law
To prove my good faith, I will recite my understanding of what patent infringement means: producing a device, or performing a process, that matches any one of the often dozens of claims in any one of the millions of subsisting patents. So how should an engineer familiarize himself with all these tens of millions of claims in order not to infringe any of them?
you can NEVER do anything outside of what apple says you can
Sure you can - you can always jailbreak (or root, or whatever).
There will always be a means for the technically ept to escape whatever bonds there appear to be wrapped around any technology. What there has not need to this point is a way for people who did not understand technology to get tangled in unkept tentacles of difficult that crept out all over.
YOUR kind is the one who has enslaved humanity over the years; you are the luddite proclaiming something new to your experience is bad even though you have lost nothing. You simply wish to seek others from enjoying technology to the degree you can, because it threatens for some reason.
Screw that I say, let EVERYONE enjoy the technically enhanced world that computers promised but had a rough time delivering.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I hope you'd have enough sense to object if you needed a special key to turn the drain plug retained by the dealer and that any attempts to defeat the lock would void your warranty and exclude you from any future deal service paid or otherwise.
And if the tradeoff were an oil change that would happen once a decade? You seem to ignore there could be a very real benefit here which you are hiding, like some kind of super-lubricant you cannot get normally and the risk is that someone would accidentally use normal oil and destroy the engine.
The fact that you cannot see possibilities opened up by limitations is a curse you must overcome to grow. Anyone creative realizes the fundamental truth in what you see as a contradiction.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The computer has failed at nothing.
Has the crescent wrench 'failed' to live up to its potential as a hammer?
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
No, it doesn't. The Mac Mini comes with an HDMI port and an HDMI to DVI adapter. There are only three situations where you would need an adapter: you own a dual-link DVI monitor, you own two monitors, or you own an ancient VGA-only monitor.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
For instance, I have 2D CAD, structured drawing, whiteboard, paint, text and word processing, spreadsheet, music composition and performance, photo manipulation, comic builder, mannequin manipulator, and HTML5 authoring tools on my iPad. I've also got a wonderful camera-control app for my DSLR. All of that came from the app store. I have to say, I'm not feeling particularly compromised, creativity-wise.
When I want to write software, I generally do it with the target in mind being the desktop. Part of that is a disinterest in the way Apple runs their developer programs, part of it is simply disdain for the idea that someone would expect me to pay to develop for them (if anything, they should pay me.) But if I *wanted* to, I certainly could make IOS apps in the Objective C to-the-metal sense. I can already cook up HTML5 goodies, should the urge strike me.
Apple's far from perfect, and so is the iPad (I have a list... lol) but really, this whole "not a creative tool" thing is a bridge too far. You could put me in a corner with my iPad and I could go under all day, doing nothing but creating.
I'd also like to throw this out: Consuming content can also be part of the creative process. Read a textbook, a thoughtful essay, a political rant, etc. If that doesn't spur you to think creatively, warning, you may actually be algae.
I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
Well, certainly not a M$ fanboy or shill, it would seem :)
People make it sound like administrating unix is hard. You should try to administer Windows Server from a tablet. That's a real challenge - although less so with the new GUI-less options.
Views expressed do not necessarily reflect those of the author.
You tell em grandpa. Shake your cane some more. Keep them darn kids off your lawn.
Well I've got a Windows partition on my Mac and I'm a .NET developer so I think I've got the full set :-)
Wouldn't you need a Touring machine to predict every way a malicious piece of software may behave?
An operating system doesn't have to solve the halting problem to stop malicious actions by applications; you just block the system calls that enable the misbehavior. For example, operating systems already prevent processes from scribbling on each other's memory spaces, and they prevent users from scribbling on each other's files. Or an operating system implementing Internet access whitelisting would return an error when resolving hostnames outside the domains designated by the package manifest, and it would return an error when connecting to IP addresses not returned by the resolver.
Even if you could with %100 accuracy analyze and then prevent every future piece of malware, most users would still give it permission to run.
That's where the parental controls come in. If the parent doesn't want the child going on random web sites, the parent will establish a domain whitelist on the child's account. If the parent doesn't want the child installing random applications that access the user's contacts, the parent will set a filter that blocks the child's installation of applications that require the contacts privilege. In order to install such applications, the child would have to first seek permission from the parent who owns the device.
The end user knows that the people who made the computer are smarter then they are
You see, that's where the opinions differ. There exist more than one sense of "smarter". On the one hand, the employees of a company that manufactures a device might be "smarter at electrical engineering" and "smarter at GUI toolkit design" and "smarter at operating system kernel implementation". On the other hand, the user might be "smarter at domain knowledge related to the application that I want to use". A user might want to run wireless network monitoring tools, for example, but Apple doesn't allow such tools to be made available through the App Store. Sure, users should have the choice of delegating curation to a third party. But a device's owner shouldn't be forced into a particular curator appointed by the device's manufacturer. Android, for example, gives a device's owner the power to enable or disable installation of applications from sources other than Amazon Appstore (for Kindle devices) or Google Play Store (for most other devices). So he can choose to make Google the exclusive curator, or he can choose not to.
Nice strawman, fanboi!
My comments apply to any Post-PC device, not just from Apple.
The only strawmen here are the ones you and your neo-luddite pals are erecting in s futile effort to prove that technology should stay as it was a decade ago...
If you can't stand progress go huddle in a cave. You can always burn your personal strawman for warmth.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The user wants to get X done on their computer. Every time you prompt the user to validate or confirm something that isn't doing X, you are taking time away from the user.
And every time you ban an entire class of applications from the monopoly repository, as Apple has done with wireless network monitoring tools on iOS, you are also taking time away from the user.
Bitfrost
A user owns all their files, and they want their applications to use their files. [But] they care about the files that any app running with the user's permissions can (by design and by necessity) access.
Then the application should not run with the user's permissions. Instead, it should run with the application's permissions, where the application can see only those files or folders that the user has chosen through a file chooser form. (If you're using a PC running Windows or Linux, press Ctrl+O now to see an example of such a form; if you're using a Mac, press Command+O.) I apologize for not linking to a page about OLPC Bitfrost more conspicuously earlier, but Bitfrost implements this model, as do the Mac App Store sandbox and the JavaScript File API.
have you ever read through the list of permissions some [Android] apps ask for? [...] They're useless descriptions that essentially tell the user nothing about WHY the application wants those permissions, which is the important information.
Then the application should explain, in its description on the repository, why it needs each Android permission. I've noticed that a lot of applications on Google Play Store already include such an explanation. I'll agree that the permission rationales should be moved closer to the actual list of permissions though. This reduces the attack surface from "applications that request more permissions than the developer adequately explains" to "applications whose developer intentionally lies about what the application does with the permissions", and introducing intent into the equation also introduces the possibility of prosecution under the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act and foreign counterparts.
"live up to its potential as an educational tool"
Thank business and advertisement industries for that. They have no care for the educational system aside from selling/exploiting it.
I started in computers in the 1980's, when computers were expensive as hell and the dream of a one 1% as functional as today's phones and tablets was literally science fiction.
The the high school student who got a gift of a $600 system - STFU and use it to read any of the thousands of free resources devoted to Javascript or some scripting language like Python, Ruby, etc. Install an SSH app, get a VPS linux distribution and have about 1000 times better access to computers than any of the people back when THIS SHIT WAS BEING INVENTED did.
Or, said student should have just requested a Mac Mini in the first place, or some cheap beater PC and spent the difference on Visual Studio, or gotten a Chromebook and done whatever.
Basically, color me unfucking sympathetic to the plight of the student with a $600 modern tablet. Those things are orders of magnitude more powerful than any computer I had personal ownership of for a decade or two.
1. Go EABOD
2. This is not brand loyalty, I would be happy with any open handset. iOS is the very opposite of that.
Explain to me the essential difference between a tablet + keyboard running a terminal program, and a laptop running a terminal program?
A tablet running Windows 8 or the forthcoming Ubuntu Touch is equivalent to a laptop, apart from the lower precision of the pointing device. Tablets that ship with any other popular operating system have limitations that I'll explain next.
For one thing, operating systems that ship on tablets tend to maximize all applications. This makes it hard to see the source code and the program's output side by side, or the source code and the documentation side by side. On my 10" laptop, I have no problem putting two 80-column windows side by side, but I can see how someone with much older eyes than mine might have a problem.
For another, "terminal program" means one thing on Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X, and something different on Windows and iOS. On Linux, FreeBSD, and Mac OS X, "terminal program" most commonly means a program used to run a command-line shell on the local machine, such as GNOME Terminal or Konsole or Windows Command Prompt. In this case, the difference between a tablet and a netbook is the policy for what applications the manufacturer allows to be installed on the device. Windows RT and iOS are far more restrictive than Android and laptop operating systems in this sense.
Third, "terminal program" can also mean a program used to connect to a remote computer and run programs on the remote computer, such as GNOME Terminal+ssh or Konsole+ssh or PuTTY, or by extension VNC or RDP viewers or X11 servers. There isn't much difference between laptops and tablets here: if you're connected to the Internet, you can use them; if you aren't, you can't. It's just that some Slashdot users have promoted SSH, VNC, and the like as workarounds for Apple's restrictions, without considering that a lot of people aren't willing to spend hundreds of dollars extra per year in order to have Internet access on the transit commute to and from the day job.
To be completely analogous, it's like buying a bike that can be operated as a unicycle OR a bicycle, and then pretending the 2nd wheel doesn't exist, never existed, hasn't even been conceived of, and is impossible to attach.
I see it as more like buying a unicycle with a bicycle accessory and then finding that the assembled bicycle's wheels lock up on roads that the manufacturer hasn't specifically approved.
Isn’t it crystal clear that this last and most important service is quite lacking in today’s computing for the general public? Apple with the iPad and iPhone goes even further and does not allow children to download an Etoy made by another child somewhere in the world. This could not be farther from the original intentions of the entire ARPA-IPTO/PARC community in the ’60s and ’70s.
Even this is disingenuous because Apple doesn't in any way prevent a people from creating a good app uploading it to the store for free and let people download it for free.
Alan Kay is talking about a system where children can easily create toys, games, learning tools, etc in an authoring environment that they can use and then share those creations with others, and you suggest that instead they create an Apple(tm) iPad(tm) "app" and load it on the Apple(tm) App Store(tm)? This is what Alan is talking about, not a corporate-controlled cash cow. How many pre-teens do you know that are creating iOS applications? We're talking about tools to help kids learn about computing and technology, not a system that a child prodigy can use to stun adults by being proficient at. That's what Alan is talking about, and I don't think that is being disingenuous. I also don't think that you know more than Alan Kay. Once you've been a fellow at Xerox, Apple, Disney, and HP, then you can come with your valuable expertise to let us know how great the Apple ecosystem is for teaching kids about computing and technology.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
In which case I'm going to suggest that the PARC vision has problems, and that the reason it won't happen is because it is, at least in part, dumb. This means no disrespect to Kay and colleagues, since the vision was created long before we could get significant practical experience.
I like my Nexus 7. I don't want to develop software on it. The on-screen keyboard is unsuited for programming, and even if I get a Bluetooth keyboard it's got far too little screen space. It works much better to develop on my laptop, which is much better for such things, and transfer to my Nexus.
Until we get something like fold-out screens that are convenient to carry, along with fold-out keyboards (one of the nice things about my Nexus is the number of pockets it will fit in), I really don't want to program on my tablet. Once this happens, I will be able to program comfortably on it, and development environments will appear on it.
BTW, it is possible to program HTML 5 on an iDevice, and that's a valid way to run many possible apps. (And, since a developer's license costs considerably less annually than I was spending on Mac programming environments in the 90s, I'm not real sympathetic to the argument that capabilities that cost money don't count.)
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Install an SSH app, get a VPS linux distribution
School buses tend to lack a Wi-Fi signal. The student would have to wait until he gets home. But in light of the rest of that paragraph, I'm not going to push this issue.
Or, said student should have just requested a Mac Mini in the first place, or some cheap beater PC
For one thing, this would require that the student have known years in advance that his needs would grow to those for which a PC is needed. "No, you can't sign up for a programming elective because you don't have a computer on which to do your homework, and no, I'm not going to buy you one because I just bought you an iPad last year. Isn't that good enough?" One possible solution would be to sell the iPad and use the money to buy a beater laptop.
and spent the difference on Visual Studio
Visual Studio Express is distributed without charge to users of recent versions of Windows.
Trying to price the Mac Mini gets screwy, because you need to factor in the cost of a monitor and keyboard and mouse.
If your super tight on money and at the point of scavenging for parts, the Mac Mini is the cheapest way to go, since you can SURELY turn up a monitor, mouse, and keyboard for free or close to it.
I own two Apple computers (Mac Mini and Mac Book Pro) so I know all about their pricing. Nevertheless, the FACT is the least amount of money you need to shell out for a full blown OSX development system is... $599 plus tax/shipping. Everything above that is just fine tuning how many luxuries you want.
Change of heart. Right. Apple is a company.
"Change of heart" is as metaphorical for a corporation as it is for an individual. When one says an individual had a "change of heart", it doesn't refer to a heart transplant except in a bad pun.
They saw negative reactions to a decision they made, and hence reversed it
What I'm asking for is the news story covering these negative reactions, or an Apple press release announcing the change to the App Store Review Guidelines that allowed Codea to be made, or something like that to document the timing and circumstances of the policy change.
I kinda feel that this is the problem with all mobile devices. You can do pretty much everything with them, but for anything you use them for there is a device that will beat a crap out of it in terms of functionality, usability, everything. It may be a good compromise, I mean it *is* portable and you *can* do pretty much anything, but if you are a professional, you have to have a real thing.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Tel my how I can write an app on the iPad, and then share it with whomever I want. How do I just send it to my friend across the table?
Did you try going to the App Store and looking for Codea?
Instead of making other people do the research, you could have just said "they can install the Codea app, create a project, use the Codea Runtime to package their project as an iOS app, get a developer license from Apple for $99/year, submit their app to Apple, and if it gets approved then someone else can download it". Not exactly what Alan Kay was talking about, but I guess that can be considered some form of "distribution". It doesn't help if you want your friend sitting next to you (or across the world) to play the new game you made, but hey, with Apple you can only ask for so much.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
Install an SSH app, get a VPS linux distribution and have about 1000 times better access to computers than any of the people back when THIS SHIT WAS BEING INVENTED did.
Back in the day when Kay and his friends started working on the Interim Dynabook, it was all too clear that HW was going to improve. It was also all too clear that it was software that would either make it or break it. So far, the SW has been breaking it ever since the advent of Unix and Windows, if you compare it to the original vision.
Also, the point of Dynabook was for people to be able to have useful open, flexible, user-extensible SW on their local machines, not to use them as dumb terminals. Somehow this point seems to elude you.
Ezekiel 23:20
Parents.
It really depends what you're doing. I happen to largely agree with you, but there are some good music and art applications out there. Also, if you're writing, say, a novel, then you can attach a bluetooth keyboard and be completely fine. I myself haven't done this, but it stands to reason, and others confirm that it works for them.
Actually looking at his gripes, and they are so far and away from legitimate that there is a very valid argument to be made that he's full of shit.
Actually, if you read the papers at the VPRI site, his gripes are so close to being legitimate that there is a very valid argument to be made that you are full of shit.
This has been absolutely done by the iPad and other tablets. People love to make the claim you can not create content on the iPad but its been proven time and again for the most part to be false beyond a few exceptions you can create just fine.
OK, show me the VPRI system implementation for the iPad. I suspect that Apple would never, EVER allow such a system to be distributed through their channels.
It shows a blatent misunderstanding of the app store, and reasons behind it.
And this shows your blatant misunderstanding of the Dynabook idea, and the reasons behind it. It was supposed to make it not only possible for you to easily create stuff, including new behavior (code), but also to make it as simple for two people to exchange digital stuff as is the exchange of books between the same two people in a room.
Ezekiel 23:20
1. Calling me a kiddo, aren't you a dear
2. I do not care if it is popular or not. As it turns out those android is a lot more popular than iOS.
Go troll someone else.
As it has always been.
I am too old to worry about it now. So long as Android is the most popular mobile platform, which it is, I say we are pretty safe.
It is fine for Apple to charge to put it on the store, but it should not cost you money to load your own app on your own tablet.
I see what you did there. Except he says that iPad "betrays" the Dynabook vision.
Nobody ever claimed that iPad was supposed to complete the Dynabook vision. In fact, you could likely scour the Internet for weeks and only find iPad and Dynabook mentioned together in this particular interview.
Dynabook is a vision. iPad is a shipping product. There is a massive difference between the two.
Slashdot still doesnâ(TM)t support Unicode after it was added to the HTML standard in 1997.
you have a cat and mouse game going where you constantly try to close the latest hole
Apple closes security holes, which they absolutely should.
There will always be the possibility of tethering jaibreaking which is more an issue of trcking the system updater; Apple COULD close that hole but has not to date.
Otherwise what would be accomplished by your paper other than to kill trees? Anyone with technical ability knows jailbreaking exists in short order, if they desire to go beyond the approved development tools (which give you a huge range of scope to start with).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
The world of end-user programming is larger that one would think on first glance, although in the case of spreadsheets it looks like functional-languages-with-globals (;-))
I've seen occasional graphic languages (POLs) that could be used in more general ways than spreadsheets: one needs to find one that solves an interesting problem everyone faces.
--dave
davecb@spamcop.net
As much as Alan Kay is a super Geek and co-father of todays technology the following must be stated very very clearly.
Apple bought all the rights to the Xerox PARC technology which they incorporated into the Lisa and then the Macintosh. But they were not following the Xerox PARC vision and immediately veered off in Apple's own direction since day one.
The iPad was never meant to fulfill Alan Kaye's vision of the Dynabook. It was Apple's vision of a tablet computer and always has been. There is zero betrayal. The premise is flawed.
So I actually read the article and this is what I got out of it..
"I had this very particular grand vision in the 1970's about how I wanted this ubiquitous computing environment that people would use to do everything...and the iPad doesn't live up to that vision"
I couldn't help but think that the guy was grousing about with a serious case of sour grapes.
With the clear evidence of the tablet market being in complete freefall...oh wait that's netbooks... I would argue that the android tablets come closest to his vision if anything does. Basically an Android tablet that had a slide down keyboard would in fact be a dynabook.
While Apple has slick products, just they're just too locked at this point.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
What have the Romans ever done for us?!
They're so far from generation 2 the 90's called and want their Apple Newton back. 2000 called and want their iPAQ's too. There's been all the PalmOS devices too. The Tablet PC's that came out with Windows XP tablet edition.
The current crop of tablets are maybe gen 4, 5 or 6? They've sacrificed everything productive for style and design though.
Says the troll.
Artistically stifling? Isn't it odd then that whenever there are artists doing some artistry with a tablet, it's virtually always with an iPad.
e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wzr6kPoxQhI
Or did you intend to limit the artistry to the creation of apps. Strange then that there are more apps of better quality on the iPad than on Android tablets. And the categories that are missing are anything but artistic in nature.
How about any job (and there are many) which used to be done walking (or driving) around with a clipboard, and then someone back at the office doing data entry from the paper form.
Just because your own kind of job doesn't require mobility, doesn't mean that all professionals don't need mobility.
Yes, clearly your trolling is insightful.
Go troll elsewhere. Don't like being called a troll? Stop trolling.
Please tell me how using safari I can make a wifi scanning tool. I will wait.
Assumptions with what we should be allowed to do on our devices? I SHOULD BE ALLOWED TO DO ANY FUCKING THING I WANT, IT IS MINE!
Please tell me how I can make my wifi scanning tool using scheme running in safari.
I think you didn't fully comprehend what I wrote. I made no assumptions about what you should be allowed to do on your device. You can use it to summon pink fairies if you want. What I did was question the concept of the device itself -- the device is a HTML5 browser, with some added plugins thrown in for accomplishing specific tasks (we call these Apps).
Just like I'm not going to tell you you can't use a screwdriver to hammer nails, I'm not going to tell you you can't run a wifi scanning tool on your iPad.
Of course, jailbreaking the iPad, you actually CAN modify it to run a decent wifi scanning tool. Works better than using a screwdriver to hammer nails. You could also install Android on it, or just buy a copycat tablet with Android already installed. The iPad (nor Apple) doesn't prevent you from doing any of this. Apple won't support it outside of its original configuration, but hey -- Skil isn't likely to give you support on that dinged up screwdriver either.
The problem here is that many people think they're getting a computer when they get an iPad, and that's not what it is. But what they get is still miles ahead of what was envisioned in the DynaBook -- just not via Apple's ObjectiveC SDK.
The ipad is a computer, sure apple tries to cripple it, but it is still a computer. It is not an HTML5 browse and plugins, it runs native code if the church of Apple approves your native code.
So any non-ipad is a copycat tablet? Fanboy much?
How do you touch-type on a touchscreen?
The problem is, the creativity tools on the iPad are sorely limited / limiting, and what's available for desktops isn't much better.
I can't put together a system now which works as well for me as my NeXT Cube running Altsys Virtuoso. The best thing I can piece together would be a Microsoft Surface Pro running a 10 year old copy of Freehand MX.
Looking into xasy and NodeBox --- any other suggestions?
Sphinx of black quartz, judge my vow.
The point was more about creativity.
Still, I'm pretty sure most of those tasks were solved by special devices long before iStuff showed up.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
Nothing is ever "solved", there are simply ever improving products addressing needs. For sure there were mobile devices serving professionals before iOS. But the solutions since iOS have been much improved.
What sort of creativity? The only block is on developing apps for no cost. (Which is why slashdot are unusual in their hate.) Every other sort of creativity is well served.
There are plenty of graphic editors including Photoshop touch, Video editors and music/sound editors. in that category.
There are also no business or productivity apps in the app store either.... oh wait. https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios-business/id6000?mt=8
https://itunes.apple.com/us/genre/ios-productivity/id6007?mt=8
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Let's take a web browser that can upload and download files. Hardly a niche application. It therefore has privileges to use TCP/IP pretty much at will (sandboxing irrelevant), full read access to the file system (sandboxing impossible)
Why would a web browser need full read access to the file system just to upload one file that the user chooses? When the user clicks the "Browse/Choose File" button, it asks the operating system to present a file chooser form. Only the file that the user ends up choosing would be visible to the browser. Likewise, any file that the user drags from a file manager onto the browser would become visible.
write access to part of it at least
Namely the browser's download folder, which the application's manifest would specify.
(with the expectation that the files will get to arbitrary places)
What exactly do you mean by "arbitrary places" in this context?
and can execute one or more Turing-complete languages (can and should be sandboxed).
I mentioned the file chooser precisely to mirror the restrictions of the File API in HTML5.
Amazingly, most of what people would want to write and share could be done via a web server and an HTML5-based Scheme interpreter. Kay likes Scheme, right?
I don't know what he thinks about Scheme but Alan Kay probably does like Smalltalk.
Amazingly, most of what people would want to write and share could be done via a web server and an HTML5-based Scheme interpreter. Kay likes Scheme, right?
I don't know what he thinks about Scheme but Alan Kay probably does like Smalltalk.
Yeah; I figured SmallTalk was too close to Alan and too far from what others would use though ;)
An HTML5 Squeak interpreter would also be nifty.
If you go with the cheapest options Apple provides for these when you order a Mac Mini, you'll balloon the price up to $1700. No, seriously, because the only monitor they offer bundled with the Mini is the $1000 27-inch Thunderbolt display.
"Bring your own mouse, keyboard, and monitor".
I advocate that we should keep the access to general purpose computers restricted [...] By the way, when did you last use a blowtorch, a soldering iron, a pneumatic drill? All of them are less advanced tools than the computer, still most people without knowledge of how to use them (including geeks) would never pick one up. Why should computers be treated any differently?
Is access to a blowtorch, a soldering iron, and a pneumatic drill restricted?
I write books or articles I need a keyboard
The iPad has always supported Bluetooth keyboards.
I take photo for even 10% of my job I need a computer with photoshop etc. I edit video even at the level of simple cutting I need a computer. I troubleshoot machinery with hardware interfaces I need a computer. I am building a $20,000 custom piece of lab equipment I need a computer.
If you need a computer for your job, your employer can provide one for you. This doesn't mean people need a computer at home.
Calling a tablet a creation tool is like cutting off a painter's hands and then letting him create his next masterpiece.
No, that's like trying to draw anything using a mouse...
Tablets are a significant step up in terms of lots of artistic kinds of creation. And they are at level with text creation when simply paired with a keyboard.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Actually, Apple borrowed the concept from PalmOS, changed some minor things, and loaded it on larger-format screens -- they didn't innovate or design the UI type any more than Google did. (While they didn't mimic the Newton, I wouldn't be surprised if Palm did borrow many of the UI concepts from an earlier company that's just not coming to mind.)
Now mostly at Usenet:comp.misc & SoylentNews.org (it's made of people!)
PCs get viruses.
Everything gets viruses. This isn't limited to 'PCs'.
This is like saying: "riding an unicycle is easy, because you can put its wheel into a bike and ride that one instead".
As opposed to saying "riding a unicycle is impossible; I know because I once tried riding a bicycle with a wheel missing for two hours."
Of course news about a fake are Fake News.
Xerox PARC produced wonderful, important concepts, but I'm unable to think of a single important commercial product that came from there. Dynabook is just another example.
Every end-user computing product on the market today borrowed significantly from earlier innovators, who in turn often borrowed heavily from others before them.
My point about Apple is that they were not technologically revolutionary, but were the first to truly crack the mass market. And yes, I include Palm in this - I was a long term Palm user, starting with the Palm Pro - the Nokia Communicator, the Newton, and many others. The iPad is important because it's essentially commoditized the tablet.
There'll be other, better products and manufacturers. Android's a start. So is Surface, so is BB10. Their and iPad's successors will, however, be accepted because of the massive appeal of iPad. That's all.
Cole's Law: Thinly sliced cabbage
You mean, just like running Java Applets in a JVM in your browser?
Yeah, a whole lot of security that gave us.
Sarcasm duly noted. But the Java problems were the result of defective implementation, not poor design of the underlying security model. Defective implementation is what allows iPad jailbreaks in the first place.
There's no doubt that the iPad is optimized as a consumption machine. But I think the focus on the walled App Store is a little misleading. It's true that creating and sharing a native iOS app is onerous -- but Apple has excellent support for offline-capable, "installable" HTML5-based apps. People seem to forget that a lot
Now, I'm not saying that the good support for HTML5 apps absolves Apple of the problems with the App Store; but it does mean that saying "you can't use an iPad to create and share an app with your friends" is inaccurate.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Only if it's a native app. If it's an HTML5 app, then you can make it available -- and installable -- instantly with no review from Apple. The only problem is that the HTML5 apps don't give you access to the complete capabilities of the device.
We may not imagine how our lives could be more frustrating and complex—but Congress can. – Cullen Hightower
Well, pretty much any sort of creativity: creating/playing/processing music, creating/editing pictures, creating/editing video, writing software.
I can give you writing novels, because the requirement for tool is quite minimalistic and the fact that you can write anywhere probably makes the laptop perfect for it.
Again, I'm not claiming that you can't create/edit videos on you tablet, I'm just saying that they are by far not the best tool for any of those tasks.
May Peace Prevail On Earth
The last one I already covered.
For the rest, there are professional artists in all those areas that use the iPad as one of their tools. And when they do, it's because the iPad is the best tool for that particular job.
Take musicians for example. Many of them are using iPads when gigging, as part of their kit.
And we're back again to the position that in practical use, the tablets *are not* computers, or are only computers in the sense that new Dishwashers are computers.
This, by the way, is why I don't buy "name brand" tablets because I like to save my money for the new ultra consumable / disposable portable screen that's out next year.
Many of the chinese / knockoff tablets also come with an unlocked boot loader so you can flash the firmware with whatever if you want, and come with Adroid rooted for you.
There are also more niche devices more like the PARC vision for how open they are, if not for form factor - like the OpenPandora and some of the Ubuntu tablets planned.
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
There are a lot of self employed photographers
Then allow me to amend my statement of this position: Self-employed people who need a PC can buy a PC. But this doesn't mean people who aren't self-employed need a computer at home, and the majority of people are not self-employed.
a ban on wireless transmissions
You make a good point here. I'll have to bring up typing on a tablet on an airplane the next time someone suggests a tablet as a laptop replacement.