I have a well, which requires a submersible electric pump for the water to flow. When the electricity goes out, the water does not flow. This is not uncommon, though I can certainly understand that people with municipal water supplies may think that water flows into their house or apartment building through some magical process completely unrelated to power.
I will readily admit that losing electricity would not be a death sentence for me - mostly because I have a generator which will power my electric pump and some other crucial appliances in an emergency, and I also have a wood stove which I could easily use for heating the house. But there are a sizable number of people for whom electric pumps & even electric heat (remember, even forced hot water *can be* provided by an electric heater), cutting off someone's electricity in the middle of the winter could very well be a life-or-death situation.
And no, I am not trying to change the argument. The GP cited water, power, phone, and heat as services that can't be cut off (at least under some circumstances) due to regulations imposed by the government, and then argued that the internet, like those services, was "a necessity," and should be afforded the same regulatory oversight. I am simply pointing out that it is NOT a "necessity" in the sense the GP implied, which is a direct refutation of his point.
Unless you live in a home - as many do - where water is provided by your own well. In which case, no power = no pump.
Electric (radiative) heat is also a very common heating method; gas, wood, oil, etc. are all alternatives, yes. But heat and water, biological necessity, are the reasons why the power company is not allowed to cut you off mid-winter. If you happen to live in one of the places where you will *die* without them, they're not allowed to kill you for non-payment of your bill. A reasonable regulation, I think
The biological necessity argument cannot be made for the internet. It simply is not a biological necessity, and as such does not really qualify for the "it should never be cut off, ever, under any circumstances," argument that goes with that "necessity" argument.
If internet service is to be a government-granted monopoly, then I'm all for the FCC having the ability to require neutrality provisions. But let's not blow it out of proportion as if losing access to the internet will literally kill you. It will inconvenience, set up unfair hurdles for some, and generally be a pain in the ass. But grandma isn't going to freeze to death in her bed because Comcast disables BitTorrent.
How is the internet not necessary to function in daily life.
Wow. Get some perspective. You do realize that losing your internet connection will not result in you freezing to death, right?
As a "utility", internet service is pretty low on the ranking. Water is a biological necessity. Heat, during winter months, is a biological necessity. Phone is important for access to emergency services. Electric is generally required for delivery of water and/or heat in some fashion.
If you're going to declare the internet a "utility", and then claim it's a critical utility in the interests of your net neutrality goals, you have to then demonstrate how it's okay to leave millions of homes across the US without an internet connection, but those who already have it can't possibly have it cut off or managed in any way by the ISP.
Re:Pound and a half and its too heavy?
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iPad Review
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Two words: Gorilla Arms.
Four words: Feel the burn, bitch!
Get real. If your arms, hands, and wrist are so spindly and lacking in muscle tone that lifting and holding a pound and a half, even for hours at a time, will give you "gorilla arms," then you are either severely malnourished or in dire need of a little exercise to tone your muscles anyway.
There are a vast array of common objects that weigh several pounds that you hold, carry, and manipulate every day. Have you ever once said to yourself, "Goddamn, this quart of milk - weighing 2.25 pounds, roughly! - is too heavy. I guess I can't have my cereal this morning." Or, "Damn, this shampoo bottle is too heavy. I guess I'll skip washing my hair and grow dreadlocks instead."
No, the parent expressed a valid opinion as a statement of fact. There's a difference.
And as for not being the Thought Police... you haven't been around Slashdot for long, have you?:)
Re:Pound and a half and its too heavy?
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iPad Review
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Actually the form factor of The Stand certainly does lend itself to 2-handed reading, since it's much wider than an iPad (held in either orientation, actually) when it's opened.
But it is less dense, so I guess The Stand is superior for any handheld use, despite it's nearly-half-a-pound of extra weight.
To make another comparison, I take photos with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi, which weights about 1.2 pounds; more if I attach a flash or a bigger / different lens to it. I have often used that camera for hours on end at family and other events - it's simply not that big a deal to carry it around.
All this hue and cry over "1.5 pounds! SO HEAVY!" Is just ridiculous. And the beauty of your muscles is that, even if it is heavy for you when you first start using it, your muscles will adapt and 1.5 pounds will be no problem soon enough!
Re:Pound and a half and its too heavy?
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iPad Review
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· Score: 1
It's really the density that gets you; the thing is surprisingly heavy for its size.
The density? So you're saying if they made it less dense, it would be somehow better? Since density is a function of mass & size, there are two ways to achieve this: remove mass without changing the size (bye-bye, battery, wireless chipset, screen, and casing!), or increase size while maintaining the overall mass (hello boombox-sized iPad!)
If a pound and a half is too heavy for your hands and arms to hold, then what you're probably looking for is called a clipboard or a legal pad. Both slightly less functional than an iPad, but I hear they're both far more accessible to tinkerers, and the displays are just like reading on paper, even better than eInk.
For the record - the shipping weight of this book is listed at 1.9 pounds, according to Amazon. I read this book for hours at a stretch when I discovered it back in high school. If you've ever sat down with a decent sized hardcover novel and found yourself saying, "I just can't get over how heavy and uncomfortable this 1.5 pound book is," then you MIGHT want to think about spending some more time at the gym. I'm not in particularly great shape, but my arms and hands can handle a pound and a half pretty easily, in a form factor and use case remarkably similar to a hardcover book.
So let's do a scientific comparison.
The Stand (linked above, hardcover)
8.3 x 5.9 x 2.1 inches gives it a volume of 102.8 cubic inches;
Weighs 1.9 pounds
Has a density of 0.02 pounds per cubic inch.
The iPad (per apple's specs)
9.56 x 7.47 x 0.5 inches gives it a volume of 35.7 cubic inches
weights 1.5 pounds
Has a density of 0.04 pounds per cubic inch.
The Stand has a weight distribution that is uneven as you read through the book, as more pages shift from one side of the spine to the other once they are read. This increases rotational forces on the wrist and fingers substantially when the book is held one-handed. It is also about 1 inch shorter, but nearly 5 inches wider when open, increasing the likelihood that a second hand will be needed just to hold the book up. So while the density of The Stand is half the density of the iPad, it's clear that the difference in dimensions will also come into play, making density a contributing factor in comfort, but not the sole concern.
Re:It's not the same size, first of all
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iPad Review
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Except... the keyboard on the iPad is nearly the same size as a regular, full-size, honest-to-god physical keyboard. While the iPhone has a small, cramped keyboard that is made for two-thumb use.
I actually think that the predictive nature of the keyboard + the larger screen real estate will make for a pretty interesting test drive. I haven't tried it, and I generally type 80-100 wpm on a regular keyboard, so I'm quite keen to see if that increased keyboard size will truly allow for comparable speeds after some adjustment to the lack of tactile feedback.
No, I am assuming that anybody who has $500+ to spend for an iPad for their child can easily get their hands on a sub-$500 system (jesus, get a netbook for $300, slashdot will rejoice!) that their child can explore and learn about if they wish to learn about computers and programming.
Or, simply let the kid install perl or a jdk & eclipse on the existing family computer. It's overwhelmingly likely that any household buying an iPad *already has* a computer that the kid could hack around with any number of languages and development environments in. It's also overwhelmingly likely that any household that cannot afford a cheap Dell desktop will not be buying a $500 "personal iPad" for each of their kids to use.
Once again, put yourself in the shoes of a child: If you were curious about programming on the iPad, would you really give up so easily? "Well since I don't have a Mac to program for this iPad with, I might as well just give up any hope of learning anything about computers or programming, and become a mindless media consumer like Apple wants me to be." You're ignoring a whole middle ground where the gadget gets the kid interested, and then he discovers that there's a whole world of technology out there that he can play around with like it's christmas morning. Or does the iPad not allow you to visit the thousands of web sites out there where people discuss programming, hacking, etc?
The kids who are tech-curious will remain tech-curious regardless of (or in spite of) the presence of an iPad in the house. In fact, if they are frustrated so much by a single unhackable (or hacking-unfriendly) device in the house, they will probably grow up to be rabid Free Software supporters here on Slashdot. I look forward to seeing all 17 of them declaring the arrival of the Year of the Linux Desktop in about 15 years, and every year thereafter.
In short, the kids are all right. The iPad will not destroy their minds. The iPad will not prevent a generation from growing up and being interested in making computers do cool shit. The iPad's supposed "harmfulness" is based on a wild assertion about its lack of openness hurting kids' curiosity, and there is absolutely no evidence to support this fabled outcome. Kids are curious by nature - just sit there and listen to one ask "but why?" a million times. If hundreds of generations of frustrated parents haven't been able to breed the curiosity out of them, it's a safe bet that a couple years of exposure to an iPad in the home won't, either.
No I didn't miss that, I read your post quite clearly. What do they do? They get a "hackable" computer is what they do. As a parent, if your child showed an interest in and a curiosity about computers, and programming, wouldn't you encourage that sort of an intellectual pursuit in your child?
You're creating this either-or situation, where either every computer is totally hackable, or NO computer is hackable, and ignoring the incredibly-likely middle ground, where most houses that have an iPad in them will also have another desktop or laptop computer in them.
Did having an un-hackable calculator around the house stifle your curiosity & interest in math? Probably not.
Do you really have so low an opinion of children that you think their curiosity is that easily satisfied or stymied? Would you have just given up and said, "Well I guess I'll become a mindless, uncurious drone!" if, for some reason, your childhood computer had been sealed shut in a way that prevented you from messing with the physical hardware, or making low-level software calls that might damage the device? Or would you have instead focused on the software you could write, and exploring that, and seeing what cool things you could do?
I'll tell you this - for my money, I'm betting the curious kids won't have much problem at all saying "Look at this cool thing I can do. I wrote this!"
You're right - you didn't mention BASIC. But that's an entirely irrelevant point, which dodges the simple question I posed. So let's strike my mention of BASIC on the merits of your objection. What are we left with? Oh yeah, the question you can't answer without acknowledging that you're full of it:
How did this 13 year old kid learn how to program the iPad, if not by tinkering? If not by downloading the SDK, and messing around with it, then how?
Or are you really proposing that this kid woke up one morning and said, "Mom & Dad, I'm a crass consumerist. I have no interest or curiosity about the inner workings of this device, or with tinkering with it, but I really wanna make a million bucks off a piece of software I wrote. Can I, please?"
Your assertion that this device is "killing tinkering" and sterilizing the minds of millions of young possible programmers assumes a multitude of facts not yet in evidence, and in fact, flies in the face of all of the evidence available to us today, both in the form of anecdotes like these, and in the form of tens of thousands of applications written for the iPhone OS.
You do realize you just said that the iPad is "fundamentally" a big iPod Touch, right (an iPhone - the phone = iPod Touch)? And that the iPod Touch is not, fundamentally, a netbook?
Right?
And this kid who wrote the iPad app learned... how? Did he go to the Apple iPad Programming Educational Institute? Obviously he must have learned to hack and tinker on a PDP-8 at the age of 13?
What he has is actual useful knowledge (of a programming language, of programming for a device, and of how to write a functional application that might actually make the kid some money) as a result of his tinkering. What you have is a lot of warm memories of (by your own admission) useless software that you dicked around with a lot. How is your experience tinkering with writing programs in BASIC any different from his experience tinkering with writing programs in ObjC? I'd argue that some of that makes him a much more successful tinkerer than most of us.
Here's the thing. Most people do not buy Toyotas because they perform an exhaustive review and industry-wide comparison of engine torque, zero-to-60 acceleration, 60-to-0 braking distance, side-impact crash test performance, compression ratios, and detailed chemical analysis of the exhaust fumes. Most people buy a Toyota because they test drive it, and they like how it handles, they like the looks of the car, it has good gas mileage, and a bunch of people they know have one, and love it.
I think the answer to your exhaustive question on "why" have apple products become more popular in recent years runs along the same lines:
1) I know a bunch of people who have one of these;
2) Those people love theirs;
3) At a minimum, it does what I need it to.
I don't know a single person who has said, "I have absolutely zero need for a portable music player, but I bought an iPod anyway, because it's so well marketed, and I want to be hip!" If you can point out a study that shows this is happening, I'd gladly take a look, I know I've never seen one.
So let me review, just to make sure I've got this straight - you:
1) produced a product of reasonable quality ("didn't suck so much that buyers would return it to the store")
2) made sure that product was available for purchase in stores ("was easily available")
3) told people that the product was good, was available, and where it was available...
4) profited!
Congratulations, you just described the history of free enterprise. In other news, up is still up, and water is still wet. Please explain how the first 2 points would have been rendered unnecessary by the third? And then, please explain how the model you describe doesn't describe Apple's success as well? ("Produce decent product. Put said product on sale. Tell people where they can buy it.")
Apple is a marketing company that also makes electronics, they are quite adept at their core business, such that people don't even realize that they are pretty mediocre when it comes to their secondary, and in fact believe them to be the absolute greatest of all time.
So have you actually *watched* or *read* an iPad or iPod advertisement? Since you know it's full of psychological voodoo, I presume you're immune to it. But have you seen the simple fact that the iPhone is being advertised solely on the merits of the stuff you can do with it? They all basically demonstrate the cool functionality of the device in a loosely realistic scenario. "I'm out somewhere, and I want to find a sushi place nearby. So I search on my iphone. And wow, I can dial them to make reservations directly from my web browser." I see very little evidence of the "ZOMG U WILL BE THE COOLZORZ IF U BUY DIS FONE AMIRITE?!!" in their advertisements.
Likewise, the stuff I've seen in the iPad commercials has been about the stuff you can do with it. I fully expect to see dozens of ads pimping all kinds of cool functionality that the developers put together for it. I suspect that we'll see very little in the way of "hipsters use this iPad to be super cool!" advertisements. Most of the initial product announcement featured this sort of a display.
Think about it: Macs and iPods crash all the time
Citation? Since you didn't provide one, I can only presume that you're speaking anecdotally. I'm sorry that's been your experience, mine has been exactly the opposite - the Apple laptop & desktop computer have been amazingly stable and well mannered, much more so than the WinXP and Fedora systems I've used as home computers in the past. I guess your anecdote and mine cancel each other out, huh?
they require special software which is incompatible with other hardware to operate
This is called an "Operating System" and "device drivers". This has been the state of computing for years, why is this new?
they cost a ton of extra money
Not really. While I could have bought a *cheaper* piece of hardware from Dell or HP and loaded Linux or Windows on it, if I had bought hardware with similar specs, the price difference would have been vanishingly small. Apple doesn't offer the number of choices that HP or Dell does, agreed. But spec-for-spec, there's not that much of a price differential, and the the factor that outweighs it all is that I get Mac OS X with my hardware, which gives me a Unix operating system with a lovely GUI which runs all the software I need to use at home, and I almost never have to dick around with "fixing it" like I did with Fedora & Windows.
they are not measurably better for any particular use or application than competing products
When I owned a Windows system as a home PC, I would easily spend several hours a week just updating virus definitions, running scans, rebooting, installing the latest MSFT security bundle, etc. etc. When I owned a Fedora system as a home PC, I would easily spend several hours a week just fiddling with configuration files trying to get things working. I place a very high value on my time (/. reading notwithstanding), and so yes, the Mac does have measurably better performance for me - I spend less time tinkering and repairing, and more time doing the things that I bought the thing for.
and yet they still have legions of fanatical users who couldn't even imagine using something else.
I can imagine using something else, as I've used both Fedora and Windows at home, and I work on and use Windows, Solaris, AIX, and Red Hat Enterprise Servers at work every day. When I go home, the last thing I really want to do is deal with a computer that needs me to spend an hour on it updating virus definitions (Windows) or fiddling with a graphics driver update that broke my display configuration again (Fedora). I'm a "fanatical" user because I value my time, and in my experience, the Mac requires the least amount of time to keep running well.
As somebody who owned a Rio PMP300 that pretty much fell apart under fairly gentle usage (I was much more careful than I ever have been with my iPod), I can assure you that MP3 players were not all "fine" before iPods.
My first MP3 player was a Rio - with a brittle, creaky plastic case, "tactile" buttons that sometimes just decided not to work, a *gasp* proprietary cable connector, and a battery door that, at the end, was held on with a small piece of duct tape. I replaced that with a 4G iPod that was smaller, held more, and worked a damn sight better than the Rio, and it still runs just fine. I replaced the 4G iPod with a 5G iPod, because my music collection grew beyond the size the 4G would use. I still have the 4G around, and it still worked fine last time I used it, and looks more or less the same as it did originally, less some scuffs and scratches. The 5G iPod was bought because it had more capacity, and I still carry that with me to work every day. Both iPods have proven far more durable than the Rio, and both of them functioned much more reliably.
Yes, the iPods and my iPhone is MUCH "prettier" than the Rio. That's not why I bought it. I bought it because I wanted larger capacity and after going into the apple store, I was surprised at how well put-together the iPod was. So yeah, the concept of an MP3 player, or a tablet computer, isn't "ground breaking." But getting the design "right" in a form factor that's attractive, while understanding how & what-for people will use the device is a hugely important (I daresay "ground breaking") step. If Tablet computing were just about the hardware, you're right - tablet computers have been around for a while. But as the initial sales of the iPad seem primed to demonstrate, getting the design right is just as important as having all of the hardware feature boxes checked on your spec sheet.
..and I love the way that the slashdot group mind treats Flash as the spawn of Satan and destroyer of worlds until Apple leaves it out (and, consequently, persuades a number of large video sites to switch to standards-based HTML5 video).
Imagine you've spent years sounding off self-righteously about how evil closed systems are. Now imagine that a closed system comes along and forces the change that you've been spending years blowing hot air about.
Can you imagine how outraged you'd be then, when DRM is eliminated from music in the itunes store, or Flash video goes the way of the dodo, and you get no credit for making it happen, because everybody says it was that evil closed system that actually forced the change to happen?
Yeah, don't you know that a real man would do away with the "sachharine animations" and simply read books the way they were intended to be read? And by "the way they were intended to be read," I mean, of course - one line at a time, using arcane vi-mode commands to scan forward word-by-word?
Do you really reboot your computer that frequently that time to boot is a serious drain on your productivity?
Seriously... I reboot my laptop when I power it down to take it home for the weekends, and when I return on Monday mornings. Other than that... it's running. Even if the boot sequence took 15 minutes each time I started my computer, 2 reboots a week would not constitute a significant performance drain.
Re:There are different ways of doing it.
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Apple iPad Reviewed
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For the average users the device works so,so (there are complains about missing features from average users too)
Such as?
For the geeks, the device is almost useless,
Really? If someone handed you an iPhone today, you couldn't get any use out of it? Even if you don't ever install a single application on it and only use it with default iphone OS software, it's a perfectly serviceable: phone, email device, web browser, music & video player, text messaging device, calendar, pocket camera, gps-enabled mapping device, weather forecaster, voice memo recorder, notepad, clock, and calculator.
Does every device you own have to grant you access for unlimited tinkering, and if so, how many of those devices do you *actually* tinker with and write / improve software for?
they'll move to something else (Android, Maemo, webOS, even Windows Mobile)
And that's absolutely their prerogative. If a device doesn't meet your needs, buy something else and use that instead. Nobody's suggesting you should buy an iphone or an ipad if you have an actual need for a function they don't have.
In result, the iPhone/iPod/iPad are just expensive toys with a nice shining polished finish.
As opposed to most of the other devices which are just expensive toys with a cheap, junky plastic finish?
Re:The moment Linux can be installed on the iPad,
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Apple iPad Reviewed
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Slashdot Mirror
I have a well, which requires a submersible electric pump for the water to flow. When the electricity goes out, the water does not flow. This is not uncommon, though I can certainly understand that people with municipal water supplies may think that water flows into their house or apartment building through some magical process completely unrelated to power.
I will readily admit that losing electricity would not be a death sentence for me - mostly because I have a generator which will power my electric pump and some other crucial appliances in an emergency, and I also have a wood stove which I could easily use for heating the house. But there are a sizable number of people for whom electric pumps & even electric heat (remember, even forced hot water *can be* provided by an electric heater), cutting off someone's electricity in the middle of the winter could very well be a life-or-death situation.
And no, I am not trying to change the argument. The GP cited water, power, phone, and heat as services that can't be cut off (at least under some circumstances) due to regulations imposed by the government, and then argued that the internet, like those services, was "a necessity," and should be afforded the same regulatory oversight. I am simply pointing out that it is NOT a "necessity" in the sense the GP implied, which is a direct refutation of his point.
Unless you live in a home - as many do - where water is provided by your own well. In which case, no power = no pump.
Electric (radiative) heat is also a very common heating method; gas, wood, oil, etc. are all alternatives, yes. But heat and water, biological necessity, are the reasons why the power company is not allowed to cut you off mid-winter. If you happen to live in one of the places where you will *die* without them, they're not allowed to kill you for non-payment of your bill. A reasonable regulation, I think
The biological necessity argument cannot be made for the internet. It simply is not a biological necessity, and as such does not really qualify for the "it should never be cut off, ever, under any circumstances," argument that goes with that "necessity" argument.
If internet service is to be a government-granted monopoly, then I'm all for the FCC having the ability to require neutrality provisions. But let's not blow it out of proportion as if losing access to the internet will literally kill you. It will inconvenience, set up unfair hurdles for some, and generally be a pain in the ass. But grandma isn't going to freeze to death in her bed because Comcast disables BitTorrent.
Wow. Get some perspective. You do realize that losing your internet connection will not result in you freezing to death, right?
As a "utility", internet service is pretty low on the ranking. Water is a biological necessity. Heat, during winter months, is a biological necessity. Phone is important for access to emergency services. Electric is generally required for delivery of water and/or heat in some fashion.
If you're going to declare the internet a "utility", and then claim it's a critical utility in the interests of your net neutrality goals, you have to then demonstrate how it's okay to leave millions of homes across the US without an internet connection, but those who already have it can't possibly have it cut off or managed in any way by the ISP.
Four words: Feel the burn, bitch!
Get real. If your arms, hands, and wrist are so spindly and lacking in muscle tone that lifting and holding a pound and a half, even for hours at a time, will give you "gorilla arms," then you are either severely malnourished or in dire need of a little exercise to tone your muscles anyway.
There are a vast array of common objects that weigh several pounds that you hold, carry, and manipulate every day. Have you ever once said to yourself, "Goddamn, this quart of milk - weighing 2.25 pounds, roughly! - is too heavy. I guess I can't have my cereal this morning." Or, "Damn, this shampoo bottle is too heavy. I guess I'll skip washing my hair and grow dreadlocks instead."
No, the parent expressed a valid opinion as a statement of fact. There's a difference.
:)
And as for not being the Thought Police... you haven't been around Slashdot for long, have you?
Actually the form factor of The Stand certainly does lend itself to 2-handed reading, since it's much wider than an iPad (held in either orientation, actually) when it's opened.
But it is less dense, so I guess The Stand is superior for any handheld use, despite it's nearly-half-a-pound of extra weight.
To make another comparison, I take photos with a Canon Digital Rebel XTi, which weights about 1.2 pounds; more if I attach a flash or a bigger / different lens to it. I have often used that camera for hours on end at family and other events - it's simply not that big a deal to carry it around.
All this hue and cry over "1.5 pounds! SO HEAVY!" Is just ridiculous. And the beauty of your muscles is that, even if it is heavy for you when you first start using it, your muscles will adapt and 1.5 pounds will be no problem soon enough!
The density? So you're saying if they made it less dense, it would be somehow better? Since density is a function of mass & size, there are two ways to achieve this: remove mass without changing the size (bye-bye, battery, wireless chipset, screen, and casing!), or increase size while maintaining the overall mass (hello boombox-sized iPad!)
If a pound and a half is too heavy for your hands and arms to hold, then what you're probably looking for is called a clipboard or a legal pad. Both slightly less functional than an iPad, but I hear they're both far more accessible to tinkerers, and the displays are just like reading on paper, even better than eInk.
For the record - the shipping weight of this book is listed at 1.9 pounds, according to Amazon. I read this book for hours at a stretch when I discovered it back in high school. If you've ever sat down with a decent sized hardcover novel and found yourself saying, "I just can't get over how heavy and uncomfortable this 1.5 pound book is," then you MIGHT want to think about spending some more time at the gym. I'm not in particularly great shape, but my arms and hands can handle a pound and a half pretty easily, in a form factor and use case remarkably similar to a hardcover book. So let's do a scientific comparison.
The Stand has a weight distribution that is uneven as you read through the book, as more pages shift from one side of the spine to the other once they are read. This increases rotational forces on the wrist and fingers substantially when the book is held one-handed. It is also about 1 inch shorter, but nearly 5 inches wider when open, increasing the likelihood that a second hand will be needed just to hold the book up. So while the density of The Stand is half the density of the iPad, it's clear that the difference in dimensions will also come into play, making density a contributing factor in comfort, but not the sole concern.
Except... the keyboard on the iPad is nearly the same size as a regular, full-size, honest-to-god physical keyboard. While the iPhone has a small, cramped keyboard that is made for two-thumb use. I actually think that the predictive nature of the keyboard + the larger screen real estate will make for a pretty interesting test drive. I haven't tried it, and I generally type 80-100 wpm on a regular keyboard, so I'm quite keen to see if that increased keyboard size will truly allow for comparable speeds after some adjustment to the lack of tactile feedback.
No, I am assuming that anybody who has $500+ to spend for an iPad for their child can easily get their hands on a sub-$500 system (jesus, get a netbook for $300, slashdot will rejoice!) that their child can explore and learn about if they wish to learn about computers and programming.
Or, simply let the kid install perl or a jdk & eclipse on the existing family computer. It's overwhelmingly likely that any household buying an iPad *already has* a computer that the kid could hack around with any number of languages and development environments in. It's also overwhelmingly likely that any household that cannot afford a cheap Dell desktop will not be buying a $500 "personal iPad" for each of their kids to use.
Once again, put yourself in the shoes of a child: If you were curious about programming on the iPad, would you really give up so easily? "Well since I don't have a Mac to program for this iPad with, I might as well just give up any hope of learning anything about computers or programming, and become a mindless media consumer like Apple wants me to be." You're ignoring a whole middle ground where the gadget gets the kid interested, and then he discovers that there's a whole world of technology out there that he can play around with like it's christmas morning. Or does the iPad not allow you to visit the thousands of web sites out there where people discuss programming, hacking, etc?
The kids who are tech-curious will remain tech-curious regardless of (or in spite of) the presence of an iPad in the house. In fact, if they are frustrated so much by a single unhackable (or hacking-unfriendly) device in the house, they will probably grow up to be rabid Free Software supporters here on Slashdot. I look forward to seeing all 17 of them declaring the arrival of the Year of the Linux Desktop in about 15 years, and every year thereafter.
In short, the kids are all right. The iPad will not destroy their minds. The iPad will not prevent a generation from growing up and being interested in making computers do cool shit. The iPad's supposed "harmfulness" is based on a wild assertion about its lack of openness hurting kids' curiosity, and there is absolutely no evidence to support this fabled outcome. Kids are curious by nature - just sit there and listen to one ask "but why?" a million times. If hundreds of generations of frustrated parents haven't been able to breed the curiosity out of them, it's a safe bet that a couple years of exposure to an iPad in the home won't, either.
No I didn't miss that, I read your post quite clearly. What do they do? They get a "hackable" computer is what they do. As a parent, if your child showed an interest in and a curiosity about computers, and programming, wouldn't you encourage that sort of an intellectual pursuit in your child?
You're creating this either-or situation, where either every computer is totally hackable, or NO computer is hackable, and ignoring the incredibly-likely middle ground, where most houses that have an iPad in them will also have another desktop or laptop computer in them.
Did having an un-hackable calculator around the house stifle your curiosity & interest in math? Probably not.
Do you really have so low an opinion of children that you think their curiosity is that easily satisfied or stymied? Would you have just given up and said, "Well I guess I'll become a mindless, uncurious drone!" if, for some reason, your childhood computer had been sealed shut in a way that prevented you from messing with the physical hardware, or making low-level software calls that might damage the device? Or would you have instead focused on the software you could write, and exploring that, and seeing what cool things you could do?
I'll tell you this - for my money, I'm betting the curious kids won't have much problem at all saying "Look at this cool thing I can do. I wrote this!"
You're right - you didn't mention BASIC. But that's an entirely irrelevant point, which dodges the simple question I posed. So let's strike my mention of BASIC on the merits of your objection. What are we left with? Oh yeah, the question you can't answer without acknowledging that you're full of it:
How did this 13 year old kid learn how to program the iPad, if not by tinkering? If not by downloading the SDK, and messing around with it, then how?
Or are you really proposing that this kid woke up one morning and said, "Mom & Dad, I'm a crass consumerist. I have no interest or curiosity about the inner workings of this device, or with tinkering with it, but I really wanna make a million bucks off a piece of software I wrote. Can I, please?"
Your assertion that this device is "killing tinkering" and sterilizing the minds of millions of young possible programmers assumes a multitude of facts not yet in evidence, and in fact, flies in the face of all of the evidence available to us today, both in the form of anecdotes like these, and in the form of tens of thousands of applications written for the iPhone OS.
I know! It's totally unprecedented!
And it's fully complete and on sale now! Oh wait.
You do realize you just said that the iPad is "fundamentally" a big iPod Touch, right (an iPhone - the phone = iPod Touch)? And that the iPod Touch is not, fundamentally, a netbook? Right?
And this kid who wrote the iPad app learned... how? Did he go to the Apple iPad Programming Educational Institute? Obviously he must have learned to hack and tinker on a PDP-8 at the age of 13?
What he has is actual useful knowledge (of a programming language, of programming for a device, and of how to write a functional application that might actually make the kid some money) as a result of his tinkering. What you have is a lot of warm memories of (by your own admission) useless software that you dicked around with a lot. How is your experience tinkering with writing programs in BASIC any different from his experience tinkering with writing programs in ObjC? I'd argue that some of that makes him a much more successful tinkerer than most of us.
Here's the thing. Most people do not buy Toyotas because they perform an exhaustive review and industry-wide comparison of engine torque, zero-to-60 acceleration, 60-to-0 braking distance, side-impact crash test performance, compression ratios, and detailed chemical analysis of the exhaust fumes. Most people buy a Toyota because they test drive it, and they like how it handles, they like the looks of the car, it has good gas mileage, and a bunch of people they know have one, and love it.
I think the answer to your exhaustive question on "why" have apple products become more popular in recent years runs along the same lines:
1) I know a bunch of people who have one of these;
2) Those people love theirs;
3) At a minimum, it does what I need it to.
I don't know a single person who has said, "I have absolutely zero need for a portable music player, but I bought an iPod anyway, because it's so well marketed, and I want to be hip!" If you can point out a study that shows this is happening, I'd gladly take a look, I know I've never seen one.
So let me review, just to make sure I've got this straight - you:
1) produced a product of reasonable quality ("didn't suck so much that buyers would return it to the store")
2) made sure that product was available for purchase in stores ("was easily available")
3) told people that the product was good, was available, and where it was available...
4) profited!
Congratulations, you just described the history of free enterprise. In other news, up is still up, and water is still wet. Please explain how the first 2 points would have been rendered unnecessary by the third? And then, please explain how the model you describe doesn't describe Apple's success as well? ("Produce decent product. Put said product on sale. Tell people where they can buy it.")
So have you actually *watched* or *read* an iPad or iPod advertisement? Since you know it's full of psychological voodoo, I presume you're immune to it. But have you seen the simple fact that the iPhone is being advertised solely on the merits of the stuff you can do with it? They all basically demonstrate the cool functionality of the device in a loosely realistic scenario. "I'm out somewhere, and I want to find a sushi place nearby. So I search on my iphone. And wow, I can dial them to make reservations directly from my web browser." I see very little evidence of the "ZOMG U WILL BE THE COOLZORZ IF U BUY DIS FONE AMIRITE?!!" in their advertisements.
Likewise, the stuff I've seen in the iPad commercials has been about the stuff you can do with it. I fully expect to see dozens of ads pimping all kinds of cool functionality that the developers put together for it. I suspect that we'll see very little in the way of "hipsters use this iPad to be super cool!" advertisements. Most of the initial product announcement featured this sort of a display.
Citation? Since you didn't provide one, I can only presume that you're speaking anecdotally. I'm sorry that's been your experience, mine has been exactly the opposite - the Apple laptop & desktop computer have been amazingly stable and well mannered, much more so than the WinXP and Fedora systems I've used as home computers in the past. I guess your anecdote and mine cancel each other out, huh?
This is called an "Operating System" and "device drivers". This has been the state of computing for years, why is this new?
Not really. While I could have bought a *cheaper* piece of hardware from Dell or HP and loaded Linux or Windows on it, if I had bought hardware with similar specs, the price difference would have been vanishingly small. Apple doesn't offer the number of choices that HP or Dell does, agreed. But spec-for-spec, there's not that much of a price differential, and the the factor that outweighs it all is that I get Mac OS X with my hardware, which gives me a Unix operating system with a lovely GUI which runs all the software I need to use at home, and I almost never have to dick around with "fixing it" like I did with Fedora & Windows.
When I owned a Windows system as a home PC, I would easily spend several hours a week just updating virus definitions, running scans, rebooting, installing the latest MSFT security bundle, etc. etc. When I owned a Fedora system as a home PC, I would easily spend several hours a week just fiddling with configuration files trying to get things working. I place a very high value on my time (/. reading notwithstanding), and so yes, the Mac does have measurably better performance for me - I spend less time tinkering and repairing, and more time doing the things that I bought the thing for.
I can imagine using something else, as I've used both Fedora and Windows at home, and I work on and use Windows, Solaris, AIX, and Red Hat Enterprise Servers at work every day. When I go home, the last thing I really want to do is deal with a computer that needs me to spend an hour on it updating virus definitions (Windows) or fiddling with a graphics driver update that broke my display configuration again (Fedora). I'm a "fanatical" user because I value my time, and in my experience, the Mac requires the least amount of time to keep running well.
As somebody who owned a Rio PMP300 that pretty much fell apart under fairly gentle usage (I was much more careful than I ever have been with my iPod), I can assure you that MP3 players were not all "fine" before iPods.
My first MP3 player was a Rio - with a brittle, creaky plastic case, "tactile" buttons that sometimes just decided not to work, a *gasp* proprietary cable connector, and a battery door that, at the end, was held on with a small piece of duct tape. I replaced that with a 4G iPod that was smaller, held more, and worked a damn sight better than the Rio, and it still runs just fine. I replaced the 4G iPod with a 5G iPod, because my music collection grew beyond the size the 4G would use. I still have the 4G around, and it still worked fine last time I used it, and looks more or less the same as it did originally, less some scuffs and scratches. The 5G iPod was bought because it had more capacity, and I still carry that with me to work every day. Both iPods have proven far more durable than the Rio, and both of them functioned much more reliably.
Yes, the iPods and my iPhone is MUCH "prettier" than the Rio. That's not why I bought it. I bought it because I wanted larger capacity and after going into the apple store, I was surprised at how well put-together the iPod was. So yeah, the concept of an MP3 player, or a tablet computer, isn't "ground breaking." But getting the design "right" in a form factor that's attractive, while understanding how & what-for people will use the device is a hugely important (I daresay "ground breaking") step. If Tablet computing were just about the hardware, you're right - tablet computers have been around for a while. But as the initial sales of the iPad seem primed to demonstrate, getting the design right is just as important as having all of the hardware feature boxes checked on your spec sheet.
Imagine you've spent years sounding off self-righteously about how evil closed systems are. Now imagine that a closed system comes along and forces the change that you've been spending years blowing hot air about.
Can you imagine how outraged you'd be then, when DRM is eliminated from music in the itunes store, or Flash video goes the way of the dodo, and you get no credit for making it happen, because everybody says it was that evil closed system that actually forced the change to happen?
Yeah, don't you know that a real man would do away with the "sachharine animations" and simply read books the way they were intended to be read? And by "the way they were intended to be read," I mean, of course - one line at a time, using arcane vi-mode commands to scan forward word-by-word?
Do you really reboot your computer that frequently that time to boot is a serious drain on your productivity?
Seriously... I reboot my laptop when I power it down to take it home for the weekends, and when I return on Monday mornings. Other than that... it's running. Even if the boot sequence took 15 minutes each time I started my computer, 2 reboots a week would not constitute a significant performance drain.
Such as?
Really? If someone handed you an iPhone today, you couldn't get any use out of it? Even if you don't ever install a single application on it and only use it with default iphone OS software, it's a perfectly serviceable: phone, email device, web browser, music & video player, text messaging device, calendar, pocket camera, gps-enabled mapping device, weather forecaster, voice memo recorder, notepad, clock, and calculator.
Does every device you own have to grant you access for unlimited tinkering, and if so, how many of those devices do you *actually* tinker with and write / improve software for?
And that's absolutely their prerogative. If a device doesn't meet your needs, buy something else and use that instead. Nobody's suggesting you should buy an iphone or an ipad if you have an actual need for a function they don't have.
As opposed to most of the other devices which are just expensive toys with a cheap, junky plastic finish?
I'll admit it - I laughed.