I haven't dropped off of the face of the earth, and there are a large number of posts just waiting for me to finish up. But I've been too busy dealing with lots of other things.
And playing with my iPad. Which, by the way, I absolutely love. Those who are complaining about the iPad just haven't sat down and really taken the time to enjoy it. Enjoy it. Not use it; just
enjoy it. It is the most
personal computing experience I have ever had. It makes reading on the web a pleasure, more like a newspaper or magazine or book. The enhanced content applications are a joy, and will only get better. And then there's Netflix and YouTube and Pandora and iBook.
Oh, and, despite the naysayers, it is not just a consumption device. I am writing this right now on the iPad. I've been typing documents on Pages, and my daughter edited one of her essays on the iPad over the weekend while we were running around. Apps let me sketch and play around with pictures - simply letting me do what I am somewhat embarrassed to admit that I could never figure out in Photoshop.
Andrew Sullivan has made a point since the announcement of the iPad to tout it's uselessness. They complain that it's just a giant iPod Touch - as if that would be a bad thing - or that it doesn't do anything that their laptop can already do - which misses the point that it's not about what the iPad can do, it's about
how the iPad does it.
Sullivan made a particular point to also highlight
Cory Doctorow's anti-iPad rant about the "closed" nature of Apple and the App store, Apple's absolute control over the hardware and applications in the App Store, the inability to hack and take apart the iPad - it's too sleek, not geeky enough, too focused on content of which Apple acts as the sole gatekeeper. You cannot "own" the iPad because you cannot take it apart.
And it you buy into what a computing device must be, well, then, point taken. But even if you do have such a limited vision (yeah, I'm turning that back on you guys), it's a generation too late. We went down that road long, long ago when the BASIC programming language was removed from home computers.
When I got my first computer in elementary school - a TRS-80 from Radio Shack - you got a home computer precisely so that you could learn how to program and create. Frankly, there wasn't much else you could do with the computer. So you spent hours upon hours getting words to scroll across the screen, making PacMan emulators, or bouncing balls.
Today, how do most people use any computer - not just a iMac or an iPad or and IPhone, but also any Windows-based PC (despite the fact that Windows-boosters love to lament the supposedly closed-world of Apple), or any Palm or Blackberry phone (which I don't see many people taking apart, either, for that matter)? You buy
software. That's the name us old folks used for Apps.
When my daughter entered middle school a couple of years ago, she was required to take a course on "Technology." I thought she was going to get to learn some basic programming skills, how to use mathematics and analytical skills in order to create. What did they teach in that class? How to use Microsoft Word and PowerPoint, and how to access sites like Wikipedia.
My response? Indignation. I got on eBay and, since they were fairly widely available, bid on an old Commodore 64 (OK, I bid on three before I won one), so that I could teach my girls how to program. That C64 has been plugged into the TV twice. Suffice it to say that the kids were most assuredly not interested in dad's old-fashioned ideas about technology and learning and elementary programming techniques.
But here's the thing. My daughter has an iPod touch. And it does really neat things, and has really neat and exciting Apps. Lots of them. And she has ideas about other Apps that she'd like to see, if only they made them. And look, right there on the iPhone page and the iPod page, there are links to the iPhone and iPad App development tools, the iPhone SDK and programming guide and sample code. Oh, and you can create stuff and, because of the dreaded iTunes App Store, other people can actually use the stuff you create, and, oh gosh, they'll pay you for it, too. This sealed off, closed device and this supposedly restricted market is actually encouraging a huge amount of creativity and the desire to learn and develop and use analytical skills. The disinterest my daughter had in anything resembling the way a computer works is turned on it's head by a glued together device with a gated-community marketplace for software, encouraging creativity through the openness - yes, you heard that - of the marketplace for good ideas, in an App Store that offers more in the way of software than any Best Buy.
And that ignores all of the avenues for creativity and learning and curiosity that are enabled by the devices and the applications themselves. Avenues and opportunities that might not exist in a world where the existence of a certain level of standardization didn't exist in order to unleash the opportunities in that so-called restricted world.
To claim that giving you this opportunity isn't allowing you to "open" it is a complete lack of understanding of what's really going on these days. Even when you could "open" the computer, you couldn't "open" the chip. There were and always have been parts and elements to technologies that were not easily accessible. I used to take apart and build radios - as a kid I was always riding my bike to Radio Shack to get parts to repair the electronics that I had taken apart the week before. It never taught me how to make a transistor, but it taught me that I could create, make things, and make things my way.
For those who actually care to see it, the devices Apple builds give you the keys to creativity and technology. You can take advantage of that, or you can just use it and take advantage of what others have done for you. Just like any other device. That doesn't make it less valuable. It's just different from Doctorow's vision of how the world should be. But kids who are inclined to learn how things work and build and create new things will see the opportunity in the Apple devices that are being derided here, the devices that Sullivan and Doctorow and countless others are getting their contrarian juices flowing over.
The iPad offers the creative and intellectual spark that will enable those who are inclined to use their energies toward creating something new, something better. Having something that works well doesn't mean that all other creativity ends. And it's foolish to think otherwise.
Maybe Apple could build a device that was less elegant and allowed tinkering with the guts so that performance wasn't consistent and you never knew if your software - Apps - would work properly in whatever configuration you had. They could sell fewer devices, have less of an exciting feel to their products, encourage fewer kids to create on them and for them. Maybe we'd be better off without Apple. Or maybe not.
I'm pretty happy, myself.
Let me make sure I have this right. According to the New York Times this morning, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham is pulling his support for climate change and energy legislation because he is upset that the Democrats are going to give priority to immigration reform. In other words, Graham is going to kill climate change and energy legislation because he does not believe the Democrats are doing enough to pass climate change and energy legislation. No, it doesn't make any sense to me, either.
The people across the street are Tea Partiers. They fly the Gadsden "Don't Tread on Me" flag. That's how I know I live in a safe neighborhood.
