iPad is the first computing device in history that I can suggest to my non-computer-savvy friends and know they will be able to use it, without the software getting screwed up in a few months. With the iPhone and iPad, Apple has (pardon the hyperbole) brought usable computing to the masses.
We can bash Apple that they did not turn the masses into programmers at the same time, but it’s far from obvious this is even possible (on the contrary). And, at least for me, a hackable software device is a device that can be broken more easily, thus compromising the first and most important principle of usability. It’s so refreshing to be able to tell people that they don’t have to worry about the device, because there is almost nothing they could break, no matter how hard they try.
Also, this sounds awfully condescending:
I think one of the main consequences of the inventions of personal computing and the world wide Internet is that everyone gets to be a potential participant, and this means that we now have the entire bell curve of humanity trying to be part of the action. This will dilute good design (almost stamp it out) until mass education can help most people get more savvy about what the new medium is all about. (This is not a fast process). What we have now is not dissimilar to the pop music scene vs the developed music culture (the former has almost driven out the latter -- and this is only possible where there is too little knowledge and taste to prevent it). Not a pretty sight.
It’s like someone has got the whole computer interaction thing sorted out and is just waiting for the rest of the idiots to catch up. With all respect to Alan Kay, I’m not buying that.
>iPad is the first computing device in history that I can suggest to my non-computer-savvy friends and know they will be able to use it, without the software getting screwed up in a few months.
This is really important. Mutability is a key requirement for creation, but also destruction.
What's more, the iPad is a capital P Product, which itself hosts Virtual Products, both of which have tightly constrained mutability. And this, it seems, really resonates with people: bright, shiny, consistently behaving virtual products. Apple wins financially by tightly coupling these virtual products to their physical product, but people win too because now they have, arguably for the first time, truly reliable virtual products.
iPad is the first computing device in history that essentially takes away any user capability to tinker with its machine, forbids installing any software that Apple decides it shouldn't be running on it, including basic things like alternative browsers (as you know, Chrome on iOS is only a reskin of the included WebKit) or installing a previous OSes (which means my one year old iPad 3 became a slow but beautiful paperweight after updating to iOS 7), you can't develop apps for it without paying Apple 100€/year (even if you don't plan to distribute them), etc. But if you think that's okay because that means less technical support for friends, go ahead.
> forbids installing any software that Apple decides it shouldn't be running on it
Weird, I got a developer license and was building and installing random github projects on my iPad without any fuss. If you can't afford the license, go in on it with 100 of your closest friends and it's only a buck.
> But if you think that's okay because that means less technical support for friends, go ahead.
I'd happily pay 100 bucks not to do tech support anymore. I sent my mother my iPad 2 a year ago and haven't heard a peep from her about computing problems since.
So you don't see any issue with paying Apple _again_ to grant you the right to install what you want in the device you already paid for (and I'm not talking about distributing it in the App Store). Well, we can agree to disagree.
It's not that I don't see any issue--I do and it's actually a selling point. The best security in the game comes at a price that I, and millions of other satisfied customers, are more than willing to pay. The only people who complain about Apple's system are people who don't mind doing free sysadmin labor on a device that they already paid for.
There is also no way to fix things when they break:
One of the iOS upgrades (7 or 8) brought massive performance problems, on a normal OS you would just downgrade but there is no such option on iOS.
Alternative browsers are also very slow, it looks like Chrome isn't able to take full advantage of V8. An Android device that costs less than a third than the iPad can run Chrome much better than an iPad2 can.
The iPad2 (WiFi) also has a GPS device, but it only works when you are connected to WiFi: I couldn't get it to work without WiFi which limits its usefulness.
Android devices with GPS always worked offline, you even have the option to download AGPS data when you're connected to a WiFi to speed up TTFF, but even without that it works it just takes (a lot) longer to get a fix.
Try finding the equivalent of a commonly used application
from Linux/Windows on iPad that isn't filled with ads, or limited features (unless you do an in-app purchase). For example is there a usable VNC client?
In the end the iPad is useful only for: web browsing (with default browser), reading emails, playing games.
An equivalently priced Android device can be much more useful, and you have a wider selection of useful applications.
With all these problems I couldn't recommend anyone to buy an iPad (much less an iPhone), and I'll probably sell mine at some point.
> The iPad2 (WiFi) also has a GPS device, but it only works when you are connected to WiFi
Testing on my iPad3 right now, and it seems to work fine. iPad2 should really be considered a legacy device at this point (even if Apple still sells it).
> Alternative browsers are also very slow, it looks like Chrome isn't able to take full advantage of V8. An Android device that costs less than a third than the iPad can run Chrome much better than an iPad2 can.
And you can't use Safari at all on an Android device! Gasp! As for the JS engine, I'm pretty sure all apps have the ability to use the full-speed one now, and if Chrome is lagging behind, the blame lies with Google, not Apple.
Chrome has never used V8 on iOS. All browsers on iOS use the built-in WebView with custom UI and with iOS 8 all 3rd party browsers have access to the same full-speed Nitro Javascript engine that Safari uses.
WiFi versions of iPads do not have GPS. Only the cellular versions. And those cellular models can use GPS even with no cellular connectivity.
Complaining about iOS apps with ads is laughable when Android is just as bad or worse. And god forbid that developers make any money with a 99 cent app or in-app purchase. And it's obvious you didn't even try a simple Google search for "iOS VNC" as there are plenty of worthy apps.
For me, this was the money quote which I think is a sentiment not mutually exclusive with what you're saying:
It is just a shame that in an effort to make interpersonal engagement over computers easy and ubiquitous, the goal of making the computer itself easily engaging has become obscured
> the pop music scene vs the developed music culture (the former has almost driven out the latter -- and this is only possible where there is too little knowledge and taste to prevent it)
I wonder about the idea that popular music is undeveloped, tasteless, and ignorant. Take Michael Jackson's "Off The Wall" album. It's a very sophisticated album by any measure except, of course that it is pop music.
I don't think Kay was claiming popular music is _universally_ tasteless; that would be ludacris. He's lamenting that taste is not important to music's popularity. That you could think of a particular example of developed popular music would seem to support the claim that pop music is, in general, undeveloped.
A lot of the most popular music has lyrics utterly devoid of meaning, simplistic least-common-denominator structure, humanity auto-tuned out of the vocals, and dynamic range compression crushing out subtlety for greater loudness. Taste IS subjective, and that's why the things that become very popular have to have very little of it.
We can bash Apple that they did not turn the masses into programmers at the same time, but it’s far from obvious this is even possible (on the contrary). And, at least for me, a hackable software device is a device that can be broken more easily, thus compromising the first and most important principle of usability. It’s so refreshing to be able to tell people that they don’t have to worry about the device, because there is almost nothing they could break, no matter how hard they try.
Also, this sounds awfully condescending:
I think one of the main consequences of the inventions of personal computing and the world wide Internet is that everyone gets to be a potential participant, and this means that we now have the entire bell curve of humanity trying to be part of the action. This will dilute good design (almost stamp it out) until mass education can help most people get more savvy about what the new medium is all about. (This is not a fast process). What we have now is not dissimilar to the pop music scene vs the developed music culture (the former has almost driven out the latter -- and this is only possible where there is too little knowledge and taste to prevent it). Not a pretty sight.
It’s like someone has got the whole computer interaction thing sorted out and is just waiting for the rest of the idiots to catch up. With all respect to Alan Kay, I’m not buying that.