So as I sit here I remember the cars I used to work on and modify (tinkering) many years ago; it was fun and creative; but I sure enjoy driving today’s cars, and, frankly, “tuning” one up today is beyond my capabilities and interest. Likewise with today’s computer technology. It was fun at one time writing programs, tweaks, and routines, but now I’m interested in functionality and ease of use.

In the morning my wife and I sit down have our coffee and read the days news from differents sources via apps (much better tailored for iphone than the web page). Throughout the day I use apps–hmmm wonder when low tide is…..alas Shazam couldn’t identify that Hayden string quartet we were listening to on Wunderadio, but did id it by listenng to excerpts at the itunes store (bought it). There is also an ancillary app we use from time to time–the phone, including Skype in prime time to save our shared mimutes.

College friend who got an ipad yesterday called. He was playing a movie from his Netflix instant
queue. Nice.

Having said all that, my experience is that the provider usually kills the golden goose, but the technology lives on. The more Apple controls, the more more abusive they will become — it’s genetically wired into company genes. Sad, but inevitable.

So for our purposes this kind of technology is perfect

I have to say that I was also an iPhone aficionado for about a year and a half, although I probably dropped calls a minimum of 10 times a day, every day, as I drive a lot and the thing can not handle jumping tower to tower according to an Apple tech at their tech support phone number. Understand that I had hacked my iPhone in every way to play with it (this had zero to do with dropped calls) and I’ve seen all that it can be capable of. Long story short, I was forced to switch the the Android phone to get on another network so my business would not continue to suffer from dropped calls.

I would say in my honest opinion, that I expected to step backwards going to any other phone, however I now feel the Android OS is probably 50 times better than the iPhone OS for a plethora of reasons including speed, intuitiveness, and most of all the ability to get apps from any developer through their web sites. I think anyone who still loves their iPhone simply hasn’t had a chance to play with a Droid for a few hours, or doesn’t really want to spend the money to switch which is understandable and is also why most PC users hate macs. They cant afford them or dont understand them. Its funny how now Apple has become to the phone and the iPad what Microsoft was to Apple users in the know.

Bottom line here…. the iPad has the same drawbacks as the iPhone most iPhone users don’t know about yet or understand. I have seen android OS tablets on the way, and anyone who is about to shell out money should wait and take a look only to understand…. faster, smarter, and unlimited by a controlling company will truly free you.

Wikipedia, for example, notes this often was “an arrangement in which employees are paid in commodities or some currency substitute (referred to as scrip), rather than with standard money. This limits employees’ ability to choose how to spend their earnings—generally to the benefit of the employer. As an example, scrip might be usable only for the purchase of goods at a “company store” where prices are set artificially high.

“While this system had long existed in many parts of the world, it became widespread in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, as industrialization left many poor, unskilled workers without other means to support themselves and their families. The practice has been widely criticized as exploitative and similar in effect to slavery, and has been outlawed in many parts of the world.”

Paying the workers in scrip and forcing them thereby to buy at the company store was the heart of the system. This was the time of the foundation of many of the great American fortunes — the times we associate with the names of Robber Barons and industrial and financial magnates such as Rockefeller, Morgan, Carnegie, Astor, Harriman, and the like.

Something similar has been approached, but until recently been never realized in the new world of data handling.

Imagine, for example, the furor that would arise today were Microsoft to engineer a new Windows operating system that would prevent totally using any word processor other than its own WORD application. In point of fact, critics have asserted that earlier versions of Windows, while not preventing using outside software, did indeed offer certain specific operating advantages to Microsoft’s own spreadsheet, display, and word handling programs. And only this year did the European Union force Microsoft to present other internet browsers than its own EXPLORER on an equal footing in the latest version of WIndows.

But Apple, always fiercely defended by its ultra-loyal devoted partisans, has seemingly managed to create its own “company store,” successfully selling one data handling device to which it totally controls normal access, the iPhone, and now presumably, the iPad to come.

I write as one who bought the original Macintosh, upgraded through the years, using the computers to manage two medical offices, even wrote two (functional but not totally successful, alas) commercially available programs for it (a physician’s California office billing relational data base program—this being surprisingly complex — and also a teleprompter simulator that simultaneously, while presenting scrolling words under speed control to a laptop user, also showed synchronized slides and videos to the audience), and has generally appreciated Apple’s offerings through the years. But I nonetheless look with growing disappointment at the company’s restrictions on outside resources, and its censorship or suppression of software it finds objectionable — sometimes disgracefully on purely competitive business grounds.

Certainly, Apple has the right to sell what it wishes in its own stores, internet-based or in reality. But preventing others from selling software to its products? That’s precisely the 21st century update of the “company store.” And forbidding outside developers to speak out about their relations with Apple — is this not Big Brother in action?

When commentators have been critical on this point, Apple devotees have responded: “It’s a company, and they can do what they want.” And also, “There are contracts for the developers, and they signed them willingly.”

Those writers are displaying a woeful misunderstanding or lack of knowledge of the law. There is a reason, for example, why in the splendid film and later television series, THE PAPER CHASE, about a beginning law student, the sternly curmudgeon professor, portrayed by the magnificent John Houseman, thundered: “I teach you to think like a lawyer!” and had, as his subject, the most important first-year law course, Contracts. Because, as every law student rapidly learns, just because both sides have signed a piece of paper with words written on it, a valid contract is not thereby created. There are many, many reasons such paper agreement can be considered invalid—and chief among them being a finding by a judge that its provisions are against “public policy.”

So as a former attorney, I think there is a reasonable probability that many if not most, of the provisions of Apple’s absurdly restrictive “contract” with developers for its iPhone (and presumably iPad) system would be voided with a court challenge, since they are clearly against certain public policies. Attempting to forbid, by a specific provision, an outside developer from speaking out about relations with Apple, and about the contractual provisions themselves, is certainly a BIG BROTHER, perhaps Fascistic, tactic! Should this muzzling not be against public policy?

Monopoly avoidance is another such public policy, and indeed, one that has led to various forms of legislation in many countries. Microsoft certainly did not have an absolute operating system monopoly in Europe, since the Macintosh OS and various open source operating systems are in widespread use there. Nonetheless the EU concluded there was a sufficient monopoly interest that Windows could no longer be permitted to favor Microsoft’s Explorer.

So how then, can Apple’s more restrictive closure of its systems for the iPhone and iPad be defended? My guess here to that this “company store” policy can also be voided, because Apple does have a quasi-monopoly, established by its restrictive operating systems, over the hardware universe it has pioneered.

Another legally valid reason for considering a contract invalid i that it is not the result of legitimate “bargaining” between the signatories, in that one side has a significant advantage. This is called a “contract of adhesion,” and can thereby be voided. Can any Apple functionary or fan maintain that an iPod, iPhone, iPad developer can bargain, on an equal footing, with Apple?

B

By way of introduction, as a young boy my dad told me stories of building radio sets. Kids in his home town risked their lives to snake through the grass up to large radio transmission antenna towers, cut the copper radial wires, and then crawled away with the wires tied to their feet. They got the wire for the coils. They built receivers and later transmitters. They went to war, came back, and had children.

When I was 10, my dad and I built a ham radio transmitter, but it was *from* *a* *kit*. So it wasn’t quite the same, but I got to learn how to put parts together, and by the time I was 15, I had torn it down, improved it, and rebuilt it several times. My friends thought I was simply “off the air,” but I was doing something that was to me even more fun.

When the Apple II+ came out, I bought one, learned BASIC, and programmed. Got a IIe and then a IIGS. I fought getting a Mac as long as I could until my IIGS was no longer fixable, and then I ran Apple II programs in emulation.

When my Mac broke, I saw that the capacitors on the mother board had swelled and burst, so I replaced them one by one until the computer ran once more. But this was not a good use of my time. As a child I replaced components on a chassis, but as a grownup doing so is nearly impossible. The boards are the new components. Plugging in boards now is what inserting a tube was years ago.

When I can afford one, I will buy an iPad. It is not because I’ve lost my tinkering soul, or because I’ve sold out. I understand that it is great to have control over our devices, but I see the iPad (and, to a lesser extent, the iPhone) as giving us more control over our world. We can write programs easily, and we can ignore the interface enough to concentrate on the content.

I commute on the subways and buses three hours a day. I read constantly, more than one novel a week. I live in New York City, but my rent is less than the cost of a (32GB) iPad. Yet I will try to save some money for one. It will give me access to the world that I can’t afford any other way.

In the future, perhaps the hardware will become so powerful that it will become insignificant, and the software will rule the device. I always worry that our information and our freedoms will be co-opted, but I see having access to more of the world’s knowledge as being a deterrent to that. Most people don’t want to tinker and probably couldn’t. With the increasing complexity of our devices, we run the real risk to having to devote our time to dealing with the machine as opposed to dealing with information exchange. The iPad may help to give us greater access, and for this I am thankful.

When all the world’s information was delivered over the air on 7 TV channels plus radio, I had no idea how much was not delivered. Now I have some appreciation for how much I can never hope to comprehend, but I also have a hunger for more. Some day, maybe in a decade, the tools will change. The next decade’s tablet will be out hammer, the smartphone our screwdriver.

I want to make a simple point. Geeks are not the best folks to get advice from. It is sad but true. If I use a computer it is to make me more productive or make me money. I do not play games on it, I do not use it as some entertainment device. It is a great tool. For entertainment I read (3 – 4 books a week), play golf, cycle and sometimes create and play music. I also like to go out, see plays, look at architecture and meet other people.

I have been fortunate to run technology companies and have employed everything from CISCO Engineers, Heuristic Phds and PEngs down to programmers and IT guys. They all sadly have the same mantra for some reason … they want stuff free cheap and they know everything and basically hate everything. Sems to be the nature of the beast.

I like paying for stuff. I hate deals and bargains. And I detest folks wanting to rip off stuff I make.

The iPad to me in an interesting interface. Imagine running Logic on a beefed-up version of an iPad as an interface. I swoon thinking of that.

I think of all the times I have rescued, over-ruled and basically out-performed folks on my Macs who were on a PC. This won’t print, that won’t open, I can’t do this etc etc … I did an entire album over the internet in 1995 ona Mac II. I was plugging into mainframes in 1989 on that same damn Mac. I was doing all the same neat stuff Cory mentions in the early days on Hypercard as well (I was running the company where he did that stuff.)

It is about results. It is about being real. It is about the folks getting what he folks want. Oh and if you happen to run large companies as I do you also like making money. And getting the shareholders what they want.

So, if the market wants an iPad… give it to them. Good business.

The only thing I want to add is Cory’s take on the death of CD-ROM – That was dead before it started. Like electronic buggy whips.

How can you do such an amazing thing? They’re called websites.

Say what you will about the App Store, but Apple has put tons of work into making Safari do amazing things, and on the iPhone and now iPad, that make it possible to make “web apps” that install locally, don’t require an internet connection, and look and feel like native apps. Oh yeah, and a lot of that effort benefits mobile browsers on other platforms too, since they’re just about all based on WebKit.

If everyone who hated the App Store spent a little more time making awesome web apps and less time whining, we wouldn’t be stuck going to the Cupertino Politburo to find cool things to do with our devices.

Steve Jobs is not only the spiritual heir to Edison but P.T. Barnum as well.

Just as smart phones and app stores are really meant for stupid people, the iPad will prove without a doubt there is a sucker born every minute.

I currently have an HTC Droid Eris through verizon and a (used to be) top of the line laptop. There is nothing that the iPad can do that either my phone or my laptop can’t.

I hope people realize it will just be another toy and I really truly hope that it flops…
And for the record… IT’S AN OVER-SIZED IPOD TOUCH!

If only it were really all that pretty. How do you hold it? No handle and quite slippery, with a slightly curved backing. Under your arm, it might slip out. Fingerprints on the overly glossy screen (unreadable under sunlight btw) It’s 1.5 lbs, which is not that “pretty” for holding for an extended period, say, to read a book. The Kindle weighs 10 oz. This is a crappy and poorly thought out form factor even from a purely superficial viewpoint.

I love beautifully designed devices. This is a half-a$$ed effort by Apple.

Respect to Apple if they can sell a product that no one has ever managed to sell well before, and respect to them if they can make it work well.

Having said that, if you want a tablet, get an Archos.

I guess it is sort of like hand-coding a website or using a WYSIWYG-editor. or to use only the command line and an editor for a software-project, or an IDE like eclipse. I mean sure, there’s the purity and nerdiness to the archaic side, but there are moments where I don’t want to be bothered with it. And for those moments i think devices like the iPad are a good choice.

And also I believe that the iPad is not the messiah bringing us the digital revolution. As you pointed out, this revolution will not come from a company who has to make a profit. But honestly, it’s not their job. It’s our job. And when the revolution comes, I believe with safari the iPad is well-equiped to give access to the new content. DRM sure is crap and should burn in hell as the drugged braind who invented it. But those are not arguments for/against the iPad…

But I don’t see what’s wrong with Apple products being out there. After all, in a market that has space for Slankets, meat-based business cards, and at least three major gadget blogs, isn’t there place for someone selling simple, locked-down versions of our gadgets from the future? :)

I run a small website for an MMO community, and have flash all over the place. I even have trouble getting that to work sometimes, and can’t imagine what’s going to be involved in converting to html5. Basically, it’s not going to happen. I wonder how many other small sites will care to adapt.

Still, I preordered my iPad and am eagerly awaiting it’s arrival. Can’t wait to sneak in a Netflix movie at work! (Mhaura)haha!

(Does anyone hear that rumbling in the distance? Sounds like the pitter-patter of fanboys and haters preparing for battle…)

*hides*