Given all the hype and the rush, and the reviews of Apple's tablet, I have been following both sides of the argument. I've seen Cory Doctorow's post on BoingBoing about how the tablet represents a step backwards as well as heard Gruber its virtues. Gruber sounds more like Apple mouthpiece in some of his posts but I won't go into that.
Today seemed a good time to write something about it. Time magazine carried Jobs on its front page title 'Inside Steve's Pad'.
I was a Mac user once, drawn by the argument of how open Mac OS was, how, since it was less restrictive than the Windows environment, it made sense to work on it. Then I had my interaction with its development kit. I still cannot unsubscribe from Apple developer tools mailing list, try as much I may. I am not a developer but I do have a fair amount of interaction with the computing environment I am involved with which requires me to tweak, or in Cory's and Mark Pilgrim's words, tinker with it.
I am afraid Apple, or for that matter any other environment I have worked on doesn't let me do that as much as Linux does. I won't go into the advantages of working with Linux or disadvantages of working with Mac OS or the Windows are, but suffice it to say that Linux is the best of the OSes out there, undoubtedly in the server domain and pretty much there in the desktop domain. With Oracle dealing a death blow to Open Solaris, things are only looking better for Linux in the server market.
Compiz can beat the shit out of Mac OS if you are speaking about presentation.
Now for the talk about the iPad and the openness (or the lack thereof) that people are criticizing it about. I am one of them. It started with the iPod, carried forward into the iPhone and now the iPad. As Cory mentions, 'incumbents made bad revolutionaries'. Apple's ability to grow now depends on its ability as every other company has tried before and repeatedly is to restrict it's consumers' (not customers anymore, consumers who have to be fed perpetually with crap) ability to modify the experience in any way and that is a very bad idea. History will tell you why.
For the tinkering part. Gruber and many other argue that most consumers need a working device, not something you'd need to tinker with. 'So simple even a caveman can do it', say Geico's ads. No, we don't need the iPad to be more open because we want everyone can tinker with it. We want it to be open so that anyone who knows any shit about how software works can tinker with it and make it better. How long before you have to wait breath abated for Apple to release a point release? When it comes, some or most of the things on your wishlist is either partially left out or outright ignored. We don't things to be open so that we can copy Apple's software and sell it as our own. If you worry about piracy, take some lessons from RIAA about how to sue people to oblivion.
We want to tinker with it we want to make things better for others. Others, get it?
For all the hoopla going on about how iPad will revolutionize the web scene; bollocks. Screen size mattering or not, the tablets won't change the web or publishing business as much as mobile phone changed the web. They did, but not much as every pundits had predicted. Publishing apps is easy you say? Unfortunately, I can't afford the $99 developer account.
So, in all its awesomeness that consumers flock to, the iPad to me is a show-off for jerks, much like the iPhone.
