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Re: Cory Doctorow on iPad, Apple ][+

mdj wrote:

On Apr 6, 1:22 pm, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:


mdj wrote:


On Apr 6, 3:50 am, "Michael J. Mahon" <mjma...@aol.com> wrote:



Bah, humbug.



I completely agree, Dave.



That is my problem with "magic" devices that offer no point of
entry for understanding/hacking short of destruction.



I agree that if it were the only game in town, it'd be a very bad
thing ...


Well, for Apple, such devices are pretty much the only game...unless
you become a "developer".



To be fair, MacOS comes bundled with the developer tools and all the
documentation (including the Intel processor documentation). "Sign up"
is free and you can pay more if you want 'real' support as a
developer. By contrast, Visual Studio Professional is $550.


I'm delighted, and a little surprised, to hear that!


I don't know what the numbers are, but perhaps the number of (actual)
developers for the iPhone/iPad are comparable to the number of
scripters, but it would surprise me...



It's not even close. I hear a semi-constant whine from the web
developers I know about the lack of Flash support on the iPhone (and
how it's stifling innovation etc). I'm in the (perhaps minority) group
that considers the lack of Flash a *feature* :-)


Now if we could just get rid of GUIs and HTML programmers could get
back to working on solving problems instead of eye candy...and most
of the world could get back to work instead of surfing the web!   ;-)

(Hey, I'm *kidding*--what would do with our time without it?
We might have to actually *talk* to someone!  ;-)


We are in danger of losing our collective ability to create the
mechanisms on which we have all come to depend.  (Reminds me of
what I used to consider far-fetched science fiction scenarios.)



Meanwhile, the open source community has built an entire operating
system and application stack for which the entire source code is
available and hackable. Combined with a Linux OS, the modern PC
architecture is almost as open as the Apple II. The only part of the
system that is closed is the hardware inteface to the graphics
subsystem (and I really wish the nVidia's and ATI's of the world would
pull their collective heads out of their behinds on that score).



So I think future generations are for the moment "safe".


Actually, I'm more worried about the kids who used to develop an
interest in (and some confidence in their capacity to) program a
machine to do interesting things.  I'm not sure what platform
caters to them these days.



Lego Mindstorms :-)


I would have guessed Arduino and it's kin, but yes.

And Make magazine is a stalwart attempt to rejuvenate hacking.


Of course, given the economics of the situation, we would never
actually lose that ability--it would just become concentrated in
fewer and less innovative (more risk-averse) corporate hands.



I pretty much agree with all this in principle, but in practice
products like the iPad just echo how ubiquitous information technology
has become. It's target market is non-technical people, and I have a
feeling they're going to flock to it like seagulls. The 'just works'
mantra is a compelling one I admit even for myself who spends a fair
amount of time messing around with the 'low level' stuff.



Radio and Television work because people like to consume media. The
latest generation of gadgetry just reflects the fact that 90% of the
population that's "on the internet" just want to consume media in a
convenient way. For a while, the beige-box PC was the most convenient
and cost effective way to do that, but not anymore.



For the rest of us, the opportunity exists to fire up Emacs, and get
busy tinkering with the internals of what is now a pretty advanced
system.


I agree with that, too--I just regret how much more daylight there
is between "users" and "makers" these days...ah, well.



I often find myself torn by newer languages and development tools that
promise to turn users into makers, and the desire to see makers
actually understand the substrate they're building on. I suspect in
that regard we are very similar :-)


I certainly share those desires!


BTW, did anyone else think of Sculley's Knowledge Navigator when the
iPad showed up?


I sure did.  I wish I had a copy of that "concept video".  Several
companies made "anytime, anywhere device" videos around that time,
HP included.  ;-)



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WdS4TscWH8


Thank you!  ;-)

That reminded me of all the work being done on "intelligent agents"
by Apple, HP, and others.  It's a shame that MS's "Bob" so totally
poisoned that well for at least a generation.  ;-)


Of course, they all hark back to Alan Kay's "dynabook", and before that
to Ted Nelson's "hypertext/hypermedia" vision.



Last I heard Alan was living the dream with Negroponte and Squeak on
the OLPC, which was good to hear.


Good for him.  The last time I saw him (a few years back), he seemed
worn down and on the verge of getting crochety...


Today it likely calls to mind the ubiquitous "tablets" of Star Trek:
The Next Generation.



:-) Apple's marketing was drenched in images of their screens showing
stills from the new Star Trek movie for a while before the iPad
appeared, and it's still featuring those images once you wade past the
iPad marketing to the Mac pages.

Master class subliminal advertising if ever I've seen it ;-)


And Apple has always been the master of "product placement".  If you
judge by the movies, you'd think that 90% of the world uses Macs!  ;-)

-michael

NadaNet and AppleCrate II: parallel computing for Apple II computers!
Home page: http://home.comcast.net/~mjmahon

"The wastebasket is our most important design
tool--and it's seriously underused."