iPad

[Richard Pieri]

On Apr 10, 2010, at 9:46 PM, Martin Owens wrote:
> 
> Right, and your microwave oven has add on third party modules called
> "food" that can only be bought from the microwave manufacturer's food
> store and in order to use the microwave with non-certified "food"
> products you have to unlock it breaking the warranty. Bovine-droppings!

That... is a ridiculous analogy.  Now, if you want to make a good kitchen appliance analogy you could compare iPad to, say, a Cuisinart Elite food processor that only works with compatible Cuisinart blades.  But I don't hear a hue and cry over the proprietary parts from chefs around the world so maybe it isn't as big a deal as you're making it out to be.

> Consider the idea that there is a set of functionality that is intended
> and that one of those functions is clearly a programmable, Turing
> complete extension system. Why then is this functionality controlled,
> centralised and vetted? It is nothing short of a product for sale that
> is in fact never truly owned.

Got it in about 5. :)

Seriously, you are making a mistake if you think of Apple as either a hardware or a software company.  Apple is neither.  Apple is a user experience company. You don't buy hardware or software from Apple; you buy the experience.  The hardware and software are the delivery mechanism.  In order to deliver that experience to everyone, universally, the environment must be controlled and centrally vetted.  The alternative is malware havens and UI monstrosities.

I don't want to be a sysadmin when I go home at night.   I don't want to fight with 5 different applications with 52 different, incompatible design philosophies.  I don't want to worry about kernel updates breaking my audio playback.  I don't want to spend hours diagnosing some new incompatibility between GPE and OpenSync.  These are some of the "wonderful" benefits of free and open source software that I've had to deal with over the years on my own systems.  I like being a sysadmin but there's a point beyond which I want to be able to put it aside for a while.  Apple gives me that freedom.  If the free and open source alternatives ever deliver a superior experience then I'll see about switching back.

--Rich P.