04/04/2010

So the iPad has hit the store shelves.

I’ve read a couple of articles that talked about how awesome it is, and how it’s really going to revolutionize stuff, and yada yada. I agree that it’s a new thing, and it’s all nice and shiny, and people are excited about it. But I also feel like in a year there are going to be ten competitors doing the same thing, and we’ll be able to choose what really fits us best.

Personally, I don’t think the iPad will fit me.

Cory Doctorow over at Boing Boing wrote a great piece about why it won’t fit him either. To quote:

Then there’s the device itself: clearly there’s a lot of thoughtfulness and smarts that went into the design. But there’s also a palpable contempt for the owner. I believe in the stirring words of the Maker Manifesto: if you can’t open it, you don’t own it. Screws, not glue. The original Apple II came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better. If you wanted your kid to grow up to be a confident, entrepreneurial, and firmly in the camp that believes that you should forever be rearranging the world to make it better, you bought her an Apple II.

The way you improve your iPad isn’t to figure out how it works and make it better. The way you improve the iPad is to buy iApps. Buying an iPad for your kids isn’t a means of jump-starting the realization that the world is yours to take apart and reassemble; it’s a way of telling your offspring that even changing the batteries is something you have to leave to the professionals.

Time will tell whether Apple will succeed in the same amazing way they did with the iPod, or whether this will be just another yawn in computing history.