If you follow me on Twitter you know I’ve said some pretty snarky things about the iPad today. But honestly, I don’t see any empty clothes on the streets of Saint Paul.
To be clear: I think the iPad will be wildly successful, commercially. But that’s not the point. It hasn’t moved computing forward like the Apple acolytes would have you believe. The iPad has moved media consumption forward, but not enough to save the incumbent media corporations that still don’t get it. I mean, really, US$207.48 for an annual iPad subscription to the Wall Street Journal when an annual print subscription is just a little more than half as much. Rupert, here’s a clue: Stick a fork in your old monopolistic media model; it’s done. It’s not coming back.
The iPad has actually moved computing back, it’s just that we don’t yet know how far. Here’s why: All the cool kids will be developing for the iPad instead of the Mac. The Omni Group has already announced it’s tabling development efforts on its Mac software in order to focus on iPad development. Indeed, the one app that turned my head on the iPad was OmniGraffle, and sure enough, it shipped.
Cory Doctorow explains nicely why he won’t buy an iPad, citing the Maker Manifesto: “If you can’t open it, you don’t own it. Screws not glue.” Doctorow reminisces that Apple’s first products, up through the Apple ][+ “came with schematics for the circuit boards, and birthed a generation of hardware and software hackers who upended the world for the better.” And—wait for it—invokes William Gibson’s description of a consumer:
“Something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It’s covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth… no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote.”
Joel Johnson has an excellent counterpoint to one of Doctorow’s points on Gizmodo.com.
But Johnson fails to address the walled garden and sole provider nature of the iTunes store. iPad users can load whatever they like on their shiny new devices; as long as whatever they like has been approved by Apple. Dan Gillmor has queried the New York Times, USA Today, and Wall Street Journal as to “whether Apple can unilaterally remove their apps if it doesn’t like their content.” Gillmor hasn’t received any responses. The answer may be different for these corporate publications, but the answer for the rest of us is clear: Of course it can.
So, is this how it ends? A war between the makers and the consumers?
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