Cory Doctorow has a great rant on Boing Boing about why he won’t buy an iPad and why he thinks you shouldn’t buy one either. It’s a great article, full of passion and well thought through arguments. Problem is it’s mostly bunkum.
He makes a number of points in the article that are worth looking at one by one.
Incumbents made bad revolutionaries
His argument here seems to be that Apple is more interested in using the great technical features of the iPad to either restrict its use or find a way to make people pay for it.
The example he uses is the Marvel iPad comic app. The argument is the app – and by extension the iPad – is bad because, for example, you can’t lend someone else your comic. Put aside the fact that it’s really an anti-DRM rant (which I mostly agree with) he forgets one simple thing. The device actually makes it extraordinarily easy to lend someone your comic – hand them your iPad. It is in this way exactly as easy to lend someone a comic on your iPad as it is with a physical comic book.
And if Apple gets this right, they’ll help craft – or at least speed up – the development of a whole new computing and media model - tablet computing.
That leads nicely into the next argument…
Infantilizing hardware
Tonight I had leftover pizza for tea. I heated it in the microwave and then put it under the grill for a minute to crisp it up. I punched some buttons on the microwave and it did what it needed to do – help me consume my dinner. I don’t need to be able to take it apart, repait it and install Linux on it. I just need it to work – like my television, my bed and my table.
But Cory’s argument here seems to suggest that if I’m only using a device to consume something I’m somewhat less likely to survive in the brave new world of the 21st century than someone who can take a device apart and put it back together.
I can enjoy consuming a book even if I don’t know how to pull the spine off, reorder the pages and put it back together again. It should be okay that not everyone wants to take everything apart all the time.
Boing Boing is a site supported by ad revenue. I bet there’s a strong correlation between the rates for those adverts and the number of people simply consuming the site – page hits or unique visitors. I hope the number of people actively interacting with the site by adding comments also factors in there but I doubt simple consumers of the site take a back seat when it’s time to crunch the numbers.
Wal-Martization of the software channel
According to Wikipedia there are around 150,000 third-party applications in the App Store. If Apple was the only computer maker in a regulated market I’d be more likely to accept the claim that “the iStore lock-in doesn’t make life better for Apple’s customers or Apple’s developers.”
But again this is an anti-DRM argument, that’s not (or shouldn’t be) restricted to the iPad. Clearly developers and customers aren’t stupid. That’s why more than three billion downloads have been made from the App Store.
The Wal-Mart analogy is a bad one too – at least on one level. The development of the iPod Touch, the iPhone and now the iPad has not seen a massive takeover of an existing market, it’s fostering a massive expansion of a new, previously small market.
Journalism is looking for a daddy figure
It’s not the device’s fault if journalists and bloggers get sucked into the spin from Apple’s marketing team. Indeed, arguing that Rupert Murdoch is silly because he thinks putting up a pay-wall will save his newspaper empire in the long-run should not be confined to discussion about the iPad.
Gadgets come and gadgets go
I’ve got some sympathy for the argument that “the real issue isn’t the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.” But that’s the real crux of the whole post. Until he gets to here, Cory seems to be arguing that the iPad can’t won’t and shouldn’t change things. But here, he pretty much gives up the ghost and you almost get the sense that he knows it will.
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I agree completely, Robert. Cory’s complaints annoyed me. In a world where there were no other computers, sure, but we don’t live in that world. The argument that Apple hates users and wants to take away their ability to do stuff with their computers would also make more sense if we didn’t have, say, OS X…?
In summary, though I usually agree with Cory, he needs to STFU or back up his arguments with less rhetoric this time.
Your parents rock, Chris.
But good points all around. Once I figured the iPad was basically a consumption device and not meant to be a tablet computer, I chilled out a bit.
Mine arrives on Monday, a birthday present from my parents.
While I can see where Cory’s coming from, most of his arguments boil down to “this is a slippery slope” and I’m annoyed, a bit, that he can’t see the “let’s see how cool we can make this, though” side of things… If it lets people use the things that others have created, awesome. If it lets me view, read, learn, make or listen to something I wouldn’t have otherwise, that’s always a good thing.
Hi there,
Lots of good points. The big one is that iPad is designed to be easy to use and to work.
Cory’s arguments about DRM are about the business model, not the device. The Marvel Comics app could easily allow sharing of files (the iBookstore supports electronic loaning of your books via bluetooth or Wi-Fi). Both people need iPads but you could buy Foundation and lend it to me. While it is leant to me, you can’t read it. When I give it back, I can’t. Just like a real book only electronically.
Or you could go the hard copy route Robert describes.
The point that get lost in the iPad debate is that it is a transitional device between a computer and a phone. It isn’t a netbook or a desktop – it is designed for easy mobile computing and for the convenience of the user.
One of the iPad’s key markets are people like the guy in my office who will never buy a netbook because there’s too much effort getting it to work properly. He wants to browse the web, do some email and maybe swap a presentation or two and would but an iPad precisely because it is not a laptop. It works basically out of the box.
As for the points about Apple’s restrictive practices, well they are just silly. If I buy a copy of Mini Ninjas for the XBox, I can’t play it on my PS3. I have to buy another copy of the same game against to use a different platform.
One of the reasons for Apple’s so-called control of the apps is that a key selling point of the iPhone, iPad or iWhatever is the experience. Once you are familar with the device, you can use pretty much any app.
I’ll stop my rant now with one final point. There are other tablet options out there. One of the reasons they haven’t captured the imagination is that they are too much like a netbook. Apple have actually, in my opinion, been very smart with how they’ve pitched and sold the iPad.
Cheers,
Damon