Gizmodo’s Joel Johnson, responding to Cory Doctorow:
The old guard has The Fear. They see the iPad and the excitement it has engendered and realize that they’ve made themselves inessential—or at least invisible. They’ve realized that it’s possible to make a computer that doesn’t break, doesn’t stop working, doesn’t need constant tinkering. Unlike a car, it’s possible to design a computer that is bulletproof. It just turns out that one of the ways to make that work is to lock it down. That sucks, but it certainly appears to be a better solution than design by committee gave us for the last couple of decades.
Stuff like this is why the iPad excites me. Not only is it going to be dead simple to use, it’s the first truly new paradigm in interface design we’ve seen since… well, the iPhone. It really is like personal computing’s Wii.
I can respect the simplification (and masterful design at that), but I am leery of the control.
As a device that has it’s place in the overall spectrum…yes! The future of computing–I pray not.
I think it’s inevitable at this point, with piracy concerns and other factors. Steam does basically the same thing for games – it creates a platform with control to generate an easy purchasing and playing experience.
Editorial-style control is a different story.
Yeah, that is true.. but the hardware lockdown in conjunction with the software platform is what is slightly disturbing to me.
I emphasis slight. As long as all our devices don’t morph into something so top-down restrictive, I have no problem with this. It can definitely serve a purpose.
Hmm. Why did this post down here? Thx P2?