I just finished reading Cory Doctrow’s latest piece for BoingBoing, entitled “Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either)“. In it, he makes a few points that I feel need to be addressed.
First:
[L]ook at that Marvel app (just look at it). I was a comic-book kid, and I’m a comic-book grownup, and the thing that made comics for me was sharing them. If there was ever a medium that relied on kids swapping their purchases around to build an audience, it was comics. And the used market for comics! It was — and is — huge, and vital. I can’t even count how many times I’ve gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I’d missed, or sample new titles on the cheap. [...]
So what does Marvel do to “enhance” its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous [sic] sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites.
On this point, I actually quite agree with Doctrow. Unfortunately, however, this is the direction that all consumable media seems to be headed. Consumer content, in the near future, will all be downloaded media. This started with downloadable music nearly ten years ago, but has since grown to include books (see: Kindle, nook), movies (see: Xbox Live, PlayStation Store, iTunes Store, Amazon Video on Demand), and video games (see: Wii Shop Channel, DSi Shop, Xbox Live, PlayStation Store, iTunes Store).
I’ve said for years that “the disc is dead”, meaning that physical media is on a rapid decline. The Corporation doesn’t make much on second-hand sales (via places like used CD and video game shops), so they’ve spent years trying to find ways to get rid of that secondary sale. With downloadable media, they’ve done exactly that.
That’s not to say that the disc is necessarily extinct, just that its life as a primary medium is rapidly coming to an end. There will always be the guy who wants to have a stack of stuff on a shelf somewhere. The tactile experience is important to a lot of people, but those people are very quickly becoming an overwhelmed minority.
So, gone soon will be the days of swapping CDs, DVDs, video games, books, and even comic books with your friends and neighbors in hopes of finding something new and exciting on which to spend your money. The future is full of 30-second samples, game demos, book excerpts, and movie trailers. Whether you like it or not (and I don’t), this is an inevitability.
Next:
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 — really 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 ][+ 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 ][+.
But with the iPad, it seems like Apple's model customer is that same stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother as appears in a billion renditions of "that's too complicated for my mom" (listen to the pundits extol the virtues of the iPad and time how long it takes for them to explain that here, finally, is something that isn't too complicated for their poor old mothers).
Here, Doctrow is at least partially off his rocker.
Sure, the hardware is locked down, but how is that different from any other component in any modern system? You don't see people modifying motherboards or video cards anymore, do you? Do you find people opening their cell phones to install high-gain antennas? What about a neighbor down the street who has upgraded his microwave to give it more power?
No? I didn't think so.
As platforms grow in complexity, they create a necessity for obscurity and eschew openness. You need a degree in Computer Engineering to even begin to understand the complex nature of most modern electronic systems. Even if the latest, greatest gadget shipped with a full system schematic and detailed pin-out charts for every IC, the vast majority of us would have absolutely no idea what to do with that information.
Sure, it would be nice to know that any given system is wide open and modifiable as the Apple ][, but let's face it: that's a long-bygone era.
Now, as for the software hackers? This is easily one of the best-documented platforms available. Sure, you have to pony up $99/yr to run your own code on your own iPad (which I disagree with), but the tools and information necessary to build software for the iPad are free and well-documented.
To further this point, just take a look at the phenomenal success of independent, part-time developers on the iPhone OS platform. There are no guarantees in life, but there are enough one-man operations making healthy earnings in the App Store that it’s impossible to dismiss as a fluke.
Furthermore, the 30-pin dock connector is well-documented and accessible from the iPhone SDK. If you want to build an add-on hardware component for the iPad (or the iPhone, or the iPod touch), you can.
Continuing:
The way you improve your iPad isn’t to figure out how it works and making 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.
This is so narrow-minded that I almost laughed it off completely. There are so many opportunities to teach the “take it apart, learn how it works, and put it back together” ethic to your kids that any argument to the contrary is absolutely absurd.
Don’t believe me? Take apart your vacuum cleaner, build a t-shirt cannon, or build a high-end radio-controlled car from a hobby kit.
Moving on:
I think that the press has been all over the iPad because Apple puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who’ll promise them that their audience will go back to paying for their stuff. The reason people have stopped paying for a lot of “content” isn’t just that they can get it for free, though: it’s that they can get lots of competing stuff for free, too.
On this, I mostly agree. Major media outlets in all formats have thus far completely missed opportunities to evolve with the modern state of technology. Instead, they’ve looked for means by which to resist the need to revisit their archaic, out-dated business models. Music publishers and movie studios, for example, are so busy trying to sue the hell out of anyone who illegally downloads anything that they’re not trying to figure out why these people are so unwilling to pay for content.
Finally:
Gadgets come and gadgets go. The iPad you buy today will be e-waste in a year or two (less, if you decide not to pay to have the battery changed for you). The real issue isn’t the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.
This is pure, unadulterated fear-mongering.
Do I think that the iPad and the strategies surrounding it are flawless? No, I don’t.
One example: I haven’t written about it here, but I’m not a big fan of Apple’s approval process for the App Store. I don’t mind the idea of a central repository, but I think that Apple has so far fumbled in its role as a gatekeeper.
Doctrow’s EFF-fueled rage against the iPad, however, is pretty predictable. He’s a high-profile activist for open, transparent systems (even which such a system is infeasible), so of course he’s going to launch this sort of volley against the iPad. I don’t think that he totally missed the mark, but I’m also not convinced that he’s being completely genuine.
{ 5 comments }
Setting aside the fact that you and I fundamentally disagree on the fate of digital media (but “near future”, really?), because this is probably irrelevant to physical vs. digital, I think you’re underestimating a) the ability of people to find ways around DRM, and b) the desire of people to share media with each other (which leads to a, as necessity breeds invention). I still download from P2P and BitTorrent regularly to try out new things both from friends I know and people I’ve never met. This is the pretty typical of our generation. All they’re doing by restricting this ability is making it impossible to have a legal way to do this (e.g. time-based transfer of ownership, a pretty simple thing to implement).
People have proven (to the music industry, and the movie industry is starting to learn) that they simply won’t put up with DRM. I think it’s easy to visualize a DRM-less future, whether led by producer or consumer. The future is not full of 30-second clips and trials, it is full of illegal downloading, hacking, jailbreaking, and other means of DRM-avoidance. Unless of course, the industries lead the way to finding legal means of sharing.
The plethora of “digital copy” DVDs, the iTunes Plus move for all its music, and the complete lack of effort at coming up with new copy protection schemes show that the producers are starting to get it. But there are far too many businessmen out there that refuse to believe that people are fundamentally moral, and insist on treating us all like criminals, in the name of greed and fear.
Re: Section 2
Here’s a metaphor for you. Say there’s a brand new fridge, the iFridge. And what if it were one of the most efficient fridges in the world. It’s the cheapest fridge to run of all the ones out there, a veritable evolution in economy. Now what if there were drawers in the fridge that were locked. And there were only two shelves; there is room for a third shelf on the bottom, but no way to install it. If you pick the locks, or if you mount new shelves, consider your warranty null and void. Would you buy this fridge? There are a lot of people who would buy it, use it in its locked down form, either knowing or not knowing that they are being shorted space. And there are people like me, torn between whether to buy a less-efficient fridge with mounting brackets anda standardized modular drawer framework, or buy the iFridge, supporting this ideal I fundamentally disagree with, just to be able to take advantage of the efficiency. And now imagine that I already have a mini-fridge, and it’s not even full. That’s kinda where I’m at with the iPad.
I agree with the your point that abstraction is necessary as things get more complex; I just think it’s premature for a full-fledged computer. I still have a hard time with laptops basically only allowing changing out the RAM and battery without doing some pretty major surgery. Microwaves and TVs still allow the possibility to open them up , but it would just be kind of pointless to do so; it’s a single-use device.
Is the iPad a single-use device? Maybe so, depending on the definition. Is media consumption/creation a single use? Not to me. And it sure isn’t being marketed that way. People still put up the with the iPhone’s locked-down nature because every phone was originally a single-use device, and as they have become more complex and powerful, most people haven’t caught on. The desire for customization and the inherent hardware capacity for it has increased, but they have stayed just as closed. I hate this. Part of the reason I decided to get an iPhone (apart from the fact that it’s only just now suffering any real kind of competition) was knowing I could jailbreak and take advantage of effectively a hand-sized Pentium 3 with a cell-phone built in.
When I see what kinds of possibilities exist for the iPad, and those possibilities surpass both my iPhone and surpass (or even rival) a low-end laptop, and when the jailbreak community hacks it to run OS X (and maybe even Linux or Windows), I may consider the possibility of making it my next computer. But if it’s not going to fully-replace a computer, I don’t see the draw.
If I understand your metaphor correctly, you’re comparing a standard computer (the “plain ol’ fridge”) to an iPad (the “iFridge”). Is that correct?
If so, the entire discussion that follows is based on what I consider to be a false premise. The iPad is not meant to be a standard computer. It’s not meant to replace a laptop, nor is it meant to replace a smartphone. Steve Jobs was pretty clear in his product announcement: this is a third tier of products, which rests squarely between what’s in your desk and what’s in your pocket. This is the kind of thing that goes on your coffee table or on your nightstand next to the bed.
If I misunderstood the metaphor, please correct me.
You still disagree with the closed nature of the system, and that’s fine. I’m obviously willing to accept that in this case.
Sort of. It could be iPad vs. laptop or iPad vs. smartphone, since where it fits on the continuum is self-proclaimed to be between the two. My hasty premise is basically, to me, the higher-powered it is, the more open I need it to be. For a microwave/toaster, who cares anymore; for an older non-smartphone like my old LG enV, it sucks but what can you do; for a this-gen smartphone, it’s to the point where I am unwilling to accept it (since viable alternatives exist); and for a laptop/desktop, it’s just plain unfathomable to me not to have nigh-unlimited control over the system. Since it lies between the latter two categories, I’m beyond the point where I could justify investing in a closed system.
I agree with you on Section 3. Kids will always find things to take apart. If you’re lucky (or unlucky), your kid might take apart the iPad anyway, not just things society tells them to take apart. That point is pretty bunk. Same as Section 5. He has a point that we may be moving in that direction and that is scary, but the idea that one device or even one company could instantly put us there is as laughable as Obama single-handedly transforming American into an authoritarian socialist state.
On Section 4, he’s right. People won’t pay for what they can get for free. And, constrasts pretty brilliantly with my argument on Section 1 about DRM. And we’ve come full circle.
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