> All she knows is, "Wouldn't it be cool if my iPad had ... ?" or "Wow, I wish I could ... " And the tool she has not only gives her no ability to explore those possibilities, it looks like it's designed to actively impede her from exploring them.
While I understand this argument has no right or wrong answers, I can't say I agree to the above statement. Just by the virtue of having a well-designed piece of hardware in her hand, she can start asking these questions. If it was an open platform, it would most likely have been of lower quality, not as ground-breaking, and she wouldn't have had it in her hands in the first place (I'd love to be wrong here, but I'm afraid I can't find the evidence to prove myself wrong). The fact that it has "apps", written by real people can actually guide her to search online what it takes to create these apps, from which she can then find out about open platforms, programming languages, (even FPGAs!) and development in general.
I understand that talking about our curious, hypothetical protagonist we can prove anything we agree with, but without an extremely approachable, polished device it would simply not appeal to as many people. Most of these people will just be users, but some will be curious, and those are the ones we're talking about. Since hobbyist platforms are ubiquitous, you don't need to create yet another hackable platform, you need to get them interested.
I'm purposefully holding back anything specific to the iPad. Nor I, nor the majority of HN readers have even held the device, but knowing Apple, I think it can vastly increase the ubiquity of general purpose computing even more, and make good UI and design be expected. And that's a win for everyone.
If it was an open platform, it would most likely have been of lower quality
That doesn't follow at all. Is Mac OS X of "lower quality" because anybody can write and distribute apps for it? Does the existence of the "allow non-market apps" checkbox in Android make it worse?
> If it was an open platform, it would most likely have been of lower quality, not as ground-breaking
The issue isn't that the platform is open/closed. Open or closed is a binary decision that Apple made that was entirely separate from their user interface decisions.
It just happens that most of the development money is behind closed products.
NOTE Before anyone on here says anything more about how much better/worse open systems are vs closed systems when it comes to user interface and integration, think about these points:
* Do you feel that at any point during the development of the iPhone or iPad, Apple's designers would have been restricted had the platform been open? (By designers I mean user interface designers; please don't give me some smug, "they couldn't have incorporated a close-source library," answer)
* Do you feel that if Apple were to release the source code to the iPhoneOS tomorrow that the usability of all iPhones would immediately suffer and there would be mass panic as people were not able to continue using their iPhones?
* Is there any real reason that Apple couldn't have a 'devmode' switch that voids your warranty, but allows you to run whatever you want on it? Note: I'm not talking about jailbreaking. I'm talking about an official switch that flips the only-run-signed-binaries bit off, but at the sacrifice of Apple supporting your further actions.
Apple is all about control. One example, is when they removed the built-in ability to theme the operating system (in OS9) when building OSX. I remember that the justification back then was the Steve Jobs wanted every Mac that was running OSX to have the same interface so that: (1) it would be highly recognizable and (2) people wouldn't have to worry about differences between different setups.
What gets my goat about this is that they were selling computers to the masses. They weren't setting up some sort of corporate infrastructure or university computer lab where all the computers must be the same. What if I want my computer to be different than someone else's? What if I don't care about whether or not someone else can sit down and use my computer? What if X modification makes me more productive? I feel like if I were an Apple employee and voiced such concerns at a planning meeting I would be looking at a pink slip, the way that Steve Jobs runs his boat.
I guess the point of all this is that I see a lot of the electronics industry going the way of 'dumbing down for the masses,' but not just specific products... EVERYTHING. Just look at what happened with TechTV/G4TV, now it's no longer about tech, or even gaming. It's just a SpikeTV, "Let's watch some wrestling" network. The same with SyFy. I feel like this is the start of a 'race to the bottom' in the industry.
While I understand this argument has no right or wrong answers, I can't say I agree to the above statement. Just by the virtue of having a well-designed piece of hardware in her hand, she can start asking these questions. If it was an open platform, it would most likely have been of lower quality, not as ground-breaking, and she wouldn't have had it in her hands in the first place (I'd love to be wrong here, but I'm afraid I can't find the evidence to prove myself wrong). The fact that it has "apps", written by real people can actually guide her to search online what it takes to create these apps, from which she can then find out about open platforms, programming languages, (even FPGAs!) and development in general.
I understand that talking about our curious, hypothetical protagonist we can prove anything we agree with, but without an extremely approachable, polished device it would simply not appeal to as many people. Most of these people will just be users, but some will be curious, and those are the ones we're talking about. Since hobbyist platforms are ubiquitous, you don't need to create yet another hackable platform, you need to get them interested.
I'm purposefully holding back anything specific to the iPad. Nor I, nor the majority of HN readers have even held the device, but knowing Apple, I think it can vastly increase the ubiquity of general purpose computing even more, and make good UI and design be expected. And that's a win for everyone.