This last weekend the first iPads shipped to early adopters in the general public, including me. Like many of us in the technology business, I’ve kept a weather eye on the first impressions of many folks on the web, and friends in the industry. Most of these reactions are the stuff of geek discussion, and not terribly enlightening either about the device and its potential future uses, or the direction in which our industry is moving.
But one exchange is worth analysis and our attention, whatever the details of the device and our first impressions. Cory Doctorow, open-source freedom fighter extraordinaire and speculative fiction author, published a widely discussed, negative essay concerning the very idea of the iPad. By now, you’ve probably read it, or seen the link. If you haven’t, you should.
Cory’s essential points are two (with apologies if I’m missing something serious). First, that open platforms (think Linux, Android, FreeBSD, etc) are structurally designed to foster innovation at minimal entry cost, and with minimum friction to the innovator, and minimal interference between the innovator and the eventual consumer of those innovations. Second, Doctorow argues that the justification everyone is citing for the closed system — “making computers easy for mainstream users” — is insulting to mainstream users.
Joel Johnson responds that Doctorow’s principal arguments miss the point. In particular, that openness and innovation are not causally linked to the extent that open-source and Linux advocates claim. That innovation will thrive on the “nearly closed” platforms like the iPad and iPhone.
I’m watching TV almost exclusively from the Internet nowadays, and mostly by subscribing on iTunes and watching in HD from my AppleTV. This works incredibly well, once you have the season downloaded and ready to play.
The downloading process exposes some seriously irritating bugs and/or design flaws in iTunes, however. I live at the northern edge of civilization on an island (well, my Canadian friends would say the southern edge, and after reading coverage of the Tea Party Convention I’m inclined to agree…) and I have “difficult” internet connectivity. This is no fault of my local ISP, who do an amazing job considering where I live.
But I often encounter TCP resets in long downloads given the Motorola Canopy point-to-point wireless I use, and iTunes really behaves badly. Despite having typed my Store password to begin the download, upon resumption, iTunes will ask me again. And again. And again. Possibly once for every stream that needs to be resumed, but it doesn’t seem to be as well patterned as that. The application hasn’t restarted, I haven’t logged out, it’s the same hardware underneath, why can’t the application cache the Store password used to initiate a given set of downloads for the duration? Perhaps only asking me to retype if the application closes and restarts?
This seems trivial, but if it happens frequently, and you’re not sitting in front of the computer to type your password whenever needed, downloading a season of episodes can literally take days. Three thus far, in fact, for a show I’m subscribing to at the moment. With 29 more items to go. Basically, it’s going to take a week of retyping my iTunes Store password to get the entire season down, given my internet connection (which is normally pretty decent for browsing and other purposes).
Doesn’t anybody in Cupertino test this type of use case?
It’s been a week since the iPad announcement, and like many in this business, I’ve followed the opinions and punditry. My personal view is that the iPad is going to be a great product for Apple. It will also — and this isn’t quite the same as being a great product — be a commercial success.
There’s a lot of criticism about what the device doesn’t have built-in, or doesn’t support. And there’s been a lot of “why, it’s nothing but a big iPod Touch.” And the usual lists of “must have but missing” features from engineers and developers who are already gnashing their teeth about how useless the iPad will be.
Here’s why we should ignore premature predictions of doom for the iPad.
Sure, there’s nothing shockingly new here. In a sense, it’s a big iPod Touch. Or it’s a slimmed down Tablet PC with integral Kindle. Actually, it’s all of those things.
What we’re forgetting is that Apple’s main strength isn’t necessarily inventing a new category (marketing spin aside), it is in bringing hard-core user research and industrial design to bear on creating devices which end up “crossing the chasm” to the mainstream for a given technology. THAT is what Apple, and Steve Jobs, are good at.