

IPad thoughts from Ben Fry (creator of Processing) - ewjordan
http://benfry.com/writing/archives/608

======
CrLf
The control that Apple has over the iPhone and the application distribution
channel does contribute greatly to the iPhone's success. It makes the platform
easily accessible to people who aren't inclined to search the internet for
apps and are, in fact, afraid of doing it for all the malware experiences they
have on their PCs. They know the App Store has everything, and that they can
reasonably expect that the apps won't harm their device.

But, the iPhone is still just a phone. Most people don't hit the walls of the
room Apple has them locked in. Heck, most people don't even do much with their
iPhones... They rarely browse the web or use it to do serious email (one line
replies in a pinch are not "serious email") because they find the screen too
small and the experience too cumbersome when compared to a real computer. They
install some apps, but never really use them besides the first few minutes,
unless they're games, which also says much about the typical iPhone user:
phone calls and games.

The people that complain about lack of openness are the exception.

Now, the iPad is not an iPhone. Nobody will buy it to make phone calls,
although they will certainly play games in it. The iPad is more of a computer,
and more people will hit the walls of Apple's control. _This_ is what's going
to define the iPad's success.

It is a beautiful device, but if the average Joe expects it to behave more
like a standard computer than an iPhone, and if Apple doesn't make it more
open, it may very well end up a failure.

I like the iPhone, and if I weren't the kind of person that lives fine with
just a basic phone, I would prefer one over the alternatives (android et al)
even though it is much less open. On the other hand, I won't buy an iPad
despite how beautiful it is because it is too expensive for something that's
not a real computer.

~~~
pvg
_The control that Apple has over the iPhone and the application distribution
channel does contribute greatly to the iPhone's success._

Does it really? The iPhone was hugely successful well before there was an App
Store.

~~~
ryanwaggoner
Yeah, you couldn't install _any_ applications on the device, which is the
ultimate control. You can easily argue that the device is much more open now
that developers are able to create the 150,000 apps that have been downloaded
more than 3 billion times.

~~~
pvg
You still can't install _any_ application on the device. You could easily
argue a lot of things but what on earth are you talking about, as far as the
initial success of the iPhone is concerned?

~~~
tree_of_item
You're confusing the use of the word "any" here. In the previous post, it was
used to mean that there were _no_ applications available for the iPhone.

You're using it here to mean "you can't install arbitrary applications" which
is something different.

As far as the initial success of the iPhone is concerned, the device gaining
traction without "any" applications (in the first sense) is largely important
when speaking of the necessity of the App Store.

------
cpr
His thoughts make a lot of sense, but I really wonder if he's not missing the
forest for the trees, like a lot of writers on this subject.

It's not the little hacks (e.g., font organizers, window minimizers) that are
going to make or break this platform: it's going to be the immersive apps that
capture people's imaginations. (And most "real people" don't care about OS
hacks.)

I know I've already got way too many killer ideas for this platform, really
the first to incorporate touch computing in an intelligent, affordable
fashion, and I suspect many others are in the same boat.

So the lack of hackability may simply not be an issue. Within a given app, the
world's your oyster; you can do just about anything.

The gatekeeping problem may be the bigger issue, but there are so many great
apps waiting to be built that are completely non-controversial from Apple's
point of view, and that will fulfill the promise of the platform.

The recent sweep-up of semi-porn and cookie-cutter apps makes complete sense
to me; as a retailer, who wants all that crap on their shelves? And as a
developer, why would I want to be doing anything in those areas (unless it's
simply to exploit people for their money)?

I do have some areas of concern that affect my plans: Will Apple ever permit a
full-blown non-Safari browser app in the store? That's a biggie. And will
Apple ever permit an interactive programming tool like Smalltalk adapted for
the touch screen, or (one of my ideas) a graphical meta-calculator building
tool that ultimately allows the user to do "real" programming?

Ultimately, I think the answers are yes and yes, but the unsureness of those
answers is troubling.

~~~
orangecat
_Will Apple ever permit a full-blown non-Safari browser app in the store?_

If it's just a WebKit wrapper, probably. If it's a different rendering engine,
not a chance.

 _And will Apple ever permit an interactive programming tool like Smalltalk
adapted for the touch screen, or (one of my ideas) a graphical meta-calculator
building tool that ultimately allows the user to do "real" programming?_

Smalltalk, no. Graphing calculators with variable assignments and stuff, sure
as long as you can't create things that resemble real applications.

 _Ultimately, I think the answers are yes and yes, but the unsureness of those
answers is troubling._

I'd be looking at developing for Android tablets, where you don't have to give
the manufacturer a kill switch to your ideas. Or HTML5 if possible.

------
alain
The worst enemy of freedom in software is not Microsoft, it's Apple. You're
pretty free to develop and distribute software as you want on Windows. On new
Apple devices, they control the way the software is distributed, they tax you,
they make you obey their rules. Imagine a world with appstore as the main way
of distributing software for any kind of devices. This would be hell. This is
where Apple is going. Stop using Apple. Use Linux, or if you can't, use
Microsoft.

~~~
rauljara
This is only true of the iPad/iPhone ecosystem. For OSX, they give away
development tools better than the ones microsoft charges ridiculous amounts of
money for. Almost all apple-made software (even the kind they sell) doesn't
even make you enter a license key. If you are honestly worried about a closed
app store coming to OSX based on what Apple does with phones and devices that
they clearly think of as large phones, you are paranoid.

~~~
bad_user
Sorry, but having worked with both, Visual Studio is miles ahead of Xcode. I
even did an app for a client in C++/Qt that wanted it running in OS X ...
developed 100% in Visual Studio. That's because at the time (at least) Xcode
wasn't even having Intellisense (and Visual C++ does have the best
intellisense available).

Visual Studio Express is free to use ... and it's enough for almost every need
you might have. And before that you could use the #Develop which is an open-
source IDE for C#/VB.NET.

And while Xcode doesn't even support intellisense properly, Visual Studio is
in a different category altogether considering that you can also develop with
it web applications / Silverlight clips, supports many more languages and has
a really healthy plugins ecosystem.

Not to nitpick, but Microsoft is endorsing Mono lately as THE Linux/FreeBSD/OS
X alternative. On Linux I can have a dotNet app that uses Windows Forms
running ... can you do the same with Cocoa?

Of course Mono for Apple would be an abomination that had to be destroyed
(considering how they sued Psystar and even Wired on publishing an article
about hackitoshes)

(pretty ironic I'm defending Microsoft, since I've been badmouthing them for
years, but compared to Apple they start looking like saints)

~~~
sjs
> Of course Mono for Apple would be an abomination that had to be destroyed
> (considering how they sued Psystar and even Wired on publishing an article
> about hackitoshes)

Cocoa is a direct descendent of NEXTStep which is an open spec. Hence the NS
prefix on class names. Here's "Mono for Apple":

<http://www.cocotron.org/>

<http://etoileos.com/>

<http://www.gnustep.org/>

You mention MS "endorsing" Mono as if that means something.

~~~
grinich
Don't forget Cappuccino!

<http://cappuccino.org/>

~~~
sjs
Yes, and this recent thread[1] on the Cappuccino mailing list has links to
several other Objective-X languages.

[1]
[http://groups.google.com/group/objectivej/browse_thread/thre...](http://groups.google.com/group/objectivej/browse_thread/thread/61a965b76eddd31b/3ebd668260d17526?#3ebd668260d17526)

But the first ones I linked are all Objective-C. Well, Étoilé has implemented
a smalltalk-esque syntax now.

------
Kilimanjaro
The iPad will sell like hotcakes and while some preach doomsday for freedom
others will make millions developing for it.

At the end, pops and moms will be happier than ever with their new computing
experience that doesn't crash every day and has to be formatted and
reinstalled every other month.

~~~
aw3c2
"Kilimanjaro, I want to send some of our holiday photos to aunt Annie with
your mom's iPad. Where can I plug it in? Dad."

"Kilimanjaro, your father bought a book which I would like to read too. Could
you tell us how to copy it to my iPad too? Love, mum"

~~~
tumult
"Hi Dad. You'll have to buy one of these
[http://images.apple.com/ipad/specs/images/usb_connectors_201...](http://images.apple.com/ipad/specs/images/usb_connectors_20100127.jpg)
for the iPad, unless your camera has built-in uploading. Look on the box for a
WiFi icon."

"Hi mum. Plug your iPad into iTunes and click 'add device to authorized list'
under the Advanced menu when dad is logged into his iTunes account."

~~~
Zev
_"Hi mum. Plug your iPad into iTunes and click 'add device to authorized list'
under the Advanced menu when dad is logged into his iTunes account."_

That one actually isn't too hard to walk people through on the phone. I did it
with my mom and dad for their iPod's a few months back. Took all of five
minutes; most of which was waiting for the iPod's to finish syncing.

------
loumf
The iPad and iPhone puts the needs of the user over the needs of the
developer. I agree that the whole "take down the network" line is ridiculous
-- but "take down your phone" is not at all ridiculous. Most of the apps I
have bought are from unknown (to me) developers -- I would never download a
Mac OSX app from any of them without doing a little research to get some
confidence that it wasn't going to be malware. Most of the time, it isn't
worth the trouble -- I buy OSX software all of the time, but only from
established vendors.

With the app developer program, approval process and store, there is a pretty
good chance (better than ever) that your device will keep working and that
apps you use can't (won't try to) do anything malicious. It lets single
developers get access to a market that is very hard to break into.

Certainly, there are decisions Apple has made with the AppStore and approvals
that are ridiculous. But, in the history of all human endeavor, there is no
complex operation that doesn't have problems. The vast majority of apps are
approved without incident. Apple has solved many more worse problems with app
distribution than the ones they created.

My main gripes are lack of transparency of the process (and your progression
through it) and no way to revert to a previously approved version (or fast
track a bug fix). Also, the lack of any way to offer paid updates is a big
issue for funding future versions of apps. The control over the platform
doesn't bother me at all (as a user or developer).

------
middayc
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------
rimantas

      To use an example, if things “just worked” then I'd be able
      to copy music from my iPod back to my laptop, or from one
      machine that I own to another.
    

True for the first part, as for the second: this feature is built in into
iTunes, it even allows you to see the music that's not on your computer and
copy it with a simple drag and drop.

    
    
      The thing that will be interesting about the iPad is the experience
      of using it — something that nobody has had except for the folks at
      Apple — and as is always the case when dealing with a different type
      of interface, you're always going to be wrong.
    

Not sure what he has in mind talking about experience. I gather few folks had
a chance to try it out after it was presented and all were raving how fast
that thing is. Then a lot of folks keep saying "it's just a bigger iPhone",
but don't know what the UX will be. Well, if it just a bigger iPhone (it's
not) user experience is going to be as good, only better.

Then people cry and predict the end of hacking, tinkering and programming.
Folks, don't forget: with iPad also comes out new _free_ SDK. But maybe
shouting about freedom is just a tad easier than using it.

------
bugs
My favorite criticism of the ipad came from a morning show host who is
somewhat tech savvy was asked by his co-host if he wanted one he responded:

"I already have one it is called an iphone."

