
iOS is anti-Unix and anti-programmer - Derbasti
http://blog.dbpatterson.com/post/10244529137
======
mas644
It's not anti-Unix or anti-programmer...it's all about being anti-freedom.

All these companies want to do is turn your computing experience into a locked
down, controlled, monitored experience. They want to turn your limitless and
powerful computer into a home appliance...like a blender or electric razer. No
way to customize, no way to modify, no way to organize thoughts your way. No
hacking or "jailbreaking" into your own device to give yourself features like
"tethering". That would violate the ALL HOLY EULA (unless you paid $5.99)!!!

Also no need to understand how the technology works -- technology is now
magic. And when technology becomes magic, they have control over you. Google
manages all your e-mail, Facebook and iPhone manage your social life. Google
and FB make their money through selling your information to marketing
companies. Apple makes it by selling you hardware. Both of them make money by
exploiting the lack of will by the masses to understand their technology and
how it affects their rights and privacy. They make money when they are in
control of you and your data. They make money by making you think you need a
new computer when all you need is a better operating system.

Getting rid of files is like Newspeak from Orwell's 1984. They want you to be
dumber. They'll take care of savin that file for ya, you just worry about
eating nachos and 'batin. Besides, they need to take a looksie at it first to
infer information about your shopping habits...

~~~
snprbob86
"All these companies want to do is turn your computing experience into a
locked down, controlled, monitored experience."

Oh, bullshit. Do you really think there is someone siting around at Apple
dreaming up new ways to take away your freedom?

No. There fucking isn't.

I'm a huge believer in small, composable components. And I know that
developing against closed platforms _sucks_. Being able to dig down into the
source code of every layer of your stack is critical to the understanding
necessary to build high quality software. Libre, Gratis, and Open are all key
elements of the software I choose to use to do many mission critical jobs,
every day of my professional career going forward.

But you know what?

The people at Apple just want to make damn good products. They are proud as
hell of those products. They work very hard to make them that damn good.

Freedom isn't free. There are costs associated with development, complexity,
opportunity. Free is a strategy that only few can afford to execute. Google
has to vary the gratis, libre, and open dials with their products every single
day to paint the benevolent picture they count on to keep their recruiting
pipelines full, while still building high quality products on time and budget.

My Girlfriend's Android phone (a highly rated model) is a horrible piece of
crap next to the iPhone. It lags, crashes, has UX issues, flimsy hardware. The
iPhone is a glorious, crowning achievement of engineering that still, years
later, Microsoft and Google are struggle to replicate.

I'm no dumber for owning an iPhone. It gets the job done: It makes phone
calls. It settles arguments at the bar. It lets me cut in line at Chipotle. It
wakes me up in the morning. It keeps me entertained. It makes me smile every
time that little orange plane animates by as it goes into airplane mode.

It just fucking works.

You want to talk about freedom? I'm free from thinking about memory
management. And processor utilization. And data loss. If it stops working, I'm
free from worry because the Apple store makes everything better. I am free
from all of the horrible things that can go wrong on my production servers.

Unless something does go wrong on my production servers, in which case I'm
free to be away from my desk when it happens. And I'm free to drive aimlessly
without worrying about getting lost. I'm free to call a cab, when I just don't
feel like walking home.

In context, my iPhone represents every last bit as much freedom as my blinking
cursor in an empty vim window.

~~~
josteink
_The people at Apple just want to make damn good products. They are proud as
hell of those products. They work very hard to make them that damn good._

It's very hard to read the rest of your comment and not have you mentally pre-
positioned as a fanboy. I'm not saying this to be a troll, but because
comments like this really _do_ stand out. Would you give any other company
this sort of slack you are now giving Apple? If so, why not?

And while that may not be such an interesting discussion in itself, I am not
willing to support and hand over my money to someone _acting_ against freedom
of choice, because someone else on the internet says "Don't worry: These
people are good guys. Really!"

 _Freedom isn't free._

Again. I would love to see anyone make this sort of defense for Oracle or
Microsoft.

 _I'm no dumber for owning an iPhone_

Maybe not dumber, but you have locked your mind to the most restrictive of the
mobile OS platforms out there and the limited workflows it allows.

I would be very surprised if this didn't also limit your ways of thinking
about how problems can be solved.

 _The iPhone is a glorious, crowning achievement of engineering that still,
years later, Microsoft and Google are struggle to replicate._

Absolutely revolting fanboy talk. I tend to find the iPhone a glorified piece
of needlessly heavy electronics running visually polished but annoyingly
limited software, which fails at the most basic of tasks, like sending data
from one app to another via something called "files".

 _You want to talk about freedom? I'm free from thinking about memory
management. And processor utilization. And data loss._

So am I. On my Android phone. While my iPhone 3G had constant memory-problems
because it wasn't built to multi-task. Oh well.

Why is it iPhone owners seems to default on Android being an immature
platform, cite Android 1.6 problems, while any factual representation of the
limitations found in current iOS releases is answered with "iOS next" and that
is supposed to be a valid answer, free from hypocrisy?

Seriously. You guys need to get out of the Apple store more often. It may
actually be starting to dumb you down.

~~~
dasil003
Thought experiment: Is it possible to think Apple makes the best technology
products without being a fanboy?

~~~
josteink
Oh absolutely. I have no doubt about that. In fact, saying anything else would
be absurd.

However I think it's fair to recognize the difference between someone merely
(very) happy about their Apple stuff and someone who seemingly is personally
insulted when it is suggested that Apple is (shock!) a normal corporation
following a normal corporation's need and desire to profit, doing some ethical
comprosises on the way.

And looking at snprbob86's post here, it's full of seemingly personal feelings
when discussing this topic. It's almost this short of saying "Dear sir. You
have defiled my lovers honour and I challenge you to a duel".

I have to say he/she seems like the glorious, crowning achievement of the
Apple PR-Department which is hellbent on making Apple-Products a matter of
personal honour and identity. And it's very freaky to observe from the
outside.

------
andosa
I couldn't agree more. Some people say that iOS is not meant to be a
programming device and that it is great for what it's meant to be, e.g.
reading and watching content, but I disagree. Just a few examples.

\- The lack of user facing filesystem means I have to jump through wierd hoops
when doing simple stuff like managing my pdfs. An example, I get a pdf and
open it in iBooks. A few months further on, I want to read it again and do
some annotations, but I need another app for that. Well tough luck, i cannot
open the pdf in the other app, since the pdf is tied to iBooks. If i'm lucky,
maybe i'll remember i got it via a particular email, and resend it to the
other reader. Most probably though, no annotations for me on that pdf.

\- I have a network drive and would like to stream movies from it using VLC
(due to native player not supporting the encoding). I also have a filebrowser
app that can do smb. But there is no way to connect the two. I can either
download the whole movie and send it to VLC (which takes a long time and space
on my iPad) or try to look for a video player that does smb :S.

I could go on and on with such examples. IPad is obviously a beautifully
designed and built device but I would definitely not purchase another one or
recommend it to a friend, exactly because of the shortcomings of iOS.

~~~
Apocryphon
Could you achieve the same things on an Android tablet? On the Touchpad? On
the Playbook? I'm not sure if that is an inherent issue with iOS, or rather
functionality that mobile OS's in general have not yet bothered to implement,
as tablets are still marketed towards common consumers, not power users.

~~~
andosa
Dont know about touchpad or playbook, but you definately can on Android.

------
kolinko
I disagree.. The app interoperability in iOS is achieved, but in a different
fashion. You don't have files, but you DO have logins and APIs.

Say, Twitter - you want to tweet something from another app? No problem, you
implement the right API to do that. Or perhaps you'd like to export a text
file, so it can be received by another app? No problem - you use the clipboard
& store the file there, or publish the file at a secret URL, and import that
url through another app.

Is it as easy as save+drag&drop? Not yet. But filesystems also took some time
before they were perfected. Give Apple one or two years, and iCloud will offer
you as much as the desktop filesystem. And more.

Files are not the only way to go. If I want to share a text document with my
friend, I don't attach it. I put it into Google Docs, and send my friend a
url. Much more convinient - avoids a _plenty_ of mess with versioning etc.

~~~
kalleboo
Android's Intents architecture is far more elegant than forcing every app
developer to reimplement every API or specifically support every secret URL
handler.

Being able to make a client for, say, a new social network, and instantly
having every app on your phone support it through the generic "Share" button
they already have is a very powerful tool.

------
tudorizer
OS X command line user here, after testing various other 'nix distros in the
past few years. You're a bit harsh on the topic. Sure, composability is
awesome for the reasons you mentioned, but look at who's using iOS devices. Do
they need more? There are days when after being bombarded with information, an
app that does one thing is a breath of fresh air.

"But it’s not a computer, it’s just a glorified palm pilot with a few bells
and whistles". You can SSH into it if you want to be hardcore ;)

When I'm using an app to track expensese while at the supermarket or taking
notes while on the train, I really don't care about "composability". Why
should I?

------
Newky
As someone who spends almost all day either in vim/commandline mode or web
browsing, I want to make the point about the unix pipe point, and that with
gui's this is impossible.

Its not even the fact that it would require a lot more effort to sort and
format a list of 100,000 names into our predefined pattern, but more the fact
that the power of the command line is lost.

I find as I'm programming, I gravitate towards languages which can give me
good access to this piping system, and give me access to stdin as a stream.
Often in languages such as Java, pushing it information into a file and
reading from the file is the easier solution and although this may be the more
long term solution, for shell scripts etc its hard to beat the likes of perl's
"while(<>)", not to mention the fact that awk works like this by default.

Also in terms of bringing this piping paradigm to the GUI world, I think the
closest thing I've seen is Intents, both on the android side and the new Web
Intents that both Google and Mozilla are working together on. Technically this
seems like a more hefty version of pipes to me.

~~~
thesz
>I want to make the point about the unix pipe point, and that with gui's this
is impossible.

There is a GUI programming paradigm, called Stream Processors. One of earlier
Haskell GUI libraries was developed over those processors.

Take a look at Fudgets: <http://www.altocumulus.org/Fudgets/>

You can pipe them, you can arrange them into DAGs and trees (as in DirectShow
or Gstreamer). You can create cyclic structures.

I haven't seen Intents. But I think that Stream Processors are closer to (and
even surpass) command line pipelining.

~~~
Newky
Sorry, my wording was incorrect. I should not have used the word impossible,
thank you for the resources you have provided, my point was more that with the
standard gui, it makes things easier in a pick up and play way but any
sustained time using an application, the tradeoff between being what people
describe as "easy to use" and being extensible and streamable becomes very
useful.

------
yardie
How many people actually program on an iPad or iPhone? I mean in any real
sense and not something simple like SSHing into a unix box to update a config
file. None. That's not the purpose of it. Apple has never implied nor
mentioned anything like that should be or could be done on that device. It's
built to browse the web and use touch applications.

I despise articles like these because they try to put products like these in
impossible situations that suits no one else except to drive traffic. Yes your
iPad is anti-programmer the same way that a wheelchair is anti-stairs.

~~~
andybak
I think the title is misleading. The author hints at a much bigger issue (I'm
not an iOS user so I can't say how valid his point is but it's not about
'programming' per se.

~~~
yardie
I don't think the title is misleading. He spent over half the blog talking
about how you don't have access to POSIX tools on the iPad. But the iPad isn't
a Unix. It's only when you jailbreak it and add the unix tools do you even get
to a commandline.

There are many applications that are GUI based and do good message passing.
But they are on the desktop the iPad isn't that. It may share the same
underpinnings as OSX but it is not a desktop bound OS, it is an appliance. He
doesn't like the sandboxing but the sandboxing is also why it is secure.

------
ericHosick
"The more I use graphical interfaces (or anything that does not operate on
text streams - commandline curses programs included), the more I am struck by
how profound the loss of composability is".

Exactly this!

You've hit on the nail on the head here. Computing devices are inherently non-
composable. Mostly because we, as software developers, have failed to create
frameworks that are fully composable. The real problem is we still need to
program.

~~~
bad_user

         Mostly because we, as software developers, have 
         failed to create frameworks that are fully 
         composable.  
    

This is MBA-talk.

Big companies would like nothing more than for programming to become something
unskilled workers can do. I would like that too, but from a different
perspective.

Programming is not really like assembling Lego blocks. And if you pick any
other industry, taking a close look at how new developments are made, you'll
find that sharing in software development is a lot more common and a lot
easier.

After all, when building new software, you don't have to write your own OS,
your own compiler, your own debugger, your own libraries built on top, or even
your own domain-specific framework. Well, unless you have the not-invented-
here syndrome.

And what does "fully composable" mean anyway?

    
    
         The real problem is we still need to program.
    

Well, for specifications to get written, you still need to write. For
designing a user interface, you still need to draw. For doing architecture,
you still need to think.

~~~
ericHosick
Yes. My bad. I should have said "The real problem is we still need to code." I
do agree with you that we will always need to design interfaces, engineer
solutions, gather requirements, understand the systems being developed, etc.
But we should not and will not need to code the solution.

What does "fully composable" mean?

A framework/architecture that is fully composable would be one that allows you
to implement any solvable system without writing code.

As for the "MBA-talk" stuff... It is possible to create frameworks that are
fully composable. If you would like, I can chat with you about such things
outside of HN.

------
rimantas
Photoshop is anti-unix and anti-programmer. Because I cannot program in it.
Duh.

It's official—from now on I am anti-stupid-titles on HN. Will flag any
submission with a meaningless title like this.

What does it mean being anti? It's either active stance against something or
at least major disagreement.

I cannot see how iOS is actively fighting unix (being based on it) or
programmers (being created for it and offering thousands of API for them).

Neither I see how iOS is passively anti-unix and anti-programmers. My car has
probably a dozen computers but I cannot program on it. So what? My TV probably
runs linux, and I cannot program on it either. Does it make it anti-linux and
anti-programmer?

Why do some expect anything with cpu, display and storage to be full-blown
programmers workstation is beyond me.

~~~
william42
Photoshop doesn't have a scripting interface? I'm surprised.

------
martinpannier
The capacity to compose is giving way to the possibility for almost anyone to
express his/her creativity in a concrete way. So maybe what you're saying is
true, but then iOS is pro-artist and pro-creation. See that 10-yr old
Taiwanese "programmer" for example.

And what are computers if not tools for creation? "Unix" and "programming" are
means, not ends.

------
spiffworks
Eh, I can understand the outrage the author feels. I used to be so pissed off
when people were contented with their iOS devices. But I have my Nexus One, I
can hack the hell out of it, it is state of the art, and I don't really care
what anybody else uses. If people find that trading freedom for convenience is
acceptable, then that is their choice to make.

~~~
gavinlynch
You used to be pissed off when consumers chose a product that fit their needs?
This is an attitude I just can't understand.

~~~
spiffworks
It was just that these people were happy with having limits on their
computers. I guess the difference in mindset is that while normal people want
computers to be appliances, we want everything to be computers.

------
decklin
I hate to be _that guy_ , but don't complain about how something isn't as
awesome as Unix pipes and then use cat | grep | awk where you could have just
used awk.

------
pinaceae
I don't get the article, at all.

Do you have a command line in your car to change the radio station? Do you
expect to have the controls when being on a plane?

You want a device that let's you program? Buy a notebook. I hear the MacBook
Airs are excellent.

Some of my friends are musicians and LOVE the iPad. Garageband on it blew
their mind.

Does every computing device need to behave like a PC?

~~~
epo
Don't attempt to reason with the self-righteous. Apple is EVIL, they are
stealing your freedom, read the memo.

------
gillygize
Actually, interoperability between apps is possible through things like URL
handling and UIPasteboard. I am dreaming of the day that something like the
UNIX toolchain can be assembled by sending data from one app to another like
this. Enough app developers just need to get together and decide to make it. I
suppose that you could not script it though, so it would still be more
limited. But you _could_ send data step by step through a series of apps in a
chain, which _could_ allow for creative interoperability.

------
natch
I love composability as much as the author, but his opinion is, to put it
kindly, not well informed. iOS has a myriad of mechanisms for sharing content
within and between apps, bot from the same developer and from different
developers, with and without prior agreement, and for composing workflows and
experiences that are greater than the sum of the parts.

Some of these mechanisms are new, and the possibilities have not yet been
fully plumbed. Some have been around for a while.

But iOS is just getting started. People said the iPad was a "read-only" or
"consumption-only" device, but, over time, we have seen tools come out that
are great authoring tools for various types of content. The same thing will
happen (and already has happened, but is growing over time) with cross-app
workflows.

As far as the title, "anti-Unix and anti-programmer," taking the first part,
well yes it doesn't provide a built in command line for programmers, if that's
what he means, although it does happen to be built on UNIX, and it benefits
from the maturity of UNIX (and gives back, with OSS tools like LLVM).

On the second part, the tools it does provide for programmers are truly
wonderful - the Objective-C language, the frameworks, an amazing compiler with
static analysis (if you don't know what this gives you, the answer is pure
joy), the development environment (though Xcode 4 had a rocky rollout, it has
proven itself to be a sweet update), the patterns that are used and
encouraged, and the architectural choices, are all very well thought out.

Programmers coming from other mobile platforms have told me that they left
behind a lot of pain, and found a lot of power on iOS.

"Anti-programmer" is a very odd way to describe a platform that makes
programmers who get into it happy with their coding experience, makes them
money, and gives users a great experience while keeping their private
information secure from abuses by ill-intentioned programmers.

I can't help but be baffled by where he is coming from. I love UNIX, the
command line, and composing commands, but then I love cooking in the kitchen
too. Different environments come with different tools.

If we want to compare just mobile development environments, iOS is one that
has clearly been developed with a careful deliberative process intended to
preserve good battery life, protect user data, and avoid painting itself into
any architectural corners. There are constraints. There always are.

But iOS is growing, with very exciting (for programmers) features with every
update, including deep stuff that goes down to the core architectural level of
how your data flows in your program, in ways that promise a very, very happy
life for iOS programmers on multiple core devices. The future is very bright
for iOS programming.

The "anti-freedom" charges, the locking out of certain features, you get the
same stuff on any platform. Just try to publish an app that abuses the Android
logo in any Android market. Not that you would want to, but then, I wouldn't
want to publish an app that steals user data, and that's exactly the kind of
thing iOS does not give me the "freedom" to do... and that's a _good_ thing.
All the mechanisms for preventing abuse could have been done in a much more
heavy-handed way, such as by being tied to a central email account that you
use to authenticate to dozens of critical services you depend on in your life,
that can be yanked and shut down at any time, with a very tenuous appeal
process. As developers we are lucky to have a platform that has done things in
such sensible ways.

~~~
BoppreH
You are missing the point. What the author wants is a composable toolbox. He
knows it's possible, he can wield them proficiently, and the gains are
numerous, but the system doesn't give him the _means_ to do that.

You can't pipe iPad apps. You can't filter emails from a file using a single
line of Objective-C. Development environments don't have the practicality of
typing text in a shell for instant execution.

If I understood correctly, "anti-programmer" means the environment doesn't
make use of his abstraction abilities, not that it is bad for developing
software.

And hell yes, I would compose kitchen appliances if I could.

~~~
_pius
_You can't pipe iPad apps._

Yes you can, through custom URL schemes.

<http://handleopenurl.com/>

~~~
lurker19
That's not part of ios, that is a library. I can't add that to someone else's
app on the device. Apple should integrate it into iOS.

The user of the device should be able to compose apps, not only cooperating
app writers.

~~~
natch
You could not be more wrong. Not only is it part of iOS, it is part of
UIApplication, the class on which any iOS app is built. Why even bother
commenting, if you're just going to make stuff up?

I'm guessing you didn't even click on the web link, which, you will notice if
you do, does not lead to any library. It's just a site (which I've never
visited before this myself either... don't need to, to write or use inter-app
URL launches) that hosts an informal registry of protocols along with
information on what they launch.

------
iradik
iOS has no concept of files (for the user). There's no common bit you can
share between two programs. Of course, there are ways around this (Dropbox API
for example). I'd say removing this concept has probably made iOS a lot easier
to use.

The big danger with iOS is that it's also attack the open web itself. What if
the catalog the author downloaded was only available in an iOS and android app
and not on the web. That's when we really start to have problems.

------
dasil003
So only programmers deserve nice things? Look, I get the danger the app-
storification of software, and honestly it scares me more than Microsoft ever
did, just because it's so _appealing_ from a consumer perspective.

But barring the removal of direct distribution and the UNIX shell, I say more
power to Apple in terms of re-inventing the consumer computing experience.
What the author doesn't seem to understand is that great design and usability
can never be achieved solely by adding features. Things need to be taken away
as well. I can personally vouch that taking these things away is a huge win
for someone like my mom who will never understand or be comfortable with
filesystems. For her, the limitations of iOS take her from a place of constant
_fear_ to a place where she can actually explore and figure things out like us
geeks take for granted.

It might be uncomfortable to think that tech devices are no longer primarily
for geeks, but that chasm has been crossed, and we have to acknowledge that
programmer devices are increasingly going to be distinct from the mass market
devices.

~~~
william42
> we have to acknowledge that programmer devices are increasingly going to be
> distinct from the mass market devices.

Actually, this creeps me out more than anything else, because where are we
going to get new programmers? The prototypical childhood story of most of us
is that of discovering a programming language on our computers and learning
through experimentation. Will that be possible in an iPad world?

Though this brings me to an idea I've had for a while; a website where
children can learn to program from their browser, since every modern browser
has a JavaScript interpreter built in.

~~~
dasil003
Not too worried about this personally. You read a lot of articles decrying the
state of programming for kids these days, but I think it's all nostalgia.
Programming is more accessible than ever. The only problem is there's way more
distraction now, but the number of young programmers seems to keep growing.

------
sambeau

      "Those days are dead and gone and the eulogy was delivered by Perl."

------
tobiasu
Does HN make the first character of the title upper case? It's iOS. IOS is
Cisco's Internetwork Operating System. Please get it right.

~~~
hpaavola
> Does HN make the first character of the title upper case?

Yes it does.

~~~
tobiasu
Thanks :)

------
naveengarg
Have you seen <http://schemes.zwapp.com/.json?page=1> There is the beginning
of some hope: [http://gigaom.com/2011/06/09/zwapp-builds-a-social-
network-f...](http://gigaom.com/2011/06/09/zwapp-builds-a-social-network-for-
app-discovery/) its a database of all the apps that use custom url schemes.

You can also use javascript bookmarklets to compose with any webapp (webpage).

Hopefully one day apple will expose a framework that will allow users to do in
app user level scripting for all apps. And maybe even allow cross app
scripting with very well declared uses by responsible / licensed people.

------
sehugg
As a programmer who makes his living from iOS, and would not be doing so if
Apple didn't show the world the right way to sell software directly from
developers, I disagree with at least half of this headline.

------
elisee
Windows 8 has Charms, Android has Android Intents, and Google & Mozilla are
working on Web Intents. Composability is on its way back at the mainstream
user level.

------
gapanalysis
I'm a marginal Linux script writer at best but I appreciate the point
regarding composability. Still, I have to wonder whether composability is as
relevant today as 30 years ago, not because it isn't a desirable attribute for
programmers but because the thousands of developers that are churning out
limited feature, limited purpose apps don't seem to miss it. Happy to learn if
I'm missing something here.

~~~
Loic
or you need the thousands of one task app to mitigate the lack of
composability.

------
daijo
The author clearly mistakes indifference for antagonism. Yes the majority of
consumer devices are both Unix and programmer indifferent. One might argue
that for the vast majority of people this is a good thing. And followers of
the Unix way never really seem to run out of ways to scratch their itch
anyway.

------
kaishin
I wouldn't expect anything less from a programmer. But then programmers (as
customers) are not the ones making Apple the most valuable company in the
world. Comparing something made by programmers for programmers to something
made by a consumer product company for consumers is pure nonsense.

------
kaishin
I expect nothing less from a programmer. But then programmers (as customers)
are not the ones making Apple the most valuable company in the world.
Comparing something made by programmers for programmers to something made by a
consumer product company for consumers is pure nonsense.

------
quandrum
After reading this, it struck me as this is how intents could (and sometimes)
work on android.

It's not perfect. You can't string together a bunch of apps. But it's nice
when I click on a youtube video, the youtube app seamlessly takes over. Same
for email, or reddit links.

------
patrickc
Most people just browse to web. If you want a shell, it's way easier to use a
linux thinkpad that has a proper keyboard and proper OS, as opposed to an
iPad. But that's not to say that an iPad is not good for some things.

------
lootabooga
> "The more I use graphical interfaces (or anything that does not operate on
> text streams - commandline curses programs included), the more I am struck
> by how profound the loss of composability is".

Er, try Automator.app for an example of non text-stream "composability". Also:
Quartz composer. Also: Max/MSP.

Oh, and text-stream composability might be the "unix way" in, but is not
exactly programming, it is command line glue.

Composability in programming itself is achieved via other means, for example
objects, widgets, components, messages, etc.

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pointyhat
Composability is what makes something greater than the sum of its parts. The
iPad, I found, is so constrained as to be useless. I know of very few people
who are still using their iPad regularly after 6 months or so precisely
because of this (and the star trek wow factor has worn off).

Ironically, composability is why I still carry around a 15-year old TI92
calculator instead of an iPad, even though my peers look at me strangely. Oh
and it still runs on good old fashioned AA batteries :)

~~~
tomjen3
How many of those people you know with iPads are what we would call normal
people?

I only ask because it seems to me that most of them wouldn't mind at all that
one couldn't be productive on the iPad since surfing and a few games are
mostly what they use it for.

~~~
pointyhat
80% I'd say.

It seems to go like this:

1) They bought it with a purpose in mind but it didn't work quite as well as
they were hoping (khan academy, mapping, general use, recipes in kitchen,
streaming video).

2) The games last a while but they are mainly novelty rather than immersive or
lasting so it's back to the XBox.

3) then the web browsing gets frustrating as streaming video is choppy over
WiFi and impossible over 3G and "what do you mean flash or java doesn't work"
- I can't play facebook pool.

4) then the keyboard becomes frustrating when they try and do real work
because it's not tactile.

5) then they switch back to their laptop when they have to do something like
mail merge.

6) then the ipad goes in a drawer, followed by ebay about 2 months after they
find it again.

I've seen this so many times across about 12 ipad owners now. 20% "software
dev". 40% "tech enthusiasts". 40% "joe average".

Bear in mind this is just my observation.

~~~
thomasgerbe
My friends have had a very different experience.

It's much more comfortable to hold on the couch, at the cafe, in bed, or on
the plane/car than being on a laptop.

~~~
pointyhat
IMHO I think that's wierd. I'd never consider using a computer in any of those
places personally. I consider them all "downtime".

~~~
Xuzz
I think some of the point in this case is that the iPad is specifically not a
computer.

~~~
pointyhat
It is though. What is it if it's not a computer?

~~~
Gilpo
> What is it if it's not a computer?

An interesting question. Is the iPad a computer?

Your average power-user (let's say programmers, Apple fanbois, Android users,
and me) would say, "Umm hello? Obviously!" But your legions of average regular
iPad users (grandmas, and your average college students) might not agree. But
if you asked them what an iPad was, if it was a computer, they couldn't quite
be able to tell you. "Umm, yes? But wait, it can't do so many other things."

This means, as a society, Apple has forced us to rethink the question: "What
is a computer?" and "Is the iPad a computer by this definition?"

~~~
pointyhat
That is precisely it. Which brings me to the point here:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3003812>

"We're slowly being led into paying incrementally for utility computing on a
device we actually paid up front for".

If it's no longer a computer, it's an open market to exploit. We are
consumers, not users any more.

~~~
Apocryphon
I really don't understand your point. How is any of this to the detriment of
the average user who uses the iPad to browse the net/read ebooks/watch
movies/listen to music/as a digital photo frame? The average user doesn't need
to use the iPad as a computer. If the problem is pricing, then that indeed is
an issue with tablets, but then Apple's products have always been high priced.

~~~
pointyhat
It's at the detriment of the user when the iPad is no longer vogue and they
wish to retain their books, movies and music.

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EtienneJohnred
BREAKING NEWS: iOS Was Not Designed for Neckbeards

Full story at 11

------
chugger
iOS is anti-Unix and anti-programmer?

It must be why Android's trying so hard to copy it.

