
Tinkerer’s Sunset - mqt
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2010/01/29/tinkerers-sunset
======
yan
I really don't understand the wave of alarmist posts on the 'end of a
tinkering era'. Today, we have more communities and devices for tinkering than
we've ever had. Magazines like Make, sites like Hack-a-day, platforms like
Arduino, and _countless_ open source projects that are simply there to be
messed with, and one device that comes out with a (probably) justified need to
be locked down, and everyone raises panic? If I ever have the desire to mess
with anything technological today, I can literally get my hands on anything,
from affordable FPGA boards with great I/O, to open mobile devices, to even RF
hacking! (GNU Radio's great.)

The iPad will _never_ harm anyone's ability to tinker with technology that
want to. There will _always_ be platforms that are open by design and _always_
be platforms that have been rooted/hacked/jailbroken/etc. Being a geek/hacker
today is far more socially acceptable and wide-spread than it was in the 80s.
I'd even argue that it is doing much more to advance the technology than a
completely open device like OpenMoko. Completely open devices are rarely
better designed than their commercial counterparts. They don't inspire
complete neophytes ("I have to do _what_ just to get a decent resolution?"),
they don't push boundaries -- they only appeal to people who are already
waist-deep in tinkering.

Frankly, if anything, all of this comes off as elitist. God forbid people get
their hands on technology that doesn't have a steep learning curve or require
you to write BASIC to be useful. Well-designed products that have a lot of
concentrated money (and more importantly, talent) inspire people much more so
than completely open systems. I think of them as (and please pardon the
extremely hyperbolic analogy) well-polished, completed works of art. They
won't teach you how to paint or let you alter them, but they'll show you
what's possible with the canvas and advance the art.

I'm actually now thinking back to a discussion with a friend of mine, who's a
collector of 60's-era oscilloscopes. He was raving about them as being the
pinnacle of electronics engineering. Not only were these scopes beautifully
designed, but their manuals detailed _everything_ about them, how they worked,
what tricks they used to function, what micro-components they used. Their
documentation authors really _wanted_ you to understand exactly what made it
function. Maybe that's the ideal, but I still believe that beautifully-
designed products, even closed, further the state of hacking far far more than
completely open platforms. If you don't believe in it, don't buy it.

If you believe they're a step in the wrong direction for open platforms, make
another blog post tomorrow when you have _less_ open platforms, _less_
hobbyist projects, _less_ educational materials, and _less_ hobbyist
communities than yesterday.

~~~
rosser
"Tinkerable" and "steep learning curve" are orthogonal.

In fact, what the article's author is decrying is that this thing _without_ a
steep learning curve is completely un-tinkerable. That, per his argument, is
what will cost us some chunk of the next generation of programmers -- that, in
pursuit of ease of adoption (and/or control), Apple has lopped off
tinkerability.

You're absolutely right: if I want to tinker, I have more options available to
me today than anyone ever has before. But it's not me that's being cut off
from tinkering. It's the novice computer user, who's only beginning her
journey of discovery into the possibilities these incredible tools can offer
-- because the tool she has in front of her, as it's been given to her,
_explicitly excludes those possibilities_. She doesn't know what Arduino is;
she doesn't even have a concept for it. As far as she's concerned, FPGA is
something a golfer might join. Those are things for people already at least
knee-deep in tinkering.

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.

~~~
yan
> 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.

~~~
pyre
> _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.

------
jdminhbg
This whole tinkering panic is ridiculous. Did tinkering end when Nintendo
released the NES? Or more recently with the Wii? His dad could have bought a
word processor instead of a ][e, would he have been able to tinker with that?

Some devices are more open than others. This is not a new phenomenon, nor did
anything change on Wednesday.

~~~
aristoxenus
Seriously, you guys are making me sad. Use some imagination -- there is a lot
more to tinker with for your dollar in 2010 than there was in the good old
days. For the price of your dad's ][e you can now buy multiple linux boxes, a
bucket of Arduinos or a NerdKit, robotic legos, and -- if you are so inclined
-- an iPad with developer account on top of it.

At first I was wondering what the ulterior motive to all this drama was. I'm
beginning to think it's just link-baiting.

~~~
wmf
The point of the argument is that in the old days you didn't have to buy
anything extra; you could tinker with your main computer. This drew in some
opportunistic hackers.

~~~
potatolicious
> _"didn't have to buy anything extra; you could tinker with your main
> computer"_

You realize that mass adoption of the "home computer" is a very, very recent
phenomenon, right? I grew up with a computer in the late 80s/early 90s because
my father was in the field, but most of my neighbours did not start getting
computers until the mid 90s. IMHO the image of the precocious youngster
learning to hack on the machine his family _just happened to have_ is a bit of
selection bias.

People look back at the wonderful days of the 70s and 80s with rose tinted
glasses - the truth of the matter is back then computers were _exclusively_
hacking machines (i.e., you couldn't work them at all without some fairly in-
depth knowledge), you _did_ buy them just to hack on it.

~~~
bd
A lot of people grew up in 80s with computers used primarily for games. I was
a kid in glory days of 8-bit computers (Atari, Commodore, Sinclair). There
were many many millions sold of those.

So yes, many precocious youngsters of my generation learned to hack just
because they happened to have computer (bought for non-hacking purpose) and it
was tempting and possible to tinker.

------
blasdel
If the iPad has a way to enable the Webkit Inspector, you’ve got your
tinkerer’s playground right there! The equivalent of Ctrl-Reset is
about:blank.

    
    
      Unix OS : iPad : Browser :: MOS CPU : Apple II : BASIC
    

I’m sure that in your day there were curmudgeons who grew up with Altairs
railing against the kids these days that bought computers that not only had
one-chip CPUs (make your own damn ALU from TTL), they even came fully
assembled! Just like you didn’t want to have to deal with wire-wrapping and
debouncing yourself, kids these days don’t want to have to deal with stupid
implementation details like booting an operating system. Just as you wanted a
standardized BASIC prompt that let you punch in code listings you got from
friends and magazines, kids these days want a standards-based browser that
they can use to tinker with the whole world’s creations.

Having your code running persistently on a server (whether abstracted like App
Engine and Heroku, or old-school like a VPS) where other people can interface
with it is far more important to the youth of today than something that dies
along with your battery and wireless connection.

~~~
joe_bleau
Picky, but the Altair did have a single chip CPU (the 8080).

------
gfodor
The iPad has really brought out a lot of old, crochety "well in _my_ day"
engineers that are now to the point where its embarassing.

The iPad will draw more people towards software engineering, because for the
first time we will have a general purpose computer that doesn't suck horribly
for normal people. It will be cool. It will be fun.

Passion for software has little to do with how much you can "hack" down to the
hardware. It has to do with curiousity, drive, and interest. The iPad is going
to increase these. Any lack of hackability out of the box that is really
interesting will be overcome by these kids, I think people posting about this
are thinking these darn youngins will never figure out how to jailbreak their
iPads. Odds are though, they just won't care, because being able to root the
filesystem is pretty boring compared to what you can do for a $99 dev kit.

The development environment for the iPhone is perfect for learning. None of
the bullshit, all of the good stuff so you can get results quickly. Apple
should simply make it so you can get a dev license as a student for free, or
really cheap ($99 is arguably already pretty cheap considering it includes the
App Store services.)

Kids will be able to write apps for the iPad and get them into the App Store.
Now their non-tech savvy friends, and everyone in the world, will be able to
get them in one tap. This will be absolutely phenomenal for re-kindling the
fire of curiosity and passion for building more stuff. When I was learning, I
was lucky if a few dozen local nerds on BBSes tried out my programs. Now a
clever teenager could conceivably become a millionaire.

Now, what if they want to go deeper? What if they want to use "undocumented
APIs"? They can, of course, but can't share their work through the App Store.
(They can share it with friends via Ad Hoc) What if they want to really hack
the thing beyond what they can do in an app's sandbox? They can, of course,
jailbreak.

This is a much better world for getting young kids excited about engineering.
I personally think Apple could not pull off the computer revolution they are
poised to do with an open system. Just look at the Jailbroken iPhone ecosystem
for an idea of what that would look like. It's great if you're a hacker, but
it would have destroyed the platform.

Instead of complaining about not being able to root your iPad, complain about
the fact Apple is not talking about how they're going to use the iPad to get
kids excited about programming.

~~~
pyre
> _They can, of course, jailbreak._

Why do people insist that 'jail-breaking' is some sort of valid option?

* If Apple had their way even jail-breaking would be illegal.

* Jail-breaking is dependent on security holes in the operating system (i.e. the same way that you are jail-breaking your iPhone is the same way that blackhats could take it over)

* Jail-breaking breaks on most updates.

Why do people think that it is impossible for Apple to make some sort of
button that says, "Yes. I want to enter 'tinker mode' my iPhone/iPad. I
realize that this will void my software (maybe hardware?) support from Apple."

[EDIT]

> _Just look at the Jailbroken iPhone ecosystem for an idea of what that would
> look like. It's great if you're a hacker, but it would have destroyed the
> platform._

That's a strawman. If the system was open, would all of those Apps on the
AppStore right not just vanish? People wouldn't have bothered to develop for
the iPhone at all? What about the people that didn't develop neat apps for the
iPhone (that are impossible under the SDK) because the 'jail-broken' community
is so small and not officially sanctioned? (Or just because of all of the
issues with jail-breaking I mentioned above?)

~~~
gfodor
My point was Jailbreaking is a final, last ditch step that young aspiring
software nerds will probably have if they want to spend their time dicking
around with the low level guts of the pad. My bigger point was, they won't
bother. Because the capabilities of the device make it so there's not really
that much joy to be had in rooting the thing or tinkering with it the way we
were "brought up" in the computing world.

If I am an aspiring young hacker I would probably spend more of my time
writing apps for the app store or building apps on the web for my friends'
iPhones. If I really want to learn about the guts of the thing, I can
jailbreak or simply learn about the guts of non-iPad computers.

------
noonespecial
The funny part is that they (Apple) are waging war against those grown tinkers
that _they created_. The sweet irony doesn't stop there. Today's little
hackers are just as motivated to seize control of their technological world as
those in past years. I have learned from watching my own children that just
about nothing can stop a motivated child.

All they are doing with their endless keys and locks and walled gardens is
creating an unstoppable army of new hackers for whom the latest and greatest
"content protection system" won't even be worth a raised eyebrow and for whom
the legal harassment has become nothing more than background noise.

~~~
rimantas
_endless keys and locks and walled gardens_

By that you mean freely available SDK?

------
kqr2
I think the web itself gives the individual a lot more to tinker with and
explore than in the old days.

For example, you can still play around with applesoft basic.

Applesoft basic interpreter in javascript:

<http://www.calormen.com/applesoft/>

------
DannoHung
Answer this: You have somehow given a completely unlocked iPad to a child that
will run any unsigned executable.

How are they going to figure out that they can hack its guts?

Now answer this: You have given a child a personal computer running Windows 7
or OS X 10.6.

How are they going to figure out that they can hack its guts?

~~~
blhack
>|Answer this: You have somehow given a completely unlocked iPad to a child
that will run any unsigned executable.

>|How are they going to figure out that they can hack its guts?

I have no idae, I think the point is that they can't.

>|Now answer this: You have given a child a personal computer running Windows
7 or OS X 10.6.

>|How are they going to figure out that they can hack its guts?

<http://www.python.org/download/>

<http://www.gentoo.org/main/en/where.xml>

<http://openbsd.org/ftp.html>

<http://gcc.gnu.org/>

<http://docs.python.org/tutorial/>

<http://www.cplusplus.com/doc/tutorial/>

The list goes on and on and on and on and on and on of things that I can do on
my PC that I will not be able to do on an iPad. If the iPad philosophy becomes
the norm (which it probably will) we're boned.

Apple has set a precedent here. They have said "It's okay to release a PC,
then totally limit what software can even be installed on it. It's ours,
you're just licensing it and that is fine.". Other manufacturers are going to
take note.

~~~
raganwald
_t's okay to release a PC, then totally limit what software can even be
installed on it. It's ours, you're just licensing it and that is fine_

No, an iPad is __NOT __a PC, it's an iPad. Apple sells another product, a Mac
pro, that's a PC. I'm typing this on a Macbook Pro, that's also a PC. And
there's the Macbook Air, that's a PC as well. But the iPad is not a PC just as
my car is not a PC, even though I'm sure it has RAM and ROm and various CPUs
in it. I hear you can buy a fridge with a web browser. That isn't a PC with
freon-cooled CPUs, it's a fridge.

~~~
statictype
Your fridge is not in danger of replacing your PC.

Your argument makes sense if we were talking about the iPhone. What role is
the iPad meant to play, if not a simplified PC replacement ?

~~~
raganwald
An iPad is not in danger of replacing my PC, I completely agree with Apple's
proposition that it's a third class of devices.

I won't program on an iPad. I like the look of iWork, but I can't see myself
composing my next presentation on it. I won't be (legally in Canada) ripping
my DVD collection on it. I might write comments like this on it, but without a
stylus I can't see myself writing a blog post on it.

An iPad may replace my mother's Macbook. And it ought to. She surfs the net,
writes email, does her banking, and skypes. She has no need of a device that
she can tinker with.

I see iPads as a threat to books and also as a threat to secondary
televisions. The big screen isn't going away, but a lot of people like a
smaller TV in their bedroom or kitchen. Being able to watch movies and
favourite shows on a small device may displace these extra televisions.

------
ghshephard
Tinkering now moves to "Meta Tinkering" - as it always has, to some degree
There was a time when Tinkering involved modifying the OpCodes/Circuitry of
your Computer - 1950 - 1970s. Then Tinkering involved programming the
computer, with little ability to touch the hardware or modify the CPU, using
assembler, compilers, interpreters.

The next generation is the creation of Meta-Environments, in which tinkering
allows us to go back to first principles, _create_ circuits, OpCodes, and
generally understand the Computing Universe from it's bare components -
[http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...](http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=10218)
Has been the most fun I've had in a Decade, and I'm pretty sure any smart kid,
around the 8-10+ age, can start to mull through most of it's components.

------
byrneseyeview
One company that sold lots of easily-modified computers is now selling a
harder-to-modify computer.

Could you get an Apple ][e Emulator through the App Store? And throw in all
the tips, manuals, and cheat sheets Mark referenced?

~~~
Zak
That would be a virtual machine or interpreter, and that's against the TOS.

~~~
oconnor0
Virtual machines are against Apple's App Store's TOS?

~~~
mbrubeck
_"No interpreted code may be downloaded or used in an Application except for
code that is interpreted and run by Apple’s Published APIs and built-in
interpreter(s)."_

\-- Apple iPhone SDK agreement

~~~
tfinniga
The only hope is a javascript-based interpreter, which bypasses the SDK. We'll
see how fast the A4 is, I guess.

------
bemmu
I grew up with an 8bit basic too, but to me it seems Garry's Mod would inspire
a lot more tinkering than Apple II basic:
<http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=7D7FFF74CFCF1CC5>

You can start without any programming at all, then extend with Lua scripting.
Available on Steam.

------
whyenot
My first programming experience was using a televideo terminal and an acoustic
modem to connect to my school system's mainframe. We played around in basic
and did tons of tinkering, and the devices we used were closed, dumb
terminals.

I just don't see the problem.

------
Super_Jambo
Economic rules only exist to serve society.

The iPad & iPhone lockdown are simply a way for apple to give themselves a
monopoly on software and content sales.

It's leveraging success in one market (shiny looking hardware) into dominance
in another (content provision, software sales)

If they keep it up and are successful you can bet your ass the regulators will
fine them for it, it's far more destructive than MS bundling media player.

Of course the end service may be better, but thats neither here nor there,
it's hugely anti-competitive.

Does rather depend how in-thrall to no-regulation academics & business leaders
our politicians get though.

------
tocomment
By the way after finishing vernor vinges the peace war I'm thinking tinkerers
really need to get to work. They did some amazing things in that book.

------
pasbesoin
My concern is if/when they come to dominate content distribution and become
the only channel (or a member of an oligopoly of channels, all using "fair
use" adverse licenses and DRM). At which point I'm effectively forced to lease
rather than own my content, under whatever terms they dictate.

~~~
rimantas
Apple still makes most of the money on hardware. They could not care less how
do you get your content if you consume that content on the device they sold to
you.

Frankly, I cannot imagine they going back to DRM for music on iTunes, and I
hope it is only the question of time when DRM will be dropped for video and
other media. If ITMS (where M will stand for "Media" instead of "Music") is
the most convenient way to get your media and the price is right they will do
well without DRM.

