

Jeff Jarvis on How the iPad Destroys Creativity - dreambird
http://thefastertimes.com/mediaandtech/2010/04/04/the-ipad-an-unhappy-return-to-the-past/

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dasil003
It's way too early for this type of hand-wringing. It's not like native apps
are fundamentally less capable of UGC than web apps, it's just that the iPad
was released, uh, _1 day ago_.

Media companies don't have anything against interactivity, they're just
excited about the fact that Apple has had some success creating markets where
people actually pay for a la carte content. The true old-world of limited
distribution is certainly not going to come out of the app store—Apple is a
gatekeeper yes, but they don't have any interest in enforcing an artificial
scarcity on behalf of old media.

The hardware limitations are just v1 stuff. Remember when the iPhone launched
without an SDK? People were shitting cinderblocks all over the blogosphere,
but Apple took its time and came out with a killer product in due course.

I'm all for open platforms, but the way some of this stuff reads it's like
Apple already has achieved a monopoly on general purpose computing with the
iPad. Yes, it's too bad that Apple couldn't have been a little more open with
the iPad, but realistically they are innovating more than anyone else in the
market. We should be glad just to have them injecting ideas into the
marketplace even if their platform remains fully closed. It's still better
than Microsoft buying and killing anyone with a promising idea, or free
software's inability to create a compelling end-user experience. When Internet
usage starts to approach 50% iPad then maybe we have something to worry about,
but for now it's just rabid punditry desperate to cash in on the hype.

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qwzybug
UGC is overrated. He mentions this in his article: Twitter, e.g., is thinking
out loud and not a lot more. Yeah, it's fun, but is it good for you? Sure, why
not. Twitter's a conversation at least. But have you ever read a YouTube
comment worth reading? And it's damn hard to find a blog, even a really good
blog, where the "Comments" h2 tag isn't a sign to gtfo before you remember how
stupid other people are.

I think there's a parallel to be drawn between user-generated content like
comments* and what the Web has done to the magazine format. Compare say
Slate.com with a really good old-media magazine like Harper's or the New
Yorker. The former is throwaway, largely vapid, blog-format pageview fodder,
terrible podcasts, or dull echo-chamber commentary on the real, long-form kind
of reporting and thought perpetrated by the latter. Slate pushes more words
than Harper's, it's probably fair to say (and scare-quote) that they "actively
engage" more of their "readership" than Harper's, but this is not an
unmitigated good. Sometimes it's good to stop and take a breath and think,
even if it's just for the 1.5 seconds you lose having to hit the home button
before you can switch to your IM client.

This isn't a categorical judgement on "content creation", but it's important
to consider what exactly is meant by "content". Jarvis seems to be longing for
the brave, relatively new world where you can add your blather to the bottom
of the first page (~180 words, skip the rest) of a Time.com article on the
Michael Jackson heirs. The iPad is perfectly capable of thoughtful aggregation
and creation of content; what it doesn't lend itself to is millennial ADHD
"multitasking" and throwaway content. (I think there's a breed of geek that
has the idea that the internet really is a lot like the Matrix: you get images
and text thrown at you for a while and all of a sudden "I know kung fu". No,
you don't, you just wasted hours of your life passing your eyes over
disconnected words that you will never remember, synthesize, or regain.)

If you're interested in reading a book or two, thinking about them a while,
recording your thoughts, maybe make a drawing or two, a blog post, etc., the
iPad is perfectly capable of aiding your schemes. If you absolutely must watch
two TMZ video feeds (and firstpost on the comments thread natch) while
updating your work/home/secondary work tweetdeck streams and copywriting top-
ten lists for your blogs.com subsidiary, yeah, you're going to want something
different, but I don't want to be your friend.

*aware of the irony thx

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dodecaphonic
Sometimes I feel people writing this type of article decided to see the world
through their window and ignore what goes around it.

I get the ways the iPad can be detrimental to software development and the
perception of what constitutes legitimate use of a device, just as the iPhone
was/is. However, to place it as an anti-creativity agent infiltrating our
lives is either disingenious or misinformed.

There's no doubt different interests are at stake here, and that old media is
trying desperately to feel in control again. But media consumption is but an
use case for this and similar devices. To reduce it to that and ignore the
amazing things people have been doing with their post-iPhone mobiles is to
dumbly state only the issue of content distribution (written content, mostly)
is relevant in this discussion.

Look at Everyday Looper, the many drawing apps, the games. You can argue any
way you want about how it isn't an IDEAL situation, but there's vibrance in
the community of developers, and a growing number of things users can achieve.
I am not a musician, and I have been working beats. My drawing frustrates me a
lot, but on my phone I feel free to sketch, and it allows me to spend my time
in more creative ways than I would have a couple of years ago. And maybe, just
maybe, all that arises from the perceived stability of the platform as opposed
to Android (and its many versions): people can target it in code, people can
use it and know it will be a thought trampoline, and that different
trampolines will come out soon.

We all have our biases, and too easily frame situations as if our version of
inside baseball were paramount to the fate of the world. While we do it,
people will keep churning great ideas wherever they feel enabled to do so.
Apple is kind of like New York, or Berlin, or Paris in that sense: there's
much to dislike about it, but it provides enough of a cushion for creatives
(including programmers), enough inspiration in the form of the works of
others, to help make great things.

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NZ_Matt
Anyone else find it interesting that that these days it is Apple vs Google and
not Apple vs Microsoft. I almost feel sad for Microsoft :P

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petercooper
Giles Bowkett has written an entire blog post rebutting this point:
<http://gilesbowkett.blogspot.com/2010/04/ipad.html>

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jodrellblank
> Equally important, it does not include a simple (fucking) USB port

There's probably a name for this error, but it's something like "I'm not
thinking of what's behind the scenes, therefore there is nothing behind the
scenes".

1 simple (fucking) USB port. A tweak to the case to allow it to be somewhere.
Out of the way when you are holding around the edges, but also connected
internally to the right places. A tweak to the power supply to provide +5V to
guest devices and allow more power when the iPad is being powered (except if
it's being powered by weak USB itself). USB host IO controllers internally and
kernel modules. USB drivers for common things you want to plug in, and an
interface to manage and update them (internationalised). A way around the
problem of poor 3rd party drivers crashing your iPad. A user interface to
expose the 'safely remove USB device' option. A file manager and file related
APIs for apps. A print interface if it is to support printing. Available to
any app.

You still wouldn't get, say, a wired LAN controller because there's no
interface for working with multiple network cards. You might get a USB TV
tuner, but you'd probably struggle with an external monitor driven by the CPU.

I'm guessing what he really wants is just USB mass storage for moving files
around - and putting a USB interface but limiting it to do only that is rather
clunky. Especially when he could do it wirelessly with the right software (App
or Apple tweak).

> See the German WePad, which comes with USB port(s!)

and which doesn't exist and has no price or estimated release date.

~~~
albertsun
While the difficulties you outlined in adding a USB port are not completely
trivial, they are pretty close when compared with the rest of the technical
difficulties and problems overcome in building the iPad at all.

If Apple wanted to, they could produce solutions to all those problems and
give it a USB port. Or support Flash. Or whatever.

Where Apple spends its technical talent just reflects what's important to them
and how they envision the people using this device.

I don't often agree with Jeff Jarvis, but I do here. The iPad is a device
designed for consumers not creators.

~~~
petercooper
_I don't often agree with Jeff Jarvis, but I do here. The iPad is a device
designed for consumers not creators._

If that were true, why are people getting so excited about the myriad of
music/synthesizer/drum machine, sketching, mock-ups, and presentation creation
apps that are already available for the iPad?

The consumer-vs-creator thing is bullshit anyway. A tiny percentage of people
online are serious creators. Look at sites that have tried video commenting,
hardly anyone uses it. The whole Web is really "designed for consumers not
creators." The number of people who "give back" is tiny compared to the number
of consumers. And so it will go with the iPad, the iPhone, the PC, the Mac, or
any other device you make.

~~~
stcredzero
_The number of people who "give back" is tiny compared to the number of
consumers. And so it will go with the iPad, the iPhone, the PC, the Mac, or
any other device you make._

Very true. It's much the same as music. The degree of musical talent required
to be a professional musician is _widespread_. The bar is really pretty low.
Basically, if you can play in rhythm, in tune, in the right key, with a
modicum of feeling, you can get paid for playing music. This squares with the
distribution of musicians in the pre-phonograph United States. It used to be
that almost every household that could afford an instrument had an
accomplished musician living there. It's what one had to do to have music at
all.

Now look at the situation today. The economic barriers to music production are
_low_. The industrial revolution enabled an individual to acquire a real
instrument for $20 without even looking too hard (Hohner Harmonica) but today
there are millions of devices capable of _studio production_ , advanced
digital sound manipulation, and even limited mass production of _product_. Yet
not even close to every household has an accomplished musician living there.

Another thing I learned while teaching both music and programming: Those who
aren't inclined to learn won't learn very much, no matter how much time and
resource you throw at them, but those who really want to learn _can't be
stopped_.

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ugh
He would have convinced me if the iPad didn’t include a kick ass web browser
:)

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gojomo
Disgree that this is inherent to the iPad -- but strongly agree about the
first generation of media-outlet-specific apps. Many are "worse than the web"
-- less content, idiosyncratic controls, no outlinks, no permalinks for
inbound linking, no commenting.

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hackermom
These bitter, narrow-minded opinions about the iPad's closed nature are boring
to no end.

The closed nature of any machine or videogame console has never affected
people from hacking it and developing for it to _make it do what they want_ ;
the best example would be vast amount of "homebrew" software available for
every damned videogame console from SEGA, Nintendo, Sony and others, that
each, with time, has been broken wide open, documented, and made available for
developing - and a system just doesn't get more closed than a videogame
console.

