I tweeted earlier that after having slept with her (Ms. iPad), I woke up with morning-after regrets. She’s sweet and pretty but shallow and vapid.
Cute line, appropriate for retweets. But as my hangover settles in, I realize that there’s something much more basic and profound that worries me about the iPad - and not just the iPad but the architecture upon which it is built. I see danger in moving from the web to apps.
The iPad is retrograde. It tries to turn us back into an audience again. That is why media companies and advertisers are embracing it so fervently, because they think it returns us all to their good old days when we just consumed, we didn’t create, when they controlled our media experience and business models and we came to them. The most absurd, extreme illustration is Time Magazine’s app, which is essentially a PDF of the magazine (with the odd video snippet). It’s worse than the web: we can’t comment; we can’t remix; we can’t click out; we can’t link in, and they think this is worth $4.99 a week. But the pictures are pretty.
That’s what we keep hearing about the iPad as the justification for all its purposeful limitations: it’s meant for consumption, we’re told, not creation. We also hear, as in David Pogue’s review, that this is our grandma’s computer. That cant is inherently snobbish and insulting. It assumes grandma has nothing to say. But after 15 years of the web, we know she does. I’ve long said that the remote control, cable box, and VCR gave us control of the consumption of media; the Internet gave us control of its creation. Pew says that a third of us create web content. But all of us comment on content, whether through email or across a Denny’s table. At one level or another, we all spread, react, remix, or create. Just not on the iPad.
The iPad’s architecture supports these limitations in a few ways:
First, in its hardware design, it does not include a camera - the easiest and in some ways most democratic means of creation (you don’t have to write well) - even though its smaller cousin, the iPhone, has one. Equally important, it does not include a simple (fucking) USB port, which means that I can’t bring in and take out content easily. If I want to edit a document in Apple’s Pages, I have to go through many hoops of moving and snycing and emailing or using Apple’s own services. Cloud? I see no cloud, just Apple’s blue skies. Why no USB? Well, I can only imagine that Apple doesn’t want us to think what Walt Mossberg did in his review - the polar opposite of Pogue’s - that this pad could replace its more expensive laptops. The iPad is purposely handicapped, but it doesn’t need to be. See the German WePad, which comes with USB port(s!), a camera, multitasking, and the more open Android operating system and marketplace.
Second, the iPad is built on apps. So are phones, Apple’s and others’. Apps can be wonderful things because they are built to a purpose. I’m not anti-app, let’s be clear. But I also want to stop and examine the impact of shifting from a page-and-site-based Internet to one built on apps. I’ve been arguing that we are, indeed, moving past a page-, site-, and search-based web to one also built on streams and flows, to a distributed web where you can’t expect people to come to you but you must go to them; you must get yourself into their streams. This shift to apps is a move in precisely the opposite direction. Apps are more closed, contained, controlling. That, again, is why media companies like them. But they don’t interoperate - they don’t play well - with other apps and with the web itself; they are hostile to links and search. What we do in apps is less open to the world. I just want to consider the consequences.
So I see the iPad as a Bizarro Trojan Horse. Instead of importing soldiers into the kingdom to break down its walls, in this horse, we, the people, are stuffed inside and wheeled into the old walls; the gate is shut and we’re welcomed back into the kingdom of controlling media that we left almost a generation ago.
There are alternatives. I now see the battle between Apple and Google Android in clearer focus. At Davos, Eric Schmidt said that phones (and he saw the iPad as just a big phone… which it is, just without the phone and a few other things) will be defined by their apps. The mobile (that is to say, constantly connected) war will be won on apps. Google is competing with openness, Apple with control; Google will have countless manufacturers and brands spreading its OS. Apple will have media and fanboys (including me) do the work for it.
But Google has a long way to go if it hopes to win this war. I’m using my Nexus One phone (which I also had morning-after doubts about) and generally liking it, but I still find it awkward. Google has lost its way; its devotion to profound simplicity. Google Wave and Buzz are confusing and generally unusable messes; Android needed to be thought through more (I shouldn’t have to think about what a button does in this use case before using it); Google Docs could be more elegant; YouTube’s redesign is halfway to clean. Still, Google and Apple’s competition presents us with choices.
I find it interesting that though many commercial brands - from Amazon to Bank of America to Fandango - have written for both Apple and Android, many media brands - most notable The New York Times and my Guardian - have written only for Apple and they now are devoting much resource to recreating apps for the iPad. The audience on Android is bigger than the audience on iPad but the sexiness and control Apple offers is alluring. This, I think, is why Salon CEO Richard Gingras calls the iPad a fatal distraction for publishers. They are deluding themselves into thinking that the future lies in their past.
On This Week in Google last night, I went too far slathering over the iPad and some of its very neat apps (ABC’s is great; I watched the Modern Family about the iPad on the iPad and smugly loved being so meta). I am a toy boy at heart and didn’t stop to cast a critical eye, as TWiG’s iPadless Gina Trapani did. This morning on Twitter, I went too far the other way kvetching about the inconveniences of the iPad’s limitations (just a fucking USB, please!) in compensation. That’s the problem with Twitter, at least for my readers: it’s thinking out loud.
I’ll sleep with the iPad a few more nights. I might well rebox and return it; I don’t have $500 to throw away. But considering what I do for a living, I perhaps should hold onto it so I can understand its implications. And that’s the real point of this post: there are implications.
: MORE: Of course, I must link to Cory Doctorow’s eloquent examination of the infantilization of technology. I’m not quite as principled, I guess, as Cory is on the topic; I’m not telling people they should not buy the iPad; I don’t much like that verb in any context. But on the merits and demerits, we agree.
And Dave Winer: “Today it’s something to play with, not something to use. That’s the kind way to say it. The direct way: It’s a toy.”
: By the way, back in the day, about a decade ago, I worked with Intel (through my employer, Advance) on a web pad that was meant to be used to consume in the home (we knew then that the on-screen keyboard sucked; it was meant to be a couch satellite to the desk’s PC). Intel lost nerve and didn’t launch it. Besides, the technology was early (they built the wireless on Intel Anypoint, not wi-fi or even bluetooth). Here’s the pad in the flesh. I have it in my basement museum of dead technlogy, next to my CueCat.
Also posted here on Buzzmachine.com
Brennan Novak says:
What part of a touch screen tablet computer, that has a very awesome and capable (minus Flash) web browser built into makes you think people will move to using apps instead? Just because the large news apps don't allow commenting, blogs via Safari still do... I don't see the iPad as a castration of expression rather a reconfiguring of interface channels. I think any app that does not allow for open communication channels will ultimately fail. Who would want to pay for an app that only allows one way communication. If feels like you've ignored the notion of consumer choice as far as apps go. If anything I see this as encouraging web sites to push the envelop and compete against apps. Given many exciting new web standards emerging this could be awesome. The absence of flash is a bummer, but enough to overlook.
giles bowkett says:
the first thing I did with my iPad was make music. I draw with it, too. take a look at iElectribe, iDrum, Brushes, Sketchbook Pro, TouchOSC, Midipad, or any of the (very many) other apps for creative work. the New Yorker had already put three sketches done in Brushes on its cover back when Brushes was just an iPhone app and the iPad was barely even a rumor.
I also make music every day and draw from time to time as well. not a coincidence. creative people are doing creative things with the iPad. if you haven't done anything creative with your iPad, that's not the device, it's you.
even your own argument that Grandma has something to say fails here. Grandma can say it with an iPad. I'm writing this comment on an iPad. WordPress has an iPad app. all that Web 2.0 goodness is available on an iPad. the only Web technoogy it omits, Flash, is also the one Web tech that is more often consumed than created.
you're just twenty different shades of wrong here.
kent says:
I don't think we are moving away from the web/cloud. Most iPad apps are not much different from a web app. They are just cloud apps written in Objective C with XML frontend, they might as well have been in php with HTML. And Apps will never be able to compete with the web. 100,000 apps is nothing compared to over 30 million new websites added to the web every month.
Amanda says:
The iPad is not to replace computers.
Robin says:
No offense, but you're stupid and ignorant. Did the closed nature of the videogame consoles of the 80s and the 90s hamper people's creativity? No, it spurred it beyond the wildest dreams, as people started hacking the devices in order to tame them and develop software for them. Every single console made by SEGA, Nintendo, Sony, and all the other minorities, has been "broken" and developed for. Today there exists a tremendous amount of so-called "homebrew" software for all of these consoles, and the scene just grows larger. Why will the iPad be different? It won't - trust me.
It's ironic how you call the iPad and its makes for shallow and vapid, when, in reality, it is you who can't see further than your own nose.
Adam Ierymenko says:
I agree to some extent, but I think Apple will win? Why? User interface, user interface, and user interface. Apple is basically the only company that can do user interfaces today. I say that pretty categorically. Everyone else doesn't get it.
John Blossom says:
Jeff, thanks so much for nailing it. It's not to say that the iPad will not be successful in its own way - shiny new toys that have enormous publicity and few direct competitors will tend to do well - but the iPad is standing against virtually every lesson learned on the Web in the past twenty-five years. That may be what some in the media business want, but it's not going to help them in the long run to adapt to the link economy. I agree also that Google needs to get refocused on simple and great user experiences. Here's hoping.
George Girton says:
I'm impressed that you still have your CueCat!
I disagreed with the commenter who called him/herself "Robin", by the way. And I would be willing to bet that he/she wrote her comment using a computer keyboard on an open system. Creative albeit offensive & rude. It's a consolation that when he/she switches to the iPad, we won't hear from her anymore.
bobh says:
ok I'm totally missing the point. How will "robin" never be heard from again? Let's perform an expirement. I don't have iPad so I'm using an iPhone which is locked down tighter than a drum. I'm about to create an offensive post right now, here goes-- Darn Robin what a jerk! Now I'll switch over to an "open" system to read it. Or will Apple's closed system totally thwart me?
app, web app, browser/page-site based Internet--they all seem to exist in "Seemless company" on Apple closed systems. Mr. Winer ends his article seemingly confused about which is which.
bobh says:
this is bobh back on his open system. Hey my post made it!
Maybe the problem is with too much choice. If the people have options, they may not make the "correct" choice.
And what's with USB. Who cares? Dropbox, air sharing, iTunes sync (oops, they are all apps, is that the problem?). Mr. Jobs said no rs-232 ports, no parallel printer ports, no floppy drives this is just another.
Dan says:
Pretty interesting post. But do you really think Google isn't about "control?" You're looking at the little picture: the control Google exerts is far more concerning than Apple's app policies: that phone knows who you're communicating with, where you are, what you like to do. Google will use that info - just as it does the information parsed from its desktop products - to profile you and throw ads at you. Not scary? Remember, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said, just this past December: "If you have something that you don't want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Those are the words of a scoundrel, and the implication - to me - is that Google is reserving the right to do -anything- it wants with whatever you provide.
As far as not collecting your "personal" info, of course Google does. Sure, it may not connect it to your name or physical address, but I'd argue that those old-fashioned concepts are meaningless. Your Google ID is you; your location - as transmitted by Google software - is a far better indicator of where you can be found. I'm not saying Google is necessarily evil, but I will argue that the company is the greatest information-gathering apparatus ever created, and that includes the KGB and NSA, because we willingly allow it to perform what is the equivalent of surveillance.
I'm far more comfortable with Apple's restrictions than Google's tacit agreement.
As far as not being a writing tool, disagree. Perhaps it isn't an editing tool, but with the keyboard, it will work for many writers - especially those who use "distraction free" software like Write Now. That product, IMHO, makes it easier to write and be creative, and it will (likely along with others) be ported to the iPad. (And as far as editing is concerned, Documents to Go will also be ported - and that works as an excellent editing tool on the iPhone as it is.)
Frank Reade says:
"The iPad is retrograde. It tries to turn us back into an audience again." I think Mr Jarvis nailed it with this line.
Some folks seems to be missing the larger point -- that while, yes, you can create simple content (message board posts, blog posts, twits etc) on the iPad, doing anything more complex is something of a headache. From everything I've read, getting documents on and off the thing is a hassle; you have to jump through too many awkward hoops (emailing myself? really? It's 2010, ffs).
The iPad and the iPhone, as well as iTunes and syncing, is designed around big media consumption.
Apple's attitude is apparent in their design (and lack of updates for) their baseline "Notes" app. Here's a quick experiment: Write 500 words on anything using Notes. The only way to get those words off your phone is by emailing yourself. You can't access any note from you desktop computer, even after syncing with iTunes. This is, in a lot of ways, less functional than what US Robotics wa
doing with the original Palm Pilot back in 1995.
I understand your phone isn't about content creation. Which is fair enough, but that attitude has transferred now to the iPad.
If you're sitting in a cafe in LA and can't easily write and edit a script, the iPad is useless as a content creation tool. Likewise if you're in New York and want to edit chapter four of your novel, or you're in San Francisco and want to play around with a quick 100 lines of Perl.
Apple's own tools prohibit you from exporting in open standards (Pages doesn't allow you to send out documents in RTF or plain text) and only allow you to, again, email documents or upload them to their own don't-expect-this-to-be-free-forever cloud (iWork.com). Third party apps don't have access to an open filesystem, so they have to resort to kludgy workarounds for document sharing (more clouds, or transferring documents over wifi).
These are pretty simple things, and yes you could work within this rigid and ill-designed framework to sort of brute force creativity on the iPad ... but why should you have to?
Civilian says:
I think you are wrong.
Let me remind you that the iPad has a web browser and that fact invalidates the entire basis for your post.
Your argument against native iPad apps also makes no sense. Again, let me remind you that every interactive site on the web is also an app. Just because the Times chooses not to implement commenting on their iPad app doesn't mean its is impossible. If the likes of the Times truly want a user base that doesn't contribute comments, why would they allow commenting on their sites? You have to consider that the iPad was just released a couple of days ago and most developers simply haven't had the time to incorporate every single feature they may have planned.
I'm getting rather tired of hearing all the whining about the iPad's lack of a camera. Do you really want to walk around snapping shots with a device that big? Use your phone or go to your local Target and pick up something more appropriate for that task. My macbook has a built in camera and frankly, I never use it.
Onto USB. I heard the same arguments when the iMac made its debut without a floppy drive. That argument was tired then as it is now. People do not care about USB or any port for that matter, what they care about is what the port allows them to do. If you can't find a solution between the dock connector, bluetooth or Wi-Fi coupled with cloud based storage and services, then I'm afraid you aren't very resourceful. Here is your opportunity to get creative :-)
I'm a software engineer by day, a musician at night and a photographer/film-maker on the weekends. The iPad helps me in a myriad of ways with each of those endeavors.
God of BIscuits says:
I'm starting to believe that age or experience—which in and of itself is really just a form of professional aging—reaches an inversion point where each of us forgets one or the other side of the equation.
Here's the thing: why on EARTH would you consider that a new device like this would simply be applied to the same old forms of creation, the same old ways of creating?
Why do you neglect to consider the effect that the iPad will have on forms of writing, forms of drawing, forms of speech, forms of story, of collaboration, of ad hoc interaction, of resurrection of past forms of all these?
Soon there will be millions of them out there—iPad users, that is—making their impression on the global infrastructure.
Blog posts, tweets, facebook status updates. The iPad already is more than adequate at creating all of these with its onscreen keyboard. So's the iPhone.
A tweet? What the hell can be done in 140 characters? Not much. But retweet and follow and search and DM and run a twitter client on your desktop and hook marketers into it and announce with it and get tens of millions of people to do the same and suddenly a 140 characters isn't just 140 characters.
My point is, the iPad is about people and how they use it and what they develop for it and what emerges from millions of people participating.
Cory Doctorow won't buy an iPod before he's ever seen or used one. What the f*ck is someone with that atttitude doing writing about technology?
DISCLAIMER: I'm an iPhone OS developer (and Mac/Cocoa developer for a long time before that), and the first thing *I* thought of when Apple rolled out the iPad was all the ideas for iPhone I had for users making things that were impossible because of the phone's physical limitations were now not only possible, but dazzlingly doable, on the iPad.
You'd think I should keep my mouth shut and hope the pundit world is made up of people like you who believe the iPad is where "creativity goes to die" so that my products will catch everyone with their britches down, but no. I want there to be a bazillion apps that help people make things.
I want everyone to make new things. My apps, whatever the final versions are, will sell because I'm good at what I do and I'm passionate about what I do, but it's more important to me that more people make more things and express themselves.
And that's what *I* think the iPad's eventually going to bring to the party.
Stick around. It's going to be a blast.
Tim Almond says:
"Apps are more closed, contained, controlling. That, again, is why media companies like them. But they don’t interoperate - they don’t play well - with other apps and with the web itself; they are hostile to links and search. What we do in apps is less open to the world. I just want to consider the consequences."
The thing with apps on a phone is that the limited screen space, input and networking mean that they improve the user experience over having to use a website.
Take the (UK) Telegraph app for Android. I open it, the menus are all on the phone (so fast) and when I choose a subject area, it just grabs all the stories ready for me to click and open. That's a faster experience than messing around with the phone's browser on the Telegraph site (and all optimised for the size of the phone).
The problem for the iPad is that once you go back to a 10" screen and you're using wi-fi, such problems start to disappear. You don't have a fiddly little keyboard and limited screen space. So, an app offers few benefits over a website. So, if you charge for an app, but make a website free, you're going to struggle to make that sale. That's not to say that all apps are then useless - those that offer say, location-based functionality will still be useful, but many apps will become redundant.
icorn says:
I disagree. There are already tons of apps which are made for being creative. Even at launch date there were lots of music apps, lots of apps for hand drawing, and not to mention the 3 office apps from apple which are all made for content creation.
It's the same situation like on a computer: If you only want to consume, you can consume. If you want to create, you can create.
It's the users choice.
Pierre says:
Just because -you- can't….
"that's not music, that's noise"
The one thing cool about you is your Flock of Seagulls haircut.
Paramendra Bhagat says:
"I see danger in moving from the web to apps." Me too. That is a real danger. Also, like you say, Farmville is the media savior, it is not the iPad. 99% of Farmville users don't pay.
James Burland says:
I despair sometimes... Shocking lack of imagination by so many people who really ought to know better. The iPad is actually far better suited to creativity than most netbooks and laptops. If that needs explaining, then you really are not the intended audience for the iPad.
Evidence here...
http://www.ipadcreative.com/blog/2010/4/15/heres-to-the-crazy-ones.html
and here...
http://www.ipadcreative.com/blog/2010/4/10/the-ipad-a-revolution-in-the-creative-arts.html
This is just the start.