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"The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today." I simply do no

"The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today." I simply do not buy this. A tinkerer is born a tinkerer. I had a Mac in the late 80s and throughout the 90s and the only way to program the damn thing was to beg my folks to shell a couple hundred bucks for CodeWarrior and another couple hundred bucks for Apple Reference books. The dev tools today for the iPad cost $99, the reference is free with the tools. If I was a father right now and I had a ten year-old-tinkerer I'd buy one, give it to my kid, get them a dev account and say, "Hack the shit out of this thing." EDIT: "A tinkerer is born a tinkerer + some parental encouragement". When my parents (who at the time had little money, father was in the Army) bought our first Apple IIgs, he said "You should learn how to write your own programs for it". I didn't even know what programming was. But this was enough to make me hunt school libraries for books on BASIC.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
- ryanwaggoner 17y ago
  I can tell you from experience of having 7 siblings that if you gave them a iPad and gave them the dev tools, they (95% of people) wouldn't bother. But is this really different? Ten years ago, did more than 5% of people feel the need to tinker with their computer under the hood?
- swannodette 17y ago
  I didn't say the problem was the cost of development tools. "can tell you from experience of having 7 siblings that if you gave them a iPad and gave them the dev tools, they (95% of people) wouldn't bother." You can say that about the computer you're typing on. According to what you've just said the end of encouraging a "hacker like mentality" began with arrival of easy to use computers 25 years ago.
prospero 17y ago
The dev tools today for the iPad cost $99, the reference is free with the tools. And how much for the computer which is capable of running those dev tools? The point is that the iPad isn't a device which can be used to modify itself, and if it entirely supplants other computers in a household, your experience becomes completely dictated by what other people have created.
- jstevens85 17y ago
  As the iPad exists today, it's impossible to use without a laptop/desktop. If one day it evolves to the point of being a standalone device, I imagine that it may also be capable of running its own dev tools.
  - prospero 17y ago
    Why is it impossible to use by itself? You can browse the internet, you can buy media off of iTunes, you can edit documents, and you can send email. The point is that the iPad is sufficient for the average user, but it prevents the graduation to power user by poking around and learning how things work. I very much doubt self-hosted development will ever be made available.
    - jstevens85 17y ago
      I'm guessing that you'll need to sync it to iTunes first before you can use it, but I may be wrong.
      - grhino 17y ago
        With the iPhone, you need an iTunes account. I don't know if you can set that up on your iPhone. You can go without ever syncing to your desktop. You might need to sync to the desktop to update the iPhone OS, though. Of course, since your iPhone/iPod/iTouch data isn't in the cloud, you will need to sync to the desktop to backup. Not sure what happens if you sign up for MobileMe.
- GHFigs 17y ago
ampermc 17y ago
There is one major difference between the two...the development environment for the iPad doesn't run on the iPad itself, so you end up with a general purpose computer, anyway, if you want to hack. That said, you can be hacking an iPad for a minimum investment of about $1600. $500 for the iPad, $100 for the Dev Program, and $1000 for a MacBook.
- swannodette 17y ago
  The Apple IIgs we had in the 1980s was $2500. That's probably closer to $4000-$5000 in today's dollars. $4000-$5000 vs $1600. Not bad. Even if it was $5000 that's a relatively small investment into your child's future.
netcan 17y ago
Here's another way of thinking of it. 15 years ago a kid might have had access to a home computer. The machine enabled pretty much all the tinkering that it could enable. The physical limitations (It was very expensive. Everyone uses it and you are not allowed to break it. Mom doesn't want you near it with a screwdriver.) were close to the limitations that mattered. Today, a kid with an inclination has access to many, many tinker-able things. A lot of that stuff is new. They can tinker on the web via a browser, which they can do with this device. They can get a Linux machine. They can get Windows. They can get OSX. They can tinker on Android. There aren't that many android devices floating around that aren't someone's phone. In 5 years, there might be lots of old Android phones in drawers that the kid can have. The fact that you cannot write your own software on an iPad is an arbitrary limitation so people don't like it, but within the ocean of possible tinkering, it is a small drop. The practical pool of possibilities is growing. The existence of another device, even if it more successful then the iPhone, is not going to change that. Put another way, if you have the choice of either (a) creating another environment (say a webbapp) where kids can tinker or (b) fighting back the "direction" that the iPad is taking us in, choose a.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

ryanwaggoner 17y ago
I can tell you from experience of having 7 siblings that if you gave them a iPad and gave them the dev tools, they (95% of people) wouldn't bother. But is this really different? Ten years ago, did more than 5% of people feel the need to tinker with their computer under the hood?
swannodette 17y ago
I didn't say the problem was the cost of development tools. "can tell you from experience of having 7 siblings that if you gave them a iPad and gave them the dev tools, they (95% of people) wouldn't bother." You can say that about the computer you're typing on. According to what you've just said the end of encouraging a "hacker like mentality" began with arrival of easy to use computers 25 years ago.

prospero 17y ago

The dev tools today for the iPad cost $99, the reference is free with the tools. And how much for the computer which is capable of running those dev tools? The point is that the iPad isn't a device which can be used to modify itself, and if it entirely supplants other computers in a household, your experience becomes completely dictated by what other people have created.

jstevens85 17y ago
As the iPad exists today, it's impossible to use without a laptop/desktop. If one day it evolves to the point of being a standalone device, I imagine that it may also be capable of running its own dev tools.
- prospero 17y ago
  Why is it impossible to use by itself? You can browse the internet, you can buy media off of iTunes, you can edit documents, and you can send email. The point is that the iPad is sufficient for the average user, but it prevents the graduation to power user by poking around and learning how things work. I very much doubt self-hosted development will ever be made available.
  - jstevens85 17y ago
    I'm guessing that you'll need to sync it to iTunes first before you can use it, but I may be wrong.
    - grhino 17y ago
      With the iPhone, you need an iTunes account. I don't know if you can set that up on your iPhone. You can go without ever syncing to your desktop. You might need to sync to the desktop to update the iPhone OS, though. Of course, since your iPhone/iPod/iTouch data isn't in the cloud, you will need to sync to the desktop to backup. Not sure what happens if you sign up for MobileMe.
GHFigs 17y ago

ampermc 17y ago

There is one major difference between the two...the development environment for the iPad doesn't run on the iPad itself, so you end up with a general purpose computer, anyway, if you want to hack. That said, you can be hacking an iPad for a minimum investment of about $1600. $500 for the iPad, $100 for the Dev Program, and $1000 for a MacBook.

swannodette 17y ago
The Apple IIgs we had in the 1980s was $2500. That's probably closer to $4000-$5000 in today's dollars. $4000-$5000 vs $1600. Not bad. Even if it was $5000 that's a relatively small investment into your child's future.

netcan 17y ago

Here's another way of thinking of it. 15 years ago a kid might have had access to a home computer. The machine enabled pretty much all the tinkering that it could enable. The physical limitations (It was very expensive. Everyone uses it and you are not allowed to break it. Mom doesn't want you near it with a screwdriver.) were close to the limitations that mattered. Today, a kid with an inclination has access to many, many tinker-able things. A lot of that stuff is new. They can tinker on the web via a browser, which they can do with this device. They can get a Linux machine. They can get Windows. They can get OSX. They can tinker on Android. There aren't that many android devices floating around that aren't someone's phone. In 5 years, there might be lots of old Android phones in drawers that the kid can have. The fact that you cannot write your own software on an iPad is an arbitrary limitation so people don't like it, but within the ocean of possible tinkering, it is a small drop. The practical pool of possibilities is growing. The existence of another device, even if it more successful then the iPhone, is not going to change that. Put another way, if you have the choice of either (a) creating another environment (say a webbapp) where kids can tinker or (b) fighting back the "direction" that the iPad is taking us in, choose a.