9 ms·

Joe Hewitt on the iPad

161 points by nirmal 17y ago

greendestiny 17y ago
I almost didn't upvote this in deference for those who are (understandably) sick of the iPad discussion. But it represents my viewpoint quite succinctly. I don't support how closed the Apple platform is, but I think the iPhone OS is great for a whole range of computing. On the positive side its created a market for developers, without pushing out indie developers (like consoles do). I certainly have sympathy for the idea of teaching kids to program on these devices, and how hard Apple will no doubt make that. While its going to be hard to get any kind of interpreter on the device, I'm sure someone will succeed eventually - and then we could well have a generation of kids who grow up programming because of the device.
- maqr 17y ago
  > While its going to be hard to get any kind of interpreter on the device, I'm sure someone will succeed eventually - and then we could well have a generation of kids who grow up programming because of the device. Yes, someone will eventually succeed. There will be a jailbreak for this device which will turn it into a more interesting platform for students and technical users. The complaint is that it should have been this way from the start, and we're betting on a flaw in Apple's design in order to get the most of their product.
  - greendestiny 17y ago
    I was thinking more of getting something past the app store approval process. I think if it was obvious it couldn't be used to circumvent the store itself it might have a chance. Jailbreaking will happen sooner rather than later I'm sure.
  - berntb 17y ago
    Why would a jailbreak be needed? What am I missing? An iPad developer could compile up copies of some of life's goodies like bash, emacs, Perl, Ruby, Python, some lisp variants, Apache, etc. Then the developer write a little Mac-application which let the user apply for the Apple Developer program. When that is granted, the application installs the developer tools and downloads the iPad projects for emacs, etc. Every user which use scripting applications will be his/her own developer. Without jailbreaks.
    - dagw 17y ago
      I'm pretty sure you have to pay $100/year to sign up to the iPhone dev program and I imagine the iPad dev program will be the same. So your idea works fine except for the part where everybody who wants to install your package will first have to pay Apple $100. I'm not sure how many people will be willing to do that just to start learning about programming.
      - berntb 17y ago
        >>I'm not sure how many people will be willing to [pay a tax of $100/year] just to start learning about programming. Huh, learning? That is like saying people won't buy a car so they can learn to drive... :-) A user could have an iPad to write and/or run suitable scripting programs. Like emacs. [Edit: Or other programs written with Perl/Python/Ruby/Lisp etc.] If that is worth a tax of 8-9$/month will vary between users.
        bad_user 17y ago
        > If that is worth a tax of 8-9$/month will vary between users. And between teenagers who may or may not have access to dad's credit card, or between countries who may or may not have access to that program ;) This also means that a user won't be able to install some software with a single click ... he'll have to first go through the registration process, with a valid credit-card, and some time on his hands. I really don't know why people try to downplay this. If this model gets popular (and it already is to some extent because of the iPhone) ... devs and many regular users simply get proper fucked.
        berntb 17y ago
        >> This also means that a user won't be able to install some software with a single click >> ... many regular users simply get proper fucked. My point was to suggest automation of the process. I didn't imply that this would be painless, just less painful than jailbreaks. If it becomes common, even Steve Jobs will have to give in and have a simple checkbox for allowing scripting apps. (Like different sets of installable applications in Debian/Ubuntu).
- bobfunk 17y ago
  Shouldn't be to hard to make an HTML5 based programming tutorial or programming environment that exposes javascript via eval and saves the resulting snippets in the local storage...
andrewljohnson 17y ago
I commented on a previous post that I wouldn't read another iPad article, because all the ones I had read were tripe that bludgeoned the device for ideological reasons, or praised it because it's shiny. However, I respect Joe Hewitt's iPhone work and other writings, so I checked out his article, and I finally got some real insight. This is certainly the best iPad article I've read so far. The idea that we need to re-imagine all of our current software with the capabilities of a large, responsive touchscreen is a good take on the release. The only thing that worries me is the risk... what's the chance people don't buy these things? Apple has had a flop or two in its past, and even though I develop iPhone apps, I'm a bit leery of developing iPad apps.
- netcan 17y ago
  Risk/Reward By getting in early you have a chance to get to know the device early, you get to have apps out there with less competition, you have the chance to pioneer something and the buzz that comes with it, et. etc. That weighs against the risks: noone will buy it, something big will change between v1 & v1.1, etc. etc. Now, some people will buy it and the app store will not have fewer than 1000 apps when it launches, so neither the risk nor the reward are huge. You need to work out which way it leans.
- Timothee 17y ago
  During the keynote, they presented the iPad as "magical and revolutionary". Of course, this is marketing, but I was thinking about it to try to see what could be so magical and revolutionary about it. For the magical part, sure it's a wild hyperbole. But I suppose you could say that, in that it feels like it's the real beginning of the kind of interfaces that have been imagined and dreamt of for many years on TV, in movies… and considering the size of it, it is pretty amazing. As far as revolutionary, my first impression was "how is that revolutionary since everything it does an iPod Touch has been doing for a couple of years on a smaller screen?". But I came to a similar conclusion as Joe Hewitt, in that it's revolutionary (though it's also hyperbolic) because it shifts the paradigms of computing and the way we think about computers. Yes, the iPhone/iPod Touch are similar technically but the apps were still apps for an advanced mobile phone and the size of the screen was in fact very limiting. In a way, I feel that the iPad is what computers should have been from the start if it had been possible at the time. For example, take the mouse. It was a great invention to interact "directly" with what's on the screen, but if it had been possible to have touchscreens then, I doubt mice would have been used. Applications have always been a bunch of files in the filesystem and we got used to that, but really that's something we don't really need to know and something that Apple has been removing for quite some time on the Mac even, with app bundles. So, of course, we'll see what happens. But I think it's an interesting step. PS: yes, I think I drank too much kool-aid
hypermatt 17y ago
One of the few iPad articles that I actually enjoyed reading. Facebook on the iPhone was a real reinvention of UI. Something we don't see often enough.
sorbus 17y ago
"The store may not be open, but the iPhone/iPad platform itself could hardly be more open to tinkerers of all ages." Considering it as an Apple product in the vein of the iPhone, with all the limitations that go along with that? Yes. But considering it as a computer? No.
- deleted 17y ago
  [deleted]
- stanleydrew 17y ago
  "...could hardly be more open...?" Except that you have to pay $100. Oh and you have to develop on a Mac, so you should probably buy one of those too.
  - jsz0 17y ago
    $100 is only required if you want to publish your apps on Apple's App Store. If you just want to tinker you can build the apps for yourself and let friends use them also. I don't recall what the limitations are on that. As for the requirement to own a computer to develop for it -- yeah... that's common.
    - maqr 17y ago
      Not true. Apple requires you to sign your application before the iPhone OS will allow it to be installed. Also, the check is on the device itself, not in iTunes. There's only two ways to get the apps installed: 1) Pay $100. 2) Crack the device. Reference and instruction via networkpx: http://networkpx.blogspot.com/2009/09/compiling-iphoneos-31-apps-with-xcode.html http://networkpx.blogspot.com/2009/09/compiling-iphoneos-31-...
netcan 17y ago
If we leave aside the downsides, we are left with two major things here: - Simplified computer that the majority can handle fully on their own without someone's help. They can choose what apps they want, get rid of ones they don't want, etc. It does take the stress & overhead away from installing stuff on your machine. That means people will install stuff. - Assumed location awareness, connectivity, camera (eventually), mic, headphones, accelerometer, ambient light sensor along with the UI is a genuinely new paradigm Those two things together have the potential to be a very big deal.
- csmeder 17y ago
  It's a big deal because the iPod had all of this but its size meant the number of apps you could write lived in a small petri dish. The size of the iPad's petri dish is much larger, when compared to the iPhone. For example as they showed: Keynote and iBooks. And for us to design: Electronic Restaurant menus, interactive car manuals, Medical Industry, mapping/aviation, un-maned drone control (planes, vehicles, robots), and so on. The above list are applications that neither the iPhone or a laptop can do. We are entrepreneur we should see this, we should not be the ones complaining iPad sucks because x or y.
- waterlesscloud 17y ago
  I don't believe it has GPS, so not so sure about the locational awareness bit.
  - Simucal 17y ago
    If I'm not wrong, I believe the 3g version has A-GPS.
    - rryyan 17y ago
      You are correct: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/ http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/ (left-most column under "Location") It looks like both the wifi and 3g versions have a digital compass, as well.
i386 17y ago
Enough with these iPad stories, please?
zhyder 17y ago
From a developer's point of view, how does the power of Android compare to that of the iPhone OS? I haven't developed on either, but articles I've read so far seem to indicate the two have pros and cons but are pretty evenly matched overall. Of course the iPhone still attracts more developers because it has more users. Let's assume that Android-based smartphones become increasingly successful as many predict, and that users find Android smartphones about as appealing as iPhones. Tablets running Android have been announced, though no apps have been optimized for the larger screen size yet. If Google released tablet-optimized versions of the stock apps, and made the appropriate tweaks to the SDK and the Market, wouldn't Android-based tablets be a close match to the iPad? How come there hasn't been any excitement about the potential of Android-based tablets?
- pkaler 17y ago
  I can't claim to be an Android expert but coding Java in Eclipse is a big pain in the butt. Some people love Eclipse. I am not one of those people. With respect to iPhone/iPad development, Cocoa is the most beautiful and consistent framework I have worked with. It's the best implementation of MVC I've worked with. Objective-C is a little crufty but message passing languages are so much more elegant than method calling languages like C++/C#/Java. With respect to Android based tablets, Google has done a huge disservice and fragmented the market by pushing Chrome OS for tablets.
  - roc 17y ago
    I think the disservice was more that Chrome OS is locked-down Linux vs scaled-up Android. It should have been Android all the way up -- handhelds to desktops -- freeing the market to throw all sorts of crazy hardware variants into any number of form factors.
- blasdel 17y ago
  I've commented here before about the shittiness of Android as a platform: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1064415 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1064415 I think Android is a huge mistake on an unpocketable portable device, and I don't think Google disagrees. It might work out on a TV / Media Center device, but Boxee is so far ahead there that it's quite unlikely. Google's plan for Smartbooks and iPad competitors is ChromeOS. I think they'll succeed handily if they ship it with only a content-addressed-filesystem exposed (think 'media picker'), and with a fleshed-out Google Native Client for local apps. I'd love for them to get some competent hardware manufacturers lined up with solid build quality, but Apple has that market mostly cornered (the Nokia netbook looks great though).
mooted 17y ago
iPad, as a device is a new opportunity for developers. But not an incredible one. Open up the platform, and we can consider it incredible. He calls the demand for open-computing and removal of restrictions a "nonsense" .
- mmastrac 17y ago
  I'm not sure if you are familiar with Joe Hewitt's backstory, but he's been very vocally against the app store policies. In fact, he left the Facebook iPhone application team over this: "My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies.” – Joe Hewitt" ref: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/joe-hewitt-developer-of-facebooks-massively-popular-iphone-app-quits-the-project/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/joe-hewitt-developer-of...
  - mooted 17y ago
    Quoting him & disagreeing with him calling iPad platform an "incredible opportunity" - gets me downmodded. I laughed a little.
RyanMcGreal 17y ago
> The store may not be open, but the iPhone/iPad platform itself could hardly be more open to tinkerers of all ages. Really? Can I install an iPhone/iPad IDE and emulator on my Ubuntu workstation?
sshconnection 17y ago
I have a hard time accepting his new found love for Apple when in the article before last, he was ranting about the evils of Apple's app store approval process. He claimed that he would no longer be making iPhone apps, and would make web applications instead. Now, he says that the glorified iPod touch is going force everyone to "re-imagine" their applications. Sorry, but I'll remain skeptical thank you very much.
TerminalDummy 17y ago
I think the iPad is good for what it is - a personal media player. It is NOT the laptop/touchscreen hybrid next generation technology that we had hoped for. I suspect as a PMP it will see wide success, but there is still a massive void yet to be filled with a proper touchscreen laptop that can accommodate all of our computing and graphic needs. We can only hope another company steps up to the plate and delivers something truly revolutionary. Not just another iPhone/PMP.

161 points by nirmal 17y ago

I almost didn't upvote this in deference for those who are (understandably) sick of the iPad discussion. But it represents my viewpoint quite succinctly. I don't support how closed the Apple platform is, but I think the iPhone OS is great for a whole range of computing. On the positive side its created a market for developers, without pushing out indie developers (like consoles do). I certainly have sympathy for the idea of teaching kids to program on these devices, and how hard Apple will no doubt make that. While its going to be hard to get any kind of interpreter on the device, I'm sure someone will succeed eventually - and then we could well have a generation of kids who grow up programming because of the device.

maqr 17y ago
> While its going to be hard to get any kind of interpreter on the device, I'm sure someone will succeed eventually - and then we could well have a generation of kids who grow up programming because of the device. Yes, someone will eventually succeed. There will be a jailbreak for this device which will turn it into a more interesting platform for students and technical users. The complaint is that it should have been this way from the start, and we're betting on a flaw in Apple's design in order to get the most of their product.
- greendestiny 17y ago
  I was thinking more of getting something past the app store approval process. I think if it was obvious it couldn't be used to circumvent the store itself it might have a chance. Jailbreaking will happen sooner rather than later I'm sure.
- berntb 17y ago
  Why would a jailbreak be needed? What am I missing? An iPad developer could compile up copies of some of life's goodies like bash, emacs, Perl, Ruby, Python, some lisp variants, Apache, etc. Then the developer write a little Mac-application which let the user apply for the Apple Developer program. When that is granted, the application installs the developer tools and downloads the iPad projects for emacs, etc. Every user which use scripting applications will be his/her own developer. Without jailbreaks.
  - dagw 17y ago
    I'm pretty sure you have to pay $100/year to sign up to the iPhone dev program and I imagine the iPad dev program will be the same. So your idea works fine except for the part where everybody who wants to install your package will first have to pay Apple $100. I'm not sure how many people will be willing to do that just to start learning about programming.
    - berntb 17y ago
      >>I'm not sure how many people will be willing to [pay a tax of $100/year] just to start learning about programming. Huh, learning? That is like saying people won't buy a car so they can learn to drive... :-) A user could have an iPad to write and/or run suitable scripting programs. Like emacs. [Edit: Or other programs written with Perl/Python/Ruby/Lisp etc.] If that is worth a tax of 8-9$/month will vary between users.
      - bad_user 17y ago
        > If that is worth a tax of 8-9$/month will vary between users. And between teenagers who may or may not have access to dad's credit card, or between countries who may or may not have access to that program ;) This also means that a user won't be able to install some software with a single click ... he'll have to first go through the registration process, with a valid credit-card, and some time on his hands. I really don't know why people try to downplay this. If this model gets popular (and it already is to some extent because of the iPhone) ... devs and many regular users simply get proper fucked.
        berntb 17y ago
        >> This also means that a user won't be able to install some software with a single click >> ... many regular users simply get proper fucked. My point was to suggest automation of the process. I didn't imply that this would be painless, just less painful than jailbreaks. If it becomes common, even Steve Jobs will have to give in and have a simple checkbox for allowing scripting apps. (Like different sets of installable applications in Debian/Ubuntu).
bobfunk 17y ago
Shouldn't be to hard to make an HTML5 based programming tutorial or programming environment that exposes javascript via eval and saves the resulting snippets in the local storage...

andrewljohnson 17y ago

I commented on a previous post that I wouldn't read another iPad article, because all the ones I had read were tripe that bludgeoned the device for ideological reasons, or praised it because it's shiny. However, I respect Joe Hewitt's iPhone work and other writings, so I checked out his article, and I finally got some real insight. This is certainly the best iPad article I've read so far. The idea that we need to re-imagine all of our current software with the capabilities of a large, responsive touchscreen is a good take on the release. The only thing that worries me is the risk... what's the chance people don't buy these things? Apple has had a flop or two in its past, and even though I develop iPhone apps, I'm a bit leery of developing iPad apps.

netcan 17y ago
Risk/Reward By getting in early you have a chance to get to know the device early, you get to have apps out there with less competition, you have the chance to pioneer something and the buzz that comes with it, et. etc. That weighs against the risks: noone will buy it, something big will change between v1 & v1.1, etc. etc. Now, some people will buy it and the app store will not have fewer than 1000 apps when it launches, so neither the risk nor the reward are huge. You need to work out which way it leans.
Timothee 17y ago
During the keynote, they presented the iPad as "magical and revolutionary". Of course, this is marketing, but I was thinking about it to try to see what could be so magical and revolutionary about it. For the magical part, sure it's a wild hyperbole. But I suppose you could say that, in that it feels like it's the real beginning of the kind of interfaces that have been imagined and dreamt of for many years on TV, in movies… and considering the size of it, it is pretty amazing. As far as revolutionary, my first impression was "how is that revolutionary since everything it does an iPod Touch has been doing for a couple of years on a smaller screen?". But I came to a similar conclusion as Joe Hewitt, in that it's revolutionary (though it's also hyperbolic) because it shifts the paradigms of computing and the way we think about computers. Yes, the iPhone/iPod Touch are similar technically but the apps were still apps for an advanced mobile phone and the size of the screen was in fact very limiting. In a way, I feel that the iPad is what computers should have been from the start if it had been possible at the time. For example, take the mouse. It was a great invention to interact "directly" with what's on the screen, but if it had been possible to have touchscreens then, I doubt mice would have been used. Applications have always been a bunch of files in the filesystem and we got used to that, but really that's something we don't really need to know and something that Apple has been removing for quite some time on the Mac even, with app bundles. So, of course, we'll see what happens. But I think it's an interesting step. PS: yes, I think I drank too much kool-aid

hypermatt 17y ago

One of the few iPad articles that I actually enjoyed reading. Facebook on the iPhone was a real reinvention of UI. Something we don't see often enough.

sorbus 17y ago

"The store may not be open, but the iPhone/iPad platform itself could hardly be more open to tinkerers of all ages." Considering it as an Apple product in the vein of the iPhone, with all the limitations that go along with that? Yes. But considering it as a computer? No.

deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
stanleydrew 17y ago
"...could hardly be more open...?" Except that you have to pay $100. Oh and you have to develop on a Mac, so you should probably buy one of those too.
- jsz0 17y ago
  $100 is only required if you want to publish your apps on Apple's App Store. If you just want to tinker you can build the apps for yourself and let friends use them also. I don't recall what the limitations are on that. As for the requirement to own a computer to develop for it -- yeah... that's common.
  - maqr 17y ago
    Not true. Apple requires you to sign your application before the iPhone OS will allow it to be installed. Also, the check is on the device itself, not in iTunes. There's only two ways to get the apps installed: 1) Pay $100. 2) Crack the device. Reference and instruction via networkpx: http://networkpx.blogspot.com/2009/09/compiling-iphoneos-31-apps-with-xcode.html http://networkpx.blogspot.com/2009/09/compiling-iphoneos-31-...

netcan 17y ago

If we leave aside the downsides, we are left with two major things here: - Simplified computer that the majority can handle fully on their own without someone's help. They can choose what apps they want, get rid of ones they don't want, etc. It does take the stress & overhead away from installing stuff on your machine. That means people will install stuff. - Assumed location awareness, connectivity, camera (eventually), mic, headphones, accelerometer, ambient light sensor along with the UI is a genuinely new paradigm Those two things together have the potential to be a very big deal.

csmeder 17y ago
It's a big deal because the iPod had all of this but its size meant the number of apps you could write lived in a small petri dish. The size of the iPad's petri dish is much larger, when compared to the iPhone. For example as they showed: Keynote and iBooks. And for us to design: Electronic Restaurant menus, interactive car manuals, Medical Industry, mapping/aviation, un-maned drone control (planes, vehicles, robots), and so on. The above list are applications that neither the iPhone or a laptop can do. We are entrepreneur we should see this, we should not be the ones complaining iPad sucks because x or y.
waterlesscloud 17y ago
I don't believe it has GPS, so not so sure about the locational awareness bit.
- Simucal 17y ago
  If I'm not wrong, I believe the 3g version has A-GPS.
  - rryyan 17y ago
    You are correct: http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/ http://www.apple.com/ipad/specs/ (left-most column under "Location") It looks like both the wifi and 3g versions have a digital compass, as well.

i386 17y ago

Enough with these iPad stories, please?

zhyder 17y ago

From a developer's point of view, how does the power of Android compare to that of the iPhone OS? I haven't developed on either, but articles I've read so far seem to indicate the two have pros and cons but are pretty evenly matched overall. Of course the iPhone still attracts more developers because it has more users. Let's assume that Android-based smartphones become increasingly successful as many predict, and that users find Android smartphones about as appealing as iPhones. Tablets running Android have been announced, though no apps have been optimized for the larger screen size yet. If Google released tablet-optimized versions of the stock apps, and made the appropriate tweaks to the SDK and the Market, wouldn't Android-based tablets be a close match to the iPad? How come there hasn't been any excitement about the potential of Android-based tablets?

pkaler 17y ago
I can't claim to be an Android expert but coding Java in Eclipse is a big pain in the butt. Some people love Eclipse. I am not one of those people. With respect to iPhone/iPad development, Cocoa is the most beautiful and consistent framework I have worked with. It's the best implementation of MVC I've worked with. Objective-C is a little crufty but message passing languages are so much more elegant than method calling languages like C++/C#/Java. With respect to Android based tablets, Google has done a huge disservice and fragmented the market by pushing Chrome OS for tablets.
- roc 17y ago
  I think the disservice was more that Chrome OS is locked-down Linux vs scaled-up Android. It should have been Android all the way up -- handhelds to desktops -- freeing the market to throw all sorts of crazy hardware variants into any number of form factors.
blasdel 17y ago
I've commented here before about the shittiness of Android as a platform: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1064415 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1064415 I think Android is a huge mistake on an unpocketable portable device, and I don't think Google disagrees. It might work out on a TV / Media Center device, but Boxee is so far ahead there that it's quite unlikely. Google's plan for Smartbooks and iPad competitors is ChromeOS. I think they'll succeed handily if they ship it with only a content-addressed-filesystem exposed (think 'media picker'), and with a fleshed-out Google Native Client for local apps. I'd love for them to get some competent hardware manufacturers lined up with solid build quality, but Apple has that market mostly cornered (the Nokia netbook looks great though).

mooted 17y ago

iPad, as a device is a new opportunity for developers. But not an incredible one. Open up the platform, and we can consider it incredible. He calls the demand for open-computing and removal of restrictions a "nonsense" .

mmastrac 17y ago
I'm not sure if you are familiar with Joe Hewitt's backstory, but he's been very vocally against the app store policies. In fact, he left the Facebook iPhone application team over this: "My decision to stop iPhone development has had everything to do with Apple’s policies.” – Joe Hewitt" ref: http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/joe-hewitt-developer-of-facebooks-massively-popular-iphone-app-quits-the-project/ http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/11/joe-hewitt-developer-of...
- mooted 17y ago
  Quoting him & disagreeing with him calling iPad platform an "incredible opportunity" - gets me downmodded. I laughed a little.

RyanMcGreal 17y ago

> The store may not be open, but the iPhone/iPad platform itself could hardly be more open to tinkerers of all ages. Really? Can I install an iPhone/iPad IDE and emulator on my Ubuntu workstation?

sshconnection 17y ago

I have a hard time accepting his new found love for Apple when in the article before last, he was ranting about the evils of Apple's app store approval process. He claimed that he would no longer be making iPhone apps, and would make web applications instead. Now, he says that the glorified iPod touch is going force everyone to "re-imagine" their applications. Sorry, but I'll remain skeptical thank you very much.

TerminalDummy 17y ago

I think the iPad is good for what it is - a personal media player. It is NOT the laptop/touchscreen hybrid next generation technology that we had hoped for. I suspect as a PMP it will see wide success, but there is still a massive void yet to be filled with a proper touchscreen laptop that can accommodate all of our computing and graphic needs. We can only hope another company steps up to the plate and delivers something truly revolutionary. Not just another iPhone/PMP.