11 ms·

I won’t buy an iPad: ten years later

67 points by virtualritz 7y ago

zepto 7y ago
Some weird stuff for him to uncritically ‘stand by’: If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn't for you. Seems like this is garbage. If you want to write code for a platform where the only thing that determines whether you're going to succeed with it is whether your audience loves it, the iPad isn't for you. This is a weird and naively idealistic statement. On what platform has this now, or ever been true? It seems like iOS is at least as close to this ideal if not better than any other platform. I wish we lived in the world he would like us to live in, but he seems to be out of touch with reality.
- chacha2 7y ago
  > If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn't for you. > Seems like this is garbage. They're called files. > This is a weird and naively idealistic statement. On what platform has this now, or ever been true? The web. Desktop software.
  - zepto 7y ago
    You can’t be serious about the web or desktop software. In both cases you are dealing with search engines, and VCs distorting the landscape, not to mention Google Safe browsing, etc.
- SllX 7y ago
  Cory Doctorow is one of the most consistently principled men you’ll ever meet. File him with Bernie Sanders or Richard Stallman where regardless if you agree with the principles they uphold, there is still a certain admirable quality to the sheer genuine consistency as to who they are and what they represent. Reading his piece, it is easy to see that Apple hasn’t yet released an iPad Doctorow would like to buy, and I wouldn’t blame him for being who he is. He’s come to market looking for certain qualities in a tablet computer product, and found every iPad ever released to be lacking them. There’s no reason to spend money on something you’ll be unhappy with.
  - wmeredith 7y ago
    Sticking to your principles isn't really in-and-of-itself a virtue. History books are littered with lives destroyed by charismatic and unwaveringly principled monsters. I'd treat it as a curiosity at best.
  - zepto 7y ago
    Principles are genuinely great - I strongly respect being principled. Principles that are not re-evaluated in context with a changing human society, are just dogma. I respect that, but I call it what it is.
    - filoleg 7y ago
      I like the way you phrased the last paragraph a lot. Thanks for pointing it out, as I have personally been struggling to articulate why some principles are not the same as others in this context, but your comment perfectly cleared it up in my head.
- virtualritz 7y ago
  > This is a weird and naively idealistic statement. On what platform has this now, or ever been true? Any computer I grew up with C64, Amiga, Atari, PC) was like this. My friends and I swapped floppy disks with stuff we made. Code, images, music. Then came dial-up mailboxes, then the web. > It seems like iOS is at least as close to this ideal if not better than any other platform. iOS is probably farthest away from this, actually. Even on Android I can share some experiment with my friends and they can, after changing a single setting on their phone, install the APK I give them. Try this on iOS ...
  - zepto 7y ago
    We aren’t in the 80’s anymore. Things don’t work that way. Nobody has made a business that has succeeded by delivering APKs outside of a store, so that proves my point.
    - chacha2 7y ago
      Epic, Humble Bundle, Amazon and Samsung have.
      - zepto 7y ago
        Outside of a store? What exact ‘businesses’ have been made in your examples?
jdkee 7y ago
Doctorow histrionically copying the entire Gibson quote is a perfect example of why he is a poor writer. He has no sense of balance.
- cosmiccatnap 7y ago
  Interesting how an attack of his writing style invalidates his criticisms...
  - filoleg 7y ago
    The parent comment isn't saying "his writing style is bad, and that makes his points bad." It is saying "His points are bad, and the issues with his poor writing style seem to mirror the issues with the points he makes". You can say that the parent comment doesn't explain why his points are bad, but that has been already discussed to death elsewhere in the thread. So it doesn't seem necessary to copypaste all of that in here, just to make a point about his writing style issues alone.
- kome 7y ago
  ok.
- dkarl 7y ago
  Not only that, the Gibson quote has not aged well. Consumers are not gripping a remote control in voiceless isolated rage; they now hold globally connected handheld computers that provide access to a dizzying choice of ways to interact with others. If there's something essential in this unattractive picture that hasn't changed, this choice of quote doesn't give me confidence that either Gibson or Doctorow understands it.
  - jdkee 7y ago
    I think the quote was appropriate at the time, see parallel ideas espoused by Stephenson in Interface (1994). It predates the smartphone/social media era.
melling 7y ago
The iPad is a great form factor. I prefer sitting back with it over a computer. 10 years later I only wish Google or Microsoft had a stronger competitor. Apple has dragged their feet in making it more useful. Apple’s Pencil is great but user input could be enhanced with something like Soli, for example: https://atap.google.com/soli/ https://atap.google.com/soli/ Slide a wireless keyboard and mouse next to a tablet and it should become my desktop computer.
- reaperducer 7y ago
  Since iPads support Bluetooth HID, it seems like it would be possible to create a Soli-type device that works with existing iPads. Slide a wireless keyboard and mouse next to a tablet and it should become my desktop computer. That's very close to what the iPad is now. I often sit in a coffee shop and read magazines on my iPad. Then when I'm ready to do some work, I just prop the iPad up on a table with its cover and turn on an old Bluetooth keyboard I keep in my bag. E-mail on the left side of the screen. ssh on the right side with the Prompt app. Bang, it's 90% of what I use my desktop computer for. I've heard that iPads support a Bluetooth mouse now, but I don't have any personal experience with it. I haven't heard anything about trackpads.
  - ascagnel_ 7y ago
    > I've heard that iPads support a Bluetooth mouse now, but I don't have any personal experience with it. I haven't heard anything about trackpads. They do, but it's emulating a fingertip (for accessibility), not a proper mouse cursor. It was neat to play around with for a little while, but not something you'd want to do over a longer term. iPads will also work with Apple's Magic Touchpads (the standalone units), but they must be connected via USB, and the same finger-emulating touchscreen caveat applies.
    - hsitz 7y ago
      I use both a bluetooth mouse and keyboard regularly with my iPad. I'm not sure what you mean by "not something you'd want to do over a longer term". Using the mouse is most definitely preferable to raising my hand to the iPad screen and pointing with my finger. Having said that, no, it doesn't feel as nice as real mouse or trackpad on a laptop or PC. But for the use case of having iPad on a stand and using it like a "real" computer (i.e, with keyboard and mouse), the current state of iPad mouse is at least usable, and preferable to having to physically touch the screen.
dr-detroit 7y ago
My iPad air 2 is the daily driver for my family and its still going strong. This author is complaining they cannot open it and it hurts their feelings??? I wish I was half this privileged to have such small problems.
dwnvoted2hell 7y ago
It's weird to read this article when there are legitimately good programming environments available on the iPad, like ‎Pythonista 3, which is an app that lets you run python on your device. I think the thing that he's "standing by" is that he wants to continue making waves by sounding controversial when he has in fact become irrelevant. I like and appreciate the viewpoints of those shared by BoingBoing, but perhaps something less cringeworthy? I understand folks like to build electronics, and there are systems people can build on for 30 dollars. The iPad was always meant to be a computer for someone that didn't care to screw with all of the guts of hardware or software. But yes, if you really want to use your iPad to learn about hardware and software, you can certainly do so. And every company has the right to enforce their rules in replacement of defective parts, based upon what prior abuse or misuse you put on it. The average person who "opens" their iPad to fix it deserves to have warranties and guarantees invalidated, even if Apple is a touch predatory in the rates they change for repairs.
g051051 7y ago
I won't buy another iPad, because my perfectly good iPad has essentially died from being cut off from most of the services it needs to run. Apps have been "updated" to versions that won't work, and the ability to download older versions is sketchy at best. Most recently, I discovered that my magazine access has stopped working, so not only did I stop getting new issues, I can't download older content that wasn't on my iPad when they killed it. Discontinuing system software updates was bad enough, but actively killing off the functions it needs to keep operating at the old level is too much for me.
- tptacek 7y ago
  What iPad do you have?
  - g051051 7y ago
    The original iPad. Per Wikipedia, it had full software support for 2 years, 5 months. Which was by far the shortest support lifespan of any iPad.
    - scarface74 7y ago
      It had only 256MB of RAM, compared to the iPhone 4 that came out 3 months later with 512MB of RAM.
- Mobius01 7y ago
  That’s unfortunate. Which hardware version do you have? Apple has been supporting older devices fairly well from my perspective, often reaching back 5 years or more.
  - cjensen 7y ago
    The iPad 1, which I owned though I'm not the parent commenter, came with iOS 3, and the final compatible release was iOS 5 two years later. It worked poorly with iOS 5 after two years, and was fully obsolete after three years. Even for those early days, it went from new to obsolete extremely fast.
tptacek 7y ago
While I don't share the sentiment, I get the refusal to participate in the Apple App Store ecosystem. It's clear what the ideological issue there is. But I do not at all understand the enmity some nerds have for non-replaceable batteries. Over the last 10 years it seems like Apple has run an experiment on whether batteries work better when they're tightly integrated and not replaceable, and that the results are demonstrably in. The performance I get from non-replaceable batteries has been so much better that I would automatically be suspicious of any device that had replaceable batteries. Meanwhile, if I really want to carry a spare battery with me, I still can; it just takes the form of a USB charger.
- CJefferson 7y ago
  How do you measure the performance you get from non replaceable batteries is better? Batteries have generally been getting better.
- wlesieutre 7y ago
  I think they're largely fine with carrying a USB charger, the complaint is that the built-in battery is known to degrade over time. If your device has a removable battery, you can get a new one and pop it in. But when everything is sealed together that becomes a much riskier job. A lot of people replace their phones on a 2-3 year cycle. If you could get a new battery for $30 and install it yourself in 30 seconds, would people be throwing less phones out? You'll note that Apple's warranty language (and probably everyone else's) specifically defines batteries as a "consumable part." Given that, it's a bit of a dick move to make them so difficult to replace.
  - j-c-hewitt 7y ago
    The battery is the fastest-degrading component. It is also one of the most easily replaceable components, speaking in general and not specifically to the way Apple designs it to be non-removable. The desire to replace the fastest degrading component to extend the life of the device makes perfect sense from the consumer's perspective.
    - 7y ago
dang 7y ago
Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1236722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1236722
vr46 7y ago
I have met the writer and he is a nice fella but he is so preposterously missing any kind of substance in this article. A lot of great Apple technology has the ability to get out of your way and I often feel that people are being angry on principle. Making things maintainable or serviceable is a design requirement from the get-go, with all kinds of trade-offs and compromises that are endlessly speculated about on the web. But some people seem to think these trade-offs don’t exist. Hypercard? Great at the time. How much did a Mac cost to run it though? Anyway, this article is poorly thought-out and badly-written on top, with absolutely nothing to offer that you didn’t already know.
- kick 7y ago
  How is it lacking substance? He points out issues very sanely and very cleanly, like... 1. How Apple has gone out of their way to prevent allowing other people from touching their devices, including influencing legislation. (It wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if they weren't trying to get guns pointed at anyone who wanted to fix their device themselves, but the act of lobbying to make the law bend to fit your desires is bad for just about everyone.) 2. How the iPad has (nearly) succeeded at ruining the best parts of hobbies he likes, like comics. 3. Apple design principles have moved from "Sane, intuitive," to making software targeting the stereotype of "My mother's a dumb old lady; she'd never understand this!" 4. They've made a joke out of non-vendor-locked software distribution. 5. People coming to their defense have disavowed basic market principles in doing so. I don't even mind Apple's "walled garden," but Doctorow makes sound points, and I think the article is a fantastic read, especially when paired with the article it's referencing.
- mark_l_watson 7y ago
  +1 I agree with you. I have two Linux laptops that I can do anything I want on. Fit for hacking and having fun with. I also value my Apple closed system devices: Apple Watch + AirPods, iPhone 11 pro camera (it makes phone calls also), MacBook, and a small iPad Pro. The Apple devices sort of fade into the background for reading books, listening to music and audiobooks, and writing. I don’t see what is wrong having open devices and also locked down devices, for different use cases. EDIT: also, I don’t install very many apps on iOS devices and when possible use web apps. More of my software development is also now done on leased VPS. Usually, I want my local devices to be secure and convenient.
Unbeliever69 7y ago
My 1st gen ipad is still alive and ticking but completely worthless. Hardly a scratch in the case or screen and the battery is fine. I don't use it because no modern apps work on it. I bought a 2018 model and what a piece of crap. Warped like a Pringle chip, screen shattered and cracked if you looked at it wrong.
- alfonsodev 7y ago
  same situation here, I wish there was a hack to update the OS completely, we are stuck in iOS 5 if I recall correctly.
snowwrestler 7y ago
Fundamentally I think the big difference between 2010 and now is not the continued rise of Apple's walled garden--which was the focus in 2010--but the steady decline of the state of the web. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. today dominate the web and exercise at least the same level of gatekeeping over your visibility to customers as Apple does with their app store. Back in 2010 you could build a Facebook page for your business, and post messages that your fans would see. Can't do that anymore; buy some FB ads please. Google's search results quality continues to decline, and their ads continue to be harder and harder to distinguish. And if you anger them, you might just disappear from their service. 2010 was also before Snowden, before general awareness of the data collected by social apps, before Cambridge Analytica, before a thousand data breaches. Privacy is more important to people now, and one thing about walled gardens is that they are more private... that's why the original physical walled gardens were built. It's not that walled gardens are ideal; it's that everything has a trade-off, and those trade-offs look different in 2020 than they did in 2010. A lot of this is not specifically about the iPad, and in retrospect maybe the most obvious reaction to this piece is to laugh at the idea that the iPad was some important place to draw a line. Tablets are still great--and used by a lot of poeple--but they ended up being kind of a side story. The iPhone was the real turning point. Not just for Apple, but for many industries.
- fauigerzigerk 7y ago
  >Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. today dominate the web and exercise at least the same level of gatekeeping over your visibility to customers as Apple does with their app store. That's clearly an exaggeration. Apple's control over the app store is absolute and in combination with the side-loading ban so is their control over the apps users can install on their devices. These restrictions go far beyond protecting users against security or privacy threats if you think of porn for instance. Google/Facebook/Twitter's dominance over the Web is not absolute. You can still publish anything that is legal in your jurisiction. It may not be easy to get found, but that's still a _lot_ more freedom than asking a gatekeeper for permission to publish in the first place. Google/Facebook/Twitter is not the only way to find things on the Web either, and they are not one single company. The Chinese regime cannot simply tell Google or anyone else to take Wikipedia off the Web for showing Taiwan on a map or something. But they can order Apple to take down all secure VPN apps that users could use to read Wikipedia or hand over the iCloud keys of Chinese users, and that's what Apple will do.
cosmiccatnap 7y ago
I've seen alot of discontent for his writing style but only a few posts that actually attempt to rebut the fair criticisms that you are being sold a device you don't control. It's an interesting hypocracy from a site that hangs on the every word of librem but condones apple in the same day...
buboard 7y ago
bold to go after apple, but also true. It's not just infantilization of hardware, but also software, culture and attention. frankly we should be fed up with the lack of any depth It wasn't just the ipad, but the damage is already done by phones: entire generations have grown without knowning the real abilities of a computer. the internet has become a photo storage drive. people marvel at their babies knowing how to swipe, and are shocked when they are later baffled by the complexity of computer systems
modzu 7y ago
i wont buy another one because i locked myself out of my icloud and despite my ipad working fine i reset it to give to my daughter. except now it wont work without the icloud account. i went to the apple store with the device itself, and as much proof as i could muster that the original icloud email i used no longer exists.. and they kindly offered to recycle my old one (old meaning less than a year, its 128gb) and sell me a new one. never again.
wffurr 7y ago
I got six years of updates for my iPad Air, and it still works fine, albeit a little slowly and some apps are crashy now. It's hardly e-waste after 1-2 years. There's a perfectly adequate online guide for replacing the battery yourself: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPad+Air+Wi-Fi+Battery+Replacement/25869 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPad+Air+Wi-Fi+Battery+Replacem... Or you can pay Apple or any competent repair shop to do it for you. I haven't yet needed to replace my battery, even after six years. There's plenty of programming environments for the iPad, including a web browser to run all the awesome web software out there. Did it come with a BASIC interpreter preinstalled? No, but I'm OK with that.
GlenTheMachine 7y ago
I'd love to buy a non-locked down tablet. There are a lot of things I kind of half-ass do on my iPad (which is my primary mobile device), but which due to iOS restrictions don't work very well. For instance, SSH'ing into a machine from it, and then having to check a website. The SSH connection gets closed in 30 seconds. Or, you know, running a JIT language right on the machine. The problem is nobody makes a tablet that works better than the iPad for the things I use the iPad for 90% of the time - which is reading, surfing, checking email, and editing photos. I tried transitioning to a Linux laptop last year. That experiment lasted 3 months. It just didn't fit into a corporate computing environment that is really only set up to support Windows machines. The iPad does fit. Back in the day, when asked about how Apple was going to deal with music piracy, Steve Jobs said they were going to out-compete it. And they did. And that's really the only way they could have succeeded. Jobs had it right. Similarly, if you want FOSS principles to rule in the mobile space, you have to come out with a product that works as well as or better than the non-open ones.
hylaride 7y ago
I get the ideological issues with the iOS software "walled garden", but the shitshow that is the only alternative (Android) leaves me wanting. It's malware and advertising infested and Android tablets are a joke and rarely supported for more than 2 years. He complained about third party apps and then goes into a couple of nostalgia trips over the comic book store (I miss it and the music store, too) and taking apart much simpler electronics as a kid. Like, get your kid a regular PC case, then? What's there to even hack? The iPad, and almost every cell phone as well, is essentially a giant system on a chip with a screen and a battery. There's not much to hack. Also, most people keep thier iPads for more than two years unless it actually hard-fails. My last one was 5 years before I finally got a new one (though I also had the misfortune of buying the first one and the first retina one, which didn't hold up to the march of new models very well). I don't need a hackable portable computer. I have a full time job and a toddler. I want to turn it on at the end of the day and look at stupid cat videos. Doctorow reminds me of the people that refused to get cell phones and then complained that their friends stopped contacting them. Also, what the hell is a "CD-ROM programmer"? Does he just mean software that was distributed on CD-ROM? Also, if he theoretically had "a lot" of AOL shares he'd have been "bailed out" by the merger with Time Warner and would have had "a lot" of shares in the successor companies (he wouldn't be laughing, but he'd have something), but the fact that he's still using AOL as a slur is showing just how much he hasn't moved on with the times, even in 2010. The only real criticism I have of the ipad is its annoyingly bad background support. I still IRC and the clients disconnect very quickly if I switch apps. This makes SSH annoying as well.
- filoleg 7y ago
  > rarely supported for more than 2 years. Moreso, during those first initial 2 "supported years", you would be extremely lucky to get OS and security updates without an insane delay (unless you run a Pixel device or, maybe, a couple of others I am not aware of). Just ask any current or former Galaxy device owner in the US regarding how long they have to wait for an update after Pixel devices have already received it. In my case (Galaxy S8+ a couple of years ago, purchased only a few months after the release), I had to wait about half a year for the OS update after it has already arrived on Pixel devices.
wmeredith 7y ago
There's a lot to be said for making a computer my mother can/wants to use. And Doctorow's sneering condemnation of people describing their mother's as "not good with computers" is telling of what he thinks of those not firmly in the technorati circles he inhabits. Saying "not good with computers" != "a low opinion of that person". He's projecting. My wife and mother are largely mystified by computers and have been brought to literal tears born of frustration when using them. One of these women is a PHD in English literature and has published over 20 books ranging from short stories for children to graduate-level textbooks. The other has a Doctorate of Dental Surgery and is clinical faculty at a respected School of Dentistry. These women aren't dumb, but they don't give two flying fucks about a computer they lets them unscrew the casing or comes with the schematics of the circuitboards included! They're much more interested in exploring the human condition through language or practicing medicine. Between all of that they do need to check their email, shop, and keep up with their family on Facebook. So Cory Doctorow won't buy an iPad. It's not for him/me/us/the nerds. We can buy raspberry pi's, Android devices, Linux desktops, etc... But there is a whole market of people who don't care about computers beyond what they can do for them in the most expeditious way possible. I'm not into toasters, but I use one almost every day and I don't care at all how/why it works. I've got bigger fish to fry. This article is framed as a victory lap, but comes off more like a gear-head complaining about how shitty the Ford Escape is. Except that Ford doesn't care, because he wasn't on their radar when they made it. The people buying Escapes don't care, because they're busy with all the parts of their lives have literally nothing to do with cars. I'm sure Doctorow's echo chamber will congratulate on sticking it to Apple (again!) with this trailblazing though-piece. And in 10 years we'll get another article about how he's still not buying iPads. It's all very boring to me.
- UncleMeat 7y ago
  Yep. It has literally never been easier to be a home hacker. Raspberry Pi and Arduino mean you can hack to your hearts desire on a fifty dollar budget.
boardwaalk 7y ago
My only observation is this: Not everything is about that one gadget you bought. Yeah, I have an iPad. An iPhone. An Apple Watch. No, I can't mod these things, take them apart, etc. No, I don't care. I still have a self-built PC running Linux and a bunch of services. I still have a Macbook I can install whatever I want, even Windows or Linux if I chose to. I still have all my own networking hardware that's substantially more hackable. Going wider, I have a car and I have a bike. One is more hackable than the other. One of them has a service light you need to go to the dealer to clear (unless you're in the know and have special tools). Some of that is in my wheelhouse, some isn't. Sometimes I pick a battle, sometimes I let a tool be a tool. I think the world of computing is too wide to bother with puritanical about the devices I use. It's just not worth the energy when those things that are heretically 'infantilizing' etc. are just useful and pleasureful to use.
- justwalt 7y ago
  I think I agree with you for the most part. I’ve got a similar setup - linux at home with an iPhone in my pocket. I’ve broken a linux installation enough times that I know well enough that I’d eventually do the same to my phone if I ran android and rooted it. It’s a inevitability for me. I don’t need everything to be running hyper customized stuff. Sometimes simple and stable is all I need.
jamesgeck0 7y ago
> The iPad you buy today will be e-waste in a year or two (less, if you decide not to pay to have the battery changed for you). The real issue isn't the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it. The duration stated is nonsense for two reasons: Hardware support: The battery in an iOS device should last at least four years. My father's is going on seven years under light usage conditions. If the battery fails within a single year, it's defective and the included warranty covers replacement. Software support: Apple has historically provided software support for old iPads for 5.5 to 6 years. That's longer than the support duration for many Android devices, or even some cheap Windows laptops.
fellellor 7y ago
My biggest complaint with any of these mobile devices is that you can’t write any software for them, using the device itself. This is regressive and I also think it impedes the growth of technology. Maybe this is what companies like Apple want. Not a much larger pie but the largest portion of a much smaller pie.

67 points by virtualritz 7y ago

Some weird stuff for him to uncritically ‘stand by’: If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn't for you. Seems like this is garbage. If you want to write code for a platform where the only thing that determines whether you're going to succeed with it is whether your audience loves it, the iPad isn't for you. This is a weird and naively idealistic statement. On what platform has this now, or ever been true? It seems like iOS is at least as close to this ideal if not better than any other platform. I wish we lived in the world he would like us to live in, but he seems to be out of touch with reality.

chacha2 7y ago
> If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn't for you. > Seems like this is garbage. They're called files. > This is a weird and naively idealistic statement. On what platform has this now, or ever been true? The web. Desktop software.
- zepto 7y ago
  You can’t be serious about the web or desktop software. In both cases you are dealing with search engines, and VCs distorting the landscape, not to mention Google Safe browsing, etc.
SllX 7y ago
Cory Doctorow is one of the most consistently principled men you’ll ever meet. File him with Bernie Sanders or Richard Stallman where regardless if you agree with the principles they uphold, there is still a certain admirable quality to the sheer genuine consistency as to who they are and what they represent. Reading his piece, it is easy to see that Apple hasn’t yet released an iPad Doctorow would like to buy, and I wouldn’t blame him for being who he is. He’s come to market looking for certain qualities in a tablet computer product, and found every iPad ever released to be lacking them. There’s no reason to spend money on something you’ll be unhappy with.
- wmeredith 7y ago
  Sticking to your principles isn't really in-and-of-itself a virtue. History books are littered with lives destroyed by charismatic and unwaveringly principled monsters. I'd treat it as a curiosity at best.
- zepto 7y ago
  Principles are genuinely great - I strongly respect being principled. Principles that are not re-evaluated in context with a changing human society, are just dogma. I respect that, but I call it what it is.
  - filoleg 7y ago
    I like the way you phrased the last paragraph a lot. Thanks for pointing it out, as I have personally been struggling to articulate why some principles are not the same as others in this context, but your comment perfectly cleared it up in my head.
virtualritz 7y ago
> This is a weird and naively idealistic statement. On what platform has this now, or ever been true? Any computer I grew up with C64, Amiga, Atari, PC) was like this. My friends and I swapped floppy disks with stuff we made. Code, images, music. Then came dial-up mailboxes, then the web. > It seems like iOS is at least as close to this ideal if not better than any other platform. iOS is probably farthest away from this, actually. Even on Android I can share some experiment with my friends and they can, after changing a single setting on their phone, install the APK I give them. Try this on iOS ...
- zepto 7y ago
  We aren’t in the 80’s anymore. Things don’t work that way. Nobody has made a business that has succeeded by delivering APKs outside of a store, so that proves my point.
  - chacha2 7y ago
    Epic, Humble Bundle, Amazon and Samsung have.
    - zepto 7y ago
      Outside of a store? What exact ‘businesses’ have been made in your examples?

jdkee 7y ago

Doctorow histrionically copying the entire Gibson quote is a perfect example of why he is a poor writer. He has no sense of balance.

cosmiccatnap 7y ago
Interesting how an attack of his writing style invalidates his criticisms...
- filoleg 7y ago
  The parent comment isn't saying "his writing style is bad, and that makes his points bad." It is saying "His points are bad, and the issues with his poor writing style seem to mirror the issues with the points he makes". You can say that the parent comment doesn't explain why his points are bad, but that has been already discussed to death elsewhere in the thread. So it doesn't seem necessary to copypaste all of that in here, just to make a point about his writing style issues alone.
kome 7y ago
ok.
dkarl 7y ago
Not only that, the Gibson quote has not aged well. Consumers are not gripping a remote control in voiceless isolated rage; they now hold globally connected handheld computers that provide access to a dizzying choice of ways to interact with others. If there's something essential in this unattractive picture that hasn't changed, this choice of quote doesn't give me confidence that either Gibson or Doctorow understands it.
- jdkee 7y ago
  I think the quote was appropriate at the time, see parallel ideas espoused by Stephenson in Interface (1994). It predates the smartphone/social media era.

melling 7y ago

The iPad is a great form factor. I prefer sitting back with it over a computer. 10 years later I only wish Google or Microsoft had a stronger competitor. Apple has dragged their feet in making it more useful. Apple’s Pencil is great but user input could be enhanced with something like Soli, for example: https://atap.google.com/soli/ https://atap.google.com/soli/ Slide a wireless keyboard and mouse next to a tablet and it should become my desktop computer.

reaperducer 7y ago
Since iPads support Bluetooth HID, it seems like it would be possible to create a Soli-type device that works with existing iPads. Slide a wireless keyboard and mouse next to a tablet and it should become my desktop computer. That's very close to what the iPad is now. I often sit in a coffee shop and read magazines on my iPad. Then when I'm ready to do some work, I just prop the iPad up on a table with its cover and turn on an old Bluetooth keyboard I keep in my bag. E-mail on the left side of the screen. ssh on the right side with the Prompt app. Bang, it's 90% of what I use my desktop computer for. I've heard that iPads support a Bluetooth mouse now, but I don't have any personal experience with it. I haven't heard anything about trackpads.
- ascagnel_ 7y ago
  > I've heard that iPads support a Bluetooth mouse now, but I don't have any personal experience with it. I haven't heard anything about trackpads. They do, but it's emulating a fingertip (for accessibility), not a proper mouse cursor. It was neat to play around with for a little while, but not something you'd want to do over a longer term. iPads will also work with Apple's Magic Touchpads (the standalone units), but they must be connected via USB, and the same finger-emulating touchscreen caveat applies.
  - hsitz 7y ago
    I use both a bluetooth mouse and keyboard regularly with my iPad. I'm not sure what you mean by "not something you'd want to do over a longer term". Using the mouse is most definitely preferable to raising my hand to the iPad screen and pointing with my finger. Having said that, no, it doesn't feel as nice as real mouse or trackpad on a laptop or PC. But for the use case of having iPad on a stand and using it like a "real" computer (i.e, with keyboard and mouse), the current state of iPad mouse is at least usable, and preferable to having to physically touch the screen.

dr-detroit 7y ago

My iPad air 2 is the daily driver for my family and its still going strong. This author is complaining they cannot open it and it hurts their feelings??? I wish I was half this privileged to have such small problems.

dwnvoted2hell 7y ago

It's weird to read this article when there are legitimately good programming environments available on the iPad, like ‎Pythonista 3, which is an app that lets you run python on your device. I think the thing that he's "standing by" is that he wants to continue making waves by sounding controversial when he has in fact become irrelevant. I like and appreciate the viewpoints of those shared by BoingBoing, but perhaps something less cringeworthy? I understand folks like to build electronics, and there are systems people can build on for 30 dollars. The iPad was always meant to be a computer for someone that didn't care to screw with all of the guts of hardware or software. But yes, if you really want to use your iPad to learn about hardware and software, you can certainly do so. And every company has the right to enforce their rules in replacement of defective parts, based upon what prior abuse or misuse you put on it. The average person who "opens" their iPad to fix it deserves to have warranties and guarantees invalidated, even if Apple is a touch predatory in the rates they change for repairs.

g051051 7y ago

I won't buy another iPad, because my perfectly good iPad has essentially died from being cut off from most of the services it needs to run. Apps have been "updated" to versions that won't work, and the ability to download older versions is sketchy at best. Most recently, I discovered that my magazine access has stopped working, so not only did I stop getting new issues, I can't download older content that wasn't on my iPad when they killed it. Discontinuing system software updates was bad enough, but actively killing off the functions it needs to keep operating at the old level is too much for me.

tptacek 7y ago
What iPad do you have?
- g051051 7y ago
  The original iPad. Per Wikipedia, it had full software support for 2 years, 5 months. Which was by far the shortest support lifespan of any iPad.
  - scarface74 7y ago
    It had only 256MB of RAM, compared to the iPhone 4 that came out 3 months later with 512MB of RAM.
Mobius01 7y ago
That’s unfortunate. Which hardware version do you have? Apple has been supporting older devices fairly well from my perspective, often reaching back 5 years or more.
- cjensen 7y ago
  The iPad 1, which I owned though I'm not the parent commenter, came with iOS 3, and the final compatible release was iOS 5 two years later. It worked poorly with iOS 5 after two years, and was fully obsolete after three years. Even for those early days, it went from new to obsolete extremely fast.

tptacek 7y ago

While I don't share the sentiment, I get the refusal to participate in the Apple App Store ecosystem. It's clear what the ideological issue there is. But I do not at all understand the enmity some nerds have for non-replaceable batteries. Over the last 10 years it seems like Apple has run an experiment on whether batteries work better when they're tightly integrated and not replaceable, and that the results are demonstrably in. The performance I get from non-replaceable batteries has been so much better that I would automatically be suspicious of any device that had replaceable batteries. Meanwhile, if I really want to carry a spare battery with me, I still can; it just takes the form of a USB charger.

CJefferson 7y ago
How do you measure the performance you get from non replaceable batteries is better? Batteries have generally been getting better.
wlesieutre 7y ago
I think they're largely fine with carrying a USB charger, the complaint is that the built-in battery is known to degrade over time. If your device has a removable battery, you can get a new one and pop it in. But when everything is sealed together that becomes a much riskier job. A lot of people replace their phones on a 2-3 year cycle. If you could get a new battery for $30 and install it yourself in 30 seconds, would people be throwing less phones out? You'll note that Apple's warranty language (and probably everyone else's) specifically defines batteries as a "consumable part." Given that, it's a bit of a dick move to make them so difficult to replace.
- j-c-hewitt 7y ago
  The battery is the fastest-degrading component. It is also one of the most easily replaceable components, speaking in general and not specifically to the way Apple designs it to be non-removable. The desire to replace the fastest degrading component to extend the life of the device makes perfect sense from the consumer's perspective.
  - 7y ago

dang 7y ago

Discussed at the time: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1236722 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1236722

vr46 7y ago

I have met the writer and he is a nice fella but he is so preposterously missing any kind of substance in this article. A lot of great Apple technology has the ability to get out of your way and I often feel that people are being angry on principle. Making things maintainable or serviceable is a design requirement from the get-go, with all kinds of trade-offs and compromises that are endlessly speculated about on the web. But some people seem to think these trade-offs don’t exist. Hypercard? Great at the time. How much did a Mac cost to run it though? Anyway, this article is poorly thought-out and badly-written on top, with absolutely nothing to offer that you didn’t already know.

kick 7y ago
How is it lacking substance? He points out issues very sanely and very cleanly, like... 1. How Apple has gone out of their way to prevent allowing other people from touching their devices, including influencing legislation. (It wouldn't be nearly as much of a problem if they weren't trying to get guns pointed at anyone who wanted to fix their device themselves, but the act of lobbying to make the law bend to fit your desires is bad for just about everyone.) 2. How the iPad has (nearly) succeeded at ruining the best parts of hobbies he likes, like comics. 3. Apple design principles have moved from "Sane, intuitive," to making software targeting the stereotype of "My mother's a dumb old lady; she'd never understand this!" 4. They've made a joke out of non-vendor-locked software distribution. 5. People coming to their defense have disavowed basic market principles in doing so. I don't even mind Apple's "walled garden," but Doctorow makes sound points, and I think the article is a fantastic read, especially when paired with the article it's referencing.
mark_l_watson 7y ago
+1 I agree with you. I have two Linux laptops that I can do anything I want on. Fit for hacking and having fun with. I also value my Apple closed system devices: Apple Watch + AirPods, iPhone 11 pro camera (it makes phone calls also), MacBook, and a small iPad Pro. The Apple devices sort of fade into the background for reading books, listening to music and audiobooks, and writing. I don’t see what is wrong having open devices and also locked down devices, for different use cases. EDIT: also, I don’t install very many apps on iOS devices and when possible use web apps. More of my software development is also now done on leased VPS. Usually, I want my local devices to be secure and convenient.

Unbeliever69 7y ago

My 1st gen ipad is still alive and ticking but completely worthless. Hardly a scratch in the case or screen and the battery is fine. I don't use it because no modern apps work on it. I bought a 2018 model and what a piece of crap. Warped like a Pringle chip, screen shattered and cracked if you looked at it wrong.

alfonsodev 7y ago
same situation here, I wish there was a hack to update the OS completely, we are stuck in iOS 5 if I recall correctly.

snowwrestler 7y ago

Fundamentally I think the big difference between 2010 and now is not the continued rise of Apple's walled garden--which was the focus in 2010--but the steady decline of the state of the web. Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. today dominate the web and exercise at least the same level of gatekeeping over your visibility to customers as Apple does with their app store. Back in 2010 you could build a Facebook page for your business, and post messages that your fans would see. Can't do that anymore; buy some FB ads please. Google's search results quality continues to decline, and their ads continue to be harder and harder to distinguish. And if you anger them, you might just disappear from their service. 2010 was also before Snowden, before general awareness of the data collected by social apps, before Cambridge Analytica, before a thousand data breaches. Privacy is more important to people now, and one thing about walled gardens is that they are more private... that's why the original physical walled gardens were built. It's not that walled gardens are ideal; it's that everything has a trade-off, and those trade-offs look different in 2020 than they did in 2010. A lot of this is not specifically about the iPad, and in retrospect maybe the most obvious reaction to this piece is to laugh at the idea that the iPad was some important place to draw a line. Tablets are still great--and used by a lot of poeple--but they ended up being kind of a side story. The iPhone was the real turning point. Not just for Apple, but for many industries.

fauigerzigerk 7y ago
>Google, Facebook, Twitter, etc. today dominate the web and exercise at least the same level of gatekeeping over your visibility to customers as Apple does with their app store. That's clearly an exaggeration. Apple's control over the app store is absolute and in combination with the side-loading ban so is their control over the apps users can install on their devices. These restrictions go far beyond protecting users against security or privacy threats if you think of porn for instance. Google/Facebook/Twitter's dominance over the Web is not absolute. You can still publish anything that is legal in your jurisiction. It may not be easy to get found, but that's still a _lot_ more freedom than asking a gatekeeper for permission to publish in the first place. Google/Facebook/Twitter is not the only way to find things on the Web either, and they are not one single company. The Chinese regime cannot simply tell Google or anyone else to take Wikipedia off the Web for showing Taiwan on a map or something. But they can order Apple to take down all secure VPN apps that users could use to read Wikipedia or hand over the iCloud keys of Chinese users, and that's what Apple will do.

cosmiccatnap 7y ago

I've seen alot of discontent for his writing style but only a few posts that actually attempt to rebut the fair criticisms that you are being sold a device you don't control. It's an interesting hypocracy from a site that hangs on the every word of librem but condones apple in the same day...

buboard 7y ago

bold to go after apple, but also true. It's not just infantilization of hardware, but also software, culture and attention. frankly we should be fed up with the lack of any depth It wasn't just the ipad, but the damage is already done by phones: entire generations have grown without knowning the real abilities of a computer. the internet has become a photo storage drive. people marvel at their babies knowing how to swipe, and are shocked when they are later baffled by the complexity of computer systems

modzu 7y ago

i wont buy another one because i locked myself out of my icloud and despite my ipad working fine i reset it to give to my daughter. except now it wont work without the icloud account. i went to the apple store with the device itself, and as much proof as i could muster that the original icloud email i used no longer exists.. and they kindly offered to recycle my old one (old meaning less than a year, its 128gb) and sell me a new one. never again.

wffurr 7y ago

I got six years of updates for my iPad Air, and it still works fine, albeit a little slowly and some apps are crashy now. It's hardly e-waste after 1-2 years. There's a perfectly adequate online guide for replacing the battery yourself: https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPad+Air+Wi-Fi+Battery+Replacement/25869 https://www.ifixit.com/Guide/iPad+Air+Wi-Fi+Battery+Replacem... Or you can pay Apple or any competent repair shop to do it for you. I haven't yet needed to replace my battery, even after six years. There's plenty of programming environments for the iPad, including a web browser to run all the awesome web software out there. Did it come with a BASIC interpreter preinstalled? No, but I'm OK with that.

GlenTheMachine 7y ago

I'd love to buy a non-locked down tablet. There are a lot of things I kind of half-ass do on my iPad (which is my primary mobile device), but which due to iOS restrictions don't work very well. For instance, SSH'ing into a machine from it, and then having to check a website. The SSH connection gets closed in 30 seconds. Or, you know, running a JIT language right on the machine. The problem is nobody makes a tablet that works better than the iPad for the things I use the iPad for 90% of the time - which is reading, surfing, checking email, and editing photos. I tried transitioning to a Linux laptop last year. That experiment lasted 3 months. It just didn't fit into a corporate computing environment that is really only set up to support Windows machines. The iPad does fit. Back in the day, when asked about how Apple was going to deal with music piracy, Steve Jobs said they were going to out-compete it. And they did. And that's really the only way they could have succeeded. Jobs had it right. Similarly, if you want FOSS principles to rule in the mobile space, you have to come out with a product that works as well as or better than the non-open ones.

hylaride 7y ago

I get the ideological issues with the iOS software "walled garden", but the shitshow that is the only alternative (Android) leaves me wanting. It's malware and advertising infested and Android tablets are a joke and rarely supported for more than 2 years. He complained about third party apps and then goes into a couple of nostalgia trips over the comic book store (I miss it and the music store, too) and taking apart much simpler electronics as a kid. Like, get your kid a regular PC case, then? What's there to even hack? The iPad, and almost every cell phone as well, is essentially a giant system on a chip with a screen and a battery. There's not much to hack. Also, most people keep thier iPads for more than two years unless it actually hard-fails. My last one was 5 years before I finally got a new one (though I also had the misfortune of buying the first one and the first retina one, which didn't hold up to the march of new models very well). I don't need a hackable portable computer. I have a full time job and a toddler. I want to turn it on at the end of the day and look at stupid cat videos. Doctorow reminds me of the people that refused to get cell phones and then complained that their friends stopped contacting them. Also, what the hell is a "CD-ROM programmer"? Does he just mean software that was distributed on CD-ROM? Also, if he theoretically had "a lot" of AOL shares he'd have been "bailed out" by the merger with Time Warner and would have had "a lot" of shares in the successor companies (he wouldn't be laughing, but he'd have something), but the fact that he's still using AOL as a slur is showing just how much he hasn't moved on with the times, even in 2010. The only real criticism I have of the ipad is its annoyingly bad background support. I still IRC and the clients disconnect very quickly if I switch apps. This makes SSH annoying as well.

filoleg 7y ago
> rarely supported for more than 2 years. Moreso, during those first initial 2 "supported years", you would be extremely lucky to get OS and security updates without an insane delay (unless you run a Pixel device or, maybe, a couple of others I am not aware of). Just ask any current or former Galaxy device owner in the US regarding how long they have to wait for an update after Pixel devices have already received it. In my case (Galaxy S8+ a couple of years ago, purchased only a few months after the release), I had to wait about half a year for the OS update after it has already arrived on Pixel devices.

wmeredith 7y ago

There's a lot to be said for making a computer my mother can/wants to use. And Doctorow's sneering condemnation of people describing their mother's as "not good with computers" is telling of what he thinks of those not firmly in the technorati circles he inhabits. Saying "not good with computers" != "a low opinion of that person". He's projecting. My wife and mother are largely mystified by computers and have been brought to literal tears born of frustration when using them. One of these women is a PHD in English literature and has published over 20 books ranging from short stories for children to graduate-level textbooks. The other has a Doctorate of Dental Surgery and is clinical faculty at a respected School of Dentistry. These women aren't dumb, but they don't give two flying fucks about a computer they lets them unscrew the casing or comes with the schematics of the circuitboards included! They're much more interested in exploring the human condition through language or practicing medicine. Between all of that they do need to check their email, shop, and keep up with their family on Facebook. So Cory Doctorow won't buy an iPad. It's not for him/me/us/the nerds. We can buy raspberry pi's, Android devices, Linux desktops, etc... But there is a whole market of people who don't care about computers beyond what they can do for them in the most expeditious way possible. I'm not into toasters, but I use one almost every day and I don't care at all how/why it works. I've got bigger fish to fry. This article is framed as a victory lap, but comes off more like a gear-head complaining about how shitty the Ford Escape is. Except that Ford doesn't care, because he wasn't on their radar when they made it. The people buying Escapes don't care, because they're busy with all the parts of their lives have literally nothing to do with cars. I'm sure Doctorow's echo chamber will congratulate on sticking it to Apple (again!) with this trailblazing though-piece. And in 10 years we'll get another article about how he's still not buying iPads. It's all very boring to me.

UncleMeat 7y ago
Yep. It has literally never been easier to be a home hacker. Raspberry Pi and Arduino mean you can hack to your hearts desire on a fifty dollar budget.

boardwaalk 7y ago

My only observation is this: Not everything is about that one gadget you bought. Yeah, I have an iPad. An iPhone. An Apple Watch. No, I can't mod these things, take them apart, etc. No, I don't care. I still have a self-built PC running Linux and a bunch of services. I still have a Macbook I can install whatever I want, even Windows or Linux if I chose to. I still have all my own networking hardware that's substantially more hackable. Going wider, I have a car and I have a bike. One is more hackable than the other. One of them has a service light you need to go to the dealer to clear (unless you're in the know and have special tools). Some of that is in my wheelhouse, some isn't. Sometimes I pick a battle, sometimes I let a tool be a tool. I think the world of computing is too wide to bother with puritanical about the devices I use. It's just not worth the energy when those things that are heretically 'infantilizing' etc. are just useful and pleasureful to use.

justwalt 7y ago
I think I agree with you for the most part. I’ve got a similar setup - linux at home with an iPhone in my pocket. I’ve broken a linux installation enough times that I know well enough that I’d eventually do the same to my phone if I ran android and rooted it. It’s a inevitability for me. I don’t need everything to be running hyper customized stuff. Sometimes simple and stable is all I need.

jamesgeck0 7y ago

> The iPad you buy today will be e-waste in a year or two (less, if you decide not to pay to have the battery changed for you). The real issue isn't the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it. The duration stated is nonsense for two reasons: Hardware support: The battery in an iOS device should last at least four years. My father's is going on seven years under light usage conditions. If the battery fails within a single year, it's defective and the included warranty covers replacement. Software support: Apple has historically provided software support for old iPads for 5.5 to 6 years. That's longer than the support duration for many Android devices, or even some cheap Windows laptops.

fellellor 7y ago

My biggest complaint with any of these mobile devices is that you can’t write any software for them, using the device itself. This is regressive and I also think it impedes the growth of technology. Maybe this is what companies like Apple want. Not a much larger pie but the largest portion of a much smaller pie.