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I apologize in advance for the dreaded car analogy but: I'm concerned the very reason tablets will take over the PC market will also mean that tomorrow's kids'

I apologize in advance for the dreaded car analogy but: I'm concerned the very reason tablets will take over the PC market will also mean that tomorrow's kids' experience is very different from, and I would argue poorer than, my experience when I got my first computer I don't think that's any more an issue than today's car owner's have a poor experience because they don't have to worry about setting the fuel/air mixture in their carburetors like I had to with my first car. I think you are right that the closed environment is a barrier, but I live in one of the poorest cities in MA, and yet there are no shortage of computers on the curb on trash day that can happily run Linux/NetBSD/etc. The young hacker culture will live on. Ironically, my VIC 20 also was very user friendly. You turn it on, it's on. You put in a diskette -- well, it didn't load automatically but making it load was a very simple incantation, "Simple" to who? You and me? Sure. Random guy on the street? Doubtful.

julian37 15y ago
I don't think that's any more an issue than today's car owner's have a poor experience because they don't have to worry about setting the fuel/air mixture in their carburetors like I had to with my first car. Sorry, I didn't express myself very clearly. By "poor experience" I wasn't referring to usability but to the lack of opportunities to tinker with the system and make it do things outside of what its creators intended. "Simple" to who? You and me? Sure. Random guy on the street? Doubtful. Surely the iPad is easier to use than the VIC-20. Then again, the VIC-20 came with a manual and it wasn't very long. I'm confident every VIC-20 owner read it and even the dumbest of us didn't have much trouble figuring out what command to type to load the disk. Come think of it, I guess I was confusing things: I only had a disk drive later with the Commodore 64, games for the VIC-20 came on a cartridge so no typing required at all, just plug it in and turn on the power.

julian37 15y ago

I don't think that's any more an issue than today's car owner's have a poor experience because they don't have to worry about setting the fuel/air mixture in their carburetors like I had to with my first car. Sorry, I didn't express myself very clearly. By "poor experience" I wasn't referring to usability but to the lack of opportunities to tinker with the system and make it do things outside of what its creators intended. "Simple" to who? You and me? Sure. Random guy on the street? Doubtful. Surely the iPad is easier to use than the VIC-20. Then again, the VIC-20 came with a manual and it wasn't very long. I'm confident every VIC-20 owner read it and even the dumbest of us didn't have much trouble figuring out what command to type to load the disk. Come think of it, I guess I was confusing things: I only had a disk drive later with the Commodore 64, games for the VIC-20 came on a cartridge so no typing required at all, just plug it in and turn on the power.