Excellent writing, great read. Thank you!
You echo my sentiments exactly.
I think there’s something my eye.
You relate the early history of modern computing, and its openness, together as the precursors to a culture of tinkering. I wonder if the Next Great Technology won’t be just as open in its infancy? Also, the set of computer tinkerers is surely a proper subset of the set of tinkerers, so whatever reasonable lament we have for the closed computer OSes walling away a tinkerer’s catnip, perhaps tinkering is here to stay?
There might not be a MacsBug or a builtin BASIC interpreter… but there will be a capable HTML5 renderer with a fast javascript interpreter.
— mike 
So, are you buying one anyway?
— have_to_ask
Sounds to me like you need to buy your kids an Apple ][e.
I could tell the same story, but with the addition of a Morrow CP/M machine (512K!). But I like to think that if I’d been born a hundred years ago, or a hundred years from now that I’d still be the curious tinkerer that I am now. Why you’re so pessimistic about yourself and your kids is beyond me.
Furthermore: I think – for the time being – Apple still sells MacBooks. Also, and I could be wrong – I think there are other computer makers out there. Maybe your kids could learn to tinker on one of theirs.
It’s okay. Our generation made Steve Jobs. The next generation will destroy him.
— Ben
> Sounds to me like you need to buy your kids an Apple ][e.
No need; I still have my original one.
— Mark
Technology is not marching uncontrollably to some endpoint directed by Apple. There is no good reason to believe that future (developers/children/hackers) won’t have all the same means to tinker that you did. We have not reached some event horizon beyond which innovation has ended.
— jat850
@Jemaleddin: I think Mark’s not so alarmist, given how Apple has been seting the trajectory for several computing trends. I won’t argue they’ve been doing this since the ’80s, though some certainly would; but certainly of late they’re setting the die. I never thought I’d prefer having a laptop to a desktop, but that’s come true. How much mightn’t I like an iPad or an imitator–for the “Just Works” non-fussiness about it–than a laptop? I’m already thinking of the people who might be better served by something like that than a conventional system.
Maybe we’re going to see something else, though. Maybe the kind of computing most people do isn’t best served with the notoriously fussy machines of today. Let’s step aside, let them through to their glossyand-pretty-but-dumb 3G terminals, and regroup. Maybe we’re fielding fewer poorly developed inquiries into how to get X set up with hardware acceleration on an AMD video card.
I love everything about this article.
I am a bit torn. On one hand, I’m with you. On the other, if this drives more tinkerers to the HTML5/JS road (that someone else already mentioned above, and Yehuda Katz blogged[1] about), perhaps that’s ultimately better. Right? P.S. I’m really looking forward to your HTML5 book.
[1]http://yehudakatz.com/2010/01/27/the-irony-of-the-ipad-a-great-day-for-open-technologies/
— andy
All the computers I’ve worked with up until now had the important property of being, I’m not sure what to call it, self-modifying? Or maybe self-hosting? Anyway, the property is that one of the functions of the computer is to use the computer to modify itself, making it do something new. A well designed UI that allows you to carry out a limited set of tasks is great, of course, but to me it’s the limitless self-modifcation aspect that makes computers “magical”.
An Apple II booted directly into this mode.
A modern computer, like a MacBook, doesn’t boot right into this mode, but all the software needed to get to this mode is shipped right in the same box.
An iPad, by design, doesn’t have this mode at all, and leaving aside jailbreaking, never will.
— steve
If the iPad has a way to enable the Webkit Inspector, you’ve got your tinkerer’s playground right there! The equivalent of Ctrl-Reset is about:blank.
Unix OS : iPad : Browser :: MOS CPU : Apple II : BASIC
I’m sure that in your day there were curmudgeons who grew up with Altairs railing against the kids these days that bought computers that not only had one-chip CPUs (make your own damn ALU from TTL), they even came fully assembled! Just like you didn’t want to have to deal with wire-wrapping and debouncing yourself, kids these days don’t want to have to deal with stupid implementation details like booting an operating system. Just as you wanted a standardized BASIC prompt that let you punch in code listings you got from friends and magazines, kids these days want a standards-based browser that they can use to tinker with the whole world’s creations.
Having your code running persistently on a server (whether abstracted like App Engine and Heroku, or old-school like a VPS) where other people can interface with it is far more important to the youth of today than something that dies along with your battery.
— Fred Blasdel
@ mike – I totally agree, Mike. I think the potential of web/browser developing is being lost on the iPad naysayers. And I think it is because there is still the perception of JavaScript as “toy” language, which is increasingly not the case. Back in the day, you HAD to program down to the metal to get a computer to do much for you. Thanks hardware and software evolution, that’s not necessary. Of COURSE computing potential has raised the level of abstraction with which you have to tinker. This is the end result of tinkering.
But if you miss the low-level stuff and still believe there are “sparks for the minds of youth” in such tinkering, just get an Arduino have at it. I say the opportunities for tinkering are greater than they have ever been. You just don’t recognize them because they don’t look familiar. Be more worried about “View Source” going away from web browsers.
Disclaimer: I’m over 40, a web developer and have done 6502 assembly in years gone by.
— Jeffrey
in my day we didn’t have any of these fancy calculators… everything was done on an abacus! you kids today with your numeric keypads and digital displays… do you even know how those gizmos work? its no wonder none of you remember how to do long division.
— grampa
> Be more worried about “View Source” going away from web browsers.
Mobile Safari doesn’t have a “View Source” option.
— Mark
Ah, the Beagle Bros. list of peeks and pokes. I had totally forgotten that. What a wonderful sense of mystery it evoked. Like “What does ‘Reveal hi-res to page 1′ mean?” I don’t know, but it sounds awesome.
In honor of the Beagle Bros, this weekend I will start to lay out that PCB I’ve been thinking about. Thanks, Pilgrim, sir.
— Brandon
Saying Apple had BASIC, and iPad has HTML5 + JavaScript is sort of true – but what true tinkerer was ever satisfied with just BASIC? iPad doesn’t let you PEEK and POKE.
— steve
If you haven’t done so, you should read The Future of the Internet, and How To Stop It (http://futureoftheinternet.org/) by Jonathan Zittrain, which describes exactly this dilemma, albeit focused on the Internet rather than on appliances. Thanks for the read, it brought many memories back to me.
— MacFreek
Thank you for articulating a shared concern.
— paul
Great article. Who needs another “appliance”. My toaster never taught me anything. This must be how shade tree car mechanics must have felt as combustion engines became too complex to tinker with.
— Dale
Thanks Mark for a well-reasoned and thoughtful post. After reading this essay and Alex Payne’s post, there’s one thing about the shared argument that bothers me. The comparison between the iPad and a personal computer – the Apple ][e in your case – is flawed. To me, the iPad is more analogous to early gaming systems such as the NES console or the Sega Genesis. Ignore the fact that these devices were only used for games and look instead at the nature of that industry. These were proprietary, closed platforms that required specialized hardware and skills in order to “tinker”. In fact, the barrier to entry for tinkerers was so high that the only people who were able to use these platforms creatively were game development companies. Any kid who only owned the console could not hack it and create their own games.
And yet look at the gaming industry today. These early “revolutionary” and “magical” devices, despite their “closed” nature, inspired – and continue to inspire – generations of designers, developers, and creatives who constantly shock us with their stunning games and seemingly impossible rates of innovation. The closed platform they grew up with didn’t deter these people. Instead, it challenged them to seek out the tools and skills necessary to develop for it.
And indeed the gaming industry is, at least in this one respect, the same today. I own an XBOX360 and a Wii and yet I cannot write software that easily runs on these devices. But that doesn’t decrease my enjoyment of them and it certainly has not inhibited the quality of the software.
Your story of discovering programming makes me nostalgic. I have a similar story and I’m sure many of your readers share this experience as well. But I like to think that our love of hacking/tinkering/programming is born from a desire to create, not just the convenient availability of the tools. It was inevitable that we would find computers and use them to express our creativity. If we had grown up using only closed computing devices, that would not have muted our creative impulse. If anything, it would have more likely strengthened it, as these devices were more interactive and more engaging than, say, a television set.
There will always be personal computers, if only for the simple fact that they are the best, most powerful general computing tools to develop software for all computing devices. The iPad and all of its inevitable competitors and successors won’t change that. What they will change is how and why personal computers are used.
As Steve Jobs said on Wednesday, the iPad represents a new category of computing. It is not meant to replace or even trade-off with the other two categories. In short, the iPad doesn’t pose a threat to existing devices, only an opportunity. All of the current and future hackers and tinkerers who have personal computers will continue to use them to hack and tinker. But they now have a new device, a new canvas, on which to create. Yes, it costs $99 to obtain a developer certificate. And yes, it costs at least $1000 to buy a Macintosh desktop or laptop to write the software. But nothing about this financial barrier to entry should be troubling, for two reasons. First, artists inevitably have to pay for their tools – whether they are brushes, slabs of marble, or computing hardware. Second, there is an excellent and widely-available alternative to the Apple (and Microsoft) ecosystem in the form of low-cost hardware and free software.
Personal computers are still the most powerful type of computing device available on the open market. The iPad didn’t change that. It just created a new way in which to use these powerful computing devices. The fact that the iPad fulfills the same functions as a traditional computer in most respects confuses the debate. But it’s also a tribute to the power of the device.
I like to think that 27 years from now, a former 10 year old will look back and remember the day that he was no longer limited to just creating software for his personal computer, but could create software for multiple devices – devices with features a traditional computer will never have, such as phone antennas, GPS radios, accelerometers, and multi-touch input controls. Apple has increased the potential for creativity, not limited it. And the iPhone and the iPad are just the beginning.
— JP
I don’t think the tinkering is going away. It’s just unifying into The Open Web stack. It will always be there for tinkering. You will be able to write code directly in the browser if you want too. It’s just that not everyone wants to tinker. Your Dad didn’t – he just wanted to write his dissertation. The iPad is clearly more focused on being a consumer product like the iPhone.
You makes a good point. I also grew up tinkering with computers and it made me a better Internet citizen and user (though not a programmer).
But.
You know what I didn’t grow up tinkering with? Cars. Which has made me a comparatively helpless car owner. You know what else I didn’t tinker with? Radios.
The tinkerers of the future won’t be computer programers anyway. They’ll be the people who mess with their parents’ half-working 3d printers or bio-mecha or whatever the next deal ends up being.
I think that if the iPad succeeds what we’re seeing is the end of the computer revolution. They’re getting commodified in the same way that other home electronics did. (Feynmann grew up tinkering with stuff that we just throw away because its not worth fixing). It’s not the end of tinkering, but it very well might be the end of tinkering on computers.
— Tim Maly
> Mobile Safari doesn’t have a “View Source” option.
http://fettig.net/weblog/2007/07/02/view-source-for-safari-on-iphone/ helps with this.
— Grady
> Mobile Safari doesn’t have a “View Source” option.
Mobile Safari does have a rich Debug Console
With the larger screen, the iPad is a great candidate for the full Web Inspector, which is leagues beyond the “View Source” bullshit. It’s the difference between reading the raw input bytes and interacting with them as they arrive and execute in real time from inside the machine.
— Fred Blasdel
MacsBugs? Heck no…. anyone knows you used TMON. That program made it seem like your fingers were touching the registers. In my 30 years of tinkering, I think that was my favorite program. Sure, you would laugh it out of existence today, but in it’s day it was awesome. I wonder what Valdimer Horwat is up to these days?
I followed your “sense of wonder” link. Curious about who wrote it, I found that the author just blogged a defense of the iPad: http://stevenf.tumblr.com/
I will never forget the day my father brought home our Commodore 64. I feel comfortable in admitting this in the company of this blog, but it was one of the best days of my life. Would I have found programming (my current profession) later in life? Maybe, but those moments that occurred after typing in “run” are priceless to me.
— Wingnut
Amazing read, thanks for sharing it!
I see a lot of people saying that this iPad or whatever new closed technology will alienate future developers. But we still have our computers. Nobody stops you or your kids from buying a computer- the iPad does not prevent you from getting a computer to tinker on. The iPad provides you a way to consume media – in the same way that you consume media over TV, radio, CDs, etc. The people who should worry are the people who used to tinker with stereo systems and TVs and such. I did not grow up tinkering with that kind of stuff, therefore I dont miss not tinkering with media consumption devices.
I will teach my kids to tinker with computers for sure, and they can use the iPad to consume mail, media, news, etc.
— kaarthik
I grew into programming in much the same way, but honestly, this line of thinking is far too exaggerated for my taste. It’s quite simple. The iPad is hardly Apple’s entire product line. OS X offers all the tinkering opportunities I could ever want. For those who want to tinker more, buy something different, like a PC — they actually still exist, you know.
In my mind, the false dichotomy is that closed mobile computing removes the opportunity to tinker wholesale. What really intrigues me is that when a company like Apple makes decisions that it feels benefits customers and itself, they are so often rejected out of hand by the relative minority of people who feel the decision is the end of the world. Most hackers and power users too easily forget that most people couldn’t care less about about tinkering, and just want to get something done. For us, complexity is a welcome challenge, but most people are terrified of it. I can certainly see the potential irony in this particular situation — that hiding (or even locking away) complexity can disguise or remove opportunities for people to learn how the technology works — but I disagree that it is a direct attack on the ability to seek out such opportunities, nor is it an impenetrable barrier to those who want to learn.
You know what? Kids who are curious will still be curious, and I’d bet that everyone who agrees with this post experienced SOME setback or roadblock in their process of learning, but apparently, none of us gave up. Yes, one could consider it a loss of potential if a curious and talented child that could become an amazing hacker doesn’t. The same could be said for all the children in the world that may never use a computer, or for every human who lived and died before the dawn of computers. Here’s my view: Let’s not be so narcissistic about our chosen vocation as to believe that being something other than a hacker is invaluable, or a crime against humanity. Computers are not the only solution to every problem, and countless people around the world are perfectly happy without them. Most people who use a computer see it merely as a tool to accomplish what they want/need to do. Computers are wonderful tools, but not the only hope for humanity. Personally, I’m not inclined to bury my head in the sand and insist otherwise.
— Quinn Taylor
Feynman said a similar thing about how computers were closed systems you couldn’t get into and pick apart and really understand like you could the tube-based radio of his youth. In reality I think there will always be hackers hacking on what there is to be hacked with, because hacking is a human drive, and people will continue to be human. On the other hand, I think some of the commenters have missed the point that all this stuff you talk about hacking on was made by Apple. It’s not that there is nothing available to be hacked on, but that the great stuff that Apple has always put out used to _also_ invite hackers to hack. That was, perhaps, the time in Apple’s history when Woz’s spirit was still in their products.
And on the third hand, I think http://speirs.org/blog/2010/1/29/future-shock.html has a point about what people have suffered with for all these years–you didn’t reminisce about restarting your mac with no extensions, then one extension, then another, until you finally figured out what the conflict was, for example. It would be nice if they didn’t work so hard to keep people from tinkering with the innards, but tinkering with the innards is what got us extension conflicts. I would say “maybe they could just make it easy to jailbreak, but tell the users ‘you’re on your own if you do’”. I like that as a possible middle ground. Maybe Apple is afraid that what would happen, though (if they’ve even thought about it), is that someone would do something really killer with the jailbroken version, the masses would flock to it, and very shortly we would be back in extension conflict land. “Ah but you chose for it to be this way!” would be true but wouldn’t keep people from being frustrated by the status quo.
I don’t know. As it stands now, though, I think you’re right about the fact that the Wozness is really just not there on the iP[x]d. And that’s indeed a sad thing.
— msouth
> I wonder what Valdimer Horwat is up to these days?
He’s working for Google. I just happened to find traces of TMON just a few days ago.
http://codeplusplus.blogspot.com/2010/01/found-data.html
— Sean
Hackers, open..it’s like you people are living in lala land during the 90’s.
— Ron
Apple chose it’s bed, we should let it lie in it, alone..ipad is just another assumption gadget and the AppStore and associated simplified distribution and control mechanisms are simply there to improve financial return worldwide to the mainstream. I think the problem is supporting milllionsn of people with the capacity to run what they motherfucking want isn’t viable, but then I don’t know wat to think anymore, this iPhone type pad seems somehow hollow now I realise I have no command contol over it…
— Woody
Personally, I think Steve Jobs finally managed to deliver on his vision, which he has consistently and unswervingly pursued for 30+ years. It surprises me that so many smart people are shocked and disappointed.
— $mike cremer
Mark (or anybody else reading the comments, I suppose) – If you haven’t read it already, Hovik Melikyan posted a superb article earlier this month with much the same lament. To quote the intro: “There is one big change that somehow managed to unnoticeably creep into our everyday lives over the past 2 or 3 decades: the way we perceive stuff that we buy and we think we own.”
http://melikyan.blogspot.com/2010/01/era-of-black-boxes.html
Highly recommended, if only to learn how one (once upon a time) could bug a phone while it remains on the hook, and without ever touching the phone.
— Kevin H
Reasonable to have that view, but I don’t agree. What you are implying is that Apple is going to take over all computing with the iPad / iOS platform and that there will be no open computers left. I am one of those kids that learnt to tinker. Started on the Atari 800XL, C64, 128D, IBM XT and so on. My children will learn the wonders of tinkering too – just not necessarily on an iPad. I think the mistake many are making (including myself initially) is the iPad is a general purpose computer – it is an appliance. Not unlike a PSP, Wii, etc..
The obvious floor in your article is you have to use an open computer to develop for this very device. For tinkerers, why not write and tinker on that very same computer? You don’t have to pay $99 if you want to see if you like developing for the iPad – the SDK is free to download.
Cheers,
Stu
I was with you until “Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world.” I think what they’ve done is (started to) abandon us. It’s a mostly passive indifference that may lead to a sunset, but far from an active war. Apple doesn’t care if we keep tinkering with someone else’s products.
John Gruber made a great car transmission analogy that I think works here. Car tinkerers prefer manual transmissions. I’m sure car tinkering was less fun after the transition to automatic transmission as the norm, but it was better for everyone using a car for something other than tinkering.
> you have to use an open computer to develop for this very device
Why on Earth would you think that? What part of “develop in xcode, test in simulator, publish to App Store” requires an open device?
People haven’t figured it out yet, but Mac OS X is on its last legs. By 2015, Apple will make appliances and developer add-ons. Not general purpose computing devices.
— Mark
I grew up in the 90s when computers had stopped shipping with BASIC as standard but there was no readily available substitute if you wanted to program. Unless you bought the right software (and knew it existed), computers then were far more closed boxes than the iPad is. There certainly weren’t freely downloadable SDKs as there is for Mac OS X and the iPhone and – when it comes out of beta – the iPad (you can run your apps in the simulator without paying the $99).
— Graham
Beagle Bros…. <3 {sigh}
— Rich
Computers of today are nothing like the ones we grew up with (after a Timex Sinclair 1000, I too used an Apple IIe for many years). If you’re looking for that, take a look at embedded. You can get cheap dev kits from Rabbit (www.rabbit.com) for a core module that runs a C program. It’s got a full TCP/IP stack and tons of source code to dig into and tinker with.
Just because the iPad is closed doesn’t mean that there isn’t open hardware out there to learn on. I could hack on my Apple IIe but not my Atari 2600. We can write code now for desktop PCs but not an XBOX or DVR. Those hackable objects won’t go away.
Your description of learning how to Canadiansprogram sounds familiar. However, I didn’t learn how to make the computer do something. I learnt how to make a web page do something. I typed in a list of commands and pressed refresh and like magic the web page changed thanks to Greasemonkey and your wonderful book. I’m sure many of the next generation of tinkerers will be web tinkerers rather than computer tinkerers. So I feel that the loss of access to your local computer while lamentable is more than offset by being able to access the whole world’s computers via the web. Let’s hope we never lose access to that.
— Sekizaru
So Apple releasing the iPad suddenly removes your ability to buy a PC (or God help you a Mac) and installing whatever the flick you want? Gee, I must have missed that part of the announcement. Clever of them though.
— Michael Foord
Hear, hear. Raising a glass to the days of discovery. (And if anything fires my tinkering furnace these days it’s HTML5.)
— Xander
The announcement of the iPad is most definitely NOT the tinkerer’s sunset: the DMCA was. DVD Jon is a good example of this. It was developed in and promotes an atmosphere that allows companies to prosecute people who would tinker with products they own. This meme has the weird assumption that the iPad alone has ushered in an era of closed technologies: http://machine501.com/blog/2010/01/29/the-ipad-is-only-a-consumer-device-meme/ There will always be people who will want to look under the hood to see what makes something tick.
I don’t think iPad’s will replace the open computers that there are. Ie: iPad won’t replace macbooks, and macbooks won’t completely replace iMacs. Hair gel came out… did it replace hair spray? (Probably not the best saying there, seeing as I don’t even know which came first…)
— Timmcd
My god, you’re right.
Mark, I have kids of my own. I want to impart that sense of wonder to them, too. I’ve looked at what’s out there myself; what have you seen that would be good for teaching kids programming/development? I keep waffling personally between high level and low level, for example.
— Rich
And–I guess this is what happens when Jobs stays and Woz goes. But if the reverse happened, we wouldn’t be anywhere near where we are, either. Ah, but for a reunion–I wonder if that alliance could have lasted?
— Rich
Your first computer was made by Woz.
The current Apples are made by Jobs.
Explains it all.
— Veira
> iPad won’t replace macbooks
I predict that it will do exactly that. Soon. By 2015, I predict Apple will not sell any devices with root access.
— Mark
mike said “There might not be a MacsBug or a builtin BASIC interpreter… but there will be a capable HTML5 renderer with a fast javascript interpreter.”
Trouble is, that built in BASIC interpreter wasn’t just a little sandboxed environment. Different machines allowed it with varying levels of clunkiness, but that little interpreter gave you control over the *entire* machine. All it needed was PEEK, POKE and USR, and you had an escape route to machine code.
Will JavaScript provide such an escape? Will HTML5 allow the loading of pure machine code objects? Somehow, I doubt it. And that’s what you lose – the ability to peek behind the curtain, to tear the curtain down, to kick the funny little man out of his chair and start pulling the levers yourself. Instead, you can only follow the signposts and stay behind the cordons.
— gwenhwyfaer
(Sorry, steve, I missed your comment.)
— gwenhwyfaer
Woz was the reason early Apple was tinker friendly, Jobs is the reason for the sealed nature of Apple products starting with the Lisa/Mac.
— Rick
Apple strayed from the path long ago.
— Apple Bandit
>> iPad won’t replace macbooks
>I predict that it will do exactly that. Soon. By 2015, I predict Apple will not sell any devices with root access.
You seriously think Apple will replace OS X with a different or completely closed system in the next 5 years? So anyone who uses any tool which utilizes the command line and allows the user to be the root user on the machine will not be able to? Goodbye to “Pro” systems which allow you to actually use the entire computer?
What about the graphics, video, sound and effects studios running on Apple hardware. What about all the server users – especially those running in science and education fields? What about all the developers who utilize the unix core under the GUI? I can’t see how cutting off all those markets, all those users and all those developers can be part of their strategy.
I can see it as part of the mobile devices strategy. But this would appear to be throwing away all the current users and replacing them with users who don’t need or even need to know about the command line. That just doesn’t make sense to me.
— Mike
Oh please. I’m sure ‘the kids’ will find a way to keep on exploring & hacking & tinkering & inventing stuff. They usually do. Just ’cause the scenery has changed, doesn’t mean human nature has.
What you are experiencing sounds like a bad case of getting old. Trust me, I have been there. The moment you start trying to interpret what’s going on now in the context of how you remembered it years ago – old. It’s no bad thing, we all do it, but you have to have to have faith in the kids, they’re no more helpless, daft or gullible than you were, it’s just…different.
As to Apple, well, maybe this is their shark jumping moment, maybe not, too soon to tell, but rest assured, if the iPad really is the iFlop that everyone (rather prematurely) seems to think it is, then so what? There will be another Steve Jobs soon enough. Maybe it will be one of our children. We can only encourage them…
— steves
But you said it so much better!
— steve
I agree with Mark in that Apple will slowly start to replace their line of iMacs with iPad like machines. They will go after the lions portion of users which includes students, grandma, and the kids. Just push a big button on the center of the monitor. Which one? Oh, that’s right there’s only one because adding more would be too confusing. The pro series of computers will slowly fade away – until users are forced into finding other solutions.
Apple is a consumer products company and the revolution of the app store will allow them to fine tune their business strategy to where they are the number one washing machine on the planet.
Now this is not the end of tinkering by the young folk. The internet is full of life including sites like makezine, instructables, etc.
I’ve really enjoyed reading all the thought streams on this topic – but beware the macbook you’re typing on will only be able to run iPhone OS ;-)
— Joe
When I was a kind, tinkering meant taking apart radios and putting them back together, or fixing a broken radio or TV, etc. The advent of the integrated circuit ended all that for me. That, and the sharp turn from radios to computers that Popular Electronics took back in about ‘73-’74. I never did get that feeling again until about 1994/95 when I started writing HTML. Then a few years later when I started programming web apps. I’m now a fairly hardcore UNIX guy, and while I can hardly imagine owning a device that I can’t fire up a terminal w/ VIM on, I do think the rumors of the death of tinkering are greatly exaggerated.
As others have pointed out, the Mac was envisioned as an appliance when it first came out in ‘84, and hobbiest-level development on it was frustrating for years. I literally cried when my dad decided to buy a Mac instead of an Apple ][e for this very reason. So the iPad really just seems to represent the logical conclusion of a vision laid out for decades.
But I think there is some reason to be optimistic. Why? Remember Apple’s slow march toward death during the ’90s? Apple was treating their developers like shit (I was one). And another OS was having a field day under the mantra of “Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers” and practically ate their lunch. But then all of a sudden Jobs came back and turned things around, in large part I think because he abandoned the wholly proprietary model of Mac OS 9 and infused it with a Unix underbelly. All of a sudden hacking on a Mac (and even just using one) became interesting again. At least it did to me.
It’s interesting to notice the swarm of activity around iPhone development even in the face of onerous legalese, no root access and a dictatorial distribution model. It’s an easy bet that the iPad will inherit at least some of this success. I myself have no current desire to write native iPhone or iPad apps. But I own an iPhone and I probably will buy an iPad. The devices are useful to me outside of a hacker capacity. And I’m sitting at my MacBook right now with a dozen or so source code files open in editors tinkering away. But, I don’t even own it, my employer does. And frankly if I didn’t write code with it I wouldn’t even have it at all. So, if Apple does go the closed route for all of their products, I will buy them only for their commodity value, like I would a TV or and XBOX. They’ll lose my business for their high-end machines, and I’ll go back to FreeBSD and call it a day ;^)
I think there will always be a market for the tinkerers, and I think the company that learns to exploit the energy and chaos that those tinkerers provide, has a significant advantage over others. The closed vs. open debate in this realm has been with us all along. I really don’t see one side as winning at this point. Computers are in everything now, and they are still almost all different. Recently I’ve been working on apps that run on various CE devices. It’s a chaotic mess, but a beautiful one on some levels. Anyone saying that the end of computer hacking and tinkering as we know is at hand is right. But to paraphrase Winston Churchill I would argue that this is the end of the beginning.
Yes, it’s a pity it’s locked down, but would you really buy an iPad to develop on, even if it wasn’t?
It’s no good for the levels of typing development needs anyway.
The Mac is still a great platform for tinkering with – as soon as you open the Terminal you’ve got simple access to AppleScript, Ruby(Cocoa), Py(Objc), whatever you want. All those languages are maintained and given out for free.
I think this is why good mobile platforms like Android will take off. There’s less of a barrier for our young tinkerers.
— Iain Fraser
> You seriously think Apple will replace OS X with a different or completely closed system in the next 5 years?
Yes. Maybe not in 5 years, but I’d bet in less than 10. There may still be devices called Macs that run something called Mac OS X, but they won’t allow root access or running arbitrary software unless you commit criminal acts to enable that functionality.
> Goodbye to “Pro” systems which allow you to actually use the entire computer?
The Mac Pro might stick around for a while longer, for professionals running high end software. If so it will be (even more) exorbitantly priced, both to milk the existing customers and to make it unattractive for normal users.
> What about all the server users – especially those running in science and education fields? What about all the developers who utilize the unix core under the GUI?
Steve doesn’t care about any of that.
— orangecat
I’m just worried about my 2.5 years old son :(
— Ka
Tinkerers want things to tinker on but they’re in the minority. Most people are scared of something that can be tinkered with. Companies that sell appliances rather than tinker boxes make a lot of money.
— Courier
This is partly why I still have a slightly older computer running Linux in our house. Thanks for the post.
“People haven’t figured it out yet, but Mac OS X is on its last legs. By 2015, Apple will make appliances and developer add-ons. Not general purpose computing devices.”
Yeah? So it will be Apple who will write those hundreds of thousands little and not so little programs for them?
I hope we don’t have to wait till 2015 to see how amazingly wrong you are with this prediction. You could make
the same prediction in 2001 when iPod came out, would carry the same weight.
— Rimantas
“. . . the street finds its own uses for things.”
If the tinker drive develops, tinkering will occur. I work as a teacher. The 17 year olds can find their way around the firewall and onto msn about two weeks after the techies change the firewall. Their collective problem solving always amazes me.
— Keith
Yes, it’s a pity it’s locked down, but would you really buy an iPad to develop on, even if it wasn’t?
I learnt to program on a Psion organiser (a tiny keyboard-based handheld, running software that eventually became Symbian. The company were recently notorious for trying to milk their ownership of the “Netbook” trademark). It had a program editor and compiler built-in, which could be used to make reasonably full-featured applications.
But this was mainly because there were no readily available SDKs for the desktop computers I had access to, something that is very much not true today, especially for Apple. I would hope any future convergence between the iPad and Mac would result in XCode being runnable on the converged OS, but that’s a big unknown, and I think Mark’s making a big leap to assume it wouldn’t.
(can you develop ChromeOS software on a ChromeOS computer, out of interest?)
— Graham
Apple lost me when they stopped shipping HyperCard. They’ve never won me back.
I am your long time fan. It was an interesting read. But from the look of it, iPad is guiding the tinkerers into a new direction – Web 2.0, nothing else :)
— maSnun
Nintendo, Atari, Sega and others consumer gaming platforms never “opened” their systems to tinkering as far as i know but i’m sure those devices inspired many students to go into programming as a trade.
Palm seems to get it. WebOS is easy to hack. Perhaps someone will figure out how to compile it for the iPad. That would be really cool.
— Jason
Back in the day (C64s rule! Apple ][s suck!) anyone ever spend a lot of time trying to make a copy of a game that you wouldn’t have even played if it hadn’t been “copy-protected”?
Will the appeal of having to “crack” a device make more kids learn about the low levels of the system? On my Linux box I can hand-wave the entire boot process and just write and deploy userspace code. Someone trying to modify a closed platform doesn’t have that option.
Maybe the post-C64 generation just got soft, with easy access to “generative” platforms such as free un*x clones, the open web, and, to be fair, Microsoft Visual Basic. And lazily cranked out a couple decades worth of bloated, power-sucking code. Now Mr. Jobs is making the kiddiez learn assembler again.
All these apple fan boys forget that you’re not allowed to jailbreak it, you violate the software licenses. They’ve turned programmers into second class citizens, you need to purchase a visa to enter apple zone (but you already paid for the device). This makes the iPad more proprietary than the XBOX.
Forget about the device, the issue is that the real feature it is missing is freedom.
— Alister Cooper
“People haven’t figured it out yet, but Mac OS X is on its last legs. By 2015, Apple will make appliances and developer add-ons. Not general purpose computing devices.”
But by 2015, Linux will be ready for the desktop, and we won’t need OS X.
— Chris
Apple might have chosen to lock down iPhone and iPad because they want to retain full control of the ecosystem. The same goes for Microsoft and Xbox, and Sony and PS3. However, the reason why plenty of people buy (and will buy) these locked-down appliances is that these devices actually keep their promise of usability and security despite their connectivity and versatility. With early home computers, if the computer got into a state you didn’t understand, you could always just reset and start over from a known good state. Also, it was possible to maintain near-perfect security by only running programs bought in shrink-wrap. The end of this era came with Windows 95 and the Internet, and since then home computers have been both unpredictable and insecure.
So Apple, Microsoft and Sony might be evil, but they are also delivering products with qualities that the general public wants. This is why just complaining about it will do no good. “Please keep buying this stuff you don’t really want so that we can raise a new generation of engineers that keep making stuff you don’t really want.” What we need instead is a solution that satisfies the needs of both the ordinary users and the tinkerers. Somebody has to come up with a practical answer to the question “how do you design a device that will run arbitary, non-centrally-approved code, while being resistant to threats to usability, security and stability posed by lazy programmers and social engineering attacks”. Until this question is answered, I can’t really fault people who buy into closed systems.
Thanks for writing this. I’m not a developer, but it’s still a really interesting perspective on where computing is likely heading. Finding that balance point between simplicity and control, openness for public innovation and protection from viruses and the like has got to be pretty tricky. I’m not apologizing for Apple’s closed development practices, just thinking about the challenge it’s got to be to walk those lines. What I was struck with in reading this was just how this sort of trend away from tinkering and self-reliance is not unique to the computer world. Our consumerist, disposable society has produced two generations of people who are no longer masters of their own stuff. I know men who know which oils are in their salad but couldn’t tell you how much oil is in their car. Rather than learn how to change a tire, people just get AAA. If the washing machine quits working, they call somebody. If an appliance malfunctions, we just trash it and buy another one. That something could be fixed is becoming a foreign concept.
This has created a market demand cycle for ever simpler and more disposable goods. On the technology side, things like cameras and computers are made extra simple and quite appropriately “idiot-proof” so that the disinterested and ignorant users don’t “break it” by changing a setting. Remember the days when you had to understand shutter speed and aperture to take a photograph? With knowledge came power, but also the responsibility to know that if the photo didn’t turn out right, it was your fault, not the camera’s. But people are demanding simplicity to the point that Mercedes Benz doesn’t even put dip sticks under the hoods of many of their cars now. If the oil gets low, a light comes on and the hapless owner calls the dealership. Just like what you’re describing in computing, most cars are now so electronically complex and “closed” in that sense that working on your own car is prohibitive, even if you have the tools and know-how.
The sheer complexity of today’s devices and computers certainly warrants a degree of simplification in order for them to be useful — especially with the vast majority of people lacking the attention span to truly learn how something works or how to use them. But I share your lament that with devices like the Apple tablet, its mass-market appeal and finely honed ease-of-use mean that if I want to use it for anything beyond viewing my own media (and honestly how self-centered have we become that we need half a dozen devices to look at photos of our dog?) then I’m going to have to go to great lengths or be out of luck entirely. That’s too bad, because as you’re getting at, ease-of-use need not come at the expense of being able to get “under the hood” if you actually want to.
Wonderful article
— fisadev
Mark, I agree wholeheartedly with what you are saying here. I’ve expressed many of the same sentiments since the announcement.
One thing I don’t understand, and perhaps you and the people here could provide some insight on: Why does Apple spend so much time and money to lock people out? Really, if they want to “protect” the “user experience”, they only need to say “If you tinker, you void your warranty, and we’re not responsible for what happens.” Fair enough; hardware manufacturers put stickers whose removal voids your warranty all the time. It took months (weeks?) before the iPhone was “jailbroken”. Jailbreaking is a requirement for people who want to tinker, and because of the nature of the lock-out, it guarantees that you have free access to pirating third party apps. Whereas, if Apple just provided a way to run your own shit, there wouldn’t be jailbreaking, and app store piracy would be far less likely.
Can someone explain to me what Apple stands to gain not only from keeping this platform completely and totally locked but from spending copious amounts of time and money to make sure people can’t do their own thing?
The way to fight this? Support open hardware by buying, using, and developing software for it! Be open about your interests, make others know why what you do is awesome, and why they too may like it.
— Alex
You could always get a Windows or Linux machine and program a non-Apple machine? They don’t control stuff.
Macs are for end users and not tinkerers. Sad fact, but they are nice to use. And the others are nice to tinker with.
— Sammo
I do consider Alex article hyperbole.
When I was young, most of my friends and me played in toy shops on Atari 2600s. A “closed” plattform. As 10 year olds, we obviously couldn’t afford development kits. But some of us wrote BASIC programms on VC20s in shopping malls. The plattform doesn’t determine if there are hackers or not. The hackers choose their plattform.
This reminds me of ….
“My uncle has a country place That no one knows about He says it used to be a farm Before the Motor Law”
…
“A Brilliant Red Barchetta From a Better Managed Time…”
— Rush Fan
While I sympathize with your nostalgia, I disagree with your premise. There wasn’t a damned thing I could do to improve my mother’s windup alarm clock, or our lawnmower or the 1972 Challenger I got as my first car. Still, I literally destroyed the first, learned my lesson and took apart and repaired the 2nd (quite often) and in doing that learned to maintain and tune up the 3rd. Man that car would go.
My mother forgave the destruction of her clock. It was inexpensive. And, even though she never said so out loud, it pleased her that I had inherited her faculty for things mechanical. But in her day and even into my youth, girls were NOT gear-heads. Which was no more of a deterrent than the platonic wholeness of the clock, mower, car or any of the other dozens of things I took apart and put back together for no other reason that I wanted to “see how it worked”. I literally needed to know. And that is why “perfection” will never matter to those with a seeking mind.
While I’m no programmer or coder, I am familiar enough with creating websites with html to know that the principal underlying discovery and creation in all of these endeavors is the same.
The drive to understand the discrete parts of a whole and then to synthesize something “better” is a creative one, whether you end up creating code, scientific theory or art.
You and I may mourn the sleek coolness of a well built object that gives no purchase for our curiosity. But these things are not made for us. They are made for the masses of people who are frustrated and confused by the perpetual “tweaking” necessary to make all these fledgling gadgets work.
They don’t want a Model A or even a 1972 Challenger. They want a pod with cup holders and dvd players. They want OnStar and Sirus radio. They want it to be as simple and intuitive as winding an old alarm clock. And as developers in our respective fields, it is, frankly, our job to accommodate them. Read: The Design of Everyday Things (required in my design classes) to have a designer/developer explain it more thoroughly than I have space for at this point.
Curious youth will find a way to explore, no matter the limitations of the material. There is the hope you can hold on to.
— Karen
Why do I keep hearing this? Yes, Apple makes closed appliances that contain processors. They are meant to do specific things – play music, make phone calls, browse the web. They also make general-purpose computers, some buttoned up as the MacBooks & iMacs are, some that can be cracked open & modified, as the Mac Pro and the mini can be. All the general-purpose machines can run other operating systems. Some of them have SD slots that can be booted from. And if you don’t like Apple’s hardware, buy or build something else. The introduction of the iPad doesn’t stop you from doing so. It’s been 125 years since the invention of the automobile. Today there are still people who repair & modify their own cars, and people who choose to just drive & let others do the maintenance. Apple is not the threat. The media companies demanding DRM & copyright maximalism, governmental agencies that want to lock down any tool that can be used for hacking, the police & security agencies that fear anyone capable of DIY/garage engineering & science – these are the forces that threaten the future of open computing & general tool hacking. Protest that first. And of course, lean on Apple to dump DRM & open their tools & hardware up. But to say the iPad is the harbinger of the end? Please.
I couldn’t put it better myself. For me it was a Commodore PET but same story.
— Julian
The iPad has a web browser on it. Who needs to tinker with the hardware? It’s just a means to an end.
Tinker with the web. Make your brain tingle with the possibilities afforded by the internet, and accept that in 5 years your jQuery will still work on the next appliance (Apple or not). Who cares about the hardware – it’ll just end up in your basement with pictures of it fading into history on your blog. I assure you, your kids (who will probably be tinkerers as well) might like to poke at it with a stick, but won’t want to genuinely do anything with it when they can get into HTML8 like everyone else.
Great article, but I think you are missing the best part of the opportunity – the iPad is just a funky web browser which the grandparents can use. Drop your love of computer hardware and focus on fixing up a nice old car and your JS.
> how do you design a device that will run arbitary, non-centrally-approved code, while being resistant to threats to usability, security and stability posed by lazy programmers and social engineering attacks
I would have said that Apple did a pretty good job of that already. Do you have any antivirus or antimalware software installed on your Mac?
— Mark
A really lovely article. What a life it was …
Wow! Really wonderfull article!!! Thank you very much! It is great!
— Sergey Matveev
> I would have said that Apple did a pretty good job of that already. Do you have any antivirus or antimalware software installed on your Mac?
I don’t. However, I would argue that we don’t really know yet how good job Apple has done on OS X security, because the bulk of the malware authors target Windows. I know it’s a tired old argument, but looking at the security features of OS X and the security features of Windows, I can’t really see either fundamental differences or subtle design touches that I’d trust to make OS X fare significantly better if it came under the same kind of sustained attack that Windows has been facing for the last 10 years.
Also, I believe we have already reached a point where social engineering attacks are a bigger problem than attacks against technical vulnerabilities. Much progress has been made towards making the computer not run code without an approval from the user (or the administrator), but the issue of how to help the (ordinary) user to make sound decisions on what to approve and reject is only starting to be explored. The good news is that it does have received attention recently and I hear that for example some people at Mozilla are already putting a lot of effort into answering it.
Finally, I must admit that I don’t know exactly how much the App Store model can do to stop malware. What if malware authors started targeting App Store en masse? It is possible that it might turn out to be security theatre instead of actual security.
excellent article, although truly chilling. this is another reason why free software is so important. we have a mac in the house, because my wife uses it and is happy with it. but when my son is old enough to want to tinker with a machine, i’ll build him a linux box and let him go as far as his curiosity and imagination take him.
> The iPad has a web browser on it. Who needs to tinker with the hardware? It’s just a means to an end.
And what if I want a different web browser?
— Mark
“I would have said that Apple did a pretty good job of that already. Do you have any antivirus or antimalware software installed on your Mac.”
I say this as a total Apply fanboy, but I believe this doesn’t have a lot to do with the ecosystem and market penetration than any particular Malware issues. Now there are some things that help the user do a better job of dealing with them in my opinion, but it’s much more to do with the economic incentives. If Mac shared the sheer volume of users that Windows does, they would face very similar problems.
Like it or hate it, the App Store model solves many, many problems. For advanced users it represents tradeoffs, but for regular users, there’s no tradeoff at all (from their eyes at least). There’s a vast library of software that generally is safe and does what it says it does. If you ask other mobile app store users, that is definitely not the case. Part of that success in convincing the user that Apps are safe and reliable is because of that single source model. I think it could be loosened a bit for the iPad, since cel phones have a different level of mission critical-ness than a home computing appliance does.
So… don’t buy Apple products. I certainly don’t. I (and my kids) use Linux, with which we can tinker to our hearts’ content.
Until (unless) the market speaks, Apple will continue making 2010 more like “1984″.
Bah! The “tinkerers” & hackers will find something else to tinker with & be happy again :) I’m just glad that computers have gotten easier & less complicated for the rest of us, thanks in no small part to the good folks at Apple!
— Anand
I am not a programmer, and this angle never even occurred to me. Thanks, Mark.
Wasn’t there an installment in the original Foundation series in which we meet a planet of people who don’t know how to fix their own machines once they break down, thus endangering their entire way of life?
Yours,
CBB
Thank you so much for writing this. Without computational freedom on Apple’s consumer goods, nothing of my art or anything I have learned or done in my life would have ever been possible.
— Laroquod
Excellent article.
Awhile ago, Microsoft was selling or giving away Visual Studio or some student edition to the high schools. It was great. I was a Forth man, real time systems, and the new hobby controllers and newfangled Bug labs stuff looks interesting. I was briefly an Apple Certified developer around 1989 Mac II days, and left for other pastures. The objective C world seems too remote for teen experimenters, but who is to say what’s too advanced. There must be more accesible tools for OSX and iPhone OS novice developers. And of course there is the Web API world of PHP, Perl, Ruby, Python.
I think some folks here said if you can develop for the Web, you have the platform whipped. Not far off. Hey, there is LISP and Smalltalk, and Erlang.
Show me a new device or platform, and given time, there will be easy access tools to develop with, get a young gun started before they go to C#, Java, or Objective C.
Bravo! Brilliant piece, Mark.
My sentiments exactly. I’ve been watching the iPhone and iPad with dismay. My nightmare is that Apple will decide they can slowly boil the frog and introduce similar restrictions into their desktop systems. If that happens, I’m switching to Linux. Freedom to run what I want on the hardware I own, and share my discoveries with others, is too important to sell out for a pretty interface. I’ve been a Mac user for decades, but I’m not going to be an iPhone user until Apple frees the device. (And if they don’t hurry up, I’m going to jump ship to Android.)
— mathew
The real cutting-edge, bleeding CPU, overclock-to-hell-and-beyond, maximum danger tinkeerers have always historically used the open systems PCs. Before the IBM standard, this was the S-100/Altair systems on the higher end, and the cheap 8-bit Ataris/Tandys/Commodores on the low end. Apples were always overpriced, slick machines for thise who wanted a safety net. The same is true today. The real edge happens on the margins of the PC world, where people are hacking firmware, updating kernels, and bludgeoning Windows and OSX into well-behaved virtualised bitches. Macs and OSX attracts the dilletante “hackers”, who think that adding a nice pastel skin to a basic IRC/Twitter porogram is somehow dangerous. Mac/OSX never has and never will be where the real rebels work.
— tinkr
Tinkerer’s Irrationality
If you’ve been tinkering on Apple computers, you’ve been tinkering in the wrong place.
This is not new. Apple has always sought to build appliances and not “kits” for the hobbyist. From day one they positioned themselves as being the computer for the “rest of us” and that meant those who do not wish to tinker with their machine but simply want them to work. Apple wasn’t only making fun of IBM with those ads, they were chiefly targeting the IMSAI and other hobbyist machines.
Watch Steve Jobs in the iPad demo. How many times does he utter the phrase, “It just works.” That’s what matters to him.
That’s his goal, to sell a finished product, an elegant product, a simple product, a safe and secure product, not a box of Legos.
You can go to any computer store, buy a case, a power supply, a motherboard, a processor, ram, hard drive, keyboard, monitor, and a CD with a LINUX distro and tinker and play to your heart’s content.
What is it that makes you want to do this to an iPad?
Apple is successful in no small part precisely because they discourage this. If they did not, I’d be dong for Macs what I’m doing for the PC next to me right now. Struggling with nVidia drivers for the pice of crap.
There is another important difference here as well. Apple does not FORCE you or COERCE you into using their products. They set out to build the best possible experience they can and then offer it to you. There is none of that behind the scenes Microsoft skullduggery forcing vendors to include Windows.
In addition there is a big security benefit here. It took what, a DAY before significant security problems appeared on the Nexus phone while such threats only exist on Jailbroken iPhones.
I have a client/associate with muscular dystrophy. He’s currently got a clunky old PC that I clean up and repair from time to time. He knows little about it other than it “Seems to be sick again.” I can’t wait to present him with an iPad. It will easily cover 100% of his needs while opening up a whole new world of e-books, social media, and secure web browsing.
On top of all this, as it was pointed out, you can write software for the darn thing.
I suspect that maybe what bothers people is that the iPad is good, perfect, functional out of the box without the need for additional assistance from anyone else really. You can write applications. You can write complex, elegant, problem solving applications, but as far as the platform itself is concerned, Apple will handle that, thank you very much.
What’s the problem?
— Marvin
@mathew I totally know what you mean about switching to Linux. I have been indulging such thoughts ever since it became clear that the iPhone App Store regime was not a temporary situation, as many of the apologists said, then.
Furthermore, so much of my comic book art incorporates Apple backgrounds, emblems, and interface elements, that I’m not sure anymore that this was such a great decision considering the way things are going and that the comic book itself is the story of a tinkerer in an Apple world. There is an unintended irony all over that now that I didn’t necessarily intend but I suppose I’m going to have to find a way to work with! Look for it to become intentional. VERY intentional.
— Laroquod
There were times, where you had to be a mechanic, to drive a car. It made sense to build cars in a way, that they could be tinkered with easily, at that time. It made sense for many who wanted to drive a car to teach yourself that kind of knowledge. There were times where you had to be a programmer to use a computer …
Today, most cars are an appliance and you better NOT take a screwdriver and try to fix them.
…
but, rest assured: there will be many ways to tinker around with the iPad and future netpads; as there will be many ways to learn programming with them. These ways will be vastly different from hacking an Apple II in Basic (or hacking a PDP 8 in assembler, which was how I learned it). Nostalgia is a nice feeling. Its just not a good basis on which to judge current developments.
I think it’s quite foolish to mourn the new Apple ecosystem because you think it won’t encourage tinkering. As though the future won’t produce programmers because devices can no longer run native code. You’re mistake is assuming new programmers are going to follow the same path you did.
Sorry, Mark, but tinkering with and compiling code on your actual computer isn’t the route to becoming a hacker anymore, and hasn’t been for more than 10 years. These days tinkers don’t start out wondering how to make their computer work. New programmers often start with PHP—incredible for tinkering. Learn how to connect PHP to a database and you’ve got everything Facebook was built with. That’s a pretty empowering thought.
— chris in toronto
“… There won’t ever be a MacsBug for the iPad. There won’t be a ResEdit, or a Copy ][+ sector editor, or an iPad Peeks & Pokes Chart. And that’s a real loss. Maybe not to you, but to somebody who doesn’t even know it yet….”
Bemoaning the loss of freaking Resedit and the rest of this hokey crap is like grieving over the loss of a choke and an external crank starter for automobiles.
Seriously. Resedit?
The opportunity to create for the Macintosh, the Web, the iPhone, the iPad is VASTLY more compelling than using Resedit and the truly creative are proving it on a daily basis.
Here: Here’s an 11 year old that developed a nice little application. Proceeds from his app go to charity. Someone above said he only let’s his kids play with LINUX. Hmmm…
http://news.yahoo.com/video/local-15749667/17881848
I think the young man’s efforts easily and astronomically exceed anything he could have done with the likes of Resedit.
— Marvin
iMaxiPad is lame lame lame. I read this article and could have replaced apple ][ with commodre 64 and zx spectrum. Shame on you apple for making products that users can’t use. Where are the damn schematics? and the ROM dumps?
— marco
Mark: “By 2015, I predict Apple will not sell any devices with root access.”
And the more successful they are, the more other operating systems will take the leap to follow. As evidenced by the current rush to emulate the App Store in mobile phones, almost a 180-degree turn, it seems to me, from the standard operating procedure on mobile devices before Apple got into the game. It all changed. Apple did that.
Everyone is very quick to name Apple the creative lodestar for the industry when they’re making sexy products. But when they’re taking away your freedom, suddenly they are portrayed as only one choice among many and apparently not a lodestar for the industry at all, it’s not important, suddenly nobody cares what Apple does, never mind about that, look away…
— Laroquod
I’m finding all these ‘Apple is locking us out of everything’ blog posts a little misleading. Ignore for a moment the dedicated iPhone/iPodTouch/iPad native applications, there are still HTML/Javascript applications that can be installed on the phone that don’t require an App certificate, and can be run through Mobile Safari as well. Tinker away to your hearts content without Apple having any say in what you do.
You mention ResEdit, MacsBugs etc. as tools for the tinkerer from days gone by, and are lamenting their loss. Those were tools for developers, written by developers and required to program on the Mac in days gone by. That other people used them to putter around in the innards of their computers was a byproduct of their existence, not the reason for them. Apple today provides a fairly open Unix environment with a whole slew of new tools that you can use to putter around. Xcode and all the other ancillary tools is free, as well as the ability to run the open source Eclipse IDE and a variety of other open source development environments. Command line compilers exist and the Mac platform runs virtually every popular/open source language around; Ruby, Java, C, Obj-C, PHP, Perl etc.
Is the iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad closed? Only in so much as you need to understand the Apple frameworks, Objective-C and be able to use Xcode to develop native applications for it. As a technology, there is more information about how to build iPhone applications now than I’ve ever been able to find about creating the Macintosh applications from the ResEdit/Macsbug days, and there’s never been a way for the hobby programmer to get his or her application in the hands of so many people as there is now via the App store. Is it perfect? No, but it’s improving, and it’s certainly not preventing the hobby programmer from tinkering with his device. If anything, it’s preventing the hobby software vandal from putting something out in the wild that can break my device and enabling the individual or small team with an idea to get that idea out into the world without the barrier of inventing their own distribution system.
While we’re talking about the control Apple is starting to take and lamenting our loss of freedom, let’s consider that Apple has been a driving force in DRM free content, and it has been the success of the iTunes music store that’s given them the leverage to break the stranglehold of the music industry and open the doors for others to provide DRM free content. The recent refusal to include Flash on the iPhone platform is about to break the stranglehold that Adobe has on content on the web. Driving content producers to HTML5 as an open standard instead of Flash which is a closed format is a good thing, perhaps we can give them some credit there.
If you don’t like Apple or Apple products, that’s entirely your opinion, and you’re welcome to it. Don’t buy them, that’s fine. But please don’t try to convince the world that the company is somehow trying to gain control and impose some kind of Orwellian future on us, as that’s doing the people that trust you a disservice by slanting the facts to support a view of reality that’s not entirely real.
The choices are there. I’ll be buying a Mac for my wife, since she’s a designer and won’t worry about tinkering, she wants stuff to be stable, pretty and user-friendly. Personally, I’ve been running Linux on my Laptop(s) for some years now, so Linux IS ready for the desktop. Never looked back from there, and with all comfort it lets me fire up a console and optimize the kernel swappiness for high mem usage conditions.
For when I have kids, I’ll make sure there’s a linux box for them to play around with.
— Terry
The worst thing about apple is that it uses open source to create products like the iPad. Today’s open source programmers are actually believing they are making the world a better place by releasing not only the binary but also the source.
Apple tries to use as much open source as possible as it keeps the costs of development low, but instead of sharing their wisdom they lock down their products to protect their intellectual property.
— Anonymous
I loved this read. While not an apple person myself I grew up programming calculators and then eventually micro controllers and computers. There is hope out there. I have been impressed with the Android operating system. You can do many evil things, and more things are coming.
I have started a hack that will allow people to talk to hardware from any phone over the speaker and mic. I hope to help american youth reclaim what they lost in computers by allowing them to start hacking with their phones. (The truly PERSONAL computer).
I know doubt think that tinkering is dying. Lets bring it back, lets give our youth the tools to hack, to create, to tinker!
Awesome post !
Two differences: I’m 38 and started with a commodore c64.
As mentioned before, great writing!
I also learned on an Apple //e. The only language available was Applesoft. It was great, I did some neat things with it. But when I wanted to expand and do another language, 6502 Assembler in my case, it was too expensive to get a compiler/editor so I got a pirated one.
For the Mac and iPhone OS Apple now gives away the entire IDE, compilers, simulators, everything FOR FREE.
Sure if I want to load an app I wrote on to my iPod Touch the “official” way I have to pay Apple $99 for the developer membership (there is no need for Apple approval of any app you write to load on your own device, but to load it you need to be a paid member of the developer program.) Or if I can’t afford the $99 — I jailbreak my iPod. Considering the few qualms I had about pirating an Assembler, if i were in a tinkering mood jailbreaking would be a no brainer. Heck, it isn’t even stealing like my pirating was.
If anything the tools and capabilties of tinkering with todays devices is WAY cooler than when I was kid. Peek/Poke. Screw that, now you can write Objective-C. And if it turns out really, really cool you can sell it to a world wide audience for only $99. And if Apple doesn’t approve, throw out there for the jailbreakers.
The DCMA is a terrible piece of legislation. It also has nothing to do with this. Apple hasn’t prosecuted one person for jailbreaking their iPhone/iPod. They haven’t tried to shutdown Cydia, the store for jailbroken apps. Yes, they’ve closed security holes jailbreakers were using (hint: THEY WERE SECURITY HOLES). This stopped them for all of a week? An no one forced any jailbreaker to use that OS.
— Kevin
I don’t think it’s a bad thing to have to jailbreak the device to get unlimited access. If you want to tinker then fine but show you’re up to following a step-by-step howto on the Internet first. If you can’t do it then you aren’t ready to take the training wheels off. For the most part I think you’re tinkering is overrated anyway. I did that as a kid too but it wasn’t because it was wonderful it was because we had such crappy development tools available and the machines were so limited that you had to tear it apart and code everything in a hex editor. Maybe you should help your kid build a simple (by today’s standard) computer from parts and program it if that’s important to you. Expecting every single device that is released to be easily hackable is sort of a silly idea I think. I don’t get mad that my refrigerator didn’t come with an easy way to turn it into a toaster oven. Start your kids programming with available tools on your iPad. When they are ready they’ll figure out how to jailbreak it.
— MikeFM
There’s a great industry to look at to see how a ‘closed’ system worked… and that’s the newspaper industry. As the means became possible to produce, distribute and share our own news, the newspaper is dying. Rather than embrace it, they continue to fight it… possibly even blocking search engines.
Apple could learn a thing or two about this. My belief is that they are trading the future of Apple tomorrow on profit margins today. It’s a gamble that could work – or could bury them in years to come.
— Douglas Karr
I strongly suspect that the next tinkerer’s paradise will be biological in nature, and it scares the willies out of me.
— ChrisK
I grew up on the ][+, CompuColors and my beloved //e. I remember the trade-paper sized 6502 assembly book that was my bible. You’re confusing an appliance with a computer. That’s ok, so is everyone else at the moment, and it’s going to take awhile for it to shake out. Some devices are open, some aren’t. I never hacked my Atari 2600, for instance…
— Loyd Blankenship
Wow, Loyd Blankenship.
— Laroquod
I have a desktop iMac for frittering away time tweaking/customizing/etc. I’d like an iPon precisely because, like my old 1st-gen iFone, it’s great for traveling and whenever I’m not sitting in front of the Mac at my desk: couch, airplane, hotel room, etc. I have an ancient Powerbook that I never use or travel with because it’s too bulky and I just don’t need a full-fledged computer with me all the time. The iFone sort of fills that void, but I’d like something bigger for comfortable reading, and it’s too small for my creaky old eyes.
If you add up all the time spent on customizing/frittering/fucking around, esp. on Windoze, it’s no wonder that “the PC” really hasn’t made the huge productivity gains touted over the years. Before the desktop office PC we had terminals connected to a mainframe/mini like a VAX, HP3000, etc that had the basics one needs today in business: email, word proc, spreadsheet, dbase, and such, that were locked down and nobody spent an afternoon trying to decide on just the right wallpaper and color scheme.
I don’t miss those days to be sure, but something relatively idiot-proof like the iTampon is perfect for a lot of people regardless of their technical proficiency.
— David Broudy
Excellent post. I really like how you’ve made this story of the importance of open technology so personal. Thanks!
— John
RAmen Mark, RAmen.
— Shawn
Exactly my thoughts on a lot of today’s technology. Its YOUR computer, you should have COMPLETE control over it. Computers control almost everything we do today and that’s not likely to chance in the future. For many, having that control, that ability to speak the computer’s language and tell it what to do for yourself and for others is a life changing experience.
— Mike
Well, put, OP.
But be more afraid that too many “schools” have stopped teaching (well) the science so much of this technology is based on. Instead of a real OS course (or 2), some students get a course that teaches just one 1 particular OS, and/or (heaven forbid) the “windows api” and the illusion that OS knowledge is the result. Maybe it’s more dangerous to believe (without thinking) that the it’s okay that the most significant advance in a core component of Computer Science (i.e. OS) in the last 20 years has been that some are open source. Price? Really? That counts as an advancement in a science? Perhaps only when a science ceases to be science.
Maybe it’s more dangerous that a generation of kids grow up believing (without thinking) that “the web” is the beginning and the end of computing and that “standards” are not only acceptable but also required limitations.
Even yesterday’s leaders have all but abandoned their responsibility to Computer Science itself. Instead advancements in OS, we get changes to GUIs.
IMO, Apple passed on a lot of chances for innovation in the iPad, while they screwed would-be tinkerers in the name of commerce. Just like IBM was doing when Steve and Steve started their tinkering.
— Dan
You should provide a young hackers alternative!
“Apple has declared war on the tinkerers of the world.”
People tinker in a million different ways with a bazillion different things. I’ll bet every decade is filled with folks convinced that (insert name of tool, practice, person, corporation) has (see your quote above) regarding their particular interest, hobby, profession.
We tend to attach our own value judgment to every change. But, who knows what different opportunities will arise from that change? There are always opportunities to tinker and every time something is simplified or streamlined, different opportunities occur within that field. It would be wonderful if we could all look outside our own particular idiom (thank you, Sir Launcelot) and see the vast array of tinkering available in a million different hobbies.
To those who regret the opportunities lost to their children, do you really feel their “sense of “wonder” has been squelched by a new apple product? C’mon. There is still a ton of technology-related tinkering to be done. And… this may be an unpopular sentiment… please consider that some people don’t actually want to tinker with tech; they want to tinker with plants, conspiracy theories, foreign languages, paint, 2×4s, mathematical notation, fabric, rock climbing techniques, tea blending, astronomical bodies, ad infinitum.
Greater control only leads to more opportunities for those in control. I don’t believe I’ve ever seen it break any other way. So while theoretically, the argument, ‘Who knows what change will bring?’ is valid, when that ‘change’ is actually the implementation of a system that prevents change, that kind of falsifies your operating assumptions.
— Laroquod
And so I was comparing this to your previous essay in this blog, “living in the browser,” about how Chrome OS is gonna be a good thing, and…
— erdina
love it.
even though my sony alarm clock has circuits and an led, no one is bemoaning my lack of ability to tinker with it. it’s an appliance, not a computer. like the iphone, like the ipad.
on a computer, run the code you want. tinker, or just sit around bitching about how you can’t do those things on an alarm clock.
— isaac
it’s equal parts naive and condescending to the youths of today to imply they won’t have opportunities to tinker because the iphone os is a closed platform.
— brooklynwry
They’ll have fewer opportunities. And when that’s successful in the marketplace, they’ll have even fewer, after that. Perhaps this whole thing isn’t even headed in the right direction.
— Laroquod
Heck, what got me computing was the first functional PDA: The PSION Organiser II (but yes, I once built an Apple ][ as well). The Organiser came with a built-in mixture of Basic and Pascal called OPL (Organiser Programming Language) and it included database functions for a simple, flatfile database model, By means of PEEKs and POKEs and USR$ you could make ti do other things as well, including running your own 6502 code (which is how I got into assembly).
It was open, it was VERY portable, it was functional and it even had removable media and serial comms. I still think it was one of the most awesome and robust computers I’ve had (still have 3 :-).
You’re right – we need this stuff to get kids back interested in tinkering.
— Peter H
Hi Mark,
I was an Apple II kid like you, and went through all the usual steps… horse race in low resolution in Applesoft, then 6502 assembler hacking and a little bit of hardware interfacing, a few years later it was Pascal, Resedit and Macsbug on a Mac SE, later still it was Turbo C and QEdit under DOS 5 on a 386, trying my best to write my own C compiler, then discovering the Dragon book and understanding what computer science had to do with writing code… and then I wasn’t a teenager anymore.
These days, I teach math for a living, but I also sometimes work with teens, helping them build Arduino-based robots. And I can tell you the tinkering spirit lives on. I think the preferred space for hacking simply moves from one field to another every 20 years or so (every generation, I guess). A while ago, my grandfather gave me a book on how to build your own radio, from the 1930s maybe. Its pages are full of circuit diagrams, complex numbers, and integrals, and there is the same mix of enthusiasm, strangely stilted exposition of partially-misunderstood theory, and emphasis on getting things done that you can find in microcomputer books of the 1980s. Look at Arduino web forums and you will find more of the same.
I think the kids are all right.
— Paul
Just like you I grew up with computer and every computer marked me in a different way, (with a 12 year forward shift). Computers were (and still are) so amazing to me that I had to know everything about it. First I went physical with a screwdriver, dismantled it, reassembled it. Then to the software….
Most of the time when a new technology is presented, it somehow adds a layer of abstraction to whatever technology it is replacing. First we had consoles, that got replaced by windows, followed by windowing systems. This goes far beyond than computers. Somehow it is the order of things.
Now, curious kids are curious by nature. I understand that they will have to tinker harder that we did to be able to understand exactly how things work, but I am sure they will find a way. Just like we did. Even if they get to grow up with closed systems; this will make them tinker harder.
For those who say that javascript and web development is what is going to make them tinker and that it is what is coming next…, well yeah, it may be true, but then, who is going to be developing new languages, new memory managers, hardware drivers, operating systems, etc?
I hear your concern Mark: Apple has raised the barrier to tinkering. But I was a similar kid at a similar time as you, and barriers like those might have been the REASON I tinkered. The equivalent of your epiphany of getting a BASIC program to run would be to realize that jailbreaking is easy – and rewarding – and thus begins the journey of a thousand tinkerers. Why such a barrier exists at all is a good question however – seems like a power grab in the guise of malware prevention.
— Joe
Oh whatever.
I’m a physicist and a hacker. Cut my teeth on a TI-99 4/A (couldn’t afford an Apple II), and from there, the Commodore 128 and Amiga. Remember the days when your home computer came with schematics and circuit diagrams? I do. Rock lobster!
But anyways … I have two 10-month old daughters, and I’ve thought long and hard about how (if they want to follow in Dad’s footsteps) I would introduce them to the joys of hardware hacking, do-it-yourself tech, etc.
And you know what? I’ll just get them going on an Arduino. Or maybe a Beagle Board. Or one of the many, many other open source hackable hardware platforms out there.
But does that mean I’m not going to have some Apple gear around the house? Hell no. I’ll have a couple iPads and whatever else comes along. Even if it is closed and proprietary. Why? Different tools for different jobs. As someone who’s spent 20+ years supporting people in tech (and yet, also a Linux software developer and former sysadmin), I firmly believe that some people *need* closed systems where everything is done for them and they can’t tinker.
My mom for one. She’s horrible with a soldering iron. My nephew too. He has zero interest in technology, other than using it to communicate with his friends. In fact, the more locked down it is the better, because he tends to break it otherwise… and then he calls Uncle Mike. Repeatedly.
So yes, it’s sad that tomorrow’s hackers won’t be able to learn on Apple products – but it’s not as though they don’t have a choice. Give them the freely-available stuff that exists and watch them go. And if that shiny new Apple iPad appeals to you, pick one of them up too. There’s room for everybody.
And maybe that nephew of mine will finally stop breaking his machine.
— Mike
I’m not sure the societal changes are all that dramatic, parents are always responsible for helping to guide their children’s interests. An iPad is surely better than television for people who don’t know much about the world. If you otoh know how computers work, then just ban the iPhone and iPad from your house. Buy your kid a fancy geek phone like the N900 instead.
You know, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) recommends that kids under 2 years old not watch any TV and that those older than 2 watch no more than 1 to 2 hours a day of quality programming, but responsibility implementing these recommendations falls squarely upon the parents.
— Jeff
Great post. While I didn’t start with an Apple IIe (the IIc in my case), I would agree with the assessment that it likely led to my current career choice as a software developer. Initially my interest in tinkering was due to intellectual curiosity. A desire to discover more about what’s “behind the curtain”. I gained knowledge, tinkered, tried, tested, and repeated often. Now, I suppose I am probably “the man behind the curtain”. My wonder is whether that means anything anymore in this day and age.
Mark-
While I followed much the same development path (Timex-Sinclair and Commodore for me), I can’t help but notice that most people are not us. Some will be, and those are the ones who jailbreak and tweak and circuit-bend and make. But, as you pointed out in your own post on 21 Nov 2009, most people spend 99% of their time in the browser these days, even us sometimes. So, why shouldn’t they have a device that works for them, and doesn’t crash (much), and doesn’t require incantations? After all, it doesn’t have to be the only device they own.
All the more reason we need to have an “open computing” marketing campaign that informs future hackers/coders/tinkerers/makers about: linux, Make magazine, Amateur Radio, x86 architectures, Arduino, Python/JavaScript/etc., IRC, GitHub/LaunchPad/GoogleCode/etc.. We need to start a Tinkerer’s Foundation and donate our money for advertising on whatever medium get’s kids’ attention these days. We need OLPT (One Laptop Per Tinkerer). We need Gumstix in every box of Captain Crunch. Hack the Planet.
@ Jemaleddin
512K on a CP/M machine? That’s rather impressive… btw you can still buy a working Morrow, for old times’ sake – saw one last week on ebay.
(I also started, more or less, on a Z80 MP/M machine at school.)
— Toby
I call bull****
Buy your kids something other then a utility pad and a phone if you want them to learn. How about a 13″ Macbook which will run both the iPhone/iPad SDK (SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT KIT) along with XCode. Oh my .. widget’s, word processors and games can be created .. Oh NO! :)
XCode ships on every OS X install DVD and the SDK can be downloaded. Let them tinker to their hearts content and use their phone as a phone and the pad as what it is .. an inbetween device. Pretty easy.
— ben
Tinkering made me who I am today. Now Apple seems determined to stop the next generation of tinkerers, thus destroying their future pool of potential engineers. What a shame.
— Kawika
You ass. PC + Linux = tinkerer heaven. Get over your silly Apple hang-up and show your kids the real creative world.
— Tinkerer
My head hurts when people equate web-development with programming. I suppose with Turing-complete client-side scripting that is true to a certain extent, but any serious “Web 2.0″ application will always be an awkward hack.
Sometimes I don’t want my browser to automatically run any untrusted code it comes across. In fact, I have JavaScript disabled at the moment. If I want to use flash, I have to log into another user account because I don’t even have it installed under my normal user account.
Web-development will never completely replace tinkering or “hacking.”
Mark, you are so right! Like rms, you see clearly, what others just cannot imagine–until it is too late.
Incidentally, you were the one who inspired me to start blogging. Just wanted to say thanks.
— W^L+
Lovely article! :-)
Personally, I am looking for a tablet or e-book reader that runs Android, which seems to be the best alternative that I know of.
Keep on tinkering!
— Ex Apple ][ Owner
Sounds from reading your post and browsing through the comments that many of us have a similar background. I started programming and tinkering on an old TI-80 calculator, then moved to a Commodore 64 and later into the Mac line. Tinkering is important, but I’m not so sure that the iPad spells the end of that. There are other platforms and the tinkerers among us will seek these out.
— Cityhues
Tinkerers, take a look at this: http://open-pc.com
A lot of people in the comments, probably following the thrust of the article, are solely considering ‘tinkerer stuff that no one average wants to think about’ and completing omitting from the view the fact that the App Store is a *culturally* (not just technologically) closed system in which Apple not only decides what apps you will run, but what comics are OK for you to read (most comics now are distributed on iPhone as apps), what literature is OK for you to read in interactive app form (they banned the Kama Sutra at one point), what kind of satire is OK for your eyes (apps that ridicule public figures? not allowed).
All the stuff that tinkerers are not allowed to do on the iPad translates directly into stuff that average viewers are not allow to read or view. Apple uses the control for *everything* — they aren’t picky about it. They don’t just restrict it to tinkerers as if they are just doing all the average users a favour, and it all stops there. The reason tinkerers are getting squeezed is that *everybody* is getting squeezed. It just happens to be only the tinkerers who realise it.
‘Tinkerers’ and average users should be making common cause over this, not sniping at each other and telling each other that what the other is doing is too unimportant, while the Titanic sinks.
Just make exactly the same device, just like the iPad. Only make the App Store truly free. I wouldn’t care about anything else — all the UI can remain the same.
Buy the iPad if you will, but go in with eyes wide open, you are not getting a window into the world, you’re getting a window into Apple’s little tinpot world. Us tinkerers are just the canaries in this coal mine.
— Laroquod
Bravo! Very well written!
— Kunal
Superbly written :)
*bows respectfully*
you stated the reasons – and more – why I stopped buying from Apple 5 years ago, after a life as MacUser, and switched to GNU/Linux.
Don’t want to be repetitive to others’ comments here (which i haven’t read anyway) but, all that sense of tinkering is still achievable on a Gnu/Linux box. I realize it’s sad to see the company that made you who you are to turn its back to its ethics, but in the end, fuck it! Let’s just make sure that free software sticks around!
— serk01
Wonderful article!
Man this about made me tear up a bit, very well written and so true.
— schwiz
At first, i had the same thoughts like you, Mark. But then i realized that they don’t apply any more. Because Apple doesn’t build computers nowadays. They build Walkmans. The Macs became part of the Walkman developer tools.
— Andi
While I do see the possibility of your dystopian view, I feel that I must point out that the context has changed.
When you and I were kids, computers were easy to get into — not in the sense of cryptographically unsecured, but in the sense that you could pick it up and type one line and get a result. I remember a C64 program in a single line that would randomly alternate the graphic \ and / characters onscreen, producing a simple ever-scrolling maze, and I recall being amazed that this “maze” would go on forever — I’d created near-infinite complexity from around a hundred letters..
Now, though, while it’s still possible to do this sort of thing, it’s far less simple to do something that’ll impress your dad, or feel like the first step to a useful program. Now simply putting something like this pseudo-BASIC:
INPUT “What is your name?”; N$ : PRINT “Hello, “; N$; “, I’m pleased to meet you.”
isn’t sufficient. Oh sure, there’s something that you could make work in a similar fashion, but you’d have to persuade the user to open the command line and run it there, otherwise you have to create a window, assign various parameters, set up response data structures, assign mouse events, and so on, all of which requires learning.
It’s still possible, but nowadays that first step is a doozy. It’s much easier to do it on the Web with a bit of javascript, in fact… and that remains open and supported on the iPad. Better supported, in fact, as the Web is far more widely documented than BASIC was back in the day… it was hard to learn this programming stuff then. Now it’s much easier to get started on the Web, and you can even share your results immediately with friends who’d appreciate it. Tinkering with jailbreaks and other options then becomes available as the next step. You won’t be able to do it with all machines, but you’ll still be able to do the first steps on practically anything, and move on to the next step if you want to with other hardware. It’s different, but not necessarily worse… and meanwhile the iPad (and theoretical future locked-down device) user is able to get much more done than he would before. It’s a trade-off, sure, but not an outright loss… more a different modus operandi.
So while your points about the lockout on the iPad remain valid, and absolutely worth saying; the contrast between the options isn’t quite as high, because nostalgia isn’t what it used to be, and neither are computers.
I’m a bit confused as to how people find these two cases equivalent:
1. You’re free to figure out/change how the device works from the hardware on up, it beeing yours and all.
2. You’re allowed to provide input to one specific program (browser) on the device.
— dings
Fraser Speirs is right.
A few days ago, I was asked my opinion of the iPad. It is indeed a sign of the end of general-purpose computing for most uses. It’s not that there won’t be general-purpose computers; they just won’t be the preferred devices. They’ll be curiousities, specialty items used by sysadmins, programmers and tinfoil-hat weirdos.
We all had such high hopes for the elevating power of technology; we assumed that everyone would send secure email because everyone would learn about the Web of Trust and why your signing key and encryption key should be different. We assumed that everyone would demand open platforms and become sysadmins of their own domains.
This was, in hindsight, utter bullshit. The dream is dead. Computers are broken. Security on the internet is a sick joke. The ecosystem of computing is is profoundly unhealthy. The experiment of providing everyone with a general-purpose, full-power computer has failed.
I’d tell the non-techies I know to enjoy being sharecroppers on someone else’s intellectual property, but I’m too fucking sad to derive any pleasure from it.
The ipad may have been a good idea, but without a usb port and ethernet port and multitasking, its similar to a giant itouch. But seeing how apple improves its products after they come out, im sure that in a few years the ipad will be a whole lot better than it is now.
— Gracie
Actually, I think it’s not the case. Here is my humble opinion.
iPad, which everyone is talking about recently, is not a computer in traditional, known to us sense of word. It’s a tool that happens to use computer parts. It *shouldn’t* have internal programming tools, as long as it does its work. Much like pretty every phone and Wi-Fi router today. It may be excellent tool for, I don’t know, browsing the Net or painting or reading.
But it’s not a computer. Pretty much like router or Amazon Kindle (which you can’t develop on, IIRC).
Rather than write a complicated rebuttal, I’ll simply quote your previous post:
—
On the other hand, computer maintenance sucks gargantuan donkey balls, and normal people don’t care about root. If you accost a random person on the street and ask them if they need root on their operating system to install another browser, and they’ll have three questions for you: 1. What’s root? 2. What’s an operating system? 3. What’s a browser?
Still… if I had root on a Linux netbook, the first thing I’d do is install Chromium and then spend 99% of my time in the browser. So I have to think that Chrome OS is a step in the right direction.
—
This article seems a little silly after you admit in the previous post that ‘tinkering’ really represents 1% of your own interests and that Chrome OS is a step in the right direction. I do appreciate that you mention in this article that Chrome OS will have a developer ’switch’ to allow you to run your own code, but hey, 99% of the time you’re living in the browser, right?
The fact that Apple wants to save us from the, ahem, gargantuan donkey balls that is computer maintenance (at least for this device, which I believe still requires having a ’standard’ PC to get you going) is a blessing for consuming media, which even Creators(TM) spend a lot of time doing.
I think ’standard’ PC availability is at an all-time high; a lot of school kids have their own machines these days. Tinkering with your Dad’s machine was a good experience for you, but if you were growing up today it is likely you’d have had your own PC to tinker on. Which is better? I honestly don’t know, but it is pretty difficult to imagine that kids are less exposed to computing in 2010 than they were in 1985.
Anyway, I’m looking with great interest Chrome OS and would love to see some Chrome devices ship, and determine whether you guys have the stones to enforce some hardware standards and UI conventions there that sadly haven’t appeared in Android (and will, mark my words, kill the platform a lot faster than lack of ‘tinkering support’). Linux is a complete failure as a desktop OS (sadly even on netbooks) partially because skills and even ‘muscle memory’ can’t translate across distributions, let alone across other computing experiences. That’s ok with me, because I like to tinker, but I realize no one but other ‘gluttons for punishment’ will ever get on board and use Linux like I do. I really hope Google can keep from relegating Android and Chrome OS to the same fate (though I feel it might be too late for Android).
TL;DR: Apple isn’t keeping kids from using computers, but the wrong user experience will. Don’t blame Apple if people want to use their OS or devices more than yours; make a better OS or better devices.
— Rob
I have an interesting anecdote to add here. I, a technologist, could really care less. I have my iPhone and my Mac and they work for me. The iPad fills no niche for me in my life. However, My son is an artist. He is absolutely drooling over the iPad. One program demoed was called brushes. It was basically an art tool where you use your fingers to draw and paint on the screen.
Perhaps the iPad will stir another set of tinkers? A set of tinkers who use their hands to directly create things on computers, rather than keyboards with interpretive commands?
I’m sorry but saying Apple is declaring war on tinkerers is inflammatory and misguided on so many levels. Every electronic device, given time and patience, could be “unlocked” or “hacked”. I could hack my microwave if I wanted to, it has a microchip and I could get in there and tinker with it if I had the right tools. I hacked my Handspring Visor, and I hacked my Treo 650. I could also hack my iPhone, but I’m getting old and don’t have time to hack everything.
I agree with the idea that it should not be illegal to “unlock” any device you have legally purchased, but that’s it. What you should be worried about is trying your hardest to fight the DMCA and similar laws, which corporations abuse to keep things locked down. This is what stifles tinkering more than anything else.
Ignore all the people trying to derail your article by trying to make you believe that the iPad is more than what it is (an etch-a-sketch). None of them have seen computing through your eyes, so none of them understand.
Most of them are “new” computer users, most of them are ignorant to the value of being able to MOV, and INT; PEEK, and POKE.
No matter what they say, they are computer “users”, even if some are “developers” by title.
Thank you for your very informative article. Anyone that implies that a computing device is “good enough” because you can see html source in motion isn’t a systems programmer and wouldn’t understand the meaning behind your words.
— Understands
Your claim that, in order to develop for the iPad, “All you need is a Mac, XCode, an iPhone “simulator,” and $99 for an auto-expiring developer certificate.” is disingenuous. There is no fee required to develop for the iPhone or iPad. The $99/year fee you refer to is required to submit Apps to the App Store. I fail to see how Submitting Apps to the App Store is requisite for “tinkering”.
— Adam
Not sure I can agree, you figured out how the Apple IIe worked and your Dad never had any interest so he did not.
I right now working with kids, mine and others, that are hacking PS3s, Netbooks with the Mac OS, rooting into Androids, they have a lot more available to them to play with, and boatloads more information available to them.
From where I stand they have so much more available to them that I think they will be better than you or I am at digging into many areas, and more deeply.
— Tom Delmonte
I could tell the same general story, only I must be a little older TRS80 Commodore PET, C64, Amiga, Atari’s, Some Mac LISA, but after barely touching the Mac classic I began to work PC’s and even though I thought Microsoft was the Antichrist and still do generally (I lost 30 million dollars, by not being willing to sink my tiny inheritance into microsoft ;-) I’d agree that the games kids play on their devices today are TOO good, the stuff available back then was crappy enough to get bored with it and start to hack. so many young users never rise above the passivity of TV simply because of the quality of the entertainment. But I think the naked computer is about to be challenged by the rise of small scale, pervasive robotics, and a parallel development is small scale manufacturing (rapid prototypers, mini mills and the like) that’ll open up a whole universe of opportunity for innovation, even broader than the PC revolution. Heres a small, primitive, starting point: http://www.cubespawn.com
Rob writes: “That’s ok with me, because I like to tinker, but I realize no one but other ‘gluttons for punishment’ will ever get on board and use Linux like I do.”
My kids use and like Linux, as do my sisters and parents. Probably they couldn’t install it themselves (they couldn’t install Windows or Mac OS X, for that matter), but once it’s installed, they have no problems using it.
They will never be subject to the whims of Microsoft or “Big Brother” AKA Apple as long as I’m the one setting up their computers.
Just passed by (coming from Daringfireball, rereading Pilgrim’s , and wanted to congratulate the author, but also all commenters, both in favor and against the article’s thesis, because they are possibly the best comment stream I’ve ever seen to any web post.
Bravo!
I had a similar epiphany when I was 8, with a Sinclair ZX81 (Europe was different ;-)), and I became addicted. However, I think iPad-like computers (as Steven Frank has dubbed them, New World computing devices) can make people more interested in electronics (after all, it is the sensors that make possible much of the interaction), and in the same way I pressed until I got a ZX Spectrum to connect to the TV, kids can get Arduino hardware to connect to their iPads. Or they can get into web programming. Or they can decide they want to major in physics. As one commenter said, the important thing is fostering kids’ creativity. It doesn’t have to be their father’s call.
I must have missed the bit where Steve Jobs got out his checkbook and bought the entire Web, then summarily passed a provision which barred tinkerers, hackers and other morally infirm individuals from futzing with it. Oh, wait.
Remember how it was the “computer for the rest of us”? The iPad would seem to me to be the ultimate expression of that — if by “us” you mean the vast majority of consumers who, frankly, want a consumer utility, who have no interest in “tinkering,” jailbreaking or otherwise doing end runs around the warranty on their devices. Got a problem with DRM or locked platforms? Go somewhere else. And if those end up marginalized because of Jobs’ totalitarian commercial success, if it comes…then get the fuck over it. Though I have a sneaking suspicion that if the manufacturers and developers behind other platforms figured out a way to monetize content via a closed-loop system and could get their heads out of selling hardware, they’d slap the same prohibitions down as Apple. Consumers don’t give a shit about the whines and kvetches from professionals…what matters to them is disintermediation and reliability, an intuitive and idiot-proof way to access the pretty shiny Internet and its riches. Don’t carp because so many of them have chosen to embrace Apple’s gospel over your own.
In the days of radio’s glory, a tiny fraction of kids became hams or built kit radios. If you were dead-set on becoming a radio engineer, or an electronics engineer, you’d find a way to pry the back off Dad’s Zenith if he wouldn’t buy you a Heath Kit. You’d find a way. I suspect there’ll be plenty of developers who still embrace Apple, though on Apple’s terms (as they’re doing already, at a remove, via the Apps phenomenon). Got problems because Apple wants to rule content and deliver a consumer-friendly experience that’s an insult to your sensibilities? Invent something better.
Oops, in my previous comment the beginning of the first paragraph should read:
“Just passed by (coming from Daringfireball’s Linked List, rereading Pilgrim’s “Juggling oranges”, and then looking for what was new)…”
I wouldn’t be worried about Apple discontinuing Mac OS X based product lines (iMac, MacBooks, and Mac Pros). If nothing else, Apple employs boatload of engineers that need kit to develop Apple’s further products on. What do you think they’ll do? Switch to Linux, pure BSD UNIX, or god forbid, Windows? On generic hardware?
Apple just released a device with its *own CPU* in it. Do you think they’ll want to rely on outside assets to provide its own engineers with their development tools? Never. Apple’s desktop and laptop computer products are here to stay.
Yeah. And grumpy old farts like you were probably whining back then that those new simplified machines like Apple ][e killed old-style tinkering. Where were the tubes? A computer you don’t solder yourself? A preconfigured logic board? A basic interpreter pre-installed and ready to run? Oh, the good ole times when you wrote your own damn compiler from scratch…
— Anonymous
Mark, thank you for this terrific analysis of the danger posed to digital innovation by the continued abstraction of user interfaces. I agree with the overall thrust of your argument, and I’ve written about the same subject in a slightly different context regarding Chrome OS (http://www.whatdigitalrevolution.com/?p=6). Google is doing for information what Apple has done for the internal resources of computers, and in the process of tearing down the traditional barriers (money, education, and technical capacity for information; know-how and technical prowess for computing power), both firms have abstracted away their respective resources to a dangerous degree.
I don’t believe that it will be the end to the inspiration and digital creativity of children, however. They’re far too destructive for that, and from my own personal experience, both in childhood and now, I can suggest that the inevitable frustration they will feel with the deficiencies in Apple’s product line will impel them to create something new. Apple has also made me the tinkerer that I am: had it not been my frustration at being unable to create my own game on my dad’s Macintosh SE, I wouldn’t have pestered him until his friend showed me QBASIC on a Windows 95 PC.
Nevertheless, I do think that this trend has the potential to kill off tinkering, but computer tinkering itself may be replaced by an older mimetic kind of creativity that we see in art. Rarely do artists tamper the original work, though it is critical that they mess around with the idea or the design behind it to create their own product. With programming, however, the design has traditionally been the product (e.g., C code is an abstraction of machine code but not the blueprint for something different), so tinkering has meant creation. Frustrated iPad kids may very well pick up the soldering gun and their own circuits rather than the keyboard and DEBUG.
I’ve elaborated upon these thoughts and added a few more on my blog, “What Digital Revolution?”, at http://www.whatdigitalrevolution.com/?p=91. I’d be honored if you would take a look and let me know what you think!
I started out much the same on an Apple II+. The open systems you describe DO exist, but they’re Linux-based. A Linux system (out of the box) IS a tinkerer’s delight with built-in editors / compilers AND is completely open, but (assuming you’re in the US) most of us rarely encounter this because we’re rich / spoiled enough to buy a Windows or Mac-based system. It’s the siren call: come and enjoy ease of use, but relinquish control. Long gone are the days when Apple was the hobbyist’s best friend.
Disclosure: I am a web developer who develops web-based applications (primarily on Windows) intended to run on Linux. I don’t run Linux as a desktop OS, although I do wish I had the time. My love affair with Apple ended during the 68K->PowerPC transition. My iTouch serves as a lowly day planner and I don’t see the point of the iPad.
— Matthew
Mark’s right on so far as COMPUTER tinkering goes. I don’t get the defenders of tinkerability of the iPad: you might be able to, but not easily, not root, and not with the same satisfaction we had with more primitive machines in our youths. The Apple ][ was designed to be tinkered with (as was the Commodore 64), and the iPad (like the iPhone) is not. You can get part of the way back to Eden, but only part way.
Mark’s also right, I think, about the direction of Apple. In 10 years all of Apple’s machines will come locked down — but I would imagine they’ll sell some glitzy way to program on them, too. It’ll be different than what we’re used to today, that’s for sure.
But Mark, and nearly all the comments here, are wrong in one critical area. You seem to equate creativity to computer work; creativity is much broader than that. You all know that to be true; it’s not a controversial point. The real benefit of a closed system is for the teeming hordes of people who want to express their creative drive in some area that’s NOT RELATED TO COMPUTER PROGRAMMING. They’d like to make music or write poems or design more fuel efficient vehicles with self-healing tires or figure out how to balance their tiny business’ budget or work out the best spot to drill a new village well. Too often the tinker’s soul embedded in computers today get in the way. Yes, they get in the way of these people.
The world needs free computers for the programmers to create tools so that I can get my work done without having to tinker. The world needs free software to keep computer innovation flowing. But all innovation is not computer innovation, and for many, many people, even most of the people on the planet, a simpler computer is a better computer because it allows them to divert their creative energy to the tasks that matter to them. While it must be part of a healthy ecosystem of tinkerable computers, I want to see the iPad succeed and I will applaud it’s success.
— jww
I’m hopeful that as the virtualization technologies get better and better, we’ll be able to preserve things that we love – the apps, the platforms, the formats – for later. I’m always interested in keeping a snapshot of things as they happen. For example, I wrote this 3-D Home modelling software back in 1996, that I’d love to play around sometimes or just show it to friends or young students. I cannot because of the CPU it was written for, the media it resided on, the OS it was written for, have long been replaced.
yes, I guess, but this feels like an article from the heart responding to the first real palpable shift to consumer normalcy for complex computer devices. You will always have your car to tinker with – apple has nonetheless just stepped forward with a consumer device to cover 80-90% of web/media/computer usage with no user issues regarding natural intelligibility, maintenance, new programme addition or security. But you’re right: for a centre ground littered with coke cans, spare parts and chassis galore – this is twilight. Apple are at the zenith of their ability to call this kind of march. this is probably going to work. it should. Innovation will come in the positioning and envisioning of programming deeper into the societal framework on an appliance basis as it has with the iphone and that has had demonstrably positive effects on consumer understanding of the benefits of new programming. You’re not at sunset, you’re simply wailing at the break of another day.
— Aindreas
When I was 12 years old, I thought that computers were really cool things and decided that I wanted to spend my professional life working with them…. Problem was, there were no personal computers in those days…it was 1960… By 1967 I was working as a computer programmer…first in IBM assembly language (the 360 was brand new) then in doing numerical methods programming in Fortran for the CDC 3300, 6600 nd 7600 computers.. Programs were keypunched and submitted as batch programs, and debugged (if you were curious enough, and really, really good) by poring through core dumps…no symbolic debuggers for us… Some years later I discovered the ‘C’ programming language (the K & R version) which was a former assembly language programmer’s wet dream… I spent many happy years diddling the 43rd bit from the left doing low level commuinications programming which created much of the (programmatic) framework for what we today know as the internet..
I’m retired now, although I still like to periodically diddle the 43rd bit from the left, when relevant… I’ve probably got one of the more sophisticated home networking environments out there. But, I also like toasters….things which just work, out of the box. There is a place for both in this world.
I’ll probably get an IPad for my husband when it comes out; he’s a great book person ( we have 6000+ volumes in our library) and it will make it far easier for us to travel with a (somewhat) extended library… It is well designed for what it is intended to do. And, the Apple pricing model, though a bit more costly for the consumer (than the Amazon model) will likely keep more publishers in business, which is a good thing…
Curious people will always find a way to indulge their curiosity… Those who wish to tinker will continue to do so. And, with luck, people who like toasters will also be indulged..
— Dorothy
While I’m in sympathy with the views expressed, I find a fundamental flaw with the argument. The iPad is not a computer, and I think it would be best if we stopped calling these kinds of devices computers. It, along with the iPod and iPhone, is merely a content delivery device (which has its own associated evils … but that’s another discussion). Think of it as analogous to a TV set. I’ve yet to hear any geek bemoan the inability to hack a TV set. (And maybe I’m wrong here, maybe some of you have hacked TVs. But the point is that you can’t do it with the TV company’s blessing any more than you can hack an iPhone with Steve Job’s blessing.) As long as fully open computing platforms exist, I fail to see the threat from these silly consumer content delivery platforms. Even a Mac will allow you to program until your fingers bleed. What’s the problem? Don’t like the constraints of the SDK for the iPhone? Go program for Android. Or whatever. Apple isn’t the only game in town. Indeed, the best way to break up that monopoly will be to make the coolest apps for another platform. The irony is that you can create those apps on a Mac if you want.
— Ponter
Ponter, the iPad is a computer. People are going around saying it does 80-90% of what a computer does, maybe you should have a talk with them, because they’re cramping your style.
Here’s a rebuttal to the link above to Fraser Speirs:
http://manknowsmac.blogspot.com/2010/02/translating-fraser-speirs-on-ipad.html
— Laroquod
Loved the content, as well the comments and histories of others. I have a similar history, although at 10 years older my first tinkering at 16 was through a dumb terminal, and then onto assembler language on IBM System 360, followed by Fortran and ultimately ‘C’, where I branched off into a realm somewhat lower down the OSI model and telecommunications.
I have an aversion to closed systems, so I will choose not to comment on the specific subject at hand.
Thanks much for your thoughts, as always, and thanks for the memories, people!
iPad is not a computer – it should not be used to please a geek with too few friend to have fun and sense of freedom with. It’s a mother fucking visual console dedicated to interacting with media.
— TK
You make a good point. But it is interesting that your “gateway drug” into tinkering was BASIC. For the period you refer to is exactly when computer manufacturers started to remove BASIC from their products. IIRC Win95 still had QBASIC as standard equipment. Win98 required you to track it down in an OLDDOS directory on the install CD, and by WinXP it was gone completely. On the Mac it was the same story, with HyperCard not making the transition to OSX. To the (admittedly minor) extent that I am a tinkerer, I owe it to Sinclair BASIC.
I’m not saying they should have provided BASIC forever. But the need for a simple language that anyone can pick up in a few days, that comes with the computer, and that is sufficiently standard that one can share code around, remained, and remains today. A subset of Python would do just fine. Most people will never progress further, and that’s OK, but it is a starting point.
What do we tell kids today if they want to tinker? “Learn C++, and the Gnome API, and the APIs of a dozen Gnome dependencies, and all the make switches”. Some will manage to do that. Most will not. The bar for starting to tinker is just set too high.
So my point (sorry for the long-winded buildup) is that while you are right in saying that the needs of tinkerers are being ignored, you are wrong that it dates from last week’s iPad announcement. It has been a long way coming.
— clasqm
I agree with most of what you said. Street cred-wise, I learned BASIC on a Teletype connected to a faraway mainframe through a 300 baud acoustic modem. Followed by FORTRAN on punch cards. I still get cars with manual transmissions even though they are a pain in traffic jams.
I think that where you are veering off course is by looking at portable devices as venues for kids to start tinkering. I love my iPhone, but I think that the kids will still need a good keyboard to really get started coding. And I think cross-compiling for portable devices will qualify as advanced tinkering for the foreseeable future. I think they’ll just code and run on whatever their keyboard is connected to. Once they think they are hot shot coders, they can scrape $100 off of their grandparents and develop their own Facebook-integrated fart noise generator iPhone App and make $18 in their first three months like pretty much everyone else.
Best. Eighteen. Dollars. Ever.
If you really want to feel better about the future, check out the scenes around the Processing language (processing.org) and Arduino microcontrollers. To circle back to your concerns about locked-down portable devices, a motivated 10 year old today will be making his own portable devices from scratch in his late teens (check out the kits available now at liquidware.com) followed by designing and fabbing one-off cel phones for himself and his friends in his 20s. Seriously, the kids are alright…
— Garry
Imagine a machine with enough computing power and memory to be interesting, accelerometer information available to software, all input coming from a multitouch screen, a wifi card, oh right and it’s a phone too. Sweet! Now let’s wipe every single bit of crapware that came installed on it from the manuafacturer and do something new and interesting! Oh wait.
— Matt
Maybe these new devices lead us to a higher level of tinkering?
“It’s a mother fucking visual console dedicated to interacting with media.”
Then why doesn’t it give actual access to all the media? Why must Apple decide that irony, a la the ‘ridiculing of public figures’, isn’t allowed in the App Store?
Maybe what we need is a computer for general purpose, an iPad for playing media, and an even smaller, irony machine that will play the smallest ironic violin in the world for you while you enjoy your so-called ‘media-centric device’.
There are a lot of 18th Century satirists who are rolling in their graves. They aren’t invited to the interactive future. Apple is creating an irony-free zone and you’re going to live in it.
— Laroquod
Great post! While reading, I was thinking that the only kids that would be able to tinker with the iPad are those that have parents that have jailbroken the iPad, thus creating a divide between those that know how to free the motherfucking device and others that just want to consume it.
Apple success with closed platforms is worrisome for so many issues, that I wonder if Apple will be able to keep it for ever. It is a shame because its technology is amazing, but Steve Jobs is perverting it for the sake of business. He hasn’t changed in this. The scorpion will always bite the frog.
On my blog:
iPad, disrupting technology? We’ll see about it – and how open it becomes
http://www.aribo.eu/2010/01/ipad-disrupting-technology/e
Good Read! I think tinkering is an art derived from passion which makes us become good developers and problem solvers.
Maybe however the iPad isn’t the tinkers choice, but for those with no enthusiasm to tinker. Not everyone loves technology from a creatives viewpoint, but from a users endpoint.
You can still develop great apps and take advantage of it’s capabilities. Plus it fills a gap in the market which gives us developers something else to develop for. Early days yet, but should be interesting to see how people use it and fit more technology into their lifestyle. Watch this space….
Yeah, you can still develop great apps and follow your passions — as long as your passions don’t run in the direction of satire. Satire of public figures doesn’t belong in new media — only in old media.
I hope I can impess on *someone* in the world what is the problem with this philosophy, because it seems plainly obvious to me that a large of slice of our culture that is typically speaks the most truth to power is being carved out of the future by Apple and relegated to the past.
— Laroquod
To put it as clearly as I possibly can (and sorry for the double), it’s not just the tinkerers who tinker with *technology* who are being told to play elsewhere. Like Mark, I wouldn’t like that, but I really wouldn’t have that much of a problem with that to spend much time fighting it. But it’s also those who tinker the most with our *culture* who are being asked to take a hike. This is a crucial distinction for democracy.
— Laroquod
Very good points! It’s already like that, though, unfortunately… simply due to complexity. I, too, was inspired to develop software and hardware by using a simple machine – TRS-80 with BASIC and even a cartridge port for which I had a schematic that came with the computer!
These days, one would have to turn to Processing, Arduino, Python, or a few other things to find the simplicity to attract initial developers. I’m optimistic, though, and believe the spark will still be there when seeing devices do the “magical” things that they do. There will always be the “hot-rodders.”
clasqm: What do we tell kids today if they want to tinker? “Learn C++, and the Gnome API, and the APIs of a dozen Gnome dependencies, and all the make switches”. Some will manage to do that. Most will not. The bar for starting to tinker is just set too high.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I never did that. My first big satisfying hacky moment was realizing that I could use Perl to solve the NPR Puzzler–it wasn’t so much about making the machine do something it wasn’t designed to do, as understanding that the machine was completely open-ended, that the possibilities were limited only by what I could express in code.
I suppose that’s lost with something like the iPad.
Laroquod: But it’s also those who tinker the most with our *culture* who are being asked to take a hike. This is a crucial distinction for democracy.
Are you certain? Apple doesn’t censor what you write with Pages or record with iMovie. I’m not downplaying the significance of Apple moving to a walled-garden model, but writing apps for the App Store is hardly exactly the easiest or most popular way to promulgate one’s views.
My boy Cass (11) uses his macbook to make movies with iStopmotion, iMovie and pixelmator. He writes his scripts in textedit. He records the voices by overdubbing from the “start speaking text” service. He does not, and never will, want to “tinker” endlessly and aspergically with the tools that’ll one day make him a content maker, not a geek twiddler.
Sorry, Laroquod, but I don’t see it. How does the iPad limit tinkering with culture? Does it limit your access to internet content? Does it somehow stop you from writing out some Communist screed or a screenplay that criticizes China’s treatment of political dissidents? I am unaware of those limitations.
Perhaps you are referring to the app store? I completely understand why someone would be unhappy with the app store: it stinks. It’s a corporate-controlled enforced happy zone. As others have stated, you can’t publish apps through Apple that criticize political leaders. But it doesn’t limit my ability to tinker with culture any more than a Christian bookstore limits my ability to tinker with the Bible. There are other bookstores that sell other Bibles, and other devices that have other avenues to tinker, criticize, complain.
The iPad probably sucks for you. It sounds like it sucks for most everyone who reads diveintomark.com. But it doesn’t suck inherently because of your lofty standards, and it surely won’t cause the downfall of civilization. If anything, a worry-free device that fosters creativity for those who don’t want to maintain their computers is good for civilization. I expect the next generation of non-computer tinkerers to be greatly benefited by a maintenance-free device like an iPad.
— JWW
Thanks so much for writing this. Ending the tinkering era is ending the information era. This makes Apple’s decisions philosophically contradictory to companies like Google and the FSF.
— Jose Boveda
“Writing apps for the App Store is hardly exactly the easiest or most popular way to promulgate one’s views.”
Well no, writing a linear essay and posting in a blog is the *easiest* way to do that. But that argument can be reduced to a ‘let them eat blogs’ sort of elitist preservation of the halls of the newest forms of media only for those with certain kinds of opinions [i.e. the 'challenge authority' kind]. Why should these people be ghettoised in old media? Do you really have no problem with this? I mean, normally I have to try to convince people that Apple sets the pace for the industry and this is why this is so important, but I don’t think I need to try to convince too many people of that, here. And since we are most of us ‘technologists’ and most of us ‘tinkerers’ I think we can all perceive a possible future when far more of the populaton will want to write interactiviely and some of them will want to express themselves in that way with an interactive, native app. Maybe if they can’t, they won’t even resort to some blog, because it’s not the way they want to express themselves.
This is culture. You can’t say, ‘You people over here who like to write this sort of opinion should only do your stuff in this way, and let all of these other people over there who like to write less ironic less ridiculing opinions have access to all the better ways of doing things.’ I mean that just isn’t fair, is it? And there will be consequences — it’s a slanted playing field, and there are always consequences to that.
— Laroquod
Have no fear, my friend. Tinkering is an urge that will remain for those of us who love doing it no matter what others think of it and try to do about it.
— jcast77
I’m with you here. Your article has inspired me to try again to learn a programming language (I’m 15) and help keep this tinkering thing alive.
I don’t know why Apple thinks it’s OK to crack down on innovation like this. I kinda wish Steve Jobs had been out longer so the company could make some progress under someone else and see how that goes.
Anyway, well said. Thank you for writing this.
— j roth
I love this. Well written and tacit to the core of the issues.
People that are drawn to program computers will do so, regardless of what computer they are first exposed to. When my older brother was a kid, he liked to take things apart. If something was harder to take apart, he’d try harder. If a person must write for a living, it doesn’t matter what tools they have, they will find a way to write.
Easy to use, closed computing systems have a place in the tech world, because there will always be people that want their computing device to “just work,” just like many people want their cars and their toasters to “just work.” That doesn’t mean the end of tinkering with cars and toasters.
The iPad is notable because it shows that computers have finally reached the appliance phase that any technology will inevitably reach with maturity. Cause for celebration! If someone just wants to check email, surf the web and consume media, they shouldn’t EVER need an IT person to help them set up their computing device to do it. That’s what Apple is trying to give it’s customers, as an OPTION, in addition to their other lines of computing devices, most of which still allow plenty of tinkering for those of us that want that. Us tinkerers will continue to be able to tinker pretty much indefinitely, because there will continue to be demand for that and companies will continue to make a profit by supplying to that demand.
Relax, nothing is going away in the computer world because of iPad-like devices. The computer landscape is just being expanded and refined. Enjoy the ride!
— RexRay
For those of you that suggested Javascript, please, don’t forget the Lively Kernel, by Dan Ingalls et al:
http://research.sun.com/projects/lively/
It proves that tinkering last for life (at least for Dan :-) and that Javascript can be think as a Smalltalk’ish self-contained and live development environment.
Cheers.
I believe that Mark is correct in his comment stating that Apple will be making just devices/appliances with no root access within a short span of time, IF the mobile market stays extremely profitable for them. While the personal computer market has continued to make them lots of money, Apple is definitely focused on mobile these days, in any way, shape, or form. Steve Jobs said as much when he stated that the focus was mobile. Apple, Inc. could slowly drop personal computers from their line-up of hardware and still remain a very profitable company. I’m not sure they’ll do that entirely, but they may relegate the computer division to making hardware for “professionals” only. Time will tell.
Laroquod: Why should these people be ghettoised in old media? Do you really have no problem with this?
This is pretty weak tea. Look, I agree that the iPad is a terrible tool for tinkers, a terrible tool for coders and a terrible tool for anyone who knows what the hell root is. That doesn’t translate into cultural control. The set of people who care about coding and the set of people who care about expressing themselves culturally has a pretty damned small intersection on which to hang your thesis that Apple is destroying free culture.
The iPad’s locked down model is less about avoiding tinkering (tinkerers will always find a way), as it is about avoiding competition. There is no way you can compete with the built-in functionality, either due to app store constraints, or due to browser integration limitations. There’s also no way to improve the built-in functionality. The consequence of this is a very harmonized experience, but a dull one. The only party that can innovate on the iPad is apple, because all of the core functionality is outside the reach of third parties. We’re seeing the consequences of this with the iPhone. Apple hasn’t been innovating strongly on the iPhone in recent months, and as a result their market share has started slipping. Apple’s locked model requires them to keep investing at a high pace in product innovation, or they fall back relative to the rest of the market. Eventually people will catch on to the hidden costs of the closed model, and platforms will open up out of profit incentive.
Then again, what do I know?
— Joeri Sebrechts
So you want to ‘tinker’ with the device. But only if they make it easy?
Do you worry that you don’t have that same access to your microwaves OS? Is your issue with the iPad that apple only gave limited access? would you feel better if it was totally locked like all other appliances?
Seriously though. Install the SDK on your kids mac and let them tinker with the simulator.
Your kids have a chance to develop for a device. Something you didn’t have the opportunity to do. Give them some credit. I’m sure they’ll make the adjustment.
— Ricardo Russon
Seems simple enough to me – the low-level tinkerers of tomorrow will run ChromeOS; the spirit of Woz survives.
Html5 & the w3c device api will make it all increasingly irrelevant though – the OS will no longer matter, the open web will be the platform for all apps.
— rdza
“The set of people who care about coding and the set of people who care about expressing themselves culturally has a pretty damned small intersection on which to hang your thesis that Apple is destroying free culture.”
Right, so let’s just effectively outlaw coders who care about culture on new devices, because they don’t seem to yet exist much. We aren’t ever going to need people like that. They’re worthless.
I’d argue that we need people like that now more than ever, and what is happening to the iPad is a perfect example of why. The blind spot is in the middle — in a (so far) polarised world, that’s where it tends to be.
I’d also like to point out that only 15 years ago you could have said exactly the same thing about HTML. Take a look at everything that has been created by culturally focused people who forced themselves to learn HTML. Now imagine if Apple had designed HTML for one of its mobile devices rather than Mr. Tim Berners-Lee.
There is an almost willful shortsightedness on the part of the defenders here who normally should be capable of seeing possibilities that haven’t yet entirely arrived,
— Laroquod