I was thinking that the timing couldn’t have been better: here was proof that the government already had plenty of power to take down infringing sites outside of the US, and SOPA and PIPA were completely unnecessary. The reason I jumped so hard onto the anti-SOPA bandwagon was only partly being a joiner, and mostly because it’s just such a transparent abuse of power: the MPAA and RIAA had been going batshit crazy attacking individual litigants for years, and they wanted to be able to circumvent the system entirely and just go after sites themselves.

And after reading an article on Ars Technica called Why the Feds Smashed Megaupload, I thought it’d be clear to everyone that these were the “bad guys,” and here was a clear case of the system working as it should:

As for the site’s employees, they were paid lavishly and they spent lavishly. Even the graphic designer, 35-year-old Slovakian resident Julius Bencko, made more than $1 million in 2010 alone.

The indictment goes after six individuals, who between them owned 14 Mercedes-Benz automobiles with license plates such as “POLICE,” “MAFIA,” “V,” “STONED,” “CEO,” “HACKER,” GOOD,” “EVIL,” and—perhaps presciently—”GUILTY.” The group also had a 2010 Maserati, a 2008 Rolls-Royce, and a 1989 Lamborghini. They had not one but three Samsung 83″ TVs, and two Sharp 108″ TVs. Someone owned a “Predator statue.” Motor bikes, jet skis, artwork, and even 60 Dell servers could all be forfeit to the government if it can prove its case against the members of the “Mega Conspiracy.”
[…]
But the government asserts that Megaupload merely wanted the veneer of legitimacy, while its employees knew full well that the site’s main use was to distribute infringing content. Indeed, the government points to numerous internal e-mails and chat logs from employees showing that they were aware of copyrighted material on the site and even shared it with each other.

The internet joins together to protest heavy-handed legislation, and the “industry” works within the system to take down one of the most egregious offenders. Win-win, right?

Maybe not. Ars Technica also ran “Megaupload wasn’t just for pirates: angry users out of luck for now”, part of the emerging backlash against the takedown as an abuse of power. Apparently, individual creators’ losses due to piracy are statistically insignificant, but the number of people who are for some reason keeping their sole copies of their work on file sharing sites are a legitimate concern.

On Twitter and his blog, Jonathan Coulton wrote about the takedown of Megaupload and how it’s a complicated issue. Because sure, for the people running that site to be knowingly profiting off of copyright-infringing material is “kind of a dick move,” but what about the people using the site legally? (Instead of Dropbox, Box.net, iCloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Docs, RapidShare, a private FTP site, or any of thousands of other sites and services?) And more significantly, does piracy actually hurt anyone, really?

Looking at the music business, yes profits have gone down ever since Napster, but has anyone effectively demonstrated the causal link between that and piracy? There are many alternate theories (people buying songs and not whole albums, music sucking more, niches and indie acts becoming more viable, etc.). The Swiss government did a study and determined that unauthorized downloading (which 1/3 of their citizens do) does not create any loss in revenue for the entertainment industry. I remember but am now too lazy to find links to other studies that say the same thing. I can’t think of any study I’ve seen that demonstrates the opposite. If there is one, please point me to it. So I have a lot of trouble with the idea that the federal government is directing resources toward an ultimately ineffective game of piracy whack-a-mole (with some unknown amount of collateral damage to law-abiding citizens), when we are not even sure that piracy is a problem.

Well, for starters: the Swiss government’s study, as described by completely objective research site TorrentFreak.Com, concluded that piracy doesn’t necessarily create a loss in revenue for the industry, since the people in their study who downloaded copyrighted material still spent about the same amount of money on concerts (and concert souvenirs), videogames, movies, etc.

Which, if anything, says that the industry is large enough to write off the loss. But how many of us are paid by “The Entertainment Industry?” How is that anything other than ominous to anyone who believes in the value of independent artists and objects to the idea of entertainment corporations consolidating into ever-growing monolithic entities?

I can’t speak for anyone else (seriously, I don’t speak for anyone else, including companies I used to work for), but whenever I would google for “Sam & Max” and came up with dozens of torrent listings, I never thought, “Well, that’s kind of a drag, but at least people are still buying Madden, so no harm done.” Instead, I’d usually think about what would be possible if you had enough revenue to make a game with no limitations and without being reminded about dwindling sales and niche markets.

Coulton talks about Tim O’Reilly’s Google+ post piracy’s effect on “the industry”:

Tim points out that he and a lot of other content creators have been happily coexisting with piracy all this time, and I’m certainly one of them. Make good stuff, then make it easy for people to buy it. There’s your anti-piracy plan.

Sounds simple. Make good stuff, make it easy for people to buy it. Oh yeah, and one more thing: get lots of promotion from famous people.

I’ve got no doubt that a significant part of Coulton’s audience discovered his music via YouTube videos, remixes, word of mouth, and the like. That’s not how I heard of him, though. I first heard of him through John Hodgman’s books, published by a subsidiary of Penguin publishing. And I never would’ve heard of Hodgman if not for his Mac ads (paid for by Apple, Inc) and his appearances on The Daily Show (broadcast by Viacom). I’m sure lots more people have subsequently heard of Coulton via his work on the Portal series (developed and published by Valve and distributed by Electronic Arts).

I like Coulton, but I’ve got to say that it’s disingenuous bordering on arrogant to reduce it to “make good stuff” without acknowledging how much goes into promotion. (Not just distribution, promotion). I say arrogant because it perpetuates this myth that everything’s a meritocracy — if your work were just better, you’d have a bigger audience. And it makes it sound like greed if you want to protect your IP.

So: make good stuff, make it easy for people to buy it, and spend lots and lots of money on promotion to make people aware that your good stuff even exists in the first place. And, I’m assuming, cross your fingers and hope that you’re one of the lucky ones who gets paid for his work to guarantee no net loss for the industry as a whole, not one of the ones who’s repeatedly told — by people wealthier than you’ll ever be — that piracy isn’t an issue.

For me, the topic of piracy always comes down to the same issue: it’s about fairness. It’s always made out to be some big, complicated issue with lots of gray area, and no doubt in legal terms it really is. But it ultimately comes down to individual responsibility, and as I see it, that couldn’t be more simple. We know what genuine fair use is, even if the RIAA and MPAA don’t. We can distinguish between genuinely legitimate sites and ones that profit off the work of others, even if SOPA and PIPA can’t tell the difference. We want people to be paid for their work, even if we forget about the work of PR and marketing people. We want people to be free to make cool things, instead of having creative decisions determined by accountants.

People are going to pirate stuff for as long as they can get away with it, that’s a fact. But it’s not a justification; “people are going to do it anyway” is about the weakest possible defense of anything. “Make it easy for people to buy it” means you don’t load your stuff down with egregious DRM in an attempt to grab every last sale at the expense of your loyal customers.

But the concept of “happily coexisting with piracy” is just plain bullshit. Saying “it does no harm” turns into “it’s not really theft, actually” turns into entitlement and then you can’t make a living doing what you love unless you’re employed by a huge company. I just hope nobody has the gall to act surprised when we end up in an environment where it’s impossible for indies to make a living.

One of the side effects of the attention that SOPA and PIPA have been getting: more outbreaks of discussions about piracy, copyright protection, and intellectual property. Which means more of the same comments that get me all riled up.

For the record, I’m firmly in the Yes, Piracy Is Indeed Theft camp. I’ve heard and considered all the counter-arguments, and haven’t heard any that are convincing:

• “It’s not theft when there’s no physical copy.” These days, the cost of distribution is almost insignificant when compared to the costs of production.
• “With digital media, you can make infinite copies.” That’d be great if there were an infinite market of consumers, but in actuality there’s a finite number of people and a finite number of opportunities to make a sale. Most digital media is consumable, so there’s little benefit to ownership, which means once a person has watched/played the torrent of a movie or game, there’s no incentive for them to buy a copy and pay the original creators.
• “Torrents and free copies act as word of mouth. They promote sales, not hurt them.” You know who really promote sales is marketing and PR firms. And they have the undeniable advantage of doing so with the creator’s consent, instead of assuming “I’ll just put this on YouTube and I’m sure they’ll thank me later.”
• “Copyright and ‘ownership’ of intellectual property are outdated notions in the internet age.” Unfortunately, buying food and paying rent are still very pressing concerns in the internet age. It’d be nice to still be able to make a living doing what you like instead of having to get a soulless job for any corporation large enough to be able to write off millions of dollars in lost sales.
• “The people who pirate it wouldn’t have bought it anyway.” There is, literally, no way to prove that. And even if you qualify that with “Most of the people,” that still means the creators and publishers are losing money.
• “It’s the responsibility of creators, publishers, and distributors to make their offering more appealing than piracy.” And here I thought it was the responsibility of individuals not to steal from people trying to make a living. I’m skeptical that the wide availability of YouTube videos invalidates millennia of philosophy and ethics.

And so on. Piracy is bad, SOPA and PIPA even worse. It’s especially disheartening to see it hit creators who aren’t quite “the little guy,” but are also far from being huge, multi-national media corporations:

CinematicTitanic.com will be going dark on Weds to protest SOPA/PIPA. We have been hammered by piracy, but ruining the web isn’t the answer.

— Josh Weinstein (@JElvisWeinstein) January 16, 2012

The Cinematic Titanic guys are doing exactly what the whole “internet age” is supposed to support: making something on their own, directly targeted at a very niche audience, without (to the best of my knowledge) a huge sponsor or corporate backing. To hear they’re getting “hammered” by piracy (and so are the Rifftrax guys, from what I’ve heard) just makes all the attempts to defend internet piracy seem even more hollow.

But instead of hearing about the creators who actually are affected, it’s a lot more common for us to hear the examples that work, with the spin of “hey this is the new way of doing things, the system works, and people are actually good at heart!” Radiohead, Nine Inch Nails, and I think Coldplay have put out “pay what you want” albums without DRM. Cory Doctorow’s constantly putting forward his DRM-free books as great examples of how free distribution increases exposure, and Wil Wheaton followed suit with at least two of his own works (maybe more).

And Louis CK sold his concert performance for $5 and made a profit! (That’s the one I would actually support, both because Louis CK’s kind of awesome, and because he’s been transparent and bullshit-free about the entire thing the whole way through. So buy it.)

What they all neglect to mention, though, is that all of them are already famous. Doctorow from a hugely popular zine turned blog turned bully pulpit, and the rest through years of exposure thanks to well-paid marketing juggernauts. It is specious bordering on insulting to claim that any of these artists’ work was successful based solely on the merits of the work itself and the electrifying potential of the try-before-you-buy internet.

It’s important to point out that I’m not saying that any of those are bad works, the success is undeserved, or their fame wasn’t the result of a lot of hard work on their part. I’m simply saying that you can’t build a career from the work of marketing, PR, and promotional people and the publishers who hire them, and then turn around and deny that they exist. It’d also be a mistake to neglect that none of those people are supporting themselves solely on sales of their DRM-free experiments.

There’s also the counterpoint in the form of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” which was never a monster hit but did manage to build up a large and faithful audience (myself included), mostly thanks to the quality of the show but also due to the efforts (and investment) of the two networks who aired it and promoted it. The two spin-off groups Cinematic Titanic and Rifftrax should in a just universe be famous enough not to have to worry about piracy.

So the latest example of arguments that bug me came today from Tim O’Reilly of O’Reilly Media, in a post on Google+ called Before Solving a Problem, Make Sure You’ve Got the Right Problem.

O’Reilly makes what I think are a lot of good points in rejection of SOPA and PIPA, and how it’s fallacious to claim that they’ll in any way benefit job creation or the national economy. But he also says:

In the entire discussion, I’ve seen no discussion of credible evidence of this economic harm. There’s no question in my mind that piracy exists, that people around the world are enjoying creative content without paying for it, and even that some criminals are profiting by redistributing it. But is there actual economic harm?

In my experience at O’Reilly, the losses due to piracy are far outweighed by the benefits of the free flow of information, which makes the world richer, and develops new markets for legitimate content. Most of the people who are downloading unauthorized copies of O’Reilly books would never have paid us for them anyway; meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of others are buying content from us, many of them in countries that we were never able to do business with when our products were not available in digital form.

I see that as just another variant of the claims made by Doctorow, Wheaton, and anyone else diminishing the impact of piracy. They say, in effect, that piracy isn’t a problem because it’s not a problem for them. I don’t for one second believe that they’re lying. I don’t even doubt for a moment that they have the best of intentions.

But I do believe that they’re making a mistake by glossing over what’s unique about their own situations, and assuming that it’s the same for everyone. In O’Reilly’s case, I imagine it’s easier to extol the virtues of the free flow of information when the bulk of your business is selling paperbound reference books at hardback prices. That market has built-in anti-piracy; when you are in the market for a reference book, you want your own copy.

Again, that’s not intended as a slight against O’Reilly books or their publishing practices: the prices are competitive, I’ve bought plenty of their books, and I’ll continue to do so for as long as I use computers. I do believe, however, that it’s irresponsible for O’Reilly to be speaking in terms of national policy without considering his special situation. I have to wonder if the publishers of more consumable and disposable media, like paperback fiction, would be as quick to agree that there’s no actual economic harm from piracy.

Suing housewives for hundreds of thousands of dollars for allegedly using a file-sharing service obviously isn’t the solution. Neither is ridiculously restrictive digital rights management. Neither is pro-big-media legislation designed to shift the blame from the actual offenders to the businesses whose only fault or negligence is being visible enough to be sued but not profitable enough to defend themselves.

But taking the Randian “it’s not a problem for me, so it can’t possibly a problem for anyone else” tack isn’t the answer, either.

The New Scooby Doo: Mystery Incorporated series
Except for maybe “The Powerpuff Girls,” any animated series aimed at kids has failed the second they make it smart enough for adults to like, too. I really like that the new series is for fans of the old series — they’ve got all kinds of callbacks to the original monsters, cameos from “New Scooby Doo Mysteries” celebrities like Don Knotts, and clever bits like casting Casey Kasem as Shaggy’s dad. And they have a season-wide story arc hinting at the original bunch of crime-solving teens in the same city, with their talking parrot. I hope it lasts.

Aquaman on the new “Brave and the Bold” series
The series isn’t quite as charming as it used to be, but Aquaman (voiced by John DiMaggio, who does Bender from Futurama and Jake from Adventure Time) is still the best character. Nice to see the guy finally getting a little respect, since he’s had a hard few decades.

Man vs Food
Everything about this show is just wrong. It’s a testament to gross American excess and waste, the host is plenty likeable but he talks through his nose, and they referred to Walnut Creek as “just outside of San Francisco.” But still, if it comes on, my ass is fixed to the couch and my eyes to the TV for hours, or until creepy Anthony Bourdain comes on, whichever comes first. I’m not proud of it, but it happens.

The Daily Puppy
is my favorite blog, hands down. Don’t tell my cat.

The “Walt Disney World Ephemera” group on Flickr
and the “Disney Printed Matter” group
There are billions and billions of groups for Disney fans on Flickr, but these two are specifically for maps, magazine ads, FastPasses, ride tickets, parking tickets, and old shopping bags. When I was younger, I used to sneak into my brother’s room and rummage through the bottom drawer of his dresser, because that’s where he kept the bags full of souvenirs from our previous trip to Disney World. (Other families hid porn, my family hid Disney souvenirs). To this day, the EPCOT Future World icons and original Walt Disney World logo and even this photo still trigger a glee response at the base of my spine. Also this.

More evidence that no matter what you’re into, there are at least fifty other people somewhere on the internet who are even more into it than you are. And yes, I mean the naughty stuff too.

And unrelated, but just because I love it a lot: “Whiners Can Be Losers” from the Cartoon Network’s golden days.

Today I’ve already seen about a billion links to a video with an “alternate ending” for the movie, supposedly leaked by people working on the film (with the YouTube info text helpfully telling you the date of the movie’s release). And it’s edgy because it shows Boo Boo shooting Yogi with a shotgun in what I’m assuming is a parody of The Assassination of Jesse James but have no idea because, much like Yogi Bear, that movie never seemed like anything I’d want to watch.

And because of the way retweets work, a majority of the links came with the warning “watch this now because it will be taken down immediately!” Presumably, as soon as the studio found out about what some naughty, rogue animators were doing.

Except this is the same movie that had an initial teaser poster with a visual and verbal double entendre, which made its own rounds across the internet as people stumbled over each other to write “oh no they didn’t!” posts (like this one) about it. And even though those blank, glassy eyes are incapable of winking, the ads most definitely are. The tagline was since changed to the more innocuous “Life’s a pic-a-nic” or “Please do not feed the bears,” we’re to assume after one of the higher-ups at the studio was alerted by a younger, hipper staff member that “Great things come in bears” had people giggling at their cluelessness.

I honestly don’t know how I feel about this. On the one hand, I’m genuinely impressed by a marketing campaign that’s so insidiously successful. Somebody, somewhere realized that they had two options when advertising a movie based on a dated cartoon character: act like they’re in on the joke, or invite legions of internet hipsters make fun of them for being clueless. They chose the road less traveled, and that’s made all the difference in site traffic and trending topics.

On the other hand, it’s shockingly cynical. They had to realize that the type of people who would say “Pfft. Hip Smurfs,” and go on about their business, are the same people who wouldn’t hesitate to link, tweet, retweet, share, stumble, and Like a poster or a video if there’s even the slightest hint of subversiveness. They’re not just promoting your movie for free; they’re doing it while believing they’re mocking you.

Whenever pop culture starts to do a Vizzini with the whole mocking-and-self-awareness cycle of media manipulation, it just makes my head hurt. Is it wrong that I want my viral marketing campaigns to go back to the simpler, more innocent days of subservient chickens and half-naked men wearing nothing but a towel and deodorant?

Turns out that some of the rarer episodes are out there on something that’s like YouTube but isn’t but is also owned by Google and like YouTube, it also shows videos. You can search for “Time of the Apes,” which is one I haven’t seen for over a decade and will likely never be released in one of the official sets because of rights issues. Other semi-rare classics to search for: “Daddy-O,” “Master Ninja I,” and “Fugitive Alien.”

I’m excited because I love MST3k and hate copyright.

So I put up a Tumblr log, called Recommended by Spectre Collie, which I’ll eventually expand on and possibly incorporate on this site, depending how ambitious I get and if I ever get more free time. For now it’s only got a few iPhone games, but eventually it could be a repository for anything I’d like people to buy, read, or watch, and then come back and thank me for pointing it out to them. The RSS Feed is here for people who swing that way.

Incidentally, if you weren’t aware, and you’re interested, there’s already another Tumblelog called SpectreCollie Annex that links to my favorite stuff from YouTube, Flickr, and random websites (when that works).

At least, that’s if you believe everything you read on the internet. If you’re still at all grounded in reality, you realize that Apple announced a big iPod Touch.

(That’s if you’re not still giggling over the name. And for the record, I never would’ve made the obvious joke had I known a) they were actually going to call it that, and b) it would so quickly become the 2010 equivalent of abbreviating Microsoft as M$ by YouTube & blog commenters).

iPhone Gigante

I still don’t understand why so many Internet types — both criticizing and defending — seem to think that calling it “a big iPod Touch” is such a devastating ice burn. John Gruber insists that the iPad is what Apple’s had in mind all along; the iPad isn’t a bigger iPhone, but the iPhone is a stripped-down iPad. Whichever way you want to look at it: the iPhone is pretty cool.

The iPad announcement confirmed my own worst suspicions of the thing — not that I’m particularly prescient or even in the loop of the tech world, but just because it was the most straightforward and obvious thing that Apple could’ve announced. It’s designed for consuming media, not creating it. And according to people who’ve had a hands-on with it, it does a really good job at that. I’m inclined to believe Stephen Fry’s claim that you have to see it in person to really appreciate it — not because he’s any more or less reliable than anyone else as a technology commentator, but because I had the same experience with the iPhone. I’d been trying to talk myself out of getting an iPhone, but was completely won over as soon as I used a display model and saw the clarity of the screen and all the polish that’d been given to the UI.

And the iPhone is still pretty damn neat. It’s already obviated a laptop computer for a lot of the “casual computing” stuff I tend to do, and the app store has expanded its functionality several times over. And yes, I have often thought, “a faster version of this, with a larger screen, would be ideal.” So what’s the problem?

Spoiled Children of the Revolution

The problem, as I see it, is that developments in consumer technology have outpaced both content providers’ business models and consumers’ common sense. It’s resulted in a ridiculously over-inflated sense of entitlement that’s only made worse when dropped into the echo chamber of the internet.

Two of the most ridiculous examples are, unfortunately, on the only two Gawker blogs I can still tolerate reading: Lifehacker and io9. Annalee Newitz’s screed against “crap futurism” is the worse of the two, a depressingly cynical view of tech consumers disguised as consumer empowerment. She accurately describes the iPad as a device for consuming media, not creating it, but then barrels forward into a self-contradictory conclusion that paints this as not just a condemnation of consumer-oriented society but as something that endangers the very future of computing:

I know a lot of otherwise-savvy consumers and hackers who are already drooling over the iPad and putting in their orders. They hate the idea of a restricted device, but they love the shiny-shiny. I’m not saying that they should deprive themselves of this pretty new toy. What I am saying is that this toy represents a crappy, pathetic future. [...] The only way iPads can truly become futuristic devices is if we hack them so that we can pour whatever operating system we want inside. We need to jailbreak these media boxes so we can install the apps we want, not the ones provided by the Apple shopping mall.

Or in other words: devices like the iPad lead us towards a future where we’re slaves to consumerism, unable to decide for ourselves but bound by some evil corporate giant’s decisions about what we’re allowed to watch and what we’re allowed to create. So the thing to do is go ahead and buy it anyway, and then violate the agreement you make with the manufacturer on activation. The genuinely crappy and pathetic future is one in which responsible adults actually behave this way and then attempt to justify it as noble.

Because, you know, you could just not buy it. That’s what Adam Pash advises us to do in his self-confessed rant on Lifehacker. But instead of seeming like common sense, it just rings hollow. For one thing, considering how much of Lifehacker is devoted to telling people how to take advantage of other people’s utilities or how to circumvent your ISPs policies towards downloading other people’s work without paying for it, I have a hard time taking their advice on making responsible consumer decisions.

But more significantly, it takes such a depressingly dim and cynical view of people by over-emphasizing the value of slabs of metal and glass and silicon. I frequently make fun of myself for being a slave to Apple, helpless to resist whenever they announce a new device. But it’s kind of depressing to realize that there are people who aren’t in on the joke. I guess I appreciate the concern, but it’s insulting to assume that we’re not responsible enough adults to decide for ourselves what to do with our own discretionary income.

10 PRINT “I’M BEING REPRESSED!” 20 GOTO 10

And in the world of people who don’t get paid to post, there’s Alex Payne’s flowery blog post of Revelations about the dystopian future promised by Apple’s control over the App Store. He says:

The thing that bothers me most about the iPad is this: if I had an iPad rather than a real computer as a kid, I’d never be a programmer today. [...] The iPad may be a boon to traditional eduction, insofar as it allows for multimedia textbooks and such, but in its current form, it’s a detriment to the sort of hacker culture that has propelled the digital economy.

Which isn’t just overblown pessimism, it’s actually insultingly condescending if it you give it more than a moment’s thought.

My parents bought us an Atari 2600 — without the BASIC cartridge, even! — and I still became a programmer, for better or worse. Having a passive videogame-playing machine didn’t turn me into some mindless drone (any more than any other American kid in the 80s, anyway). In fact, it did the opposite: I wanted so much to see my own stuff up on the TV screen that I whined and pouted until they got me a Commodore 64. Saying that an iPad will discourage kids from wanting to create their own software is like saying that an iPod — or Rock Band, more appropriately — will discourage kids from wanting to create their own music.

It’s not even the case that people will be turned away by Apple and forced to resort to Linux or Android or something equally horrible to get their code on. Apple sells Macs. It’s kind of their thing. They didn’t draw a big X over the MacBook and declare that the future was the iPad; they deliberately put the iPad in a space between the iPhone and the Mac. And no matter how much tech evangelists go on about the iPad’s being the future of computing, Apple is going to keep on selling Macs, for the simple reason that they need people to write iPhone OS software. You can’t use “140,000 Apps Available on Day One” in your marketing material unless you’ve got tens of thousands of people diligently working on fart apps, and most importantly for them: buying Macs to do so.

The evil, technology-stifling corporate giant Apple sells a computer for about the same price as an iPad that comes with a professional-grade development environment absolutely free. That is miles ahead of anything I could get back when I started programming. (Although I remain convinced that HyperCard was the Greatest Development Tool of Any Generation). You can even download the iPhone OS SDKs for free, and write apps for them to your heart’s content. That’s not an accident, and that’s not just generosity on Apple’s part — it’s all part of their devious plan to sell devices that have software running on them that people want to use. And the $99 that Apple charges to distribute those apps on the App Store is still less than what I had to pay for Microsoft Basic on my old Mac Plus.

Or in short: if the App Store’s certification process, or the $99 annual fee, or hell, the lack of Adobe Flash support, are bothersome to you, then the iPad just isn’t made for you.

It’s just plain arrogant to assume that it’s not made for anyone else. There are plenty of people who want exactly the kind of “protected” environment that the iPad promises. And not just the “casual” users who Payne says would be completely flummoxed at the idea of saving a web link to a home screen — people like me, who are perfectly capable of opening Terminal or writing an AppleScript, but enjoy that we don’t have to every time we want to look up something on the web. And who appreciate that we never have to think about malware or viruses or even just a poorly-written app that locks up our entire computer. That is the audience the iPhone OS is aimed for, and just because that doesn’t necessarily include you doesn’t make it evil or ominous.

The only concession that I’ll make is this one: it is a drag that you have to fork over Apple’s $99 annual fee just to run apps that you write on your own machine. It was somewhat understandable for a device that piggybacked on another company’s already-feeble cell network; it’s less appetizing for those of us who’d be perfectly content to have a wifi-enabled web browser and e-book reader that we can write apps for. I think Pash’s suggestion of a “restricted” section for the App Store would violate the whole principle of the App Store as a protected environment. But it would be very nice if Apple added local code-signing so that you could write an app for a specific device — as far as I’m aware, that’s only possible currently by being a paid member of their developer program.

Necessity

Speaking of consuming vs. creating, I’ve written a treatise here just responding to what other people have said about the iPad, but haven’t yet offered up my own observations about the thing.

And that core observation about the iPad — that it’s designed for consuming media instead of creating it — is key to the whole conversation. But instead of presaging a dystopian future where we’re all locked into blind consumption, it does the opposite. It puts it squarely in the category of luxury item, where you have to be a responsible adult, and acknowledge that you’re buying one because you want one, not because you need one.

It’s a lot easier to justify “needing” a cell phone to put you in contact with people, or a laptop computer if you plan to get some work done. You can even rationalize an MP3 player as a “necessity” if you spend a lot of time commuting. But the iPad is a magazine-sized computer that lets you browse websites and read books using your fingers.

I don’t doubt Jobs’s claim that the iPad is better than a cell phone or a laptop at doing most of the stuff he demonstrated: it’s a great size for reading e-books, it’s more convenient for watching video, it’s more tactile than a desktop for browsing the web. The question is whether you do enough of that to justify paying $600-$800 for the convenience.

And I’ve done more foolish things with my money, so let’s assume that I could get over that roadblock and convince myself that I’ve got a need for something in between a cell phone and a full-powered laptop. The biggest draw for me would be e-books, magazines, comic books, web/RSS browsing, drawing, taking notes, and games.

I’ve been spending the past couple of months skimming the gadget blogs and hearing various reports from CES about all the “Apple Tablet killers” that were being announced, so I’d assumed there’d be a ton of alternatives to whatever Apple came out with. What’s been the most surprising to me is that it’s not just the Apple Effect at work: for what I’d want out of a device like this, the iPad really is the best-looking candidate.

My biggest disappointment is still that all of the devices around this size & price level have screens designed for multi-touch, not for drawing. The iPad still seems like it’d be the perfect size for using as a pen-based sketchbook and notebook, but there’s no pressure sensitivity and relatively limited resolution. Apple demoed the Brushes app at the keynote, but again, it’s finger-painting, not drawing. I’d be interested to see how well the Pogo Sketch Stylus works on it, but I’m not getting my hopes up. If I wanted to get serious about having a computerized sketchbook, it looks like the best candidate would be the HP TouchSmart tm2, which would require $1200 for a decent-powered machine, and then re-investing in Windows software after almost a decade with the Mac. (Not to mention all the iPhone apps I’ve already got).

As for the rest, they fail for me for the same reason that Macs succeed: Apple designs both the hardware and the OS. They’re made to work together. (Which is exactly why so many people complain about Apple’s controlled, closed systems). The HP Slate is about the same size and form factor as the iPad, plus it’s better-suited for watching HD video — but it’s running Windows 7. And if I can’t use a pen, I’d rather be running an OS designed for fingers than for mice. Almost all of the others are running Android, and I haven’t yet seen a demo of Android that looked enjoyable as opposed to just functional. This is a luxury device, remember, so slick presentation and little details of animation and typography are just as important as functionality.

Potential

One of the best, most reasonable, and unlike this blog most concise descriptions of the situation is Joe Hewitt’s post retitled “The Essence of iPad” on GigaOM. (And, notably, this is the guy who’s frequently cited as poster child against App Store Oppression). It’s clearly a version 1.0 device: there’s absolutely no question that future versions will come with a camera, and we can all hope that there’ll eventually be a button to lock the screen orientation, an OS that supports multitasking, and maybe someday a pen-enabled digitizer. But the biggest draw to the iPad is its potential. You can’t see the thing without imagining how you’d use it.

ComiXology has already announced an iPad version of its comic-reading app. If they can just get DC and Dark Horse on board, I’d be able to pack away all my comic books and have an apartment that doesn’t look like a creepy man-child’s.

For “real” books, in addition to Apple’s reader, Amazon’s already announced an iPad-enhanced Kindle app, and there’s little doubt that the free book readers like Stanza would follow suit. Magazines, blogs, and newspapers have already released iPhone apps separate from their web-based counterparts, but there’s rarely any use for them. It’s a no-brainer to assume that iPad-specific versions of those apps would actually be enjoyable to read.

The game demos at the Apple keynote were the least impressive, because they were all basically scaled-up iPhone games. But the potential for games is what has me most excited about the iPad, because the screen size and form factor are suited to a significantly different type of game than either the console or the mobile phone. Even the most straightforward types of games — card and board games — become more tactile and lend themselves to multiple players. Add in the potential for tabletop role-playing, collectible card games, real-time or turn-based strategy games, and you start to see how the whole platform opens up. (Imagine any of the prototypes aimed at the Microsoft Surface, without having to pay $10,000).

It sounds like I’ve just talked myself into getting one, and I still might in a weak moment. (For the record: I don’t see the appeal of the 3G model. Being able to download a book from anywhere becomes a lot less appealing when you don’t have the Kindle’s free data plan). I hate to argue with Apple’s marketing team, but there’s nothing really magical or revolutionary about the device. The magical and revolutionary part is going to come in when people start making stuff for it.

“The P.I.S.S is by far the most together group in the show biz.”

I was playing around with it using my favorite videos from Omodaka. They work great and yield some pretty cool effects, since the videos already do a lot with symmetrical frames. If you play around with the frame sizes, you can get the full-page effect to match up with the beat of the music.

Here are my favorites:

• Kokiriko Bushi: probably the best of the bunch, a screen full of skeletons and 80s disco lights.
• Kyoteizinc: the mirroring effects in the original video get replicated dozens of times
• Cantata No. 147: a screen full of weird singing heads