Category: Technology

Tomorrow morning, as you know, is The Dawn of a New Era in Personal Computing. The Coming of the iPad will bring about a magical age where people are directly connected to content, and they will become mindless consumers tied to an unchecked corporate overlord, and also it will flop and no one will buy one. All at the same time. It’s just that special.

I was pretty skeptical of Apple’s marketing at first; I thought the claim that it was “magical and revolutionary” was a bunch of flowery nonsense. But now I’m convinced. Somehow, even before its release, the iPad has taken what was once a disparate group of strangers with internet access and magically turned them into thousands of experts, better able to tell me how I should spend my money than I’d be able to by myself. And it’s going to bring about a revolution (which won’t be televised in widescreen format, apparently) in which everyone suddenly finds himself unable to think for himself or create anything of value.

All across the web are the brave souls documenting the downfall of society. It’s been a little bit disheartening watching Nilay Patel of Engadget make the transition from his initial guarded optimism to having to mention the lack of printing and the App store’s rating system in only tangentially-related posts. I actually can’t tell if he’s being serious, or if he’s just been worn down by the thousands of commenters just plain losing their shit over the idea that a gadget blog would cover a new piece of consumer technology. Stay strong!

It’s a little easier with Marc Bernardin’s post on io9, a sarcastic but pleasant enough little piece about the ability to read comic books on the iPad that gives an overview of what apps are going to be available and what it means for distribution and oh my god we’re all gonna die where the hell did that come from all of a sudden?

With Ownership of Media Comes Great Responsibility

But the best of all is Cory Doctorow’s manifesto on Boing Boing, helpfully entitled “Why I won’t buy an iPad (and think you shouldn’t, either).” It’s certainly no surprise that the guy who’s appointed himself lead internet spokesperson against the evils of digital rights management would choose to write a tirade against Apple; the only surprising thing is that he waited this long. John Gruber wrote a response that was more even-tempered than I could be. And, frankly, more even-tempered than Doctorow’s post deserves.

I should make it clear that I don’t have anything personal against Doctorow; for all I know he’s a fine person, albeit one I’d probably hate getting stuck talking to at a party. But it seems that the iPad (and its media coverage) has magically turned him from an amusingly passionate and occasionally irritating anti-DRM evangelist, into full-on sputtering douchenozzle. On the plus side, his post makes Annalee Newitz’s rant on io9 (which tried to say exactly the same thing, a month earlier) seem reasoned and thoughtful by comparison. On the negative side: everything else.

First he rails against the assault on comic books:

I mean, look at that Marvel app (just look at it). I was a comic-book kid, and I’m a comic-book grownup, and the thing that made comics for me was sharing them. If there was ever a medium that relied on kids swapping their purchases around to build an audience, it was comics. And the used market for comics! It was — and is — huge, and vital. I can’t even count how many times I’ve gone spelunking in the used comic-bins at a great and musty store to find back issues that I’d missed, or sample new titles on the cheap.
[…]
So what does Marvel do to “enhance” its comics? They take away the right to give, sell or loan your comics. What an improvement. Way to take the joyous, marvellous sharing and bonding experience of comic reading and turn it into a passive, lonely undertaking that isolates, rather than unites. Nice one, Misney.

Haha, way to stick it to The Man, C-Doc! Because as we all know, Disney is a pure representation of Evil Multinational Corporation that stifles creativity, since it’s still 1994 and all of us had our emotional and intellectual maturation stopped when we were sophomores in college. Also, MEAT IS MURDER! Ever since tiny upstart mom-and-pop operation Marvel Comics got bought by their new corporate overlords, they’ve stopped publishing single issues. Even worse, they’re stifling kids’ enjoyment of comics by making them available on every single digital platform in existence.

I, too, am a comic-book grownup. And as a grownup I would prefer to have hundreds of comic books on a one pound, half-inch high device instead of in the boxes and stacks that are overflowing my closet, bookshelves, romantic-encounter-inhibiting stack beside my bed, and my parents’ basement. If I want to share them, then holy shit they’re now on a device that’s the same size as a comic book! I can hand somebody else the iPad, and it’ll even flip over to let them read it! Also the last time I shared a single issue of a comic book with anyone was when I was 18!

The comic book thing is just the first sign that Doctorow has become the worst kind of Old Guard: the Old Guard who believes he’s still cutting-edge counter-culture. The kind who believes that putting a picture of Steve Jobs upside down or using epithets like “Misney” is anything more than a lazy substitute for bonafide insight. What he’s done here is conflate two things: his pet cause of “ownership” of media, and the joyous magic of sharing. It’s selfishness disguised as generosity. If I start buying comics on an iPad, then I’m every bit as free to go “spelunking” through the online catalog for back issues — I could buy, right now, the first 10 issues of X-Men and read them immediately and individually; they’re not to the best of my knowledge in print as single issues. I could share my collection with anyone by sharing my iPad.

What I can’t do is take someone else’s work and sell it. That is not, however, “sharing.”
Continue reading “Walled Garden Party”

As one of the idiots loyal technology enthusiasts who bought an iPhone on day one, I was a little disappointed by the anti-climactic iPad pre-order event. In June a couple years ago, I was standing in line outside an AT&T store for an hour, chatting with the other saps fine people, only to be told at the last minute that they were sold out of the version I wanted. That led to my driving all over Marin county, eventually finding myself at an Apple Store, where I was welcomed by a double line of smiling Apple employees escorting me to the demo phones on display at their all-white tables, then putting a gentle hand on my back and leading me to the back of the store where they could take my credit card info. It was exciting and not at all creepy.

With the iPad, though, I just hit a button on a web form. Where’s the excitement? Or the exclusivity? It’s been over a week, and you can still order one online! You can even have it sent to your house, and miss out on all the energizing and totally not cult-like atmosphere of the Apple Store. I used the online form to reserve a pick-up at one of the stores in San Francisco. Conveniently, the very same form let me schedule a time and place outside the store to get mugged and have my iPad stolen from me.

I chose the WiFi 32 GB model, and I chose Darrel as my Forced Redistribution Representative. I figured that even the 64 GB model wouldn’t hold all of the music and video I’ve amassed over the decades, and the iPhone is a better music player anyway, so 32 GB could easily store a couple weeks’ worth of video and books until the next sync. And I liked that Darrel is a methadone addict who plans to re-sell the thing on Craigslist, so it felt like I was giving back to the community.

Now, I put a good bit of effort into talking myself out of wanting one of these things, and then calmly and rationally going through the pros and the cons, so that I could make an informed purchasing decision by the morning of the 12th. Apple ruined all that, by apparently having enough supply to meet the demand, but I hate to see all that thought process go to waste:

Cost-Effectiveness: When I moved into this apartment, I bought a couch for $600. It’s green and very comfortable. I also bought a chair from Office Depot for around $80. It’s oddly tilted and is bad for my back. When I get home after a grueling day of watching other people make videogames, I spend anywhere from two to four hours at my desk, reading news feeds and forum messages, starting and abandoning web posts such as this one, and obsessively checking Google for mentions of the game I’m working on. If it’s “Lost” or “Castle” night, or the day after “Community” and “30 Rock,” I might spend an hour on the couch in front of the TV. This means that every second I spend at my desk, I’m losing money that I spent on my couch. Being able to browse the web while reclined isn’t only more comfortable, it’s the right thing to do.

Productivity: Whenever I’m sitting in this uncomfortable chair reading the internets, I invariably run across a recommendation of some Flash game that I end up playing for longer than it’s worth. The iPad doesn’t support Flash. Big win.

Literature: I’ve still got all these books piled up from back when I used to intend to read things. But what a hassle! Those pages! Finding a light source! All the opening and closing! On the floor of my apartment, I’ve got a big stack of unread books just sitting there, mocking me every time I sit down to play a videogame or watch a movie. Just think of all the space I could save if I could have all those books on a single device that’s a half inch thick, and not read them there!

Health Concerns: The books that I do still read are comics, and reading comic books means leaving the apartment to take a bus down to the comic book store. And that means exposing my body to unhealthy UV radiation. In the perfect world of 2010, I should be able to buy comic books without going outside. And without waiting for the trade paperbacks to come out.

My Concern for You, The Readers: The one thing the best writers all have in common is that they have a singular voice, a defining characteristic. The one thing that all my writing has in common is that there’s a lot of it. If I can make blog posts from a touchscreen keyboard with the iPhone OS’s auto-correction, then I’ll be encouraged to keep it short and sample.

The Lamentations of Bloggers: There have been several bloggers calling out the iPad for representing the Evils of Closed Systems, writing post after post decrying the “walled garden” of the App Store and Apple’s unfair business practices. They suggest that consumers are complicit in the death of open software, lured by the status of an Apple logo and a bright shiny piece of electronics instead of getting a more powerful and more user-empowering computer. So I’m buying an iPad to make a statement. And that statement is: “Fuck you.” With the additional statement: “I know what I’m doing, and how I spend my money is my own damn business. If Windows or Android or Linux or HP or LG or whoever had beaten Apple to the system with a superior product, then I would’ve bought that instead. So suck it.”

Research: There are plenty of other e-book readers and personal media players and netbooks out there already; I believe that the new thing that the iPad will bring to the market is genuinely social computing. As in: a direct, tactile connection to the content displayed on screen; and real, face-to-face communication with another person while sharing the contents of the screen. Apple mentioned both aspects during the iPad keynote, but the “sharing” part was kind of an afterthought. I believe that’s were it’s going to make a real difference, though. (It’s also what the Microsoft Surface project has been all about, but they got locked into the mindset of a big-ass table. Instead of a portable device, which they always tried to turn into just another Windows machine). Apple mentioned showing off pictures with an iPad, but I think that’s because Steve Jobs feels about games the same way George Bush feels about black people. Board games and card games are just a different experience than playing single-player or even multiplayer games online, and it’s an experience that I don’t think computers have been able to replicate yet.

I do honestly believe that there’s going to be a subtle shift in the way people think about computers once more of us can show someone else a web page or a photo or a video simply by handing them the screen. But I think the most exciting stuff on the iPad is going to come from two areas: online magazines, and social games. (And hopefully, we’ll be able to take the term “social games” back from all the people making Facebook games).

Continue reading “Our Browsers, Ourselves”