So the iPad is out and everybody can’t wait to get their hands on one to experience how it will change their lives. Apple’s marketing the tablet device as an alternative to traditional laptops and netbooks — but that’s not entirely an honest comparison, now, is it?
Let’s be honest: The iPad is less a quantum leap in portable computing than it is a symbol of Apple’s determination to control every aspect of the Internet that it can.
With my laptop, I can download, install and run virtually any piece of software created by anybody anywhere to do just about anything. But if the iPad is really going to revolutionize content, should one company alone be the gatekeeper for that content?
That’s effectively the role Apple has assumed on behalf of the users of the iPad, and of the iPhone and iPod before it, by screening applications and refusing to allow unapproved apps to reach the market. They would say it keeps their users and hardware safe from malware and buggy products — and many Apple fans would heartily agree and thank Apple for so protecting them. After all, a large part of Apple’s success over the years has been its simplification and homogenization of the geeky, arcane workings of personal computers that once kept them from becoming household items.
It’s what Apple does.
It’s also what producers of online content have been clamoring for: a platform that returns them to their glory days of publishing content to the masses on their own terms without regard for instant feedback. Web 2.0 rolls back to Web 1.0.
Moreover, in handing over control of your access to content to them, you are sacrificing the ability to make your own decisions and, in large part, rendering the need to consult online resources moot. You are also saying that you are OK with being a consumer of content rather than a producer or developer of content, and removing your support for content creators by embracing a platform that shuts them out.
And as venues for experimental, non-approved apps dwindle, so too will innovation dwindle and be confined to those who practice it only with permission in the pristine corporate halls of places like Cupertino, Apple’s global headquarters in California.
The world is not ready for the iPad to rule portable computing, because the world has tasted collaboration, customization and creation, and liked it. The device is new and exciting, and full of promise, but it has not yet grown into that promise.
