Apple's iPad is meant for drivers, not mechanics

I’ve been watching over an over the web 2.0 response  to iPad launch event and I don’t really know why is everybody presenting their opinions on how good or bad the iPad is / would be. I’ve come to the conclusion this whole gossip and speculation is an exclusive result of not keeping the device into your hands yet… It’s a compulsion, so to speak: I cannot touch the thing, but gosh, am I good at forecasting!

I would also love to have the device, but I’ll try to keep away from forecasts and criticism about it.

Here is a very strong point about what we should expect from a 2010 computer-like device and most important – why. To cut the long short: iPad is not just a computing device, but a way of approaching the consumers, i.e. not as tinkerers, but as simple consumers that need to play / work with a device that works seamlessly and could be “magically” fixed, without being necessary the know what’s behind this “magic”. Also here reads why “The iPad is not made for you, it’s made for everyone else”…

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Some 20 years ago in my native country (Romania, East Europe, “there be dragons” land) every driver was a “car hacker”. All the cars made in Romania – some 90% of total  – were crashing or stopped working all the time, no matter new or old, no matter properly used or not.

There was no such a thing as a car dealer warranty (because there were no dealers at all, but the government monopoly) , the guys working in authorized services were desperately trying to make a living so they preferred to fix your car at home instead;  the simple routine of leaving the car in a service room would have cost you much more than expected. The car cost was around 60 medium salaries, no leasing possible.

So, because of this… “features”, each driver had to learn how to repair his car and also had to carry a toolkit anywhere the car was going. It was a shame for a Romanian NOT to have a car toolkit in his / her car’s trunk.

There was like this: my car’s stopped in the middle of the crossroads, what should I do? I have to check this and that, afterwards I have to hardwire this to that, I use the toolkit to open this red thingy, let it cool for 2 minutes, then wash it with gasoline…. and so on! Believe me, this was a normal knowledge in 80’s in Romania. Even the doctors and the 14 year high school students had the basic car hacking know-how!

Of course we also had experts! The experts were the ones who taught everybody the “how-to” of a car tinkering! They were also the GODS of mechanics, the gods of knowledge.

Of course we had access to very, very cheap parts and pieces, cheap toolkits and everybody had some friend of a friend that was or used to be a mechanic and had a lot of useful scraps.

And, of course, we had the “dreamers”: they were the ones trying to swap a 400 hp to an original 40 hp engine, and the 400 hp was absolutely home-made!

Of course we had also genuine geniuses:  Iustin Capra built a 0.5 l/100 km car, back in 70’s… (Hear, hear! ):

In a way, this was the heaven of open source: handy parts, handy knowledge, handy toolkits, smart guys, the right path to a grease monkeys universe. Altogether, imagine that R&D was not bad at all! – see Capra.

But suddenly everything stopped: in 90’s, Renault and Ford got government deals for producing and importing cars, so that in a very short period of time they have dethroned the local car brand. Everybody now had a Renault / Ford car.

The only thing that really differed (besides quality, warranty and all the normal stuff, of course) was the engine being encapsulated !! All the mechanical skills were doomed, all the tinkerers were blocked from tinkering.

All the sudden, hacking the car was no longer an ordinary habit, nor could everybody take a deep look into the car’s groins without voiding the warranty. So much for the open source.

Now let’s go back to iPad and our anger at not being open enough so for the strong willed tinkerers to dig into till it screams: “I’m an open source tablet!” …

My feeling is all the tinkering, hacking and education that resulted were mainly possible because of such an incomplete operating systems windows was over time and partly because we have grown up with this “windows”. And also maybe because windows was such a faulty OS that required so much patching. I don’t know why Romanian tinkered in such an extent their local cars, it’s a dead (hi)story now.

What I know for sure is this: no one would dare to tinker a Mercedes, not to speak about a Ferrari!

Not only because of the brand, but because of the technology used. How would you like to tinker your last generation plasma TV…?

Tinkering on a computer needs to become obsolete eventually. Really! This is why:

1. A computer has to be built by a smarter person than me,  on technical and scientific bases that are way above average knowledge and common understanding, so that telling a computer to run a BASIC routine to be considered by the machine a game in a “sandbox” and nothing else at all.

I need to know that I use a computer as a tool that really is far above my comprehension, meaning it’s made in years of research and it’s made by teams of hundreds of smarter people than me, in order to rely on it.

I am really pissed off sometimes finding myself smarter than a computer builder or an OS programmer: I am paying them to be smarter than me when I’m buying their product, not the other way around.

2. An application / OS  / device has to be built by very pleased employees / devs: either by their work, or by the money they make working. If every user / consumer knows many ways to tinker the original product in such an extent that the product becomes something nobody would tell its origin, well, these working guys would value nothing. Why should I pay somebody for a professional product as long I can transform a free one into a super tool having the same functionality? Forget about utility apps, smart designes and power engines made for money. Nobody will pay if they have the feeling they can transform / port some cheap code into a marvelous application during night forge.

This at least is one strong motive for Apple keeping a closed environment: protecting their own money, therefore protecting their programmers revenue. Don’t get me wrong: I’m blogging now from my N900, running a closest Maemo OS to open source in mobile tech. But open source should only be the seed, not the final product.

(Nokia has made almost no money from the apps, but only from device huge numbers, which are now threatened by Apple and Google. So they put a seed in the ground – Maemo – because they have no clue how to make money from apps and services. They need ideas, not money. Apple has ideas, Google has too. That’s why they are also terminating Adobe’s flash.)

Another strong motive for Apple to keep the OS closed and limited to very secure areas is stealing. Yeah, stealing. For a western guy this might mean one pirated movie per month, but for an eastern one this means 10,000 apps / movies/ mp3s per week. Why do you think so many movies have their premiers in Romania and they are carried from the airport in 3 bags, each one containing an useless part without all the others? Because some morron figures out they want to forcefully put a leash on some smart kids ideas that just wants to learn a way in computers basics?…

You think iTunes, iBooks and some other “I’s” are doing just fine by simply creating them? Well, ask Symbian devs who lost more money than ever made because of millions of cracks and hacks and because some other Nokia top management bad decisions.

“Creating the system” is nothing compared to “protecting the system”.

This so called “democratic”, never-ending rant against Apple’s limited and closed source that still hovers in web 2.0 is a pure immature child’s anger against adults’ rules and world. Grow up, guys! It’s time to use the engine you have in front of you, don’t need to crack it open any more! Just use the car to go to work or see your folks, that’s what it’s made for!

You want to learn computers- go to MIT. It should be like you want to build spaceships – you have to go to NASA, not in your backyard.

I love open source, but I’ll buy an iPad. There’s no contradiction here.