Apple Should Have Named It The iAudrey
I interjected myself into a Twitter conversation between @natevw and @hjon tonight which ultimately led to me rummaging through a couple of the "miscellaneous" bins from the past couple moves to find Audrey. (No, it's not the skeletal remains of a relative or cat, nor is it a stuffed version of either either).
Audrey is/was a $500.00 USD "Internet appliance" released by 3Com in 2000 that ran QNX - a popular embedded *nix-like OS. You could surf the web, listen to music and e-mail folks (plus run a few other apps that came with it). It had a touchscreen (tho, you needed a stylus) with a virtual keyboard, but you could also use a wireless keyboard. My setup is a bit worse for the wear, but she still works:
The device failed because it was too expensive and just a bit ahead of it's time (you have to remember, the Internet was a different place back then, with the intended, primary means of connecting the Audrey being dial-up). I believe it also failed because there was no good way to develop for it, thus snubbing early adopters who might have been able to get 3Com over the 1st gen hump and provide it a stream of cool apps to make it worth the money for the general public.
I grabbed my device after it was discontinued because it then became hackable. Ah, the days of crafting CF cards just-so in order to bend the device to my will and adding the USB-to-Ethernet adapter to surf via the lame excuse for broadband back then.
The iPad is not new. Audrey had a great deal of the iPad goodness going on a decade ago. It had decent industrial design and the non-hacked device worked very well for the intended purpose given that it used a 200 MHz Geode processor (no "cores" back then) with a whopping 16 MB of flash ROM and 32 MB of RAM (all in a 9x12 package). It packed two USB ports and a CF card slot as well, making it far more open than Apple's offering.
But, 3Com had to go and be the gatekeeper. It had to dictate what you could use the device for. And, it failed.
I have no problem abstracting the innards of the OS from the end-user. In fact, Microsoft and Apple do that every day with the Windows Explorer and the Finder. If the average Joe sticks to relatively benign software (iWork, Safari, Mail - for OS X), there is little chance of things going awry.
But, if you desire to dig deeper or even make your own stuff, you can. Gratis (kinda...as I've said, you do pay for the OS). With dozens of tools both provided by Apple and other entities.
I had a chance to show Jarrod - now 9 - Terminal.app on Sunday (we built his blog - Jarrod's Place). While we were setting up various elements, I showed him how I could do everything he was used to doing via dragging & clicking by typing. Seeing his eyes light up at the understanding of the power contained in there was really cool. He is a bit away from Unix command-line hacking (he still needs to practice typing :-), but he wouldn't be able to do that at all if I just handed him an iPad. He'd be a surfing, viewing, tapping, gesturing, average person. I'm glad he wants to be more, and I cannot wait to show him Audrey working tomorrow.
As I said to @hjon & @natevw, we are heading down a path where tinkering will be equated with terrorism and where the government, media conglomerates and companies like Apple, Microsoft and Google will be the gatekeepers into what we see, hear and experience. Given the economic hole the West got itself into, there is little other choice. We don't make anything but bits that fly across screens and those who deliver that content will have to find a way to bleed every dime out of us to keep making gobs of money. The only way to do that is control. What were you doing opening up that case? Trying to circumvent copyright restrictions? Oh, you want to watch that video? Not on that device...you might be able to copy it! You want to use that cool app? I'm afraid it will cost you $0.99. Oh, you want to make an app for that? Please hand over your developer fee and purchase this overpriced development workstation and make sure you don't do anything too crazy since we will be reviewing what you post (oh, wait...there's already a platform like that).
Focusing on the current fad for a moment, Apple - the gatekeeper - has deemed no Flash on their device (or, so it seems). What is really stopping them from ensuring your feature-rich web app designed for their mobile environment doesn't work so well (because it competes with an app you would normally have to pay for)? One answer will be "because you'll switch to the Android/Windows Mobile 7/etc device instead". And, when they begin the lock-in, or when all the carriers start getting miffed at all the upgrades they need to do that they start charging more for access or just restrict what you can do in general?
Be very wary about the technologies you embrace, whether it be iPads or iPhones or Blu-ray players (you know you are one update away from not being alb to play your movies any more, right?) or video screens with really scary connectivity options (you know DVI and HDMI connections can have HDCP enabled to prevent you from viewing content on unauthorized devices, right?).
Perhaps my paranoia is unfounded (I'm old and curmudgeony, so I get to be paranoid). In a way, I hope the iPad is a complete failure, if only to delay what I see as the inevitable. If I am right, you better start accumulating spare parts for the open and pseudo-open devices you want to keep working and using and make sure you keep a few linux/BSD distros on many media types. You never know when you are going to need them again.
