<abstract>Who would have thought twenty years ago that Steve Jobs would be the guy taking his company to ever-more-dizzying heights of nigh-monopolistic rapacity and peddling locked-in consumerism and that Bill Gates would be in Africa curing malaria and trying solve climate change. It's a funny old world.</abstract> Apple announced its iPad to mixed reviews a little over a month ago. They plan to start shipping the device on April 3rd and are taking pre-orders now. A plethora of detail as well as succulent photos of the so-called game-changing device is available on the Apple home page in your country and language of choice. Far more interesting is what all this technology means for its target audience. Who, in fact, is the target audience?. <h>The Apple Elite</h> What is immediately obvious about the iPad---from its price, its feature set, its marketing and presentation---is that is a device for the elite. It's not a nobel effort to open up computing to everyone, like the $100 laptop. It's not really for your grandma, though it would be quite accessible for her, by all accounts. It's a device for "everyone" only for a very narrow definition of everyone. Call it the "everyone that matters" demographic. In order to be part of the demographic, you have to be able to afford Apple products. The target market is people who, as Steve Jobs said in his keynote, <iq>all have a notebook and an iPhone already</iq>. Jobs's "all" is the target market for the iPad: Anyone with enough disposable income to buy another device with a screen and an input and Internet connection because it would be more convenient in some situations than the other two devices that person already owns. For most intents and purposes, anyone not falling into this market does not exist to Apple. Though the $500 price-point sounds amazing if you have that kind of disposable income, it's still way out of reach for the large majority of people. The iPad is aimed squarely at the top end part of the market and probably aims to suck the revenue right out of the mid-range netbook market as well. But that's still a market limited to first-world people with enough to eat, manageable medical bills and a relatively stable mortgage and/or job. That market has shrunk considerably, but not yet enough for those of us smack in the middle of it to notice how elite we are.<fn> <h>Geek Appeal</h> On one level, the iPad is there to fill a hole in the serial gadget consumer's heart. Apple's own presentation graphics even <i>show</i> it filling just such a hole between the iPhone and a MacBook. The iPhone redefined interactivity for mobile devices, but it's still too small to use for creative endeavors. Being small excuses it from providing much in the way of the traditional tools expected of a computing platform: On-board scripting, programming and compiling. The MacBook, being a more classic personal computing device, has all of these wonderful things, but is quite large and heavy and doesn't have a sexy multitouch UI like the iPhone. Bridging these two worlds is the iPad, with access to everything that makes the iPhone awesome---the App Store, applications that work well together, an intuitive user interface built from the ground up for touch interaction---and makes it bigger. The iPad is nothing if not a nearly pure consumption device. Though you'll be able to write with Pages or calculate with Numbers, its primary purpose is to deliver the fruits of other people's creativity to---very literally---your fingertips. There are creative applications---the Brushes App springs to mind---but exercising creativity is hardly encouraged. Instead, you can <i>buy</i> music & movies & books and consume it all on your lovely, brushed-aluminium device. The iPad does not take that from the MacBook which makes it awesome: the freedom to create and program, as has nearly every other computing platform before it. The iPhone was excused from the opprobrium being leveled at the iPad because existing phones had set the bar so low that no one in their right mind even <i>expected</i> the iPhone to be a "computing platform". The geeks were just stoked that their phones didn't entirely suck anymore. The iPad, though, is supposed to be so much more. It seems to be inspired directly by sweaty geek fantasies from the dawn of the Golden Age of Science Fiction; as such, it does not get such a free pass from those who consider themselves to be its target market. But the target market is not exactly geeks, is it? Business and media executives with charge accounts seem much more likely. <h>The Price Point</h> The iPad signals Apple's first foray into a new market: Low-priced computers. Having gotten accustomed to the wonders of the iPhone, the iPad's technology didn't amaze, it wasn't revolutionary. Sure, it's great to have all that on one slim tablet, but the form factor is only marginally more attractive than a notebook, no? It's certainly not as convenient to use standing up as an iPhone. Though holding it with one hand while gesturing with the other can be learned, the device weighs 11/2 pounds, which limits its utility in when standing. The speed is breathtaking compared to netbooks and smartphones and even other tablets, but not compared to a notebook. The screen is gorgeous, but not more gorgeous than the iPhone or a notebook. The animations are great, the gesturing intuitive, but iPhone users have seen all of that. No, it's the price that signals the shift for Apple. The reason that Apple can finally enter this low-end market is twofold: <ol> The tablet is a machine behind which Steve Jobs & Co. can stand: It's sleek, elegant, fast and just works(tm). The tablet is <i>not</i> a full-fledged PC nor is it a phone and it's too big to take jogging, so it doesn't cannibalize any of their existing markets. </ol> <h>Apple == Hitler?!?!!</h> Despite all these cool things, the iPad was not universally heralded as the next big thing. It fails on so many levels---as far as the geekeratti are concerned---it's hard to know where to begin: <ul> No USB-out; No multitasking; Not 16:9 or 16:10 native resolution App Store-only (not native development) And on and on... </ul> That the iPad is here and suffers such clear deficits---from the geek's point of view, remember, not necessarily that of the target market---portends the end of computing, as some have both eloquently put it. Other have been considerably less eloquent. Some techies are getting their panties in a bunch because Apple finally made the gadget they'd doodled in their Trapper Keepers in grade school, but it turns out that Apple didn't make it <i>for them</i>. Grandma is going to be using the device of the future while the geeks have to wait for Android/Linux/Google/FOS to make something similar (which they rightly fear may take quite a while). And they're pissed off enough to wield the mighty "Downfall" meme: <media src="http://www.youtube.com/v/lQnT0zp8Ya4" caption="Hitler responds to the iPad" href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lQnT0zp8Ya4" author="" source="YouTube" align="center" class="frame"> The technocratic elite is up-in-arms because it's not a <i>real computer</i>: You can't load any old software on it, you can only load content and Apps approved or sold by Apple on it. This realization engendered some quite hyperbolic reactions, like <a href="http://www.popsci.com/gadgets/article/2010-01/ipad’s-closed-system-sometimes-i-hate-being-right" source="Popular Science" author="Tom Conlon">The iPad’s Closed System: Sometimes I Hate Being Right</a>: <bq>In OS X, Apple can’t block you from using apps it doesn’t like or competes with. But it famously blocks you from doing so on the iPhone and now presumably on the iPad, which is connected to the same App Store. How long before it blocks movies, TV shows, songs, books and even web sites? Scoff now, but don’t be so naïve as to believe that this isn’t possible. [...] I’m scared that Apple is grooming iPhone OS as the eventual successor to OS X, at least for the significant portion of Apple customers who use their machines for basic tasks like Web surfing, email and the like. [...] Apple is cleverly getting us trained on its closed platform little by little.</bq> Jee--sus. Overreact much? The iPad is not for geeks or programmers or the current members of the technocratic elite. It's for everyone else for whom multitasking only gets in the way, for whom the basic paradigms of the open computing systems currently available are far too complex. Whether the iPad is the right thing for <i>them</i> remains to be seen. <h>More Nuanced Critiques</h> The article <a href="http://io9.com/5458822/why-the-ipad-is-crap-futurism?skyline=true&s=i" source="IO9" author="Annalee Newitz">Why The iPad Is Crap Futurism</a> offers another geek's opinion (she's a self-branded geek). She urges fellow geeks to buy the iPad, then hack it in order to free the world from the Apple high command, a problem non-geeks didn't even know they had. <bq>Apple is marketing the iPad as a computer, when really it’s nothing more than a media-consumption device — a convergence television, if you will. Think of it this way: One of the fundamental attributes of computers is that they are interactive and reconfigurable. You can change the way a computer behaves at a very deep level. Interactivity on the iPad consists of touching icons on the screen to change which application you’re using. Hardly more interactive than changing channels on a TV. Sure, you can compose a short email or text message; you can use the Brushes app to draw a sketch. But those activities are not the same thing as programming the device to do something new. Unlike a computer, the iPad is simply not reconfigurable.</bq> It <i>is</i> a computer---as far as non-geeks are concerned. It does everything they expect a computer to do, so why can't you call it a computer? Non-geeks don't <iq>change the way a computer behaves at a very deep level</iq> and they never will. That's something that geeks do and there are far fewer of those, so Apple is selling "computers" to everyone else instead. The question she asks is a very good one though: If this is the future of computing, then where is the next generation of programmers going to come from? She's wrong in thinking that the advent of the iPad will do anything to restrict computing. It will do no such thing. It will instead <i>expand</i> the number of people using high-quality, high-powered computers to do stuff digitally that they previously did in other ways (or with crap technology like digital picture frames, WebTV and the like). These people will never create new Apps, they will never install or re-configure anything on their computers---unless trojans they inadvertently install do it for them). Instead of thanking Apple for increasing the market size of people willing to actually pay money for software (users in the App store actually pay for things), the geeks are bitching because Grandma is going to have a cooler device than they are. Newitz exhorts geeks to buy it anway, but crack it, so that they can download and install a freeware Bittorrent client and start stealing content as fast as they can. Lovely. In the grand scheme of things, closed computing platforms are a bad trend because content is getting <i>less</i> free instead of more free. Can you just load any old files on the iPad? Can you put your own PDFs on it? Can you print to PDF from a web page in order to read it later, when you're not online anymore? The non-geek user responds: Huh? You see, even those relatively simple tasks are going too far... The article, <a href="http://rc3.org/2010/01/28/is-the-ipad-the-harbinger-of-doom-for-personal-computing/" author="Rafe Colburn">Is the iPad the harbinger of doom for personal computing</a>, offers an above-average formulation of the basic arguments (despite the hyperbolic title). <bq>The fundamental difference between a Mac and an iPhone is that I can run any software I want on my Mac. I can buy it on a DVD, I can download it from the Internet, or I can compile it myself. I can get rid of OS X and install another operating system. The Mac is a general purpose computer in the classic sense. The iPhone is not.</bq> These are the same distinctions already made above, describing the open-ended freedom available to a master of computing. It's just a pile of gobbledegook to anyone else, though: "compile it myself"? "install another operating system"? WTF? Colburn absolves the iPhone of not being a "computing platform", perhaps because it's too small or its input methods are too simple to be of much use for software development. The iPad, however, will not be treated similarly, as Colburn puts quite well in the following passage: <bq>What bothers me is that in terms of openness, the iPad is the same as the iPhone, but in terms of form factor, the iPad is essentially a general purpose computer. So it strikes me as a sort of Trojan horse that acculturates users to closed platforms as a viable alternative to open platforms, and not just when it comes to phones (which are closed pretty much across the board). The question we must ask ourselves as computer users is whether the tradeoff in freedom we make to enjoy Apple’s superior user experience is worth it.</bq> That's a very good question for technologically skilled users to ask themselves, but the question doesn't make much sense to the real members of the iPad's target market. Mere mortals generally don't consider the user experience offered by general-purpose computers as particularly liberating. Sure, once you get into it and learn it, you probably get converted to a minor-level geek and start to crave the punishment meted out by the common interaction metaphors. Most people, though, remain frustrated by their inability to do anything "cool" or "useful" and stay within a very limited circle of functionality. Most people don't find the current user interface metaphors very intuitive and---for whatever reasons---fail to apply lessons learned in one area to other areas. That's likely why the target market will welcome "Apple’s superior user experience" with open arms with nary a thought for the downfall of modern computing. It may be unfortunate for computing, but it's hard to fault people for wanting to have fun and get something done instead of suffering in order to maintain an abstract notion of flexibility from which they only indirectly profit and in which they will <i>never in a million years</i> be able to take part. But let Colburn explain the dangers to personal computing (as well as some benefits): <bq>I think that it’s a real possibility that in 10 years, general purpose computers will be seen as being strictly for developers and hobbyists. The descendants of the iPhone and iPad and their competitors will rule the consumer market and people will embrace the closed nature of these platforms for the same reason that Steve Levy hyped Palladium almost 10 years ago — because what you get for trading off freedom is reduced risk. There will be few (if any) viruses, and applications will “just work.”</bq> This is 100% correct, but it's difficult to tell whether Colburn sees this as a bad thing. It is more of a justice thing, no? People have put up with crap, geek-oriented hardware and software for so long that it's about time they got something that actually does what they need rather than sit there and offer the potential to do a bunch of things they don't know they need yet and which they will never figure out how to effectively use anyway. There are others who, as in the article <a href="http://plasmasturm.org/log/ipadworriers/" source="Plasmasturm" author="Aristotle Pagaltzis">iSingularity? (take 2)</a>, express worries that the iPad diverges from the tried-and-true method of delivering developer tools with an operating system. How else is one to make new programs for a device? Well, with the iPad, the answer is with <iq>a dev licence and a Mac</iq>. That this model <iq>makes Apple a lot of money</iq>, while true, is not the sole reason. Apple might perhaps be more interested in getting their device out there than in waiting until development tools are ready to ship. What's the point of spending all the time and effort preparing an on-board SDK for a platform that doesn't require one? What if, as with the iPhone, there are plenty of developers champing at the bit to buy a Mac and develop for the iPad? What is Apple's incentive for spending a lot of time and money in order to undercut their bottom line? It would be nice if they did, but ridiculous to expect them to do so voluntarily. Selling the iPad as an appliance makes a lot of sense from Apple's point of view---and that of the majority of its customers. How software is developed for the iPad doesn't interest its users at all as long as it works as they'd like. <bq>Users, in Steverino’s mind, couldn’t care less whether [developers] are indentured servants to Apple. They don’t even care that they are locked-in to Apple. They just know that the [apps are] good.</bq> In a world where people seem to be getting less capable of dealing with a complex world all the time, should it be a surprise that Apple wants to stop making complex devices? The size of that market is increasing <i>all the time</i>. Grandma wants to surf and video chat. The article <a href="http://blog.jaggeree.com/post/357787918/why-the-ipad-may-be-just-what-we-need-for-digital" author="Jaggeree">Why the iPad may be just what we need for Digital Inclusion</a> offers some interesting insights. <bq>One of the largest excluded groups are pensioners who struggle to get online for many reasons [...] The first main problem they have technically is that computers look complex. They have lots of things you plug into other things. Every thing has an arcane name, very few of these names really relate to their function. Each of these things causes something to happen but not in an obvious touch the thing and something happens to it way. [...] it becomes an activity of worry and confusion.</bq> This "worry and confusion" makes the world of devices and computing <i>suck</i> for more than just old people. <iq>Then you look at the iPhone and iPad</iq> and you understand what an inclusive, accessible device actually looks like. A certain level of computing should be like a utility---always on and always available. More advanced uses should be possible too, but this is secondary for the vast majority, who just want <iq>access to services that will make a difference to their lives. Services that socially engage them, that bring them savings, that bring them government and local services.</iq> This more user-friendly attitude appeared in a few other articles---most published after some reflection instead of in the heat of initial indignation. The article <a href="http://speirs.org/blog/2010/1/29/future-shock.html" source="" author="Fraser Speirs">Future Shock</a> also addresses users toward which the current software world has been anything but friendly. <bq>The people whose backs have been broken under the weight of technological complexity and failure. [...] they are the people we have claimed to serve for 30 years whilst screwing them over in innumerable ways. There are also many, many more of them than us.</bq> Those of us who spend a good deal of our time explaining UI paradigms to users for whom they were never meant should rejoice at the advent of a better, more user-friendly computing device. For example, <bq>Those of us who patiently, day after day, explain to a child or colleague that the reason there's no Print item in the File menu is because, although the Pages document is filling the screen, Finder is actually the frontmost application and it doesn't have any windows open, understand what's happening here.</bq> The geek/non-geek distinction is not an abstract one: It's one under which people have been suffering for nearly all of computing history. One side---the geeks---is perfectly happy with the status quo <i>because their needs are being met</i>. At least they think they are. They are, however, deluded. As pointed out by Speirs, geeks also suffer from a reality distortion field, which <iq>tells [them] that computers are awesome, they work great and only those too stupid to live can't work them.</iq> They are wrong. <h>Pinning Hopes on Open Alternatives</h> Another well-respected tech blog published "<a href="http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/ars-ipad-reax.ars" source="Ars Technica" author="Jon Stokes">Insanely great? Ars reacts to the Apple iPad</a>" but, unlike Colburn, who at least acknowledged that there were users who would be well-served by the iPad, Stokes jumps on the open-source bandwagon instead, opting to wait for the semi-organized hordes to replicate the Apple user experience, but in a non-proprietary way. <bq>In the end, Apple has done something with the iPad that I didn't think they were capable of: made it worth my while to look around, or possibly even wait, for a better, more open alternative. I'm ready to buy an ARM-based, thin-client tablet computer—I'm just not ready to buy this one.</bq> Though "hissy fit" is a bit harsh, the attitude expressed here comes very close to that. The faith in open alternatives seems ill-founded, as the experience offered by Apple products tends to remain head and shoulders above those competitors. It would be nice if it were not so, but it is---especially when considerd from a non-geek standpoint. Stokes thinks that open alternatives will be able to catch up on the hardware side first, mentioning Linux-based tablets and asking <iq>[...] take battery life: 10 hours is amazing, but is it really that much more amazing than, say, the 8 hours that a Linux-based competitor might achieve?</iq> Well, no...all other things being equal, of course. However, you'd have to really dig the open-content, free-software vibe to put up with the kind of user experience a Linux-based tablet is likely to offer the first four or five times around the track. The question alone is already deep into geek territory: Why would a mortal user accept lower battery life and an inferior user experience in order to use "open software"? Apple offers a user experience that is, quite frankly, second-to-none. With this weapon, Apple convinces its users to forgive it many of its transgressions in other areas---like locking in users to a closed platform. Non-geek users will have trouble understanding why it's a bad thing that all of their apps are integrated together and that they can only shop from the App Store. If all you want is dessert, you're not going to complain that there's only a single buffet table loaded down with dessert, are you? It's only later, when you think you might like something else that you notice the doors are locked, but by then you're on such a sugar high, you no longer care (to beat the metaphor absolutely to death). Staying firmly in geek world, Stokes argues that it's technically possible to build a device at about the same price-point as the iPad but that allows <i>all</i> content and is a genuine replacement for a laptop. There's just the small hurdle of catching up to Apple in sheer design---hardware and software---its use of multitouch in applications, and the top-to-bottom integrated user experience for which Apple is rightly famous. Once you can replicate that---more or less---you should be in business. Stokes is, in fact, pinning his hopes on it: <bq>For instance, I can easily imagine an Android-based tablet that's designed by HTC, powered by NVIDIA's Tegra 2, does 1080p video (vs. iPad's 720p maximum resolution), and has much better 3D gaming performance, but at the cost of two hours of battery life. And if someone made such a thing, I would rather buy it than an iPad. I'd even pay over $500 for it. Given the number of Android and ARM-based devices I saw at this past CES, and the amount of design talent that's going into many of them, I expect to see at least one non-embarrassing Android-based competitor to the iPad by at least the second half of the year, if not earlier.</bq> One can easily imagine that, but that's pretty much all one can do until it shows up. Apple has a slobber-worthy tablet ready to go---<i>almost</i> right now---and at a price-point that was inconceivable for even Apple just a year ago. The point is that, Apple has what people want right now; why should they wait for a device that may appear at some time in the future? Unless you're a geek, that is? Remember, as an editor at a semi-famous tech-site, Stokes is going to be using an iPad every day regardless of how closed the device is...because he will be obligated to hold his nose and use it in order to be able to tell his readers about it. Poor guy. A <a href="http://www.reddit.com/r/reddit.com/comments/avagg/what_is_all_these_hoopla_about_the_ipad_there_is/" source="" author="">topic on reddit</a> declares that the <a href="http://www.archos.com/products/nb/archos_9/index.html?country=us&lang=en" source="" author="">Archos 9</a> already does everything the iPad promises and more. Follow-up comments, however, reveal exactly the kind of drawbacks one would expect when squeezing Windows 7 onto such a small device: It's noticeably laggy (e.g. <iq>takes 8 seconds to open firefox</iq>) and eats batteries (<iq>4 hour video battery life</iq>). It also doesn't have multitouch, which is <i>the</i> killer hardware feature right now. Apple has a proven track record of making great user experiences. They make devices that make you glad you shelled out your hard-earned cash for them. The tactile feel of their hardware, the gesturing and hinting in their UIs---they do a very good job of rewarding their users, both initially and ongoing. There are always quibbles, of course, but Apple does a very good job of making machines that are a pleasure to use. The iPad is apparently one of these: Initially skeptical commenters are reporting mass conversion once they get their grubby hands on one; the experience is apparently that good. What is interesting is that not even Stokes---an Apple watcher from way back---is aware <i>why</i> he doesn't want an iPad: It's because it was not made for him. Technocrats were delighted to buy iPhones despite the closed software ecosystem simply because they offered so much more than was available in other phones. And besides the smart-phone market was completely accustomed to closed systems, so the outcry was relatively small. It was only when developers tried to create their own applications for the iPhone that they cried foul: Apple was using a native SDK whereas other developers could only use HTML/CSS/JS. This initial backlash against Apple for building a monopoly on good software didn't stop the iPhone development market from simply exploding though, did it? Instead of running away from the platform, developers hung around and forced Apple to change its policy and release a proper SDK. The huge market Apple dangled in front of them brought the geeks to their knees. Now they're pissed that Apple learned their lesson well: There is a huge amount of money to be made in closed markets. Not only that, as noted in the article <a href="http://utcc.utoronto.ca/~cks/space/blog/tech/IPadTheory" source="" author="Chris Siebenmann">A theory about Apple's new iPad</a>, Apple needs <iq>something that just works [and] getting that is less effort with a closed box than with an open one</iq>. As mentioned above, it's bad for computing, for the future and for the world for Apple to retain absolute control over our devices. Of course that's true. But the place we're in now is going nowhere fast because <iq>[p]eople who do not actively like computers do not care about a lot of the computer stuff; they just want the computer to do things for them.</iq> <h>Is Apple Even Business Savvy?</h> Of course they are. As Colbert says: "The free market has spoken." Apple clearly does <iq>get the Internet</iq>---to refute the accusation made by Jon Stokes---and has carved out a huge chunk of the content pie for themselves. It's ludicrous to accuse a company that makes more money in online content than any other and has ridiculous profit margins on nearly all of their products of not understanding how to do business. As Apple has already shown, they are willing to go in open directions when it is good for their bottom line: witness the slew of open-source software they maintain and develop (Clang, Darwin, WebKit) or that their iTunes music is now DRM-free. The eBook format they chose is ePub, which is open. With the death of Apple having been prognosticated many times, it's probably a safe bet that they'll know when the time is right to switch sides. People will---for just $500---get a pretty kick-ass computing device-from-the-future. They're not going to care that Apple is limiting their selection to <i>only</i> 140,000 apps, that Apple is limiting their book selection to <i>only</i> those offered by the big five publishers, that the iPad can only play officially sanctioned and downloaded---and purchased---movies from the iTunes store. They won't care because they'll be carrying around all the media they could ever want to consume in the palm of one hand and viewing it on a gorgeous display and manipulating it with gestures that make them happy. They will be happy to be corralled into a content ghetto---an admittedly quite large and comfortable one, but nonetheless a ghetto. The gullible, consuming masses don't care about the future of technology or the freedom of information; they don't care about corporate and content monopolies; they care only about watching dogs surf in HD on YouTube while slurping a decaf mocha latté in Starbucks. But that's the market ... and who can blame them? Developers and the technocratic elite had gotten quite accustomed to being catered to as the "early adopters". They'd gotten quite used to being granted special privileges in their role as bellwethers. And now, suddenly, Apple no longer cares what they think. They're not Apple's prime market for the iPad. They were arguably not Apple's prime market for the iPhone either, actually. As mentioned above, though, the outcry was much smaller because the iPhone replaced a crappy piece of technology---existing phones---with something new and marvelous. The iPad is filling a niche that technocrats <i>thought</i> was theirs, but which includes everyone <i>but</i> them. The geeks that are prophesying Apple's doom are kind of stuck in the same category as the Ars Technica editor who reviewed the iPad's suitability as a comic book reader (<a href="http://arstechnica.com/apple/news/2010/01/ars-ipad-reax.ars/3">Aurich Lawson</a>). He went on and on about the base resolution and aspect ratio and how unsuitable it was for watching video or reading comic books. Does he even know that much of the U.S.A. still demands their films in full-screen format? Apple understands the <i>vast majority</i> of their market much better than infuriated geeks who can't understand why their needs aren't addressed even though they're shared by <i>at least</i> dozens of others. These people invariably justify their indignation by noting that "a lot of people they know" also need such-and-such a feature. It's likely that Apple actually has hard numbers to back up their decisions. And there's another difference between geeks and Apple. The open-source world doesn't have to make a profit, so it can cater to any market segment, no matter how small. Unfortunately, the coolest hardware and slickest software---so far!---comes from a company that doesn't care about tiny market segments that are market losers for them. Because he put it so eloquently, I'd like to leave the closing arguments to Fraser Speirs: <bq>Think of the millions of hours of human effort spent on preventing and recovering from the problems caused by completely open computer systems. Think of the lengths that people have gone to in order to acquire skills that are orthogonal to their core interests and their job, just so they can get their job done. If the iPad and its successor devices free these people to focus on what they do best, it will dramatically change people's perceptions of computing from something to fear to something to engage enthusiastically with. I find it hard to believe that the loss of background processing isn't a price worth paying to have a computer that isn't frightening anymore.</bq> Something like that would be great for everyone, geeks and non-geeks alike. <hr> <ft>And thus concludes the public service message of "feel guilty if you're considering buying this thing when you already have an iPod, and iPhone and two computers".</ft>