Comments | daveamongus: iPadilicious

daveamongus

iPadilicious

Apr 05, 2010 14:09

No, I don’t have one.

But I did read Cory Doctorow’s polemic on why I shouldn’t, and I thought it was pretty funny. Okay, maddening in one spot, where he seemed to be claiming consumers were a non-human, perfectly passive species, but … eh. It was rhetoric. If he really believes that, then he’s probably more deserving of pity than anger.

I do ( Read more... )

technology

Comments 3

cathshaffer April 5 2010, 19:26:51 UTC

I'm pretty bewildered by all of the emotion surrounding the iPad. It's just a tablet PC. If people like it, they'll buy it. If not, they won't. I am not sure why the perceived stakes seem to be so high over whether it will be a hit or not. I don't understand why people are so invested in seeing it succeed or fail. I think people have built up an unrealistic expectation of the importance of one device in the future of publishing and media ( ... )

daveamongus April 5 2010, 19:47:54 UTC

Yeah, I guess the dichotomy there is part of the point--is the movement as necessary as the West Coast hippies think it is, if here in the Midwest, so many people are already, unconsciously "following" it?

My problem, from Cory's post, is when it gets prescriptive. "Screws, not glue," he says, meaning you shouldn't buy anything you can't take apart and tinker with. That's great, but I don't have the time or inclination to learn how to take apart and tinker with a tenth of the stuff I have (screws, glue, or rivets), much less make it a guiding purchasing principle.

cathshaffer April 5 2010, 19:54:28 UTC

Yeah, I have zero desire to tinker or hack with my electronic devices. I think it's a fine hobby, but I also think that a black box that just works when you press a button is something that has a place in this world. I tend to agree more with his complaints about the anticompetitive nature of the deals that Apple is making with publishing houses, etc. It seems like there is some real collusion going on trying to control access to ebooks and other online entertainment, rather than giving consumers choices among many platforms and providers. But this has nothing to do with whether you can pop open the case and swap out a memory chip.