iPad - giving up Freedom in the name of Apps!

The best Quote I've seen on the iPad... (from Cory Doctorow on boingboing.net)

Doctorow quoted William Gibson's description of a consumer. "...something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote."

 It's a tablet? It's an iPod Touch XL?... what's it matter!!??!!

It matters to me... I don't just want a "consumption device" (Leo Laporte) is in love with that phrase...)

I want a device I can consume AND create content! 

I want to use different browsers! I want to plug in a webcam, my DSLR, a real keyboard (not a special Apple Bluetooth keyboard), I want to use Photoshop on my tablet (not just browse photos in iPhoto), I want to use "applications" I don't want an "app!"   

<start tangent> To me there's an "app for that" is like saying there's a watered down, limited in functionality, single use function, program that might resemble a real application; but don't get too excited, if you want to do something useful you can buy a bunch of single "apps" that combined, might be close in functionality to a real application.  <end tangent>

I don’t want to live in a walled garden no matter how “pretty” it might be.  I don’t want to live in a world of consumption.  I want to live in a world of creation.  I don’t want to give up my freedom, no matter how safe, secure, and mediocre it might be.  Giving in to Steve Jobs and Apple’s tight controls is like allowing the government to broaden the “Patriot Act!”  It’s “sheepeople” herded down the roped off lines of the TSA to get on a 50 minute Southwest flight from Burbank to San Jose!  It’s “acceptable, because it improves our safety.”  You don’t get special seating; you get a number to hold your place in another line of cattle.   It’s the justification for Big Brother…. btw... Didn’t Apple Computers, Inc. run a famous advertisement on that theme? 

 I need to go reboot now; I’m not feeling well…

Comments

[maura]

Now, I don't feel so badly about owning an HP. Thanks Manus....!!! :)