Pass the Source

The Real Tablet Wars

tl;dr formally known as Executive Summary, Openness + Good Taste Wins

Gosh, it’s been a while. But this site is not dead. Just been distracted by indenti.ca and twitter.

I was going to write about Apple, again. A result of unexpected and unwelcome exposure to an iPad over the Christmas Holidays. But then I read Jethro Carr’s excellent post where he describes trying to build the Android OS from Google’s open source code base. He quite mercilessly exposes the lack of “open” in some key areas of that platform.

It is more useful to look at the topic as an issue of “open” vs “closed” where iPad is one example of the latter. But, increasingly, Android platforms are beginning to display similar inane closed attributes – to the disadvantage of users.

Part of my summer break was spent helping out at the premier junior sailing regatta in the world, this year held in Napier, NZ. Catalyst, as a sponsor, has built and is hosting the official website.

I had expected to swan around, sunbathing, drinking cocktails and soaking up some atmosphere. Instead a last minute request for a new “live” blogging section had me blundering around Joomla and all sorts of other technology with which I am happily unfamiliar. Days and nightmares of iPads, Windows, wireless hotspots and offshore GSM coverage.

The plan was simple, the specialist blogger, himself a world renown sailor, would take his tablet device out on the water on the spectator boat. From there he would watch and blog starts, racing, finishes and anguished reactions from parents (if there is one thing that unites races and nationalities, it is parental anguish over sporting achievement).

We had a problem in that the web browser on the tablet didn’t work with the web based text editor used in the Joomla CMS. That had me scurrying around for a replacement to the tinyMCE plugin, just the most common browser based editing tool. But a quick scan around various forums showed me that the alternative editors were not a solution and that the real issue was a bug with the client browser.

“No problem”, I thought. “Let’s install Firefox, I know that works”.

But no, Firefox is not available to iPad users  and Apple likes to “protect” its users by only tightly controlling whose applications are allowed to run on the tablet. Ok, what about Chrome? Same deal. You *have* to use Apple’s own buggy browser, it’s for your own good.

Someone suggested that the iPad’s operating system we were using needed upgrading and the new version might have a fixed browser. No, we couldn’t do that because we didn’t have Apple’s music playing software, iTunes, on a PC. Fortunately Vodafone were also a sponsor and not only did they download an upgrade they had iTunes handy. Only problem, the upgrade wiped all the apps that our blogger and his family had previously bought and installed.

Er, and the upgrade failed to fix the problem. One day gone.

So a laptop was press ganged into action, which, in the end was a blessing because other trials later showed that typing blogs fast, on an ocean swell, is very hard without a real keyboard. All those people pushing tablets at schools, keep in mind it is good to have our children *write* stuff, often.

The point of this post is not really to bag Apple, but to bag the mentality that stops people using their own devices in ways that help them through the day. I only wanted to try a different browser to Safari, not an unusual thing to do. Someone else might want to try out a useful little application a friend has written for them, but that wouldn’t be allowed.

But the worst aspect of this is that because of Apple’s success in creating well designed gadgets other companies have decided that “closed” is also the correct approach to take with their products. This is crazy. It was an open platform, Linux Kernel with Android, that allowed them to compete with Apple in the first place and there is no doubt that when given a choice, choice is what people want – assuming “taste” requirements are met.

Other things being equal*, who is going to chose a platform where the company that sold you a neat little gadget controls all the things you do on it? But there is a strong trend by manufacturers such as Samsung, and even Linux distributions, such asUbuntu, to start placing restrictions on their clients and users. To decide for all of us how we should behave and operate *our* equipment.

The explosive success of the personal computer was that it was *personal*. It was your own productivity, life enhancing device. And the explosive success of DOS and Windows was that, with some notable exceptions, Microsoft didn’t try and stop users installing third party applications. The dance monkey boy video is funny, but the truth is that Microsoft did want “developers, developers, developers, developers” using its platforms because, at the time, it knew it didn’t know everything.

Apple, Android handset manufacturers and even Canonical (Ubuntu) are falling into the trap of not knowing that there is stuff they don’t know and they will probably never know. Similar charges are now being made about Facebook and Twitter. The really useful devices and software will be coming from companies and individuals who realise that whilst most of what we all do is the same as what everyone else does, it is the stuff that we do differently that makes us unique and that we need to control and manage for ourselves. Allow us do that, with taste, and you’ll be a winner.

PS I should also say “thanks” fellow sponsors Chris Devine and Devine Computing for just making stuff work.

* I know all is not equal. Apple’s competitive advantage it “has taste” but not in its restrictions.