IP patents are useful defensively and offensive when used to inhibit competition. Or "license" the efforts of a competitor. I will hold off on any Apple purchases until further notice.

I think calling them computers is wrong

Call them Slates. Does anyone own that word yet? HP maybe.

But tomorrow’s computing systems, heralded by the iPhone (and iPad), are not for DIYers.

Zeldman speaks pure geek genius. Adding plug-ins (like Flash, Java) to fixed function "computers" makes them less effective... and it damages the ability of search engines to find content.

Now if we just had a license free format for video... we'd be close to an internet that it's "owned" by companies and rented to us (with overlords).

I don’t welcome my Apple overlords. But I welcome the change, at least for now.

Go and read it all. Then this picture makes sense to you.

in contemporary politics, if you can fake sincerity, you have got it made.

Great piece from the bbc on the effective use of "authenticity" to get votes.

George W. Bush won through appearing authentic... Sarah Palin shares that same ability to cut through the details to a simple (if irrelevant or illogical) message people can relate to.

It has me quite concerned. Do we need another Bill Clinton that can lie effectively and has no moral compass to change the US? Probably not.
It might make me comforatable in terms of political tactics but in the end nothing get accomplished towards real reform of government.

Let's see if Obama is smart enough to learn how to connect and drive reforms through a political mandate. So, far he's failed to bridge that gap between what he thinks is good policy and what he projects as being good for people. They just don't trust smart people.

read the bbc article for clarity.

A lot of bloggers are forgeting about User Interface as a driver of product adoption and adaptation.

What the iPhone did to cellular phones: making them mobile computers more than anything else, the iPad will do to laptops and desktops. Reduce the dependency on the keyboard/mouse for rapid navigation.

I frakkin' hate to use "Page Down" or (even worse) press the mouse on a small scroll-down target on a browser to read a long article. It physically hurts to read a lot on the web using these tools. The Mac has some better tools for navigating with a touch pad but I use the computer my job gives me 90% of the time. The iPhone probably reduced that 90% to 80%. An iPad would make a lot of those hours a lot less painful and reduce the onset of carpal tunnel damage even further.

1.5 lbs and probably a lot less "lap heat" also will matter overtime to millions. Our tools change us, especially when they become addictions.

Interfaces matter.

Design even more so: posture, eye strain, tendon stresses, and simple frustration with getting things done without stress.
Watch someone interact with their laptop for 4-5 hours a day and you'll see physical problems in the making.

If the iPhone user interface is becoming a part of your relatioship to the web... an intuitive touch based User Interface, then you're going to crave an iPad to make that experience even more enabling.

If you've never used an iPhone then your only going to see something you can already do on a laptop and potentially for even less with a NetBook.

The difference will playout overtime as those that continue to use a "carpal tunnel" inducing keyboard/mouse interface and those that move to a gesture-based interface *FOR READING* text.

For programming, data entry, writing and complex mouse manipulation the touch interface if just poor design.

But like the 80/20 database rule: 80% of the interactions are reads. For non-computer based professionals that number may be higher: consumers of media and text. That's the target audience for the iPad. They will love the ability to flick pages about and rapidly start-up and switch between media streams.

The iPad is a computer for media consumption. I must have one. The information junkie in me needs to be fed. The programmer/creator in me will want to create or manipulate media for it.

It will change and challenge all other devices to compete for effective design. They will also get better and user interfaces as a result.

This is an effective market force at work: innovation that meets the users needs.

Some programmers that grew up hacking Basic are complaining about the iPad. They should have joined ""why the lucky stiff" who started a project to make programming easier and more fun for kids called "Shoes".

Or another project to make progarmming for kids easier called "Squeak".

Or endorsed the efforts of the "One Laptop per Child"...

But they were probably too busy craking out code to create something with a low barrier to entry that would enable the next generation to have a device around the house that will stimulate
a desire to learn to create "programs".

But essentially, for the gifted kid the features of HTML(5), CSS, Javascipt, AJAX and probably close in terms of learning curve to hacking assembly language on an Apple II. It may not be a quick to produce results as:

10 count = 1
20 print Count
30 count = count +1
40 goto 20
run

NOTE: Make a programmable web page that enraptures kids with a programming interface. I'm sure there's already a "Logo in a webpage" site somewhere.

Kids with curiousity will find the tools that allow them to play, create, make and build. I'm sure they are even as we complain about the "closed" nature of the iPad when it's browser makes it one of the most programmable consumer devices ever pushed onto a stage at the Yerba Buena center.

If we are stuck in our "typying *is* computing* paradigm we will miss the sea change. Computing is movement. Typing is just one form of movement. An efficient movement for creating text like this.

OK... now sketch more something with the keyboard.

But we have a mouse.

OH draw me a mouse sketch.

Now, sketch on an iPad. It's an world of improvement.

Can we program by connecting widgets using gestures? Probably. We just need to open the door to thinking about the possible given the new technologies the iPad enables.

Watch the iPad apps that emerge. There's a possible future that it's easrly critics didn't stop to consider becuase the keyboard interface could never enable it.

Touch. It's the next big thing.

When you Wii bowl, are you programming a computer? Is there a Wii program that could be considered a programming environment to open kid's minds to the possibilities of programming?

Games typically give kids a desire to learn how to program. Giving a kid desire is certainly half the battle to unlocking curiosity to learn.

iPad games will also encourage a desire to "open" the system and create a new emrsive experience.

The iPad will change what we think of as computing: it's interaction now that matters... programming the world with ideas.

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