[LINK] "Unforeseeable growth" (iPad)

[Roger Clarke]

At 10:46 +1100 21/1/11, Rachel Polanskis wrote:
>  ... [great review;  pity about the line-length  (:-)} ] ...
>At the present state of the art, the iPad already has an almost full 
>UNIX style stack.
>When I ran Cydia on my iPad, I was able to SSH into it and install a 
>suite of GNU software
>  ...  it also grants the user and programmer an enormous capability.   ...
>With IOS, you only get one flavour, but it is a known evil. ...

I'd understood that the device was tightly closed and controlled.

If you could get access under the bonnet, can't other parties, 
including re-sellers?


Reason for my interest:

Leaving aside punched-card and terminal usage, I'm a 27-year desktop 
and 15?-year laptop-user.

But I've skipped the mobile phones, Walkmen, PDAs, palmtops, iPods, 
smartphones, netbooks, satnavs, and all the rest.

The long-heralded arrival of tablets seemed to be the biggest 
challenge yet to my digital isolationism, especially given how good 
the first release was.

But I was turned off by what I understood to be the closed nature of 
the beast, and the highly manipulative philosophy that Apple has 
sustained since 1984, and deepened.

If it's less closed than I thought (particularly once v2 comes out), 
maybe I need to re-think?


-- 
Roger Clarke                                 http://www.rogerclarke.com/

Xamax Consultancy Pty Ltd      78 Sidaway St, Chapman ACT 2611 AUSTRALIA
                    Tel: +61 2 6288 1472, and 6288 6916
mailto:Roger.Clarke at xamax.com.au                http://www.xamax.com.au/

Visiting Professor in the Cyberspace Law & Policy Centre      Uni of NSW
Visiting Professor in Computer Science    Australian National University