Why I won't buy an Ipad: ten years later

boing
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It was not so much my point that the iPad prevents shared understanding, but that understanding the implications of a device like the iPad (and the iPhone for that matter) - and the tech ecosystem it promotes - on technology, society, environment and individual choice is part of the shared understanding required to discuss a lot of policies in a meaningful way.

Let’s first take a look at the iPad and the state of iOS at the time the iPad launched, I’ll do this by listing things that people could simply observe by themselves, and then I’ll explain what that means for users:

  • the encouraged way to add content (music, videos, later books) was syncing content you bought from apple via iTunes Store
  • you couldn’t simply attach a storage device to add music or videos, or other files, you needed a special software for that (iTunes)
  • you would pay $30 for the camera connection kit to import and export photos only via the USB port.
  • the only way to add new apps was the App Store, which was heavily policed by Apple. Apps that “replicated features of Apple apps” were rejected, e.g. other browsers, video players, audio players. Apps for what Apple thinks was porn? Rejected. Apps that could read and write data from external media via the CCK? Rejected. Apps that tried to implement Ethernet over USB, because wireless was often shitty and not reliable for professional applications? Rejected.
  • the only way to add features to the system was a system update
  • the App Store did not offer upgrade prices
  • configuration was limited
  • there was no way for apps to exchange data except for sending it via a server.
  • no support for password management software
  • Adblocking? No way, Safari didn’t support that.
  • a proprietary port instead of a standard USB
  • screws for opening the device: Nope. It was glued shut.
  • distributing apps would require that you pay for an Apple developer account
  • you needed an actual computer to make a backup of your data

The iPad was marketed as a device one could use instead of a computer, and it was targeted also at people who did not already own an iPhone, and maybe never would, so it was an entry point for many new users to the iOS platform. That’s relevant because people’s expectations of what a computer can or cannot do were subtly shifted away from a lot of the choices a desktop or laptop offered.

And Apple was the single beneficiary of taking away those choices (all of which they had to actually removed from their desktop os that was the basis of iOS), and then they monetized every single freedom they took away. Here’s a small and non-exhaustive list of consequences, most of which were pretty obvious, IF you were able to deduct from above observations:

  • People started buying content they already owned, because it was simpler that converting to transferring it to the iPad
  • people bought content from Apple, because the iPad did not offer a way to buy content via the browser and then add it to an app, so apps would either use the App store, or lock you into their own store
  • content bought locked you deeper into the Apple ecosystem
  • people put up with their device not being fully functional when “offline”
  • there was no way to restore a previous version of an app once you clicked update
  • a new version of the os brought more features, typically of the sort other computers already had, but made the device slower, and also prevented “uncertified” third party hardware from working (e.g. HDMI connectors for $5 instead of $30).
  • people bought a new device when the web became slow (mostly because of the ads, my iPad 2 can still be used to surf the web when DNS is routed though a PI-hole)
  • people put all their personal data in the cloud, because it’s simpler that way, but because of the lack of password management software, typically used weak passwords, and due to the lack of tech skills on the part of the developers who code the backends, a lot of that data is leaked
  • Apple now runs a cloud with everyone’s personal data, but there’s no way to export that data (apart from your phonebook)
  • when the device was broken in any way, apple mostly recommended buying the next version, and gave a discount.
  • some apps became unavailable, some apps stopped working with a new release of the os (which soon happened on a yearly basis, much to app developer’s dismay)
  • because the App Store is in the US of A, every single developer on the planet who wanted to use standard encryption (read HTTPS connection) has to register with the US Bureau of Industry and Security
  • Apps are rejected by Apple, often without giving developers the slightest idea what they did wrong
  • Hardware certified for the iOS Platform is more expensive, because Apple gets a share
  • Apple not only want a 30% cut from the price users pay for an app, but also 30% out of each subscription that is processed via the App Store (that’s like a credit card which takes 30% commission)
  • free apps disappeared from the store because developers did not renew their developer account
  • the requirement of a paid developer account and the often arbitrary rejections added friction to OpenSource projects
  • the lack of upgrade pricing in the App Store contributed to developers preferring subscriptions for software, so you don’t even own the apps any more
  • old devices don’t get security updates anymore, but because of all the protections in place it’s next to impossible for the community to patch problems, or to install a new system
  • when you need to reset your iPad, you always need to install the latest version of the OS, making older devices slower, breaking apps, sometimes you lose OS features you relied on
  • for a while, apps were really cheap, but that also changed. Apple still gets 30%
  • Apple allowed in-app purchases, which promoted free-to-play-but-pay-to-win games, a concept many people still don’t get. Now they’re locking away the other games behind their subscription based service

As I said, it was mostly obvious from the launch of the iPad where that would go. And most of these things would not even require one to have that much technical knowledge. Just enough to connect the dots.

As a whole, people now pay more money to Apple. They used to just pay mostly for the expensive hardware, now they pay for content, software, subscriptions, cloud services…

Yes, similar things happened with Android, but it mostly followed apple, and is still a much more open platform, albeit with some other unique problems.

You promote all these things when you buy Apple products. This is not a private choice, it’s a political one.

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Yeah, my bad—I didn’t actually mean to imply that my Mac Mini was somehow special, just that it’s the thing that I have, and it doesn’t need replacing. But neither does anything else that I own, and in this regard, this current era, despite the nostalgia for ‘repairable’ or ‘upgradeable’ computers is far better than it ever was before. The simple fact of the matter is that all computers are better built now—your Thinkpad, the HP I have as a work computer, the iMac that someone buys.

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Except nowadays, you do have access. iPads even support saving to an external USB stick, to another service like Google Drive, Dropbox or Azure, and syncing with a Mac. Even iCloud keeps a synced copy on each device with sync turned on, so you can copy it from your Mac to a stick or burn a disc with it. I personally use my Mac to make local backups.

Here’s what it looks like now:

IMG_0093.PNG
IMG_0093.PNG2048×1536 323 KB

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How has not buying an iPad materially influenced Apple’s policies and behavior?

Can you also show how my buying an iPad has led to support/endorsement of same? (If it helps, got mine back in 2013, it’s an iPad 3, same battery and everything, still works great, especially for reading mclargehuge pdfs, tell me how that all ties together.)

The majority of your bullet points are either aesthetic issues or are outright mere inconveniences—with some funny language like “added friction”—that just seem to mean “inconvenient,” but which somehow suggests that this was something an individual user could be held to account for for buying an iOS device.

I don’t think it’s overstating anything to suggest that Apple is 100% responsible for design choices which come at a cost to the environment or the tech landscape (whatever that might be) or Apple’s attempts to influence human politics, but the consumers of their products cannot and should not be held to account for them.

Does it seem reasonable if I suggest that anyone who ever bought an Apple product bears a similar responsibility for Apple not paying their fair share of taxes?

I don’t think it does.

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… perhaps, on the other hand all those inconveniences could be also be considered dark patterns/influences, the likes of which are often covered on this site. Players in society at the scale of influence of companies such as Apple fall into a sort of laws-of-large numbers space with regard to their design/policy decisions - as such it seems to me like they are especially worthwhile subjects for discussion on the consequences and motives of those very design decisions. It’s not necessarily an aspersion towards those who choose to associate with said products - just like a given citizen of a country can’t necessarily be held to fault for the actions of that state.

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Both Apple and the consumers can be held to account, they’re in this together.

Apple needs the consumer’s money to do what they do, without that the consequences of Apple’s design choices would not manifest. The consumers give Apple the money they use to run and expand their operations. You buy their products, you basically say “that’s fine with me”. Just because you don’t understand what you’re fine with does not make you less responsible…

Let’s assume for a minute that Apple powered their innovation engine with energy extracted from the hearts of sacrificed virgins. If you buy their product, you give them money to pay traffickers for bringing them more virgins. What would you tell your neighbor when you see them with an iPhone?

Not “ever”, of course only those who bought an Apple product after they could have known that Apple does not pay their fair share of taxes are responsible. After all they gave Apple the money in the first place. Without them Apple would not have been able to withhold so much taxes in the first place.

In a capitalist society, capital is continuously used to change or maintain the status quo. There are other influences, but capital is arguably the most significant one. Therefore the way you spend your money determines who gets to exert the power that comes from your fraction of the money. Of course you are responsible for the outcome.

I think it follows that choices involving how you spend your money are not private, but political, because they have an influence on the status quo. For most people that’s more influence than what they say, or even their actual vote, I’m afraid.

Excuses like “I did not know”, “I did not understand” or “I did not care” do not change the actual outcome of these choices one tine bit. All they do is give everyone an excuse to make more shitty choices when in fact we should support each other to make better choices.

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There is also some halfway decent software for controlling old hardware synths that have extremely inconvenient physical ux (rack mounts, etc) via sysex messages to do things like program sound patches, etc. I don’t think it’s unique to iOS over Android, but it’s still an interesting use case if you happen to have an iPad, that, despite being largely rooted in a plug and play product (an app + an adapter + a cable + an external device), is definitely outside the scope of a passive content consumer context.

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This topic came back to mind for me just now as I am working on installing one little tool on a Linux server. For various reasons I’ve got a few different flavors of linux running on various systems/vms at home. Today to install udptunnel on Arch I had to remember (google) how to install packages, how to install user packages, how to update the package manager system, how to update the keychain, resolve various dependencies, git clone the package files, obtain the package build files, and then actually build the package. If you don’t do it all in the correct order you get to do a lot of rm -rf and try again. Took about 45 minutes all told to get a 46K app installed.

I love completely open OSs like Linux but I also love how iOS hides all of this stuff from me, I find the app and click get. It’s magical when you understand the underlying process. Conversely the reason I need this specific tool (udptunnel) also exists on my iOS devices and for those I’ll be SOL unless app developers will build it into their apps. Like most things the knife cuts both ways.

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Oh, and after all that it doesn’t work. Silently exits. With verbose output on (level 2, level 1 is useless) it gives me an error that googles to nada, gives me the finger, and walks away. So now I get to do it again for another system that is so lightweight it doesn’t have dev tools on it I first have to figure out how to even install them. FML.

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No doubt some of them are. Does their potential nefariousness justify placing blame for their existence on us? I don’t think so, for reasons:

This is begging the question. Even an implication that merely by living in this society means we must be held to account for decisions made exclusively by larger, more powerful parties begs the question.

If I designed the iPad, iOS, and ran Apple’s approach to dispensing its influence, yeah, sure. I should be held to whatever level of account is appropriate. But I didn’t, and just bought what was available.

Did you source the components ethically enough for your device? Even if you did, did it significantly impact the outcome? If it did, perhaps you could explain how you (collectively) managed this outcome? I mean, if outcome is important, there must be a means, yes?

Even if they are excuses, how does that help your argument? If the market—or capitalism or whatever—got us into this state, mere participation and an informed choice in the marketplace has not fixed anything, and after a decade, that alone should be sufficient basis to scrutinize it.

Critically, I think you presume some things which also don’t withstand scrutiny:

  • You appear to presume that being absolutely informed could change or at least significantly affect Apple’s behavior, but that behavior clearly arose independently of any decisions consumers made.

  • Being held to account implies we have sufficient agency, and when Apple’s quarterly statement is billions, that’s … not a lot of agency—even collectively. I argue it is tantamount to no agency, because consumers as a whole—even informed consumers—did not create those conditions in the first place— a corporation did.

  • But money is a bit like but oxygen. If I could determine what a company does with my money once they have it I’d probably be a stockholder. But then, Apple seems to care less for its stockholders than it does its customers, and I think I’m maybe better off being just the latter. But if I never bought either Apple stock or product, the outcome would be identical.

Arguing that I bear that responsibility could be easily used to actually ameliorate Apple’s responsibility, and that’s another reason to just not. It’s better to exert influence in more meaningful ways: political regulation, closing tax loopholes, enforcing compliance, disrupting monopoly, etc. If you can claim consumers helped cause a problem, we’re back to assuming a market filled with them will somehow fix it, and it clearly will not.

Apple does do spectacularly shitty things. And I want that redressed. But my not buying an iPhone isn’t going to alter that accountability rests with Apple, not its customers.

I mean, you can blame us if you like. I can’t stop you.

Only, if that’s reasonable, who do I blame for not creating ideal choices for us otherwise?

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Cory is right…as far as he goes. But speaking as an aging geek who is trying to get things done, I turned to Apple devices to help my curb my unquenchable urge to tinker with tech, so I could get a book written and take care of my mom with dementia. I can’t muck around with custom ROMs like I did on my Android devices…and that’s just fine with me.

There are many people who just want to get stuff done. They aren’t technophiles; they’re everyday people living everyday lives, watching movies, sending emails, Facebooking and Instagramming and video chatting, playing games. Doing what they want works as well – or better – than on a device they can take apart or write their own software for, very few of whom will ever do either.

So, for a certain small subset of humanity, your points are well-taken. But for many, you’re crying into the void.

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If I am not mistaken, that is the core of your argument: Only by enabling something, you cannot be held accountable, because your influence is so small, there is no causality, merely dependent origination.

To me this appears to be the ultimate argument against democracy. After all one vote does not matter. If I vote for Trump, I cannot be held accountable for what he does. After all, it’s he who does it.

I hope I am not misstating your position, but I’m sure you will correct me if you do.

Accountability is not a zero-sum game. Two parties can each be fully accountable. As long as one believes that one party can only be accountable for what nobody else can be held accountable, we focus on avoiding blame over having agency. Infantilizing, if you want to call it that.

Now is the time for you to explain how you think that can be achieved.

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After reading all of the arguments, both those agreeing as well as those disagreeing with Corey, I think the thing we all have to realise is that for all of our thought-out points, our decision is an emotional one that we only pretend is a logical one. Myself included. Heck, a lot of my investment in Apple comes from my childhood encounters with the Apple II, and with how the Macintosh was what I replaced my Commodore 64 with, bucking the trend to IBM compatibles just as the Atari ST and the Amiga were floundering.

I think what makes Corey’s article so divisive is the unspoken message that we should follow his lead, and not buy the device. And that rankles, gets under the skins of those who think the device is nifty; it makes those who already were against Apple feel slightly more smug. And all of our arguments, for and against, reveal just how deep, how visceral something like a handheld computer can make us feel.

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What I hear is we can’t make rational decisions anyway, so why bother discussing reasons, implications, consequences. That is not what you mean to say, right?

I would assume that what we feel has more to do with what we associate the handheld computer with, and not the handheld computer itself. I think it’s important to make that distinction, because that’s where our agency lies, not least over our emotions. Adam Curtis “The Century of the Self” has a few interesting insights about this.

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OK, since you’re saying that there is a lot of emotion in the replies, let’s see if we can reformulate the situation as objectively as possible:

The ipad is very good at what it does. The people that like that, like the ipad.
The ipad is also very restrictive at what it could do but it doesn’t. The people who know and care about that stuff see it as wasted potential.

to elaborate:

The Ipad gets things done . That pleases a majority.
If it also had a “switch” that would allow people to tinker with how it gets things done it would also please a specific minority.
The choice to not have that “switch” rests with apple.

Conclusion:

The majority is pleased, ipad sells. The “market” feels that that’s the direction it should go, more devices from other brands go that way, less devices integrate these “switches”.
The specific minority gets vocal about that because it sees it as limiting.

Consequence:

The specific minority tries to say “you know, we want the ipad and we’d like to be able to tinker with it too. there are advantages to that”
The already satisfied majority indirectly replies “I’m happy myself, so I don’t care”.
Cory’s piece says: “Well, could you care a little?”

It may be oversimplifying a bit, but that’s how I got it anyway

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It’s not just wasted potential. It takes away choices from everyone, builds a monopoly and locks people to a single vendor, who then controls what they get to see and to do, and how long they can access content they actually paid for.

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I believed that I partly covered that when I wrote

“The majority is pleased, ipad sells. The “market” feels that that’s the direction it should go, more devices from other brands go that way, less devices integrate these “switches”.
The specific minority gets vocal about that because it sees it as limiting.”

Keyword “limiting” but yes, I was not overly explicit for the sake of keeping it simple.

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Ok, you want it simple, here you go:

Some people say “it’s nice and works well for me”, other people say “just as far as you are able to consider it, but in fact it makes things worse for the tinkerers now, and for everyone (also those who don’t buy this now) in the long run”.

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The fact that a small minority of people want a for-profit company to ignore the majority who are already buying their products in order to spend time and money to do what the small minority is demanding (and may never choose to buy anyway no matter what)…that seems to be where “takes away choices from everyone” would apply.

Sounds like our choices are not valid enough for you.

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