Hacker News Reader

Comment by kaolinite | Hacker News Reader

My parents both fairly recently bought iPads. Previously they used a Windows laptop and an Ubuntu desktop - both far more powerful and giving far more control. Or at least that's one way of looking at it.

Their iPads may have limits on their functionality, but as a result of their simplicity, they enable my parents to control a lot more of their computing experience.

They rent movies, read books, use RSS (!) via Flipboard, edit photos, install apps (previously they would never install software) and - most importantly - they experiment with new things. Unlike the old PCs, which they'd become more fearful of with every inevitable fault or virus, with their iPads they can just hit the home button.

For you and I, you're right - mobile can be limiting. But don't underestimate the power of mobile for those previously intimidated by computers.

View on HN

This is an important point that often seems lost when abstracting out concepts like "power" and "control."

There is some theoretical sense in which a user of free software has a lot of control, including the power to change it. Software being free can have a lot of indirect benefits to the user, but ultimately practical "power" is a function of what you can practically do with it, and that is very different from what the thing can theoretically do.

Apple probably has motives for the app store other than making user experiences simple. But, they also really have the goal (and the effect) of making the user experience easier, which puts more real power into real hands. If the below median user can install a photo sharing app to see her nieces photo collage, that's real power in users hands.

Also, I think being strict and abstract about "exclusively to advance the interests of its owner" is losing a lot of important texture. First, very few technological benefits go exclusively to anyone. They go to users, vendors, various other users and vendors. A lot of them get released into the ether as externality vapors, like productivity or ideas for new technology.

The reality of the current state of computing is interesting, but it's very hairy and hard to grasp and boil down to simple abstractions. When we use our phones, we are interacting with other people, generating data/content on other people's phones, in various databases to the benefit of a bunch of people/companies. When you are using your navigation app, generating data about traffic, you are benefiting the app, other osiers. Possibly future users. Possibly that data will be sued in other ways. Maybe a construction company will buys it to plan new roads (and win a contract) which will benefit the city… Maybe someone's girlfriend will one day have it beamed to her implant to estimate when Brian will arrive.

Is this bad because it's not to the exclusive benefit of the user? The benefit to the user would not even be possible with this mesh of stuff.

Doing more and having more control are not interchangeable. Your parents reading more books on their computer means they do more. More control means they know what happens inside the software/machine and they can change something about that.

You are right that people don't care about control as much as an idea of it. And you are also right that giving control to someone else who can get a value out of you might result in you being able to do more, but at some point having no control over ones life will bite people in the ass. And that's what the control topic is about.

In a simple example Apple can decide to not show the books to your parents any more. There is nothing they can do about it. Getting your Linux computer to work right takes time but then it's much less likely that a software can delete your data or if they delete it you are more likely to have a backup because you put sweat into configuring your system that way.

> Getting your Linux computer to work right takes time but

It doesn't just take more time; once something is sufficiently difficult, it goes from incrementally time-consuming to insurmountable (for most people) -- it might as well not exist.

Did we just move from "What is control? How do I get control?" to "Linux is probably insurmountable so we don't even have to try"?

If my parents ask "How do I get control?" And someone answers "Getting Linux to work takes some time, but..." Their response should be that they won't even try. My parents have a hard time with the concept that there are things called "files". Directories are completely beyond them.

I never intended to convince you or your parents to use Linux. It's just, that you said that they are able to do more, therefore they have more control. If you understand that the opposite might be the case then my job is done. In some scenarios it's okay to have less control in exchange to do more. I do such exchanges on a regular basis myself. But one must be aware that one gives away control, not gains control.

Really? You could not use actual paper file and filing cabinet as physical world analogues of computer files and directories? Pretty much everyone understands those metaphors, so why don't your parents?

Why not simply set up and maintain Linux for them? Especially because if the only thing amateurs need is a browser, then Ubuntu is exactly the same as everything else.

They still won't have ultimate control, but you will. This is certainly a tradeoff (a personal relationship has more motives for violating trust), but depending on your relationship it can be a great way to distribute control away from ApplNSAoogle.

Directories and files have a real world analog that your parents are likely to understand, but I think the doofy interface obscures this to the point of confusion.

I think it's fallacious that deeper understanding of system would guarantee data safety. I have no idea what the most of the software and hardware on the n devices I use actually do. I know they are targeting large masses of end users so I can trust the industrial process that created them. What is needed, I suppose is educating that all data that is not backed up should be considered volatile, and digital goods such as kindle books are for consuming but not for collecting.

That said, I don't mind consuming digital volatile goods - there are very few books I re-read and I usually acquire paper copy of those.

I think that is too limited a measure of control - if you can use the iPad to do a budget, but not MS Excel, then with the iPad you can get an extraordinary amount of control over your own life.

Depending on what kinds of books his parents read those might result in more control too. Even if we account for a loss of control from the computer to the iPad (and I am not entirely convinced that a practical loss happens, given that they can barely use the computer) it isn't possible that the total amount of control, for his parents, go back up.

Modern cars take a tremendous amount of control away from you. You lose the ability to easily service your own engine. You rely on electronics to do everything from braking to steering to regulating the temperature. If one thing fails, the car is undrivable and will likely need a lot of expensive repairs you can't do on your own.

On the other hand, it gives us things like AWD, so people don't need to be afraid of when they should use 4WD or when doing so might damage their car. It's automatic. It allows people with disabilities to operate a car, since they don't need to shift or use both feet on the pedals. It's automatic. You can hook up your iPhone and play music from it without touching the phone. It's automatic. And even slippery weather isn't as deadly anymore with automatic traction control.

So no, I can't rip my car down to the chassis and count every bolt. But I can drive a car in a far more safe manner, a car with far more power and far more convenience. There's two types of "control" at play. One is a mechanical control where I could tear down my Toyota 4Runner SUV with 180hp (a small amount of power) and put it back together as a Tacoma pickup. The other is the knowledge that if I hit a slippery patch in my Nissan Murano with 260hp (a huge amount of power), I will continue on just fine even with more power under the hood while the Tacoma driver is in the ditch wishing he had known to engage 4WD at that second. The news will report that the Tacoma driver "lost control" of his car, whereas the Murano driver "stayed in control".

Now that's a bleak picture, sure. I'm just using it to illustrate a point. There are two types of control. You'd never give root access to an average user. So does the Linux computer actually give them any more control? Or are you just giving them a Tacoma and locking it in 4WD for their own safety? If you give them a Corvette and then tell them to be careful or they will spin out and die, they will never let the RPMs go above 2k.

I like your example. Let's say it this way: With more electronics in your car you lose control over the car, but you gain control over the road, and the traffic around you.

Facebooks also works that way, now that I think about it. It takes control away over your data, but it enables you to interact with more people, which may improve your control over your connections.

Could we agree on that?

Exactly. Everyone has different needs, it's not necessarily wrong.

For the record, I use a Linux laptop at work. When I get home, I enjoy sitting down with an iPad and an Xbox for entertainment. I have a 16 year old truck for the weekends and a brand new Fiat for my daily driver. I understand both sides of the argument, and they're both valid.

My mother bought an iPad at the age of 67. She's not remotely technical - before she got a mac, I'd routinely get support calls of the quality "help! microsoft isn't working!", where 'microsoft' meant anything from Word to a browser to, well, anything. Anyway, the ipad was used for about a month, then plonked on a shelf to gather dust as she went back to her macbook.

As a naif and something of a technophobe, she definitely did benefit from moving from Windows to OSX (back in the late XP days), but iOS left her cold.

I think the argument should be(or is) whether I can have a computing experience other than that provided currently by Apple, Google et all.

I think historically user has lost once, seriously Linux never delivered the promised land for more mass users. I would be more interested if users can have mobile experience which is not tainted by interest of big co-operations. Unless there is an alternative, I hardly doubt there will be any change in status quo.

firefoxOS to the rescue.

How would that be any different?

if it comes, the big corporate interest will have been "The shoulders of giants." Apple's iphone, the competition from Google and all the financial benefits from that have generated a lot of progress fast.

I use open office, and it's a good example I think. If we didn't have MS office, would we have open office? would it be as good?

If Firefox OS succeeds, would it ever have been made without the smartphone market having already been defined?

"if users can have mobile experience which is not tainted by interest of big co-operations"

This is impossible. All co-operation has biases, for profit or for another reason, everything comes with "strategy-taxes".

your parent's experiences just what PG pondered in 2008.

http://old.ycombinator.com/ideas.html

"2. Simplified browsing. There are a lot of cases where you'd trade some of the power of a web browser for greater simplicity. Grandparents and small children don't want the full web; they want to communicate and share pictures and look things up. What viable ideas lie undiscovered in the space between a digital photo frame and a computer running Firefox? If you built one now, who else would use it besides grandparents and small children? "

After 7 years, we know clearly now tablets/phones and mobile apps are the answers for that question for the present.

I just got my wife a Surface Pro 3 and now she doesn't use her iPad anymore. She rents movies, reads books, uses RSS via Flipboard, edits photos, installs apps and experiments with things. She also takes notes with the stylus, rips songs from YouTube and has Adblock installed in Chrome (edit: and after all that, she can throw it in the docking station connected to a 2nd large touch screen, keyboard and mouse) - things she could never do on an iPad.

So yeah, mobile is limiting but it doesn't have to be. Once you venture outside of Apple's cold embrace, many things are possible.

The Surface is a strange one, seeing as it is both a PC and a mobile device in one. There are upsides - as you've mentioned - but downsides too. I suspect my parents might not be quite as comfortable using a Surface than they are with an iPad. I'm glad your wife is enjoying it, though.

However, I'm really not trying to get into a war between platforms. My point is that adding limitations, which many of us see as reducing how powerful a device is, can actually enable the user to go further and do more than they could previously.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com