Mike Monteiro Fucking Gets It

February 5th, 2010, by The Angry Drunk

Add Mike Monteiro to the list of peo­ple who actu­ally under­stand the iPad. The money quote:

The peo­ple don’t want “tablet com­put­ers” with Ubuntu and OpenID (worst name ever for a prod­uct attempt­ing broad accep­tance). They could hon­estly give a shit whether it’s a closed or open sys­tem. And, let’s be really hon­est, they prob­a­bly care as much about DRM as they do about base­ball play­ers juic­ing; by which I mean not very much at all. They want things to work most of the time, and be easy to fix when they don’t. And if the process by which it hap­pens is “magic” they are totally cool with that.

They want the thing in the movies.

This is a con­cept that’s been bang­ing around in my head for a while now. Ask most geeks if, given the oppor­tu­nity, they would want a device like the PADD from Star Trek. Hell, ask them if they would want the whole Star Trek com­put­ing expe­ri­ence (“Computer, down­load all avail­able pornog­ra­phy with the key­words, ‘asian,’ ‘big tit­ties’ and ‘les­bian’”). I think most would say yes. But, when con­fronted with what well may be the gen­e­sis of that model, they run scream­ing back to 1992. It’s weird.

10 comments - (Comments closed)
«  
  »
  • Anonymous

    When I saw the iPad, I said, “Finally — the Star Trek PADD!” What’s funny (not ha-ha) is when the iPhone was intro­duced, I said, “Finally — the Star Trek Communicator!”

    Is Apple about to cre­ate the Phaser?

  • http://mangochut.net/ man­gochut­ney

    When I saw the pre­sen­ta­tion I imme­di­ately thought: “Wil Wheaton will finally be able to scrib­ble one some­thing that isn’t just glass with printed paper behind it.“ I com­mented on this on the AMB blog (ep #45) already, but I’ll say it again:

    If I’m not much mis­taken were enter­ing an era (sounds pompous, but I couldn’t find a bet­ter expres­sion) of con­sumer friendly client-host-computing. This goes beyond the sin­gle task­ing approach of the iPhone and iPad, where you can only have one app run­ning at a time. You’ll decide what you want to do, load up the client device with the needed data and work away. Or to use your exam­ple: You stuff the iPad up to the brim with porn, walk away from the host com­puter and start jerk­ing off. When you’re done, you delete the unnec­es­sary data, and fill the iPad with stuff for your next task.

  • Anonymous

    I wanted that thing on the tv. Once I was clear about how the first iPhone inter­face actu­ally worked, I con­grat­u­lated TNG’s Mike Okuda for the first con­sumer real­iza­tion of his software-based inter­face design for TNG. I did so again the day the iPad debuted. Not bad for 1987.

    • http://mangochut.net/ man­gochut­ney

      IMO Apple should make a spe­cial edi­tion where there’s PADD writ­ten below the Apple logo, not iPad. They should also add an inter­face skin that makes it looks like LCARS.

      • Anonymous

        Once the SDK’s in enough hands, I’m bet­ting we’ll seea dozen LCARS-style blinkie apps up on the App Store before you can say “shut up, Wesley.”

        • http://mangochut.net/ man­gochut­ney

          You’re prob­a­bly right. I loved this episode of Family Guy.

  • http://twitter.com/CthulhuTV Jim Perry

    I don’t want to worry about dri­vers or if the flash mem­ory is sol­dered cor­rectly to enable fast-interleaved access. I don’t give a fuck if it works with my refrig­er­a­tor. I want it to work for me.

    Maybe peo­ple who bust their nut over an open sys­tem should try using a sys­tem that is more com­plete from the start. No sys­tem truly is but some do it a hell of a lot bet­ter than oth­ers and they do it in a way that does not take away from the user expe­ri­ence. Maybe that is the prob­lem with “open sys­tem” peo­ple; their def­i­n­i­tion of a user expe­ri­ence is hav­ing to fuck with the sys­tem to make it work in the first place because it is incom­plete or half-assed.

    For some soft­ware, I like expand­abil­ity and options but it is often the case, as George Carlin once observed: “Too many choices, peo­ple. Not healthy.” (From “Back in Town,” 1996).

    Money quote: “Hell, ask them if they would want the whole Star Trek com­put­ing expe­ri­ence (“Computer, down­load all avail­able pornog­ra­phy with the key­words, ‘asian,’ ‘big tit­ties’ and ‘les­bian’”). I think most would say yes.”

    Absolutely! Make it so!

  • Anonymous

    Your last sen­tence says it all. If you had really queried any of the über-geeks up until 8 days ago, they would have said this was their inspi­ra­tion to get into the field in the first place. Then, some­body hands it to them on a sil­ver plat­ter, and they’re say­ing: “Oh, did I say Star Trek? I meant The Flintstones!”

  • http://mangochut.net/ man­gochut­ney

    [I thought I’d repost my com­ment on this.
    If you are able to restore the orig­i­nal com­ments, please delete this one.]

    When I saw the pre­sen­ta­tion I imme­di­ately thought: “Wil Wheaton will finally be able to scrib­ble one some­thing that isn’t just glass with printed paper behind it.“
    I com­mented on this on the AMB blog (ep #45) already, but I’ll say it again:

    If I’m not much mis­taken were enter­ing an era (sounds pompous, but I couldn’t find a bet­ter expres­sion) of con­sumer friendly client-host-computing.
    This goes beyond the sin­gle task­ing approach of the iPhone and iPad, where you can only have one app run­ning at a time.
    You’ll decide what you want to do, load up the client device with the needed data and work away.
    Or to use your exam­ple: You stuff the iPad up to the brim with porn, walk away from the host com­puter and start jerk­ing off. When you’re done, you delete the unnec­es­sary data, and fill the iPad with stuff for your next task.