Attention older geeks: You are not the world.

Even though I don’t own an iPad, and probably won’t anytime soon, I find the launch exciting. It seems like a big shift in interfaces, and a great opportunity for some of the talented developers I know.

It is also, apparently, going to kill creativity and social aspects of content, if you ask Cory Doctorow.

This is a difference of opinion, but I have a few key things to point out:

Closed platforms can be hugely inspirational. Go read Scott Pilgrim and tell me it would have existed without Super Nintendo and Sega Genesis, two very closed platforms.
Nothing that offers internet access keeps people from creating. The internet BEGS for content, and offers thousands of ways to create it. My work and passions don’t require unfettered access to my device’s inner workings. They require information and a way to share my ideas and conclusions.
Code is not the totality of creativity. Geeks (and I count myself among them) often forget this.
No one is going to buy an iPad because ‘it’s easy’. If you think Apple’s value proposition is ‘easy’, you don’t understand the market. Simplicity, clarity of use and purpose, and astonishment aren’t ‘easy’. If they were, maybe people would use linux for something other than servers and proving a point.
Saying Apple isn’t developer friendly is in no way connected to the reality I observe. The most engaged, excited and interested developers I know are working on Apple’s mobile devices through the app store. Would they like a clearer process from Apple? Of course. But they also like having a market, which no other mobile platform offers in a meaningful way.

What confuses me most is the suggestion that the iPad, and by extension the iPhone OS, design has “a palpable contempt for the owner”. It’s not contempt, it’s respect for a more common set of priorities than your own. Contempt is creating something that you need to conform to, a thousand times a day. Contempt is expecting someone to become an expert in using your tools, to make a simple task feasible.

If you’ve ever used Open Office, you’ve felt software with contempt for you.