A couple of additional thoughts from me: Video game consoles are closed platforms, and I distinctly remember being upset and disappointed that there was no way for me to make my own games. This was, of course, because I already knew what it was like to be able to do so with other systems. As with the rest of the grew-up-with-open-systems-and-made-a-career-out-of-it crowd, if all I had access to was closed systems, I'm not sure I'd even be curious how they work, let alone be motivated to make my own.

But the iPad is hardly the end of open systems. I'm reminded of another platform that was just closed enough to be out of my reach: Microsoft Windows. To program Windows, you need commercial software that includes programming tools, the system libraries, and documentation. I can't speak definitively about the current state of Visual Studio, but during my formative years, even the steep student discount on Visual Studio made it enough of an investment that I needed to commit myself to the notion before I had a chance to try it. At the same time, Linux was becoming accessible enough to uneducated but motivated college students that it was the natural choice to fulfill my interest. I never developed any Linux desktop software—I'm a web app guy—but it was enough of a runway to build the momentum I needed.

It's awesome and necessary that Mac OS X includes professional development tools bundled with the operating system. Even the iPhone/iPad development tools are easy enough to legally obtain (it's a free download from Apple), so they get props for that. Strangely, I'm not sure that's enough to make them as accessible to neophyte programmers as the open systems of olde that ostensibly launched all our careers. It may be more important that a given mainstream platform be able to run a text editor and a Python interpreter than it have a C compiler and full OS libraries.

So there are many things that alienate people from controlling their computers and learning how to program. An important one in the iPad discussion is distribution. In what way does not being able to share arbitrary software projects with others inhibit my ability to develop an interest and skill in programming? I'm not saying there's no connection, I just can't answer the question directly from experience. Rather, it seems likely that closed development platforms encourage closed development communities—and I'm not even thinking of the original iPhone SDK terms of service that prohibited discussion of the SDK in public.

But I think what people are mostly thinking about with regards to the iPad is that an iPad-like device may eventually be someone's only computer, and you can't program an iPad from an iPad, at least not right now. I wonder how quickly that will change, and I wonder how big a role web applications will play in making that happen. We're a hair's breadth from a browser-based IDE and cloud hosting.

For quick calculations, my calculator of choice is Spotlight. Yes, Spotlight, the little magnifying glass in the upper-right corner of the Mac OS X screen that lets you do text search queries of your computer. If you type an arithmetic expression, the answer is the first "result" in the Spotlight menu. And since Spotlight is always available via keyboard (Command-Space by default), it's the fastest way I know to do simple arithmetic. (I also use Spotlight as a dictionary, and begrudgingly use it as an application launcher. It's pretty much useless for anything else. And yes, I know of the alternatives.)

It's interesting that Marco would bring the calculator example to the table in a discussion about iPad interfaces, because a calculator app for the iPad/iPhone is a prime candidate for emulating the desktop calculator interface. It's a touch interface, so we still need buttons to press to enter data into the calculator. Were Acqualia to port Soulver to the iPad, I'd expect to find a custom calculator-like keypad at the bottom of the screen, at the very least. [Update 3/13: Of course there's an iPhone version of Soulver, with a keypad.]

I want an Emacs port of Soulver. Maybe I'll write one. Of course, Emacs has a fancy calculator built in, and it includes a Reverse Polish Notation mode. (EmacsWiki on Calc.) But I like the idea of a textual calculator with real-time spreadsheet-like capabilities. And there are spreadsheet apps for Emacs, too: Simple Emacs Spreadsheet, Dismal, esheet.

Even at the time it never occurred to me that none of these effects were "digital" in any sense. Even the colored lights that sweep around the O in "HBO" are actual colored lights that sweep around in front of a camera. Also check out the computer driving the camera.

Part 2, part 3, part 4, part 5 (show outtro).

All hail the long form interview, and praise to Craig Ferguson who seems to be the only one doing it any more.

David is hosting copies of PDF scans of the Ace 100, 1000 and 500 manuals (links at the bottom of his article).

This just seems seriously ballsy to me, and I love it for that. With permission no doubt, and no risk to either brand, but still. Moxy.

At this point in my life I have to start assuming teenagers are too far removed from things from my own childhood to even hear the echoes. A kid in college today was 2 years old when Jurassic Park was in theaters. But I assume these things are funny even if you don't get the reference. It feels like a reference even when it's not one you know. I liked song parodies as a child when I was too young to know many popular songs. Seriously, how many Facts of Life references can Family Guy make and still be credible with people even slightly younger than I am?

A few obvious observations:

• Many people don't know how search engines work. A search for "login to Facebook" has this RWW article for its #2 result, and some people are convinced by this that it is an answer to the question "How do I log in to Facebook?" Searching like this is how many people start new sessions with websites, even if those sites have obvious and memorable addresses.
• Many people don't know how web addresses work. Web addresses (URLs) are arcane in appearance, and when the search feature of most browsers provides a more English-like interface to finding web pages, users tend to prefer searching to typing addresses. URLs are so arcane that users ignore the address bar completely, and don't know to look at it to determine "where" they are. It's important to check the address bar before entering your password on a website, but many people don't know how.
• When Facebook changes their interface, users tend to make a stink about it, and they've done it a few times in the past year. They've never diverged from their basic brand, but perhaps that brand is generic enough that some users can be convinced by the fact that this article is a search result that this is another Facebook redesign. Past frustrations with Facebook's interface changes have prepared these users to assume Facebook would redesign the interface with a new color scheme, ads, a news article, comments, and no way to get to any of the user's features.
• Many people don't read very carefully, especially when bouncing around on the web.

Other comments posted to this article by clued-in users are mostly unsympathetic to the confused, but it's important (for people building sites and web technology, at least) to realize that these factors are very common and affect how most people interact with the web. Modern browsers now combine the search box and the address box into one, so anything typed there that isn't an address performs a search—and anything that is an address, or just a domain name like "facebook.com," goes straight to the site without presenting a potentially confusing list of search results.

Long-time BrainLog readers may remember a modest version of this incident occurring right here back in 2003, when I commented on how a bank's credit card promotion site failed to provide basic technical trust cues, and how mainstream users wouldn't notice. That blog post became a top search result for the domain name of that promotion site, and earned a comment from someone who believed submitting a comment on that article with their personal information would be equivalent to applying for a credit card. Most web searchers finding that article just didn't read it very closely and assumed I was warning that the bank's site was a scam. I wasn't, but the confusion was understandable.