Normally when there is a topic making the rounds that I don't care about, I put in a bit of effort to just not say anything about it. Sometimes I put on a timed mute for a couple of keywords, keep it out of my eyes for a couple of days so I don't have to deal with feeling annoyed.
But that Apple thing today... man. It saddens me to see so many people spill so many words about computers built so carefully to prevent you from stretching your imagination.
I am well aware that iPads offer creative software that lets new, inexpert users do things they never could before while offering a very gentle initial learning curve. This isn't something to scoff at or dismiss lightly, it's wonderful!
But if the trade-off is that you can never take what you've learned into any other app? That in most cases you can't even take your files with you to another computer or app? That right there is a trap, intentionally or not.
@gnomon Like you, I muted most of the Apple hashtags for the day. I’ll disagree with you about the skills learned using software; the most important thing for non-experts can learn is that they can do a thing. Getting files off an iPad isn't that tough; save to Files, open your account on the web or another device, and it's there.
It's not perfect; but no systems are. I'd say it's good enough for most.
@WTL@scruss@gnomon Not only can you save files but most apps will let you save to a variety of cloud services and/or copy, move to or from those services. This includes usb drives and networked drives as well. I regularly access external drives connected via my Mac with is just a file server these days. And share files with clients that use GoogleDrive, Microsoft OneDrive and Dropbox. Easy to access right from the sidebar of the iPad Files app.
@WTL I don't know, man. I've dealt with more than one kid who had only a single secondhand Apple device start going flaky on them, never had the allowance room to set up an iCloud account, and lost everything. I don't think I can agree with "good enough for most".
I agree that learning a thing is possible at all is a huge benefit. One hundred percent. Down with gatekeeping, down with barriers to entry. But we have to remove barriers to later progress too.
@gnomon Absolutely. I’m not a fan of lock-in or barriers to progress.
In the case of the kid with a device starting to malfunction, I’d say it's the parent's responsibility to set up backups before things break. Kids don't understand how much they'll miss (whatever) if/when it disappears.
That said, many adults don't understand backups either.
I have the circuit board of the 5 1/4” 570MB SCSI drive that died on me, mounted on the wall as a reminder.
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