Open the iPad
Charles Stross makes some good points about the pros and cons of the iPad - his take on Flash is funny, but then I ran across this:
Secondary motive: I want to stay current. I have a bunch of O'Reilly nutshell books on Python. I would like to be able to open a terminal and run a python interpreter while I work through the tutorials. Ditto ruby, smalltalk, or whatever else I want to play with. The "no interpreters" rule in the app store gets right up my nose.
While average users neither know nor care about that rule, the tech influencers do care. I didn't think that mattered at first - which, given my role as a Smalltalk evengelist might be surprising - but I'm starting to think it will matter. As happened with PC's "back in the day", Android (or WebOS) tablets will eventually have a "good enough" user experience, and the open nature of them will matter. Apple lost that war once; they might be setting themselves up to lose a second time.
