iPad is iBad for freedom
With new tablet device, Apple's Steve Jobs pushes unprecedented extension of DRM to a new class of general purpose computers — As Steve Jobs and Apple prepared to announce their new tablet device, activists opposed to Digital Restrictions Management (DRM) …
Context & Ripple Effects
Two days after Steve Jobs unveiled the iPad at Apple's Wednesday event in late January 2010, the Free Software Foundation fired back with its 'iBad' framing: a device that extends Digital Restrictions Management, previously associated with media playback, into what the group argues is a new class of general-purpose computers. The critique picked up same-day echoes on independent blogs like al3x's 'On the iPad', giving Apple's launch a visible freedom-versus-control fault line from day one.
The reaction splits the developer world in the corpus itself: former Facebook iPhone developer Joe Hewitt calls the iPad everything he has been wishing for, while the FSF positions it as the sharpest DRM expansion yet. Around the launch sit two unresolved business threads — an ongoing trademark dispute with Fujitsu over the iPad name dating to September, and Jobs's stated confidence that international iPad data deals will be locked up by June or July.
First-order effects
- Buyers of the new tablet get a general-purpose computer where third-party software installs only through Apple's approval-gated store, making the review process — not the user — the arbiter of what the device can run.
- Developers face a fork immediately: Hewitt-style enthusiasm about the form factor versus the FSF's demand that code be installable without Apple's permission, with the App Store terms deciding who ships.
Second-order effects
- Apple's carrier negotiations become part of the control argument — Jobs's June-or-July timeline for international data deals means network bundling, like software distribution, is negotiated centrally rather than left to users.
- The naming fight with Fujitsu has to reach resolution before any international marketing push, since the 'iPad' mark is contested in exactly the markets where those data deals are meant to land.
Third-order effects
- If tablets follow the iPhone's template, vendor-approved storefronts become the default distribution structure for a whole computing category, and the FSF's 'iBad' framing marks the point where free-software advocacy starts contesting consumer hardware rather than just desktop operating systems.
The trend: General-purpose computing is shifting from user-installed software to vendor-approved storefronts, with free-software advocates mounting their first organized resistance at the tablet category's birth.