Why I Don’t Like the Apple iPad

I’ve never seen one. I’m sure it looks and feels sensual and beautiful and all multi-touchy. This is not about whether it is technically brilliant or not. My problem is philosophical and it is summed up here:

“FSF’s John Sullivan launches the Defective by Design campaign and petition to rain on Steve’s parade, barely minutes out of the starting gate. ‘This is a huge step backward in the history of computing,’ said FSF’s Holmes Wilson, ‘If the first personal computers required permission from the manufacturer for each new program or new feature, the history of computing would be as dismally totalitarian as the milieu in Apple’s famous Super Bowl ad.’ The iPad has DRM writ large: you can only install what Apple says you may, and ‘computing’ goes consumer mainstream — no more twiddling, just sit back, spend your money, and watch the show — while we allow you to.”
What is clear is that the rise of the App Store removes control of the computer from the user. It makes me wonder what the next generation of OS X will look like.

And here:

the iPad is choc-full of some of the most restrictive DRM ever to hit a consumer product. Defective by Design calls the iPad “a computer that will never belong to its owner.”