Apple iPad - hmm... Not with total DRM control!

It took me a while. The first couple of days after the introduction of the iPad I felt a combination of disappointment and "yeah, but it'll be a nice tool for x, y and z".

The following link is a must read for nerds/geeks/techies:

http://diveintomark.org/archives/2010/01/29/tinkerers-sunset

Note: The text is (in my opinion) not just Apple-specific, but specific to all vendors of closed app stores!

I'm actually not sure anymore that I wan't the iPad.

I think it's ok that Apple makes the hard- AND software inside of my laptop. Because I've never had a PC that worked as good as the one I have now (an almost 2 years old MacBook Pro).

But if I use the iPad Apple will not only control the hard- and software, but also the content on it - through their iBooks bookstore and which newspapers they make deals with.

I'm not being paranoid here, but I just don't like it. It's alright as long as my OSX is a FreeBSD unix I can tweak and hack as I want. My iPhone can be jailbreaked, but I don't want to. It's "just" a phone. But a tablet PC shouldn't be DRM controlled..

I still think the iPad looks great, and it seems to be possible to view non-Apple approved .epub and .pdf ebooks on it. But it's just easier and "more sexy" to buy content through iTunes/iBooks. And if Apple don't wan't a certain book (or movie for that matter - ever tried to search for "deep throat" in the iTunes Movie store?), then it's just not possible to buy it.

In the future - who knows if New York Times is allowed to write critical articles "against" Apple? Will Apple filter the article away? Will they kick out NYT in the end?

An iPad would be a wonderful email/surfing/movie/eBook-reading tool. But it should be open, not DRM-closed and controlled by a single entity.

Developers - please read the link in the beginning of this post, it's mandatory! :-)

But you shouldn't read the first one, without also reading this one (until the end):

http://gizmodo.com/5461485/ipad-snivelers-put-up-or-shut-up?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+gizmodo%2Ffull+%28Gizmodo%29

Have a nice one.