Doctorow's piece is as preachy and pedantic as you'd expect (ugh, God, I'll compile some open source software this afternooooooon, dad, OK?!), but he makes any number of solid points.

I think that the press has been all over the iPad because Apple puts on a good show, and because everyone in journalism-land is looking for a daddy figure who'll promise them that their audience will go back to paying for their stuff. The reason people have stopped paying for a lot of "content" isn't just that they can get it for free, though: it's that they can get lots of competing stuff for free, too. The open platform has allowed for an explosion of new material, some of it rough-hewn, some of it slick as the pros, most of it targetted more narrowly than the old media ever managed

The Macalope doesn't think Docotorow is completely right, though. The iPod and iTunes proved that most people don't care whether or not the ecosystem is closed if it's sexy and easy to use. Life is short and not that many people want to waste their time using stuff that looks like crap and is harder to use just because they can have the thrill of reading the source code.

Doctorow derides the "stupid stereotype of a technophobic, timid, scatterbrained mother," but that frankly just serves to show how his perspective is solely that of the technological elite. of people find systems that we think simple to be intimidating and hard to use. Maybe Doctorow's mother is SSH-ing and chmod-ing all over the place, but the Macalope's dear ma has only learned how to e-mail a picture, thanks to her iPhone.

It's true that there is a loss of control with the iPad/iPhone/iPod Touch ecosystem which the Macalope has railed against in the past. He spoke with 's Paul Kafasis (disclosure: former advertiser on the Macalope's web site) who noted that these closed ecosystems make it increasingly difficult for his company to bring their cool stuff to those platforms. Kafasis indicated that if Apple continues to keep things locked down, Rogue Amoeba may slowly be forced to other, more open platforms, such as Google's Android. The Macalope snarkily told him to enjoy the SDK and the .