We like to hack things, to take them apart to understand how they work, recombine their elements, improve them and add new ones, some of which we’ve built from scratch. We hack all kinds of things–computers, cars, food, networks, governments, music and so on.
We hack some things that we don’t own (like open-source software) and many things we do. Once we buy something we consider it ours to hack, and we don’t need or seek anyone’s permission to do so. Nobody can dictate where, how or what we hack, particularly when we’re not breaking any laws.
Our work is profoundly beneficial; it’s a big source of creative destruction in the economy and society. We turn out innovations much better and faster than big sleepy incumbents do, and we also keep them on their feet. They might not like us, but they can’t stop us; we’ll either hack their wares or turn out better ones. So we don’t need to play nice with them, and don’t have any interest in doing so.
Entities that welcome us are, in the not-too-long-run, going to outperform those that don’t, because we bring so much energy and generate so much innovation.
McAfee writes, “The sustained and rampant success of the iCosystem directly challenges core aspects of this ethos. It calls into question the idea that maximum innovation results from maximum autonomy, which has become almost an article of faith in some quarters. Millions of users and the iCosystem are teaming up to behave in ways that upset some geeks’ ideas about the way the world works, or how it should. Hyperbole, vitriol, contempt and alarmism are all-too-common reactions when this happens. We’d be better served by thoughtful reconsideration of how technology-based innovation occurs, and how it can best be encouraged.”
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
I guess I am not a geek and don’t know any – we all have ipads and love them.
Geeks can jailbreak. They need no permission to do so. What’s the problem?
@ Anonymous©
Much better to posses a female, right?
Divorced much?
Geeks hate iPads because they are snobs. Period.
More precisely why Geeks don’t like Apple products – because you don’t need to be a Geek to use them. There are no buried drivers to install, minuscule settings to tweek or trillions of hardware / software variations to account for. And therefore, the Geeks lose their power when non-Geeks adapt Apple products.
Today is my “Windows Liberation Day”. For 6 years the only Windows based computers I’ve had to deal with in my life are the POS Dell Laptops my Company purchases for me. The latest Dell died, and they have replaced it with an MBP. No more Windows machines in my life! YES!
I look forward to the day when Geeks and Hacks and IT departments don’t dictate what products I use.
If they hate the iCosystem, I really wish they would just go back to microsoft where they belong and leave me to enjoy my iPhone and iPad in peace.
When the iPad grows into a real computer, give me a call. Until then, calling it ‘revolutionary’ is silly.
When did a giant step backwards in the world of technology become ‘revolutionary’? The only thing ‘magic’ about the gadget is how so many people are ready to suck up and be sucked in by the marketing genius of Steve Jobs.
Actually, the public could care less what geeks think. Been to slash dot lately? Man, those guys are dinosaurs. If the world of computing had gone the way the slash dotters wanted it to go we would still all be staring at flickering monitors with amber type and entering everything via the keyboard.
“Our work is profoundly beneficial”
That’s why the open source community is kicking so much ass.
Sometimes complete autonomy is entropy. For 99.99999% of the consumer population, there is *zero* value being able to hack an OS.
Back in the days of primitive man, you had to know how to make your tools before you could use them. This is 2010.
inane
let them hack something else
ipad is for people that just want to get something down now
computers are just a small part of life
no big deal
Oh, and this: I’m not even a geek. I just want and need the power of a real computer to do what I do. Surfin’ and emailing is the absolute limit of the actual usefulness of this glass slab.
Hmmm…. geek food:
Geeks are repulsive social misfits that like to lord other people that they have technical knowledge that most socially well adjusted people lack. Many geeks have the secret dream that someday a beautiful woman will need her hard drive defragged and their windows registry repaired, and will joyfully fuck the lowly geek because he knows how to do these things that her football player boyfriend doesn’t know.
The iPad leaves the geeks stripped of these dreams. He is immediately transformed from a repulsive geek holding valuable arcane knowledge to just a repulsive geek.
My wife and I visited some friends and their daughter this weekend the daughter is 5. I brought the ipad over because the father likes playing with gadgets but doesn’t like buying them. As soon as I walked he said, I know you have one so hand it over. I didn’t get it back for five hours. Be watched videos with his in laws, who were also over, did some other net stuff, then watched videos with the kid, and when he put the ipad down she took it and started playing games and playing with the virtual piano app. When she got bored at dinner she got up, went on the couch, picked up the iPad and started playing the piano again. I had bought an app to show the father something, and forgot that that leaves my password logged in for a while. When I got the ipad back from the 5 year old I saw that she had been playing some game and had bought the upgraded version. Luckily it was only 99 cents.
So there you have most of the family, including a kid that just finished preschool, able to operate an iPad with no instruction, just by picking the thing up.
How could geeks not be threatened by that? How do you justify your miserable, pathetic existence when your only claim to utility is arcane technical knowledge, when faced with a device that a five year old can operate?
@Call Me
Ah yes: the mass-hypnosis theory. Good one. Really. Never heard it articulated quite so thoughtfully.
You either get it or you don’t. Advertising that you don’t is unnecessary, especially when it’s so obvious.
@Call me
“When the iPad grows into a real computer, give me a call”
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&defl=en&q=define:computer&sa=X&ei=keo1TIW5OKW1nAfqmoCNBA&ved=0CBoQkAE
http://www.answers.com/topic/computer-1
Visit the app store and be amazed
you`re welcome
I’m a geek and I love my iPad, and especially the free software I can get for it.
The 25 Best Free iPad Apps
http://jimlynch.com/index.php/2010/04/03/the-25-best-free-ipad-apps/
The 25 Best Free iPad Games
http://jimlynch.com/index.php/2010/04/07/the-25-best-free-ipad-games/
I don’t understand why people feel the need to hate it. Don’t want one? Don’t buy one? Wait for an Android tablet and then fire away.
I’m glad Android is around, Apple needs some competition. But it would take a lot for me to move to an Android tablet. My iPad hits pretty much all the marks for me.
One thing I would love is a retina display for the iPad. I’ll get one eventually, once Apple updates the iPad. I love reading ebooks on my iPad.
geeks aspire to be Morlocks.
@bdb
“All those geeks who are offended by the iPad should just not buy one.”
I agree. Better yet, if these geeks are all that, why don’t they just build something superior to the iPad?
This is an old argument – the Cathedral vs. the Bazaar – outlined by Eric Raymond a few decades back. It was easy enough to cheer for the Bazaar when they were rolling out Linux and Mozilla (forgetting they also rolled out viruses) while the Cathedral was epitomized by Microsoft. But Apple has challenged that simplistic dichotomy.
Unlike that earlier era, Apple doesn’t rule or impose its will. It doesn’t have that kind of control. “Here is our philosophy, our solution” is a lot different from “This is what you will run”. Rather than an ultimate truth, the goal is to say “It just works”. And even for those of us who spent 25 years in the computer business, that’s well beyond “good enough”.
For those who still want to “hack”, good luck to you. Call us when you’ve hacked a better iPad.
Hacking music (in other words, stealing) is beneficial to the community?
Riiiiiiight.
I love the hacker community in a variety of ecosystems. Hacking cars and audio is a boatload of fun. But I would submit this assertion is unprovable, or perhaps I should say “untestable”:
“Entities that welcome us are, in the not-too-long-run, going to outperform those that don’t, because we bring so much energy and generate so much innovation.”
I would like to think this is true, but I would like to see some actual evidence.
Wow, you guys really rip into “geeks” – I assume it’s because the title says “geeks” “hate” the iPad.
Geek here, love my iPad. I am willing to bet I’m not the only one. Some of you act like jerks, thinking there are ONLY geeks OR Apple users. It’s a false dichotomy, something I’m all too used to seeing on this website. Geeks vs Apple, Republicans vs pinko liberals, etc. It’s simplistic thinking. I thought Apple users were supposed to be smarter? PROVE IT.
And besides, what is a geek? I love these pseudo-intellectual posts like Opj did – repulsive social misfits? I’m sorry, I think it’s possible to enjoy geeky stuff and still be socially accepted. Besides, people who make broad, prejudiced generalizations about others based on their choices of gadgetry are WHAT then, if GEEKS are repulsive social misfits?
Opj, your post makes you sound like an asshole. Including children in your anecdote does not change that. You apparently think so, SO little of people you don’t know. You think everyone who’s a geek is some sad basement dweller who has a Tux sex doll and refuses to use anything but command prompts and builds their own mainframe and what, maybe has a pocket protector and thick glasses too? That’s a pathetic way to look at people. I can do that too, only replace “geek” with “Apple lemming/cultist/etc”. Get it through your thick skull, these generic hate comments can VERY easily be turned on you, and they make you sound like a child.
But no, I suppose you guys always have to have an enemy, don’t you? Microsoft is basically out of the picture now so we’re going to go after more abstract foes, like “geeks”. OOOH they HATE our iPad because some article said so! GET THEM!
Is there no place on the internet for GROWN-UPS to talk about Apple news?
Geeks lack the ability to create things PERIOD. They take a beautiful well designed PRODUCT and try to see how it works because they lack the ability to conceive it in the first place.
Geeks pride themselves on their limited knowledge. Innovation and creativity are only possible in the human mind. Knowledge is static and easily stored and retrieved in various forms but innovation and creativity cannot be reproduced by a machine.
Geeks will argue that their crude kludges are innovative and creative. Let’s see them actually design a desirable device and bring it to market and make a success of it.
Geeks hate Apple because Apple products are very well designed and easy to use. That takes away all the hope for geeks to make them complicated and limited in use.
Hmmm …from my experience, real geeks do not call themselves geeks.
@Call me…when you can rouse a whole nation of people into thinking in a particular way…that IS a revolution. Kinda looks like you are ‘out of sync’ with the population and cannot see beyond the simple applications of the iPad.
A non article, total bullshit. Filling the 24 hour news cycle with nothing of value to say. Just click whoring.