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Editorial | April 10, 2010

Apple in 2010 is Kodak in 1888

Kodak Camera in 1888

Kodak Camera, 1888. Photo courtesy of the National Museum of American History

The iPad is to computing in 2010 as the Kodak camera was to photography back in 1888.

In that year George Eastman registered Kodak as a trademark and coined the phrase “You Press the Button and We Do the Rest” thus introducing the concept of a “snapshot” and expanding access to photography beyond a niche, technical audience.

Prior to Kodak, photography was a pain.  You had to tinker with recipes, manipulate complicated instruments, and go through a time-consuming and error-prone processing period.  With the magical Kodak, however, you took a picture with the camera’s one button. You extracted the roll of film when it was used up and mailed the whole thing to Kodak for processing.  They’d return you a complete set of tidy-looking prints.

Amateur photography exploded and access to image making blew up.  Competitors came in on the scene and here we are in 2010 with a vast ecology of cameras from basic point-and-shoots to full-featured digital SLRs.

Some are complaining that iPad kills creativity by controlling access to computing.  Its “black box” concept of computer interaction waters down programming and restricts innovation because Apple controls both the programming environment and the user experience so tightly.  This, they argue, is a harbinger of a dark future where corporate behemoths restrict how we use computers.

But did this happen with photography when the Kodak was introduced?  Absolutely not.  Photography expanded and became even more instrumental in people’s lives.  The iPad will have a similar cultural effect by liberating computing from a technical crowd.  There will still be computers with power user features, knobs, and cogs and all sorts of customizations for tinkerers and professionals.  But there will also be a huge swath of very basic computers that get basic things done.  And offer a gateway experience for those who might otherwise be turned off from computing in its current form.

This is a promising time for computing.  Let’s think back to 1888.

  • Anonymous

    Cory Doctorow’s unhelpful screed aside, the design of the Ipad is one that primarily leaves the end user with consumption, and where there are openings for creativity, they are tightly controlled.

    As revolutionary as this device is. It is a mistake to assume it is liberating computing from the technical crowd, quite the opposite really and primarily because computing is not about sending and received email, reading the web, or adjusting a filter in some image manipulator.

    At its heart, computing is about manipulating the machine itself or network, you do this by creating software, being Kodak if you will. This is more and more achievable due to advances in programing and scripting languages, where the syntax is easy enough for an increasing number of creative people, musicians, designers, and many others whose vocation does not lie in technology yet create wonderful things. The web and the discipline you have are owed much to this advancement.

    When Apple has a developer agreement that states the following:

    3.3.1 – Applications may only use Documented APIs in the manner prescribed by Apple and must not use or call any private APIs. Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript as executed by the iPhone OS WebKit engine, and only code written in C, C++, and Objective-C may compile and directly link against the Documented APIs (e.g., Applications that link to Documented APIs through an intermediary translation or compatibility layer or tool are prohibited).

    What they mean to say is that all creative endeavor you wish to make for developing on the ipad and Iphone must use specifically approved languages, and cross-compilers that provide the capability to build your application in other languages are barred. That’s not to mention the fact that the only way to actually get software is by a single channel alone. Side-loading is disabled, this effectively bars creativity unless it is mediated by a single entity.

    So you are left with only approved tools, and only approved visibility.
    where an artist could build an application with an original language, or a piece of hardware, why that would be terrible. Lucky for us that Apple vets for all of us disruptive ideas before they can cause too much damage.