Speaking of Standards

Unless you have been living under a rock or been completely offline for the past several months, you know that Saturday was Apple iPad day and, today being the first “work” day post-iPad-emergence, the news and media sites are predictably in full-on iPad fever. Apple announced that it sold over 300,000 iPads on Saturday alone, along with close to a million applications and over 250,000 ebooks. A look at Techmeme this morning at 9:05am US Eastern showed that 10 of the 14 top stories were all about the iPad. It’s hard to find a single media site that is not referencing the iPad in some way.

I haven’t bought one yet, although I have the perfect use case for it. As much as I love chasing bright, shiny objects, I’m waiting in part to see how the “1.0″ release goes – and also to find out how I can connect a webcam to it for video. That said, it’s very tempting… and since I use Macs and an iPhone, it’s a natural fit with my infrastructure.

But as a strong supporter of open standards, I also find it philosophically hard to buy a completely closed system, even one that is rather bizarrely helping promote the growth of open standards!

A COMPLETELY CLOSED SYSTEM

The reality of the iPad is that Apple chose the “iPhone model” of development versus the “MacBook model”. With a MacBook, such as the one I’m typing this on, you have a very open UNIX-based operating system that you can hack away on to your heart’s content (in the original good form of the work “hack”). You can add new software, you can install, compile, and do whatever you want with it. Sure, you get your “official” software updates from Apple, as you would from any manufacturer, but you have the freedom to do whatever you want with the system.

In contrast, no application gets on the iPhone – and now the iPad – without going through Apple. Sure, you can “jailbreak” the iPhone, and people are already reporting jailbreaking the iPad, and some small percentage of the techie audience will do that… but at the cost of losing some of the syncing with Apple… and the constant challenge of future Apple updates that may block the jailbreaks. It’s not an easy path.

Harvard professor Jonathan Zittrain hit on this in an article back on February 3 entitled “A fight over freedom at Apple’s core“:

This is the significance of the iPad. It could have been built either like a small Apple Macintosh – open to any outside software – or as a big iPhone, controlled by Apple. Apple went with the latter. Attach a keyboard to it and it could replace a PC entirely – boasting plenty of new apps, but only as Apple deems them worthy.

He goes on to note this fundamental shift:

Users no longer own or control the apps they run – they merely rent them minute by minute.

And ends with the plea:

Mr Jobs ushered in the personal computer era and now he is trying to usher it out. We should focus on preserving our freedoms, even as the devices we acquire become more attractive and easier to use

As one who believes in “The Internet Way” of distributed and decentralized applications and services, it’s hard to think of dropping $500+ on a completely closed device… even though it may be a very cool and sexy device that would be outstanding to have in our family room as an entertainment guide, web browser and so much more!

PROMOTING THE OPEN WEB

And yet.. in an incredible bit of irony, the iPad may be one of the single biggest drivers of open standards for the web. Take a look at point #2 on Apple’s technical note on “Preparing Your Web Content for iPad”:

“Use W3C standard web technologies instead of plug-ins.” Most importantly… no support of Adobe Flash for video – use HTML 5 instead. Now, it’s tempting to merely categorize this as a contest between two corporate giants – Apple not wanting to cater to Adobe’s desire to control all the formats people use to view online content. And undoubtedly that plays a factor here, too… but for open standards advocates, it’s truly a beautiful thing.

Take a look at Apple’s list of “iPad Ready” web sites. Here are major web content providers that have switched from Flash-based video and audio to HTML5 – and Apple invites you to add your site using the language of standards:

Just do a Google search on “ipad HTML5″ to see a stream of other related stories. Or read the Gizmodo article from last week, “How the iPad Is Already Reshaping the Internet (Without Flash)“:

The iPad doesn’t run Flash. If your website uses Flash, it won’t play well on the iPad. Turns out, a lot of people want their sites to look pretty on the iPad. So the internet’s already starting to look different.

and:

It’s interesting, to say the least, that a device promising to be the best browsing experience—cue Scott Forestall crazy eyes— is in fact reshaping the internet. You could argue it’s for the better, moving sites away from proprietary formats and heavy, resource-sucking designs to more open standards, and more efficient layouts that are easier to use

As the article goes on to note, if you care about the market of the people viewing your site on the iPad (and, in my opinion, you’d be crazy NOT to care), you really have no choice but to look at how you can ensure your content is viewable.

YouTube, of course, has been experimenting with a HTML5 video player and you can join the beta program to try it out. Many, many others appear to be experimenting with HTML5. Some engineers have even ported the Quake II game to HTML 5. Expect much more to follow…

RESOLVING THE PARADOX

So what should an open standards advocate do?

• Drop the $500+ on a new bright shiny toy with the knowledge that even while you are funding a company to promote a completely closed end device you are also helping promote the opening up of the web?

• Wait and look forward to buying a more open end device – but be very glad for the open web that so many other people are buying iPads?
• Ignore the whole topic and wonder why Apple is able to attract so much attention.

Which will you choose?

P.S. Me? Sooner or later I expect I’ll probably own one…