Have an honest-to-gosh iPad in the home for the first time (we’ve reached the stage where dad just had one lying around and another Zoom box is useful)<\/p>\n
My snarky-but-honest social media ready thought:<\/p>\n
“Stop being impressed that your child can use one. Be troubled that the thing is exactly calibrated for minds working at a child’s level.”<\/p>\n
But will focus less on that — was recently regaled with an ad for the iPad Pro, and pleased to see a point that Apple and I agree on: An iPad is not a computer.<\/p>\n
Let’s go ahead and lean into this distinction because, hardware notwithstanding, I think it’s a good one to use. An iPad is not a computer, nor is an iPhone. Also not computers: Android devices neither. Mac and Windows laptops and desktops generally are, at least for now. Linux (lets be pedantic for a sec, GNU\/Linux) computers absolutely are and will likely will be forever.<\/p>\n
The main distinction in a general form: You own and control computers – which are *general purpose machines* — and have at least the option of great deal of control in their operation and underlying systems. The other things are limited use appliances – in which (despite being made of computer parts) the owning company has deliberately disabled “general use,” partly to make them easy to use and partly to retain a great deal of control over them.<\/p>\n
Going further – every household needs at least one computer, on which you save the stuff you care about, OUTSIDE of “the cloud.”<\/p>\n
No excuse for most of you. You can perhaps use a Windows or Mac machine (less safe) or get a Raspberry Pi. (very safe and cheap).<\/p>\n
Further, then. Every household should have at least one computer — on which you save the things you care about, outside of “the cloud.”<\/p>\n
The Mac and Windows machines are okay for this — but even better is a Linux machine. The very-cheap Raspberry Pi is a great candidate for this; get on it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Have an honest-to-gosh iPad in the home for the first time (we’ve reached the stage where dad just had one lying around and another Zoom box is useful) My snarky-but-honest social media ready thought: “Stop being impressed that your child can use one. Be troubled that the thing is exactly calibrated for minds working at […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrm4.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrm4.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrm4.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrm4.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrm4.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=72"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jrm4.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":75,"href":"https:\/\/jrm4.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/72\/revisions\/75"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jrm4.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=72"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrm4.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=72"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jrm4.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=72"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}