Apple C-Suites: "We want kids to code."
Apple Ads: "What's a computer?"
Whilst it might be me, somebody somewhere doesn't understand something.
If you think of it as a firewall around knowledge, it's basically like this set of rules:
Deny: all
Allow: <specific group>How does limiting the supply of technicians lower their wages? Is it because Apple is limiting their own supply of available technicians? Why can't a given technician go elsewhere -- is that because the "don't poach treaty" never stopped or something else?
I edit 4k video on my iPad, edit pictures, memes, do a bit of drawing with Procreate. I'm by no means professional at any of these things, but it isn't the tools holding me back.
I don't see any reason not to use Excel or Numbers or what have you on an iPad with the keyboard. I'm sure it would work fine.
I know a couple professional music producers who do the bulk of their work on a tablet now.
What hasn't made it to tablets is coding environments. Codea and Swift Playgrounds feel like toys to me.
But it's only a matter of time. I think "decades, if it ever happens" is entirely too pessimistic, it's more "now, if you want it", for most of those things.
And it's definitely not "literally no one". It's more people than you think.
If it were possible to multitask Excel or Word in Android, that's probably what I would be using right now for a lot of my basic workflow.
We look through rose colored glasses because, back then, we were able to use Excel, Word, (insert your program of choice). The people in our social circle were also able to use them. However, this was almost entirely because of who we hung out with.
The shift to closed devices (may) eventually have an effect on hobbyists, in the same way that the average person no longer knows how to change the oil in their car, but for now there's little evidence that iPhones and tablets are limiting the number of young, competent programmers (or even the number of IT hobbyists in general).
This worries me not because of any open computing concerns, but because of how FUNDAMENTAL general purpose computers are to nearly every decent paying professional job out there. All of them. No one daily drives Excel or Salesforce One or edits video or codes websites or balances accounts in Quickbooks on an iPad. Literally no one; we're decades away from that being mainstream, if it ever happens.
Everyone needs to be computer literate. Being a wiz on your iPhone or iPad does not, in any sense of the word, make you computer literate. Kids growing up with these closed-off devices quite literally destroys the fire of desire for learning how computers work, or even accidentally gaining a glancing knowledge with them enough to hold a good office office job.
Companies like Apple endlessly mouth their desire to get more kids to code, then their arms release devices so closed off that even trying to take a quick peek at how they work triggers eighteen system integrity protection alarms. You can't have it both ways, Apple.
Well, whatever. I don't really care. It just means more ultra high paying jobs for me. Apple (and Google, and to a lesser degree Microsoft) are literally actively sabotaging their own talent pool, guaranteeing that they'll never be able to hire enough people while paying the ones they do hire a ton of money.