There isn't too much discussion when there's a new version of Photoshop, or VIM, or Django, or Wordpress, or countless other technologies (e.g. http://www.asciiflow.com/) and platforms that help with content creation. One reason I read HN is that these items usually make it here. It's easier to create content now than at any time in the past.

How many people built software before iOS and Android? A few folks scattered across huge companies that either built consumer products or provided services for those companies. Today, iOS has half a million apps -- somebody produced them. Arguably the 'consumption-only' device that you think has taken us a step backward has given tens of thousands of people incentive to produce something. Amazon's vision is for authors to be able to self-publish without going through the hassle of publishers, giving more incentive for people to produce. Whereas making movies was once a task for multibillion dollar studios, Youtube has enabled something like the Khan Academy to start earning money by producing content.

You cannot have better and better consumption oriented devices in a vacuum. Someone has to produce what the masses are consuming.

Nonsense. Pre-2008 (iPhone App Store launch) there was loads of software aimed at the residential market. There was also the open source movement, which had created a whole operating system from scratch. Yes, the App Stores have made it much easier to sell software, but to think that all software was made in megacorps is silly. This isn't the 1980s!

I guess the way it looks to me is that the last dramatic production advancement for lay people was the advent of blogging. The two major advancements after that have been social networking and tablets, which both somewhat degrade production signal.

The observation that an optimized consumption experience gives producers a bigger audience is an interesting one. But I think what I'm objecting to is the further distinction between those classes. The PC and blogging revolutions were profound to me in that they closed the gap between the producers and consumers. Tablets, on the other hand, make the distinction more overt. Same with the Kindle.

You cannot have better and better consumption oriented devices in a vacuum. Someone has to produce what the masses are consuming.

While this is true, my point is about who has the means for production. I would rather see that power distributed than concentrated.

I suspect that they were much more locally focused. Writing letters to the editor (because people still read the paper), aligning with community social organizations, being more actively involved in their communities.

So now we're able to form narrowcast tribes across geographic (and even temporal) boundaries. Are we better off? En masse, such connections may leave whole societies better off (Arab spring) but I think that perhaps we won't realize the full benefits until the focus returns to the local. And that won't happen until there's a rise in the locality of the internet.

Think reinvention of the local paper; or maybe a craigslist for the issues of the day.

And that can't happen until the technology is in the hands and power of EVERYONE. Think Kindles (or iPads, or whatever) in a rack at your McDonalds, literally replacing the local paper. Perhaps the biggest advancement here is the price point; but we need to cut that iPad cost in half perhaps 5-8 more times for this access to happen.

When that day hits--the day of the ubiquitous $1 Kindle--then I think we can claim democratization, and we will see a return to locality and the strengthening of our communities.

There is an assumption here that people with a PC will automatically become producers which I think is wrong. For people to become producers they need incentive and opportunity. These devices and the ease of content creation is means the opportunity bar is much lower (e.g. you don't need to get a publisher to agree on a manuscript to publish); and the incentive is higher (you can monetize content you produce whether its apps, books or videos much more easily).

What is missing here is actually a perspective on how consumption is a form of production itself– of perspective. Better access, and new forms and content for consumption, will create (that word!) new forms of consciousness, which are fed back in production.

Consumption today seem to me more of a form of networking of sources and producers, production of perspective. There's so little that we yet know about our still new internet reality. Polishing consumption may very well be necessary in order for us to make sense of our current social/technological stage, to produce new forms of social networking/organization and ultimately new every-other-form of content/artifacts.

To dive in at the deep end: consuming stuff on a tablet, with the accompanying delights and frustrations - is part of the networking of the device itself into the cycle of human content consumption-production. There's no reason to believe that the tablet as an object is finished, and that it won't evolve to fit the 'expressive needs' of people – your own frustration/pessimism are a part of this cycle, both leading people to not use tablets, to look for different desktop paradigms, new forms of interaction with tablets, improving tablet ergonomics and on and on. You're surely not alone.

The cycle won't stop. We must not get down when there's so much great work to be done! Yet, again, also our negative feeling in this regard is ultimately productive, if we let it.

One can at least see that the path-to-market of content has been democratized with the web over time… and the App stores/'App paradigm' are also helpful in making it possible for more to program.

I think a big part of our dilemmas have had to do with how isolated and abstract programming and development have been compared to mainstream society. A relative 'mainstreaming' of programming is still an incredible thought – yet it is happening right now!

Whatever happens to our present jobs, I can't help but think that the infusion of new programming talent is about to create a new reality – a wave that could lift a great number of us – given appropriate channels for us all to contribute so much more than regular business logic programming - and us people practicing and getting ready to catch it!

(over the top eh? :)

Reading per se, however, does not result in anything vanishing from the system. It _can_ mean that but usually the ideas or perspectives contained in the book or article change the ideas or perspectives of the reader. Reading _can_ be pure consumption, for sure, but that describes a specific type of reading.

One could argue that buying a physical copy and tossing it after you're done is the act of consumption. But then the consumption really concerns only the physical medium, not the content.

Am I splitting hairs? I'm not sure, to be honest, but I feel the more people talk about reading as something "for passive users to consume", the more it narrows the industry perspective on what transmitting ideas between people means or could mean.

You are, but let me split them further. Any expense can be classified as either a capital expense or a consumptive one. Expenses classified as one can usually, with a few logical contortions, also be classified as the other. For example, food is the classical consumptive expense, but one could also treat it as an investment as food keeps one alive (and healthy hopefully) and allows one to work in the future. I think that the same can be said about reading here. If you buy a book, it's an expense, and if you read it, you've "consumed" it. Sure you can read it again or someone else can read it, but it's still a consumer good.

I think what people mean here is that devices like this and the iPad are not generally geared to the production of works and more to their consumption. What I mean is, while reading a book on the Amazon Kindle might be an investment in your own mind and future, the Kindle doesn't enable one to author his own books. The web however, does enable one to put up his own webpage or blog (if you can figure it out.) I think this is what people are talking about here. It has to do with our place in the economics of the thing.

1) A tablet is a computer you can hold. Books and magazines have over time become optimized for holding (see size and weight) precisely due to the ergonomics of reading. Thus one would expect that tablets, which can store a vast number of books and magazines, would be "optimized" for such content.

2) Due to (1) it makes sense to trade power for battery life and thus iPad-era tablets use ARM processors. Word processors, music editors, video editors do exist for tablets and each has full privileges to have any interface it wants by assuming the full screen. Over time that software will get more powerful as these low-power processors advance. It can't be argued that iOS itself hinders content creation, but it can be argued that slow processors do. Time will take care of this.

Also I don't see consumption--by which you mean reading--to be a bad thing to do with a computer. Amazon's stated purpose for the Kindle is to enable every book in every language ever printed to be available in under a minute. That's an extraordinary vision if you think about it, and we're getting there very quickly. Hardly a step backwards.

What I meant is that it's a step backward for what I saw as the trend toward a world in which the power to create things is more evenly distributed.

Don't get me wrong, I have a kindle, and I love it. But it's not just optimized for reading, it's optimized for reading content that's distributed through a centrally maintained distribution channel. (And while Amazon is trying to wrest control of that channel from the traditional publishers, it's a transfer of power from one central authority to another.) Which is why I appreciate tools like Readability's 'send to kindle' bookmarklet so much: it lets me read content from the bazaar more easily. But. Even then, I had to jump through hoops and the formatting isn't great. In short, it's not optimized.

Furthermore, while on the web on a PC I can read a blog post and then immediately comment, share, or respond in a blog post of my own, on my kindle I can't do any of that. I have to put my own system in place to even remember to do it later. In other words, the Kindle optimizes my consumption experience at the expense of my production experience in a way that's sort of profound in a way that I acutely feel is a step backward.

1) Content on post-PC devices is mediated through a central authority. You argue this is bad because presumably you cannot read whatever you want, but only what the central authority allows through. But reading whatever content you want is not enough, you also would have expected that any content you find out there that is optimized for a desktop browser be re-optimized by the tablet device for reading on it.

Response: A valid criticism of the Kindle, though in practice it seems that you are asking for an extension of what is already offered, implying a superset, not a sibling set of functionality. For example, the Kindle has always offered a browser but the technology didn't seem good enough to render a website quickly. Considering that Amazon had its pick of web-to-e-ink and books-to-e-ink, I can't immediately fault them for what they chose to throw their weight behind first--purely from the standpoint of practicality.

You criticized the iPad in your original post, but I don't see any of the iPad's existing functionality being at odds with choice of content provider or lack of optimization for reading web content (see Instapaper, Flipboard, built-in Readablility in iOS 5).

2) Your ability to "produce content" on these tablet devices is hindered.

Response: I addressed this point in my original post. This by and large is a result of the technology available for a holdable computer, not a nefarious choice on the part of the manufacturers. I think the ability to write blog posts on a plastic Kindle is asking a lot (would that even be enjoyable?), and that ability exists on an iPad today, in fact, since it was introduced.

The iPad, on the other hand, is a replacement for device for a large class of people, and it's optimized for the consumption of centrally mediated content. It's not strictly at odds with the web, but it privileges its own distribution channels. I believe that has an effect.

2) Again, not an argument against the Kindle so much as the iPad for reasons stated in (1). But the iPad offers a degraded experience for writing blog posts, for example, compared to a PC. I believe that friction matters. I believe this optimization will only continue to privilege consumption and specifically mediated consumption as time goes on, because that's where the incentives lie. This makes me sad.

[Edit: I'm not necessarily trying to criticize manufacturers as nefarious. They're just doing what the market dictates. I am saying the phenomenon is unfortunate, and I'm trying to raise awareness of the issue to get people thinking of ways to empower more people to create more, better, richer, things. I was also pointing out that Google is maybe the one large corporation that has the power and the motivation to do so.]

Or is it simply that the iPad makes so much consumption so easy – on a PC NOTHING is very easy to do in comparison. It's a little bit like the idea that TV only is for kicking back, even though you can make very difficult content for it too – all creators exlore the nature of their medium/device, whether it be developers or content producers!

iMovie - plenty of amazing music-making apps in addition to Garageband – and an increasing number of outlining apps, OmniOutliner, productivity apps like OmniFocus – seem to suggest that appmakers are still only starting to explore what can be done with this new UI and what the usage scenarios are for this device. They're different!

TODAY, most of the apps existing presume that you have a PC, and indeed, until iOS 5 – soon coming out – you need a PC for backups and various device management tasks. That PC dependence will end, and with it maybe most of the need for tablets to be defined as complementary 'consumption' devices. How file management will work with apps in the iCloud is only about to start to get worked out. Indeed, looking at how the iCloud works suggests their vision of how people will use their various devices together – it's still quite untried!

So, I'd not say tablets are doomed to be for consumption – it's more of a market dynamics question, like you note, together with technology just getting created. It's really about what gets explored. And one can hardly say that the app store model can't be successful for those who want to create something new.

I'm hopeful – and also did some of my best work at that time on a Psion Series 5, back in 1998. For editing, the touch interface, with a stylus and a keyboard, turned out superior to desktop word processing - at least to me.

What we're getting away from is maybe the idea that work is done at a desktop – something that still lived on with laptops. It will partly be a sort of 'self-conscious' loop of what is possible to be done – what we make possible to be done – and how convenient and productive these tools then turn out. 'A bicycle for the mind' indeed...

Content consumption devices (aka radio, TV, books, mp3 players) have not had a significant advance in decades. The browser was the first new conduit that moved people away from these devices. These people used a PC, but merely as a content consumption device, NOT as a content creation device!

Now tablets - which are mostly hardware for browsers, becoming more so with 'cloud' services - are becoming personal content consumption devices.

As long as there's a browser, it's a window to the world of content - not just the central authority's content.

For so long producers have wanted to have a powerful computing device in every hand. Now that day is closer!

As for the geeks, things haven't changed either. We find ways to open up the devices and get the freedoms we want.

Basically, the flip side of the increased consumption is that it's a lot easier to get your work out to other people, which means people who previously couldn't or wouldn't are now becoming producers. For example, a lot more people are publishing books for e-readers because those platforms make it so easy — with Amazon, it's pretty much as simple as logging into your Amazon account and uploading a text file. Web series (e.g. "The Guild") are a viable medium because so many people have these easy-consumption devices.

Yes and no. They didn't create software, but they created content. Just look at Facebook & other social network sites. It's full of user generated content. Likewise people generated content to print out with word processors, and they generated content as emails to send to people. They also generated photographic content. However pretty much all of this is now done in web browsers, so in a way, you can generate all this content with iPad/Kindle.

And just to be clear I do believe that tablets are aimed at content consumption and not so much content creation, and I believe that to be a good thing. Why? Well people don't need a $2000 laptop to surf the web and check email.

Our tools for production have advanced as far as they can—what major changes have the desktop and laptop PC had over the last five years?

[0]: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/9325300749/a-different-kind-o...

People said the exact same thing when the mouse and GUI came along - it was eye-candy, a substitute designed to distract the credulous from the fact that we had hit the limits of productivity and that it was all downhill from here on. They said the same thing about microcomputers and minicomputers as substitute for mainframe terminals.

Tablets have any number of interesting productivity software being developed for them (innovative word processors spring immediately to mind), but developers are severely limited by the hardware capabilities of those platforms... Obviously we won't see a full fledged version of Photoshop or Final Cut written for a tablet for many years to come, but I think we might see that eventually.

Machines optimized for creating stuff keep getting better, and aren't going away. I don't think it's necessarily bad if those machines drop to a smaller market share. It's usually a much smaller percent of people who create the apps and content that aren't crap anyway, and most of the consumer audience goes to them. Getting optimized video production machines out to the masses via cellphones is cool, but it's not really improving the average video on YouTube.

For creative ideas at the OS and interaction levels though... yeah, the platform owners need or want to own most of it. I think they're OK with jailbreaking the platform to the extent it creates a testing ground for new ideas, that they can then adopt.

What's easily missed too is that the 'free creativity and production for all' ethos on the web – all the good stuff that got us here! - so far largely missed out on financing for most of the traditional cultural sectors. Much of what is most highly valued in our cultures has been woefully underfinanced for our entire lives.

The iPad/app model – positioned between all these previously-existing devices and media/content like books/mags/+ – at least makes a start for a venue, a potentially enormously widely available venue, for content producers where they can be discovered – consumed/networked and get paid for their work by a simply enormous audience.

This is not necessarily at all a boon for central distribution in the sense of the old massmedia institutions!

I'd say that Apple having a lock on it – to the extent that Apple IS the central distribution channel, even if Amazon's tablet is just around the corner! – is not as important as that they provide a relatively 'flat' market for distribution – as I perceive them to do right now. To my understanding, they're basically running their stores at break-even.

With Amazon coming into the picture, it's about to become SO interesting – there will be so many different business models: sellers of Gadgets, Content and Ads!

EDIT: typos

I just happily browsed the web, listened to podcasts, checked my RSS feeds and flicked through my Twitter stream for six hours during a train ride on my iPad. All tasks for which the iPad – or more general the tablet form factor – is ideal.

I think your argument is incoherent.

In contrast, the native Web on PCs is more read-write by nature. And Web technologies are making production increasingly easier.

However it instantly became my go-to e-mail client at work, reminds me of appointments (integrates with Exchange), holds my to-do list, has my personal issue-tracking database (Bento), browses trough our github projects, syncs with Dropbox, allows me to connect to SQL Server, is on Skype all day long and I even did some (simple) presentations on Keynote for our meetings.

I also use it for online banking when I'm not home and I have Amplitube and iRig to play guitar trough it on weekends.

I also know some people who use it in college, my sister borrows mine sometimes when she's in town and her classmate also owns one.

Granted, I'm a developer, not a manager, so those apps aren't critical to my work... but I LOVE having only two apps on my Windows Workstation: Firefox and Visual Studio. Talk about focus!

Also, I work on a university, and we're in the process of buying tablets for the whole staff. Probably not iPads, idk.

Of course, it's a weird use case, but well, it is possible...

Mainstream PC use is for games, netflix, and facebook. All passive. I guess facebook is 50/50, if you call writing a never ending Christmas card update letter creative :)

That is a pre-tablet mindset. It wasn't long ago that GUIs were chided for being "just a fad".

"GUIs are just a fad,when their novelty wears off, users will soon return to true command-line interfaces like DOS", Jon Gladden 1986.

http://www.gladdengraphics.com/academics/GradCourses/Compute...

I also don't claim that Apple hates the web. I just think it's in their interest to privilege 1. Consumption over production; and 2. Consumption through their centrally mediated channels of distribution.

It doesn’t matter what I did or did not produce with the iPad. Computers are cheap, software is cheap, creation was never as easy as it is today. We are living in a golden age of content creation but content creation is not for everyone. So what.

Not that passive consumption is inherently evil. I just was imagining a world where the power of creation is more evenly distributed. I'm a little sad to see that trend start to reverse.

I agree that creation isn't for everyone. But the available tools have an effect. They encourage or discourage in subtle ways. The iPad's software keyboard imposes just a slight amount of friction on inputting text. That has an effect. It matters, to some however small degree, and it aggregates with every other way that Apple optimizes consumption over production.

On centralized authority: again, the way you are consuming content is not the case Apple is optimizing for. They have allowed it, but their most sanctioned way is for you to buy content from their partners through their distribution channels. It's not a complete restriction, but an optimization of a certain model through UI. TFA's description of the new Kindle seems to follow, and, indeed, to go farther down this path.

Meta: Not that I'm particularly offended, but why take such an abrasive tone? "Central authority bullshit," "obvious nonsense"? Do you simply not consider it a possibility that you didn't fully understand what I was trying to say, either because I communicated it poorly or because it doesn't align with your preconceived notions? I'm actually quite happy to be having this discussion, as it's one I've tried to have many times, but never got much uptake. But, why start with such a dismissive tone? I've seen so many threads start with mild, mutual abrasiveness and spiral quickly into full-out flamewar. Why take a step down that path? Is it so hard to be overtly civil? Honest question.

But I feel you are ignoring the larger picture. Tablets are currently third devices and prices have developed in such a way to actually allow for a third device. What’s wrong with a consumption oriented device when what most people were already doing was consuming?

Given that creation is as simple as it never before has been and that all the tablets actually can receive all of the created content I just do not understand how tablets could threaten content creation in any way whatsoever. It seems absurd to me.

Tablets are freaking awesome for content consumption of any kind and they can do quite a few other things. They are also cheap enough to make it possible to also buy a very capable PC. I … I really don’t understand how that could have any negative impact.

(Meta: I actually feel very bad about my tone now. I sometimes start to furiously write stuff like that and I always regret it but hardly ever learn. I’m very sorry for my tone. It was a mistake.)

Tablets look like the end of that side to me. It looks like an optimization of the consumption aspect at the expense of the creation aspect.

You may see it as a third device, but I think a lot of people see it as a replacement device, and those are exactly the people who could benefit most from tools that make it easier for them to produce things.

I think my ultimate lament was that the way the market works, of course large companies are going to privilege consumption, because they can make more money that way.

(Meta: Thanks, I accept and appreciate the apology!)

People want music, want videos, want books, want apps. The market gives them what they want. This is not a case of the market delivering something consumers don’t actually like.

This is not a conspiracy of big companies to dumb people down. People are already that way. The PC didn’t help with that one bit and tablets certainly also won’t help.

Again: there is no problem.

I don't think it's an overt conspiracy, it's just self-interest and centralized resources and power.

I believe that PCs did change the way people are, and the way they think. Not everyone, maybe not even a majority, at least not overtly. But I think it had a profound effect on the culture. I believe the Web made a difference. I believe the ways we have to access the Web make a difference.

You can point to dumb people continuing to be dumb and say there is no problem. I see a problem, and my solution is to talk about it, to try to get influential people to think about it, and think about making tools to empower creation by the technically lay (like me).

The media distribution model of all the mainstream stuff is not different between PCs and tablets. Tablets might be a bit more convenient when it comes to buying stuff (probably not even that) but that’s it. You can get mainstream stuff on both. People want mainstream stuff on both. Napster and all the later filesharing is a testament to that.

But that’s not the whole story. Far from it. All the other content out there is perfectly accessible with tablets. They are just as good at accessing non-mainstream content as PCs. They are not limited in that respect. They all have awesome browsers (the most modern stuff you can get), they allow you to download podcasts or to subscribe to RSS feeds. It’s all possible.

Tablets are the content consumption Yin to the content creation Yang.

I just don’t understand how one could see that any other way.

The content is available on tablets, too, but the device subtly privileges its own centrally mediated distribution channels. I believe this privilege will only get stronger.

Of course, unless devices like tablets continue to convince them that the mainstream is the only valuable stream.

Why should that happen? Why? I don’t understand. Non-mainstream content is a first class citizen on tablets.

I … I really don’t get it. You are postulating a effect that seems so wildly implausible and absolutely absurd to me.

Some here might dismiss TV completely, but many consider this a "Golden Age" for television writing, too. Is it a stretch to think that almost unlimited access to the history of film might actually be inspiring more and more people to write smarter material for popular media?

I sure think this IS a Golden Age. The bizarre and 'negative' traits, and our moments of distress, easily hide it for us - but it's here and now. We just need to learn how to create a society out of the jumble (ie, planet) that's out there...

Someone like Ugh or myself sees you call all of this awesome a "step back" and laughs.

I think you've sold the iPad short too early. Intent or not it will be a huge device for content creation the same way the iphone is a huge device for content creation -- the best camera you have is the one you have with you and as Flickr attests, iPhone 4 is used by millions every day for creation.

Similarly the iPad will be huge and Apple has already recognized this with signature first party apps like GarageBand, iMovie, Pages, Numbers. I have a feeling in years to come a lot of musicians will say that the best keyboard, drum set, guitar, etc that you have is the one you have with you.

Do you like to write sometimes? There's an app for that. When you're not at your desk will the best typewriter be the one you have with you? Probably.

Do you like to draw and doodle sometimes? There's an app for that. When you're not at your desk will the best drawing and painting studio be the one you have with you? Probably.

EDIT: Replacing the desktop – AND drawing plenty of other old technologies into this new one.

[0]: I wrote more on that here: http://blog.byjoemoon.com/post/3112676038/the-end-of-comment... which was a response to an essay by Zadie Smith.[1]

[1]:http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2010/nov/25/generat...

That’s the sentence I was responding to. Central authority bullshit and all.

The argument seems coherent enough to me. I'm not entirely convinced about the "centralized authority" part, but the "tools for consumption advancing faster than tools for production" seems true (and inevitable).

So what if consumption is easier? Does that mean less people will create something? Why? Creating something doesn’t get harder because consumption gets easier. I don’t see the causal connection.

(That central authority bullshit is just patent nonsense.)

Oh, and our tools for creation still are rapidly improving. Prices for computers have gone nothing but down. People are today able to buy a great PC and a tablet for the same price of a PC ten years ago. Software has become hugely more accessible, hardware has become so much more capable. Creating stuff was never – never – as easy as it is today.

We are living in a golden age of content creation and in a golden of content consumption. Tablets will help with that, not hinder.

You're absolutely right that there's no necessary dichotomy, but in practice that's what's happening. The iPad could be an awesome platform for a Squeak-like development environment where you create and program a bunch of objects and have them interact with each other. But Apple won't allow such an app in their store which makes it unavailable to the large majority of users, and if they had their way jailbreaking your iPad to run it would be a federal crime.

Oh, and our tools for creation still are rapidly improving. Prices for computers have gone nothing but down. People are today able to buy a great PC and a tablet for the same price of a PC ten years ago.

That's true, today. But if tablets replace PCs for most people as many are predicting, PC prices will go up substantially: partly due to reduced economies of scale, and partly because reducing the market to professionals and geeks will allow more price discrimination.

Tablets will improve.

You predictions of doom are way overblown.

The content I was consuming on my iPad – and that was my point – did not come from a central authority (no more than before when I consumed on my Laptop) and it’s enabled by the cheap tools available for content creation today.

I was listening to one awesome podcast by a guy who made podcasting his job and survives (extremely successfully) from donations alone.

I was browsing awesome webcomics from people who would never had a chance to make their comics accessible to as many people as they can today.

I was reading awesome Harry Potter fan fiction and tales from a lawyer doing his job.

All not possible only a decade (maybe two in some cases) ago. We are living in a golden ago of content creation. To be worried about tablets in that context is – sorry – crazy.

How about the webcomic, do you think it was done in the iPad / Android version photoshop?

Was the HP fan fiction typed on a tablet keyboard?

The point the OP is trying to make is not that tablets discourage production of content at a higher level. It's that companies are spending a lot of money improving consumption device /software , instead of creative devices/software

It's that there is more money is creating consumption devices, and most of the R&D is going into creating better and better consumption devices, with less focus on creation better tools for production.

This is however a natural state of the free market - creating consumer-oriented consumption devices is suddenly a lot more profitable than creating devices targeted and production of content, and therefore that is where we are seeing the most innovation/investment right now.

Argh. This is sooooo frustrating. Why does everyone believe that it’s either the iPad or nothing? That just doesn’t make any sense at all. I don’t get it.

Exactly, OP's point is that most R&D by large co's these days is focused on building consumption devices similar to the iPad. About 10 years ago, most R&D was around enterprises/PC's, and that benefited both producers & consumers of content.

No one is arguing that one particular model is right - it was simply an observation of where R&D is focused these days, and what that means for producers of content.

And this was all possible a decade ago. There were at least 50M people with web connections a year ago.