Links for Friday January 29^th, 2010

• Tinkerer’s Sunset: Mark Pilgrim's blog always contains smart, well-written stuff, and he doesn't fail on the iPad. Building off of Alex Payne's piece, Mark writes:

  When DVD Jon was arrested after breaking the CSS encryption algorithm, he was charged with “unauthorized computer trespassing.” That led his lawyers to ask the obvious question, “On whose computer did he trespass?” The prosecutor’s answer: “his own.”

  If that doesn’t make your heart skip a beat, you can stop reading now.

  So good. You really need to read the whole thing. There is no doubt that Apple is building it's vision of the future of computing. But collectively, we need to ask if that's where we want things to go.

• Future Shock: Frasier Speirs frames why the rest of the world is ready for the iPad, even if CS-trained folks aren't:

  "The people whose backs have been broken under the weight of technological complexity and failure immediately understand what's happening here. Those of us who patiently, day after day, explain to a child or colleague that the reason there's no Print item in the File menu is because, although the Pages document is filling the screen, Finder is actually the frontmost application and it doesn't have any windows open, understand what's happening here."

  Well written, and food for thought.

• Hulu’s Plans for the iPad, the Mobile Internet: I hope that Hulu does make an iPhone/iPad app, but I'm not exactly holding my breath.

• What's It Like Working For Sugar Inc?: Photo essay from around the office.

• Joe Hewitt on the iPad: Joe Hewitt's thoughts on the "closed" nature of the iPad:

  "Given my concerns about the way Apple runs the App Store, you might expect me to jump on the bandwagon screaming about how Apple is evil and iPad is the death of open computing. Nonsense. My only problem with Apple is the fact that they insist on pre-approving every app on the App Store. The store may not be open, but the iPhone/iPad platform itself could hardly be more open to tinkerers of all ages."

• iPad - Inspirational Hardware: Miguel de Icaza on the iPad, and the importance of Apple's touch-centric design:

  "Multi-touch is the only input mechanism that developers can depend on. Apple's iPhone helped create a community of developers that think in terms of taps, pinches and twirls instead of clicks, double-clicks and right-clicks. It is no longer an after thought. It is no longer a feature that is added if there is enough time in the schedule or enough budget. It is the only option available."

  Changing paradigms is hard, especially for input. This is one of Apple's greatest successes with the iPhone, and time will tell if it translates to the iPad (but I think that it will).

• Steve Jobs' Intelligence Graphed: I wouldn't bet against Steve Jobs.

• What's it like to work for Apple at a big event?: Interesting interview with a former Apple engineer, Edward Eigerman.