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| A later Speak&Spell model Photo credit Bill Bertram (CC-BY-2.5) |
A 'new iPad' is weighs 650g and measures 9.5 by 7.31 by .37 inches. Wrap one in Apple's 'Smart Case' and it packs on an additional 150 grams and about .3 inches in each dimension. Those cases are available in a vibrant orangish red. If you are of a certain age, this package may remind you more of TI's toy than it evokes the Alan Kay 'Dynabook' concept to which it was so often compared at launch.
The Dynabook concept dates from 1968 and was certainly known outside PARC by the time Speak & Spell development began at TI in 1976. TI engineer Richard Wiggins credits colleague Gene Frantz with overall product design for Speak & Spell (here's a 2008 interview with Wiggins). I can find no contemporary account in which Frantz or TI credit PARC with influencing either their ideas for children's computing or their specific product design. Their similarity may be simple coincidence. TI was certainly in no position to build Kay's complete Dynabook but neither was PARC nor anyone else.
We play a long game here at reograph. Other gadget review sites only have the stomach for long term reviews that last a few months. We keep our powder dry. I've been working on a review of the Speak and Spell for the last 34 years. That review is nearly complete but our editors have that piece timed to coincide with the 40th anniversary of the S&S in 2018. Today's iPad probably won't seem as dated as a Dynabook by then but the iPad will probably never more closely resemble S&S than it does today.
I just gave iPads to my children and the similarities between these devices was a substantial factor in my decision. S&S had a profound effect on me. It was as close I came to a computer until I got a TI 99/4a for Christmas some years later.
The S&S was sophisticated but it was certainly not a computer. I think kids hiding under the covers with a S&S managed to learn as much about what computing could be like as did users hunched at a 99/4a in the basement. In 'Points of View', an anthology assembled in tribute to Kay on his 80th birthday, Adele Goldberg recalls that Kay used to tote a completely inert cardboard mockup of his Dynabook to conferences. I imagine that some of what was obvious to Kay would occur also to users of the slightly more functional S&S.
I briefly considered just giving eBay S&S units to my children. The S&S is well past its 'use by' date for new users. Though it was made in Texas and the iPad in China, several complete revolutions in product safety in the last 30 years mean that the iPad is probably safer.
When a S&S was unwrapped in 1978, it could have put its owner a decade or more ahead of their parents' technology base. I think the next most advanced device at my home was an APF Mark 51 scientific calculator from 1975. The S&S showed it to be a mere abacus. The same is no longer true and my kids know it. There is no chance they would accept a couple of old orange boxes and my nostalgia and leave me my own iPad.
When a S&S was unwrapped in 1978, it could have put its owner a decade or more ahead of their parents' technology base. I think the next most advanced device at my home was an APF Mark 51 scientific calculator from 1975. The S&S showed it to be a mere abacus. The same is no longer true and my kids know it. There is no chance they would accept a couple of old orange boxes and my nostalgia and leave me my own iPad.
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| The APF Mark 51. A mere abacus. Photo credit ebay seller rr9. Used without permission |
Mark Prensky might say that the S&S made me a 'Digital Native'. If he's right, then I probably also have dual citizenship with the Republic of Muppet Show. If I'm a digital native, then my children are developing into 'Digital Spaniards' (you read it here first) who will consolidate power together with their playmates and have us all under their thumbs in no time. I'm happy to help. I wonder what their El Dorado will be. Maybe it will be Sunnyvale, where the streets were once lined with unsold HP TouchPads.
The S&S showed the promise of portable electronic computing to millions. Such is the power of misunderstanding. I knew neither that its vocabulary was extremely limited nor that it could do only a few simple tasks. S&S had a slot in the battery compartment. What went in the slot? More! More of what I did not know but wonderful ideas flowed into that void of ignorance. I'm not yet sure that the iPad is delivering on that promise. Though the iPad is clearly an amazing computer, there is less room for my kind of misunderstanding. To start, there is no slot. Further, it came in to the world as a larger cousin of an iPod, not the smaller cousin of a proper computer. I think it is perceived largely as a leisure device for casual buyers and as a companion device for small number of professional buyers. I think Amazon agrees. An Amazon search today for "ipad case with stand" returns thousands of real matches. Most of these stands allow the iPad to be held upright so that video can be viewed without having to hold the device. The search for "ipad case with keyboard" returns a quarter of the matches. A search for "ipad case crocodile" returns six hundred and nine. The iPad is a established as a leisure device. I think that part of the professional crowd must be IT people who have turned a quest for their lost S&S into a paying job.
It may seem unfair to hail S&S as a prophet of computing and fault the iPad for six hundred crocodile cases. After all, the iPad can actually be made to compute useful things. TI didn't market S&S as a computer. They did better. They made it in the mold of an authority figure and marketed it for children. Electronic grown-up? There's got to be a positronic robot brain in there somewhere. TI was clever and shipped the future. Apple's iPad could have been this and more. Instead, it is merely amazing. Apple included a chess program, a calculator, a C compiler, and an electronic version of the World Book encyclopedia with early Mac OS X machines. The iPad includes a number of apps from Apple that can't be deleted. Maps, calendars are there. Photo viewers and video players are there. A pretty great web browser is there. Email, messaging and address book apps are all there. You can take simple notes. You can make the wallpaper be any picture you want. There is something called 'Game Center' that I cannot make disappear. No calculator is present.
The iPad and iPhone, together with Google, Wikipedia, Wolfram, Amazon and others, are clearly delivering on the promise of portable, connected electronic knowledge. Knowledge and computing may have been part of the same nebulous future in 1978. The Dynabook certainly runs them together into the same narrative. Several vendors sell all of Wikipedia wrapped into an app for iPad but I still haven't seen a great platform for computing turn up in the App Store.
A report earlier this year suggested that Mathematica would make its way to the tablet but nothing has been heard for months. Apple themselves were (or are) part of the problem since before the iPad debut. Several developers have put small programming environments or ports of entire home micros in the app store only to have them bounced or pulled.
The developers at 'manomio' reported in September 2009 that their Commodore 64 emulator for iOS had been pulled from the app store because crafty users could enable the built-in BASIC. That app is back with ROM BASIC included. The developers have been reeducated and the app remains focused squarely on vintage games and in-app purchases. Scheme, Python, Lua, and other languages including BASIC have all become available since Apple relaxed at least the enforcement of some obnoxious restrictions on developers. More than a few seem like novelty items. Kay's own Smalltalk and Squeak are notably absent. Scratch is nowhere to be found, though intrepid users can download the source and build it themselves. Apple will hit you for $99 for the privilege of putting it on your iPad. Search for iSqueak on the app store. It's a $2 virtual dog toy.
Strangely, Apple themselves provide an amazing programmable environment in Mobile Safari but do little to advertise it this way.
I'll keep working to turn the iPad into the children's device I imagined 34 years ago. I wonder if my children's own dreams will be influenced in the process.
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