Alan Kay wrote on Wed, 14 Mar 2012 05:53:21 -0700 (PDT) > A hardware vendor with huge volumes (like Apple) should be able to get a CPU > vendor to make HW that offers real protection, and at a granularity that makes > more systems sense.
They did just that when they founded ARM Ltd (with Acorn and VTI): the most significant change from the ARM3 to the ARM6 was a new MMU with a more fine grained protection mechnism which was designed specially for the Newton OS. No other system used it and though I haven't checked, I wouldn't be surprised if this feature was eliminated from more recent versions of ARM. Compared to a real capability system (like the Intel iAPX432/BiiN/960XA or the IBM AS/400) it was a rather awkward solution, but at least they did make an effort. Having been created under Scully, this technology did not survive Jobs' return. > But the main point here is that there are no technical reasons why a child > should > be restricted from making an Etoys or Scratch project and sharing it with > another > child on an iPad. > No matter what Apple says, the reasons clearly stem from strategies and > tactics > of economic exclusion. > So I agree with Max that the iPad at present is really the anti-Dynabook They have changed their position a little. I have a "Hand Basic" on my iPhone which is compatible with the Commodore 64 Basic. I can write and save programs, but can't send them to another device or load new programs from the Internet. Except I can - there are applications for the iPhone that give you access to the filing system and let you exchange files with a PC or Mac. But that is beyond most users, which seems to be a good enough barrier from Apple's viewpoint. The same thing applies to this nice native development environment for Lua on the iPad: http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/ You can program on the iPad/iPhone, but can't share. -- Jecel _______________________________________________ fonc mailing list fonc@vpri.org http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc
