4/ Let's sit with these thoughts a minute. Aren't we living in an era where there is an effort to stamp out the notion of a general-purpose programmable #computer? Apple would love us to believe that the iPad - filled with hardware every bit capable of being a general-purpose computer - is a device for consumption, one which runs apps written by others, one which actively thwarts efforts to program on it. The home PCs of the 80s were programmable in a way the iPad isn't.