One of the stranger criticisms pointed at the iPad this weekend is that you can’t take it apart. I grew up taking things apart - in the days when televisions had valves in them and nice hinged metal chasis that you could unbolt and remove components like discrete resisters. After that you carefully read the coloured bands and put the resisters in boxes according to there value. I think those resisters are still in my father’s radio room, since it is always easier to use new components than rake around even the best organised recovery parts. I also took my motorcycles apart and reassembled them, replaced and upgraded parts, and built electronic things. I repair my own domestica appliances and do everything from roofing to rewiring in the house. So I think I have the qualifications to consider myself a maker.

However, sometime in 80s the complexity of many devices became such that it is simply not possible for anyone outside of a fully-equiped lab or workshop to do anything themselves. Electronics became a few ASICs surface mounted on some flexy substrate, car or bike engines became over run by a black box full of surface mounted ASICs. And with those you just can’t do anything without the official, expensive, workshop diagnostic boxes.

So I don’t think it’s unreasonable to seal the insides of an iPad, iPhone or whatever - there’s nothing you can do with the insides anyway. One possible exception is the removable battery, although this is a peculiarly American complaint. I’ve never once heard anyone outside of the USA grumble about fixed batteries, nor have I ever seen anyone carrying spare batteries for the phones which do take new batteries.

Cory Doctorow also complains that the content on the iPad is fixed and controlled by Apple, that you can’t make your own. This seems a little bit like complaining that your new television won’t let you broadcast your own videos! The only way you can broadcast your own video content is setting up a pirate station - which is pretty much the option you have on iPad and iPhone - ad hoc build distribution or jailbreaking. And of course you can build any number of websites that make use of the special features.

And while I don’t like the “Disneyfication” of content on apps on the iPhone and iPad, its their channel and they are entitely to do what they want with it. I’d be quite happy if they clamped down on violent content, to be honest, as some of the games are much more disturbing than any occasional nipple.

I agree with Forrester that the iPad is currently the right device for the wrong market. Buy something else if you want to make stuff; there’s no shortage of alternatives.

I was trying to find an analogy for companies looking to have mobile services built for them for the first time. Something that would capture the combination of excitement, obligation and uncertainty.

What I hit upon was buying a wind-powered generator for your house. It sounds like a good idea, it’s tantilizingly close to doing something about climate change, but you don’t how much it will cost or how much you’ll get back from it.To the brand or service provider looking to add mobile to their existing customer interactions that’s pretty much what they feel. Apple marketing has made them aware of the potential excitement they can generate, general buzz shows how mobile can be a useful service, but for that first purchase, they have no idea of the cost or likely return.

At Rapid Mobile we’ll always take the time to talk to people at the earliest possible stage, helping people understand what a project is likely to cost and the potential benefit - if any. We all need to help people discover their mobile potential if the early spring flowers  we see are going to bloom into a full mobile summer.