Apple's iPad: The End Of The Internet As We Know It?

Although Apple is marketing the iPad as a replacement for a netbook or a laptop, GigaOM's Paul Sweeting says Apple's control over the iPad makes it very different, because on most computers, you can choose any software or application you like.

"This is not an open platform where you can create a lot of content, or other people can create a lot of applications and content that you can then access and use and incorporate into what you're doing," he says. Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard, says Apple even rejected an application that took a position that was critical of the former Bush administration. The app was called Freedom Time, and Zittrain says "it actually simply counted down the days, hours, minutes and seconds until President Bush would be out of office, regardless of who his successor would be." Zittrain and Sweeting worry that if the iPad becomes popular, both entertainment and computing companies will imitate its closed system.