Why I don't like smartphones | Hacker News Reader

Why I don't like smartphones

devever.net

289 pointsantitamper281 comments

I don't really see how some of his points support his position.

e.g. I don't own a smartphone, because it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly. So is a photoalbum, so is a book, so is a TV, so is a music player. A smartphone is all in one and it's incredibly useful. Beyond that, it is in ways a production device. It's a messaging device, a photo and video taking device, it's great for email, I record audio for my college classes on it etc. Sure you can hardly build software or write books on a smartphone in a practical way, but that's throwing out the baby with the bathwater. Further, smartphones are increasingly becoming production devices, too. They're becoming bigger, more powerful, and some can now be plugged in to monitors and bluetooth keyboards and create a reasonable windows production environment, others have interesting note-taking capabilities.

Web design is another one... Bad web designers have ruined web design, just like they were ruining web design before smartphones. Further it doesn't seem like a reason not to use a smartphone, either.

I'm in total agreement with him on centralisation... it's a slippery slope, I think. For example I'm still playing games from 15 years ago, because I actually own the software. But many of today's games, even though they have no multiplayer component, would not run if in 15 years their servers shut down... because there's calculation or storage being done in the cloud that is essential to the game running. We don't physically own copies of our software anymore, but rather we own, in a way, a sort of thin client and some login details that we have to hope will last as long as we'd like to use them.

This was always a problem, back in the day, too... but at least the software was available. Take any popular MMO, if the servers shut down, people have copies and can run their own servers. In future, this may not be possible anymore. Anyway games are just an example, but it's a trend that's a bit worrying. Although, it's not specific to or exclusively because of smartphones, it's a larger trend.

The point about it being almost exclusively a consumption device might be, in a way, extreme but not at all silly.

" It's a messaging device, a photo and video taking device, it's great for email, I record audio for my college classes on it etc." Majority of what you are referring to as productive tasks are merely the users consuming various services on offer. Although they are useful devices, I agree with the opinion that any significant production work is rarely performed on them. If anything the we subject ourselves to unnecessary consumption more than increasing our productivity.

Majority of what you are referring to as productive tasks are merely the users consuming various services on offer.

If we're going to reduce taking photos to a consumption of a service just because they go to Instagram or whatever, aren't we just consuming a service when we host an application we wrote on Heroku or AWS or DigitalOcean? Aren't we just consuming a service when we share code using Github or even when we send patches over an hosted email service?

Where do you draw the line?

Almost every app (and many games) being made nowadays are thin clients making api calls where all the work is done on the server.

I don't like it. I like having games from decades ago and still being able to play them long after the companies are dead and its employees working on other things.

On my own time I try to come up with software that can run entirely without the need to communicate with servers, or even without internet access.

The only problem with that is the software becomes that much easier to pirate, but oh well, I guess. I care more about the longevity of my work for my personal projects than whether or not I'm going to make the megabucks with them.

And honestly, for a few games I've worked on for companies in the past, pirates are the only thing keeping those games accessible at all.

Hm ... Candy Crush Saga runs perfectly fine offline. So do SeriesGuide, MAPS.ME, and Podcast Addict to name a few apps on my phone. Can you show me an example of an app which is a thin client (and doesn't actually need Internet connection)?

AlphaBear, which is a single-player word game. (This is in no way to support the original article's point, but it did really annoy me about AlphaBear)

The "asymmetric" way that phones work have tangible drawbacks for consumers, even if they are not power users. However, since the competition in the space is so fierce, I feel confident that it's only a matter of time until the situation improves.

I think in a few years phones will have significant "mesh-net" capabilities and will maintain significant amounts of distributed data using paxos and/or blockchain-style algorithms. It's only a matter of time before the "thin client" and server-driven software era will end.

> Almost every app (and many games) being made nowadays are thin clients making api calls where all the work is done on the server.

This is not true of games. Can you name any? Yes, multiplayer games require a server component, but they're not thin clients. And games that are not multiplayer generally don't require a server at all except possibly for DRM. People don't like wasting their data plan unnecessarily and they like being able to play in subway tunnels.

If you think about the economics of it, this makes sense. Margins are razor slim; you need to be able to profit off of whatever is left after the app store takes its cut of your $0.99-4.99 retail price. Having to run and maintain a fleet of servers to handle your games simply doesn't make sense. Better (and easier programmatically) to take advantage of the powerful processors on the devices themselves and have the games run locally. Think of something like Civilization, that has a mobile app; why on Earth would you want a central server that would have to run god knows how many millions of AIs when the phones could simply calculate that themselves?

> This is not true of games. Can you name any? Yes, multiplayer games require a server component, but they're not thin clients. And games that are not multiplayer generally don't require a server at all except possibly for DRM.

Well, who cares. Try playing Star Craft II in 20 years or whatever it takes Blizzard to go out of business. All while v1 will keep working, even in multiplayer (LAN mode over VPN).

> Can you name any?

Clash of Clans is like that. Even when you just want to do some non-multiplayer thing like rearrange your defenses, if you have no connection the game won't start, and if it loses connection it kicks you out.

It's the persistent world problem, you can't play WoW offline because it's meaningless to do so.

I haven't played the game, so maybe this is my unfamiliarity showing, but I thought that Clash of Clans was an MMO strategy game. In that context, how is there any meaningful singleplayer component that could work without a connection to the servers? You talk about rearranging defenses, but isn't that against other players? How could that possibly work if the server can't be reached to actually update the shared game state?

Diablo 3 comes to mind as the canonical example of this, but it's a PC/console game rather than mobile. Single player mode is still run by a remote server, and if you have a bad internet connection or they have a server outage (which has happened many times) it will be unplayable.

Blizzard has been much better than most companies about keeping its online infrastructure up and running long after a game loses popularity, but even they won't be around forever.

On the mobile side I don't think that's a common strategy (Candy Crush and Angry Birds aren't going to stop working), but the purely multiplayer games like Ingress and Clash of Clans will certainly shut down someday.

I was asking for examples of mobile apps. There are lots of reasons that the "thin client even for singleplayer" strategy is less feasible for mobile games than for PC games.

But still, I didn't buy Diablo 3, and this was one of the reasons why.

I bought it, but not until the price dropped to $20.

And yeah, I can't think of any mobile games that rely on servers for bullshit reasons like D3 does.

Some examples that come to mind are Candy Crush, Marvel Puzzle Quest, Farmville, and Angry Birds. But these aren't mobile-exclusive, and they phone home to retrieve your saved game state from a database.

I'm not aware of an Android-exclusive or iOS-exclusive game that is immersive and not casual. Certainly nothing on even a Diablo-level. Anything close is multi-platform effort.

I just downloaded Angry Birds and it works fine in Airplane Mode. If Rovio goes out of business and it fails to sync my saved game to a new phone, I won't be that sad. I wouldn't say it falls under the "thin client making API calls" style software that cableshaft mentioned.

Over the past few years Square Enix has be re-releasing the old Final Fantasy games (I - IV and maybe more) for mobile (iOS & android) and as far as I remember all of them require always active internet connections to play. I tried to play on a plane recently and could not unless i paid for the wifi. For a single player game that originally had no network connectivity. Or you can download an android emulator and rom and play without needing internet. Now this is not ideal because the input is not the best. The native apps have built for mobile controls, but require internet.

Would you happen to be CydeWeys from Sup Com Talk?

No, sorry. I'm pretty much a nobody online, I just have a few games I've worked on that most people haven't heard of.

Imo cloud connected apps are just an inevitable evolution from the technology advancements of recent years. It's just how things are now and will not go away because it has too many benefits, but of course also some downsides.

But tell your argument of independent "non connected" software to administrators who have to manage installations for hundreds of workplaces and they will tell you what a godsend cloud applications are.

I think it will become even more extreme, technologically it would already be possible to have computers or even smartphones be essentially just thin clients, which today is even working for the highest demanding apps like games (eg. Steam Streaming, Playstation network etc). For this to be a reality our network infrastructures have to improve a lot though.

> But tell your argument of independent "non connected" software to administrators who have to manage installations for hundreds of workplaces and they will tell you what a godsend cloud applications are.

Only because desktop OS-es they have to manage are crappy. At my previous employer, we had Ubuntu desktops managed by CFEngine. Now guess how big trouble was to roll-out any software packages, updates or new installations, or how difficult was to configure (or preconfigure) the applications.

>And honestly, for a few games I've worked on for companies in the past, pirates are the only thing keeping those games accessible at all.

Microsoft in Bill Gates' era understood the importance of piracy. He said, "As long as they are going to steal it, we want them to steal ours."

Windows Phone in my opinion is suffering because of its nonexistent piracy - sideloading was near impossible for normal users.

Imagine downloading 3gb+ visual studio just to unlock your phone.

My siblings loved my 925 but then they asked, "How do you get apps?"

I replied, "From the store."

They responded, "So, no flashshare?"

I said, "No." And that was the end of it.

I could see the stupidity in Microsoft's previous focus on low end phones targeted at emerging markets. Because emerging markets NEED piracy.

> So is a photoalbum, so is a book, so is a TV, so is a music player

Comparing a powerful, expensive, fully programmable computer provided with cameras, GPS, radios with a photoalbum/book/TV is silly.

> They're becoming bigger, more powerful, and some can now be plugged in to monitors

You could plug a Commodore 64 to a television and write software on it, even if its CPU was probably less powerful than the battery controller of my smartphone.

It's obvious that smartphone OSes are designed to turn the device into an addictive toy. Your examples of not owning software and centralization goes on the same line.

Many TVs are more expensive than many smartphones.

Not all 7.4 billion people want to write software. Computational power got cheap enough to apply it everywhere. I am sure there were zealots decades before who said they need no pesky battery controllers in their devices.

> because it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly.

Because it could be something else than just a consumption device (unlike a book or a photo album), as it's technically a general purpose computer. His point makes perfect sense.

It's still a silly distinction and pedantic. A modern car is a consumption device, but it also contains several computers, input and output devices, and significant computing power. But everyone is fine with just driving around in them. A smart phone is way more of a production device with camera and video shooting and editing than a car.

> It's still a silly distinction and pedantic.

No, it's a crucial one, for a simple reason: you're not supposed to change the firmware of your car, but you change the software in your palmtop computer quite often. Car firmware is special purpose (let's ignore some high-end multimedia stuff), while your palmtop computer can and does run any program.

Nothing technically prevents you from tethering a keyboard, mouse, and big screen to your palmtop computer —just like you do with some laptops when you dock them. Heck, it would be damn useful, to centralise all your computing in the palm of your hand.

The fact that your computer fits in the palm of your hand and can hook up to a phone network is not a good reason to have its usage restricted. The only reason people got tricked into thinking this is somehow okay, is because those computers are misnamed "smartphones".

No. They're networked computers. "Phone" is a distant second by now.

If the Java compiler doesn't run on android phones then it's only because no-one actually cares enough to make it do so. There's no reason you couldn't run a full IDE on an android device with a keyboard, mouse and big screen tethered to it and use it to work on programs for that device (including updates to the IDE itself), except that it would be dumb; nothing technically prevents you from doing that.

And why would that be dumb? Because my phone doesn't have the CPU power?

Granted, doing this set us back a few years. Still, for my day to day computing (everything except 3D gaming and maybe HD movies), I would totally love to have my phone run GNU/Linux with my favourite window manager when tethered, and an Android-like touch-based shell when unplugged.

Phones are doomed by their UI restrictions to be primarily consumption devices. The primary restriction in computers has always been in how well they communicate with the user. Smartphone screens are limited to what will fit in our pocket so the bandwidth to the user is limited by that and halves once the on screen keyboard pops up. The situation is actually worse for user to computer bandwidth. You cannot do proper multi-finger touch typing on a smartphone. Your finger just can't approach the resolution of a mouse. Also you don't have multiple buttons like a mouse, the only action is touch. So the machine is stuck trying to separate a touch, swipe, and potentially a long touch. That's error prone so phones are often doing things people don't want them to.

That's not to say smart phones suck. I love mine. All the disadvantages have to be weighed against the value of having a network connected computer in your pocket wherever you go. There is quite a bit of latency involved in sitting down at computer compared with pulling a smartphone out of one's pocket.

>Sure you can hardly build software or write books on a smartphone in a practical way

Novels written on mobile phones are a popular literary subculture in Japan.

http://www.ualberta.ca/~berban/cell/cellwho.html

The Android SDK will run on Android, so apps can be written and built entirely on the device. Definitions of 'practical' vary, but I have done web development work on an Android tablet with a Bluetooth keyboard. I regularly use a terminal emulator on Android for quick server admin tasks.

http://www.android-ide.com/

I loved the resistive screen of Neo Freerunner and Nokia N900, as it allowed me to write code on screen (surprisingly, the awful bezel around Freerunner screen actually worked great as a resting place for the finger, N900 while more comfortable in every other situation is more tiring when writing code). I've written quite a lot of Python on those phones in my life.

Google looked poised to take Android beyond consumption when they introduced 3.0.

But then they did one misstep after another that effectively neutered it, and tried to pitch ChromeOS for office uses (watch them demo Citrix during the unveiling for example).

Now they seem to be coming back around, but can't get their ducks in a row (shipping hardware before the software is ready etc).

On iOS, I use Pythonista for running various python scripts. They also acts as an extension, on which you can run various python scripts. One of the examples provided is generating a QR code from an URL in Safari - but the sky is the limit. No idea how Apple ever allowed this on the AppStore, but it's there, and it's magnificent.

Great response, thanks.

Also, with regards to openness: First Android does have an option to sideload apps, and while Google can exercise control and limits on the OS, it usually only does so with regards to ad-blockers, and even that only partially.

And are ROM's hard to install ? For the technical user ,No,At least for large enough variety of phones. And as for the non-technical users - they always needed to pay someone or ask a friend when they wanted an OS install, so nothing's different.

And if look deeper, Android is open-source ,so it's undoubtedly offers much more freedom than windows.

Generally, the reality is that while the Android is open, the devices that run Android usually aren't, so in the end it doesn't really matter.

For very similar reason I wasn't crying after Firefox OS, even though it had some progress when it comes to platform openness in some other areas.

> Further, smartphones are increasingly becoming production devices, too. They're becoming bigger, more powerful, and some can now be plugged in to monitors and bluetooth keyboards and create a reasonable windows production environment, others have interesting note-taking capabilities.

We're talking about multi-gigahertz quad-core devices with gigabytes or RAM, USB connectivity, Bluetooth, and a high-speed WiFi cards. The fact that they are designed in such a way that connecting them to a keyboard is seen as some kind of achievement is fucking ridiculous. That alone proves the author's point.

> it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly

It's not just the fact that it's an underutilized general computing device; just look at the apps on your phone and tell me the percentage of them that open to a blank "canvas" rather than some kind of stream / feed.

On the desktop, you have your text editors, word processors, photo editors, video editors, 3D modelers, IDEs, file sharing utilities, digital audio workstations, etc.

On the phone, you have your camera app and maybe an audio recording app. Everywhere you want to produce something on the smartphone is generally tied to sharing it with others -- but then to share a photo, video, or thought, you're almost always coerced into consuming some information first.

I think this is solvable, though, especially by this community. The mobile platform is still young, especially compared to the desktop world. There is time to create real tools that enable more people to create, and don't simply aim to hold users' stares and profit from their personal information.

> On the desktop, you have your text editors, word processors, photo editors, video editors, 3D modelers, IDEs, file sharing utilities, digital audio workstations, etc.

Could have sworn i have seen examples of all but 3D modeling in the Android Play store.

That said, some of those uses can be very RAM demanding, and phones do not have much to offer there compared to a desktop.

And few professionals are going to be satisfied with a tiny screen, tiny processor and throttled connectivity. And no mouse or keyboard or Bamboo pad. Heck, I need three monitors to be most productive!

Chill dude, nobody is forcing you to replace your rig with a phone.

But a little anecdote though. I seem to recall that the early Toshiba Android tablets were popular with photographs. This because their full size SD slot (and USB-A on the Thrive) allowed them to use the tablet as a on the go light table.

Similarly, tablets seems to be getting more and more use as clipboard replacements for various tasks. This because they can handle all manner of forms and documents.

Of course; my point wasn't that these don't exist. Each device has its own strengths, and smartphones are really good consumption devices. I'd never build an entire application on a touchscreen phone, but I'd absolutely apply a predetermined Instagram filter. I wouldn't whip out my laptop on the street to look for a good place to eat nearby, but would absolutely pull up Google Maps on my phone.

For 3D modeling, there's Spacedraw[1], Qubism[2], Autodesk FormIt[3], 123D Sculpt+[4], d3D Sculptor[5], Project Dev: 3D Design[6] and others.

Whatever made you think mobile platforms don't have those tools?

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.scalisoft....

[2] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=jquinn.qubism....

[3] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.autodesk.f...

[4] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.autodesk.S...

[5] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.naticis.d3...

[6] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=xyz.projectdev...

My point was that most apps on the App Store / Google Play (and therefore most of the ones you probably have installed) are heavily consumption-focused -- not that these utilities don't exist.

I'd wager the same is true for personal laptops, though. There are certainly many more 3D games than 3D editors, and many more video players than video editors.

The point is that within these smartphone apps, there are often consumption and production elements. E.g. on Instagram, the app opens to a stream of activity (consumption). You have to tap a button to start to produce something. Compared to the Camera app or Photo Booth on my PC, both which exist to enable me to produce first, Instagram is focused on consumption first. That's what I find odd.

Speak for yourself, I have Photoshop, AutoDesk Sketchbook, a python IDE, an audio editor and various text editors, spreadsheet editors, and terminals on my phone.

If people don't have those on their phones, it's because they don't want to.

Do you use these tools more on your phone than your computer? Genuine question.

No, but then I'm never far from one of my laptops.

>It's not just the fact that it's an underutilized general computing device; just look at the apps on your phone and tell me the percentage of them that open to a blank "canvas" rather than some kind of stream / feed.

One of the best things about Snapchat is that it always opens on the camera. It orients the user immediately towards creation and sharing, rather than consuming.

Yes, Snapchat is a great example. I'd love to see more apps that work that way.

I don't think smartphones have ruined web design, it's actually forced people to develop responsive websites which work well on multiple screen sizes. Bootstrap makes this stupidly easy nowadays and probably would never have been created if it weren't for mobile.

Modern web sites look like crap and don't work. My banking website recently switched to a mobile first website ('responsive' is a lie). Now the UI is so giant that it cannot show a list of 6 account names with a balance next to it on a single desktop screen with a resolution of 3360 x 2100 pixels.

> Now the UI is so giant that it cannot show a list of 6 account names with a balance next to it

Yep."Our 2015 default theme is clean, blog-focused, and designed for clarity."

https://twentyfifteendemo.wordpress.com/ https://twentyfifteendemo.wordpress.com/about-twenty-fifteen... https://twentyfifteendemo.wordpress.com/image-alignment-and-...

"Ruined" is an understatement.

This doesn't look too bad, certainly not that kind of bad your parent complained about.

Maybe you watched it on a huge screen, or on a mobile phone where responsive snaps. I'm on a 13" laptop, and in Firefox the title (2nd link I gave) begins at about 35% of my viewport measured from the top, and I have to fine-tune my scrolling for each next paragraph I want to read.

I have previously been complaining about the spacing in GNOME/GTK but this is another level.

>I don't own a smartphone, because it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly. So is a photoalbum, so is a book, so is a TV, so is a music player.

I owned a smart-phone for a year. I didn't replace photo-album, book, TV, Music player or camera with it. I only replaced a dumb phone. So I gave it away. I do enjoy many consumption devices, I don't need one more, if it just means consuming more. But I might adopt consumption device if it allowed me to consume better.

It can be a great tool too. I think anyone who discounts smartphones as just another "consumption device" are missing part of the usefulness of the network.

I use my phone in place of paper logs for calorie counting and training. It's definitely been a solid replacement. It's probably shaved an hour a day off the odious task of counting calories, and having internet access means that I'm only a few touches away from form pointers and useful advice. I could replace it all but I'd have to start carrying about 40 pounds of books around instead.

I would not wan't to ban smartphones from people who find them useful.

But personally I don't track calories or training. I would not even with smartphone. I'm just way too incoherent person for that.

Yeah but we're old guys. The young folks don't have old bought copies of things. I think its a losing battle, and pointless to proselytize to the young about things they cannot do or experience any more. But good points.

e.g. I don't own a smartphone, because it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly. So is a photoalbum, so is a book, so is a TV, so is a music player.

It's not actually silly because of the mindset some people have. I know many people who bought an iPad or an iPhone with the mindset of, "GREAT! Now I don't need a computer." They went into it thinking that an iPad or an iPhone was a replacement for a computer and then were basically transformed into someone who could easily produce content to someone who could only produce content with difficulty.

Your argument from analogy is not apt because nobody buys a photoalbum thinking, "GREAT! Now I don't need a camera."

> I don't own a smartphone, because it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly. So is a photoalbum, so is a book, so is a TV, so is a music player. A smartphone is all in one

A palmtop computer (I insist on this more accurate name) is even more than you say. It's something that you use to run arbitrary programs.

Now I have a couple questions: why can't I tether my computer to a docking station with a big screen, a keyboard, and a mouse? Laptops can do that, why not palmtops? Why do I have to use a separate desktop computer to develops software for my palmtop? Why so many palmtop computers don't even let me have root access? Aren't they supposed to be mine? Why can't I use my computer as a freaking computer?

Because my computer fits in the palm of my hand? Because my computer can talk to the phone network? Because my computer has a camera and a GPS sensor attached?

The only way this is not utterly ridiculous is because we fail to call those devices properly. No one would ever restrict your "computer" thus (Just imagine Microsoft trying to enforce a "Windows store" in 2005). But a "smartphone"? Sure!

You can connect a bluetooth keyboard to an iPhone, and attach an external display using an adapter, or even wirelessly by connecting to an Apple TV. Then you can use it like a desktop, for writing or coding or whatever.

But people don't do that. Because the experience is shit. Smartphone apps are great because they are specifically made for a very specific use case (eg. passive browsing on a small touchscreeen, or messaging, etc). Nobody wants to do software development while waiting in line at the supermarket.

So people use desktops or laptops for coding. You have a faster CPU, more battery, a real keyboard....

And phones aren't as locked down as you say. I can write any app I want for my iPhone, and I can share the source code with others, and they can then install it on their phones... Sure, all the code signing stuff is a nuisance, but it makes downloading apps safe for non-technical users.

> Because the experience is shit.

And whose fault is it exactly? Those things have more than enough power to run a full GNU/Linux distribution, complete with IDE and all.

There are a few easy (yet deal-breaking) problems. We don't have docking stations like laptops do, and I bet the driver support for GNU/Linux is crap. Then there's the mismatch between desktop peripherals and a tiny touch screen.

The hard problem is the weakness of the CPU. Right now, we're kinda set back 12 years. We could imagine the docking station providing some co-processor, even additional RAM, or something that gives the phone more processing power when docked. Solve that with a standard docking interface, and you just turned phones into ultra-portable desktop computers. (Oh, and don't forget to invent a virtual machine that can be efficiently implemented in hardware. Something like asm.js or SPIR-V might be a starting point.)

> I can write any app I want for my iPhone, and I can share the source code with others, and they can then install it on their phones...

Don't everyone is supposed to pay something like 99$ a year for the privilege?

I don't see the point. If your docking station needs a coprocessor, why not just use a desktop? I think that mobile use vs. desktop use cases are so different, that two devices make sense.

> Don't everyone is supposed to pay something like 99$ a year for the privilege?

Developer Program Membership is no longer required. As of XCode 7, all you need is a (free) Apple ID to sign software for your device. You do need a paid membership for access to App Store distribution and for integrating services like Apple Pay.

> If your docking station needs a coprocessor, why not just use a desktop?

So I can carry my environment with me.

All with my OS, my custom keyboard, my own special vimacs… My email and favourite web pages are the same on the move and on the desk. I want to take quick notes while on the move, and organise them when I settle at home. I don't want to worry about synchronisation. I want backups of course, but that can be automated each time I have a fast connection.

Do do that, there are 2 problems to overcome: the first is storage: we need our phones to carry several terabytes of data. Thankfully with the new stacking flash memories, this should be achievable.

The second is processing power: it can be low while on the move, but we gotta achieve desktop performance at home. I don't see how we could avoid the need for co-processors in this case.

The section about mobile devices being for consumption instead of creation really resonated with me. I still use my smartphone every day, but none of my uses are related to content creation; it's mostly a time killer while I'm away from a desktop.

I've become pretty strict about installing applications on my smartphone. It seems like so many applications just wanna track everything you do and blast ads in your face. And the worst ones even start showing random notifications! To me this just shows a total lack of respect from their part. I always regret installing applications that behave this way.

What's most surprising to me about mobile is that somehow it just keeps getting worse. I've been a smartphone user since the Nexus One came out, and I currently own a Nexus 5X. I don't think I've ever had a smartphone that was as buggy and crashed as often as this!

If you're on Android, I strongly suggest installing Firefox with uBlock Origin and Ghostery. It makes the mobile web much better. But overall, doing anything on mobile feels like a painful chore.

I am a software engineer today because I learned to program in TI-Basic on a TI-82, a calculator which is so inferior to modern smartphones in all ways that that fact needs no further explanation.

And yet the TI-82 came built-in with everything you needed to write and run your own programs, on the device. Modern smartphones do not. In that one sense they are significantly less capable than those TI calculators.

> Modern smartphones do not

Excluding so many apps and web apps that enable you to write and test code on mobile/tablet? Excluding all the content writing and note taking apps? Excluding 'game builder' apps? I don't agree with your point. Android lets you run android sdk anyways.

Can you link me to some of these apps that let you write code on the phone itself? (Preferably Android, as that's what I have.) I haven't actually used any, and I'm curious.

But the important point is -- the phones don't come with them. The TI-82 literally had a button that you'd press to access programs, and the submenu within was "Run" or "Edit". That discoverability was very important. The kinds of people who would search for and use apps to write programs on the device are the kinds of people like us, who don't need it. (I do all my Android development in Android Studio on a workstation, for obvious reasons.)

IMHO apps like Tasker are an interesting example. They (mostly) work in the app-ecosystem, but people use them to work around limitations in other apps. Especially Tasker is "strong" enough that other app authors offer hooks for Tasker to control the apps.

On the other end of the scale, I have a python interpreter on my android phone (although I don't use it very often)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui

You can do consumption related to creation. I read this yesterday on my iPhone in the subway. http://d.pr/f/1jeUp

Does it have to be a platform for creation? I use my phone as a sort of amalgamated media consumption device. I listen to music and audiobooks, track my fitness, read (research) papers, I use it for navigation and maps and of course for communication. I don't want to 'create' on device the size of my palm because it's a poor form factor.

Fundamentally I want something in my pocket that I can query to find information quickly. This is truly sci-fi terminal stuff and we have it today.

Tablets - yes, this is a big problem. It annoys me that I can buy a tablet with great CPU power underneath, but I can't do any real work on it. Real work being development, access to a non-emulated terminal. We're getting closer to this with the MS Surface since you can run desktop applications on it, but I would never buy an iPad or an Android tablet because to me it's just a big phone without the data contract.

If you had offered someone in 1916 a device that they could put in their pocket that would let them instantly communicate with nearly anyone on the planet, tap into a large fraction of the world's knowledge base, read books, navigate across the country, take photographs and movies, and play almost any song ever written, what do you think that person would say?

"No thanks." ?

The smartphone is one of the most significant inventions of the last 100 years.

Ah, but you didn't mention the most egregious aspect of a smart phone - a device that they could put in their pocket that would let nearly anyone on the planet instantly communicate with them.

That is one Hell of a lot of people I have no interest in talking to.

So what? Don't answer. Set up VIP email lists, or SMS. The tool isn't the problem, it's how you use it. I get more email that I don't care about than I do care, so I don't let email distract me, in that I silence it's notifications. But that isn't enough to keep a smartphone out of my pocket.

Email has the advantage of white lists. Until phones have the same you'll always be looking at a ringing phone trying to decide if it's a call you want to take - in of itself annoying and time-wasting.

Smartphones are just portable computers. There is nothing new to them apart from the fact that 1) they have internet mobile connection 2) their form factor makes them very practical to carry.

Technology-wise, we already had about everything when we had laptops and modems attached to them. It's just become much more convenient but it's still the same concept.

Smartphones outsell computers 5 to 1 and for the next billion smartphone users a smartphone will be their first computer. Dismissing them as mere refinement of what went before is to ignore the scale of their impact on the world.

One may as well dismiss laptops with modems as "more fully featured telegraphs", or "smaller mainframes".

> for the next billion smartphone users a smartphone will be their first computer.

Smartphones will be their first and last computer. Laptops, let alone desktops, are being permanently bypassed.

Well, no. There are lots of situation where a tiny screen and no keyboard is laughably insufficient.

>Smartphones will be their first and last computer

No, unfortunately smartphones are toys at best. Nobody uses them for real work, just consumption and browsing facebook. When they go to work, they will use a real computer.

That's just... not accurate. I know lots of people who do real work on smartphones. Hell, I'd be dead a few times by now if I didn't use mine as a radar HUD while photographing tornadoes. (While also using it to report digitally directly to the weather service, and running a GPS tracker so that they both can see me on a map and so that I later can geotag photos taken on cameras that don't have integrated gps). To say nothing of how much I use my phone to take photographic and text notes. Don't make the tremendous mistake of assuming that just because you can't find a use for a smartphone in your line of work that nobody else can or does.

I use my iPhone to collect data for OpenStreetMap. If you ever find yourself in London using an OSM-based map, some chunk of it will likely have been created using my pointless silly Facebook twit-machine.

What defines the PC for ordinary consumers is not the big black box under the desk, though. It's the keyboard, the mouse, the displays.

The smartphone may replace the box, but it won't replace the peripherals. Those will continue to be extremely desireable features for many tasks, because they are far more ergonomic and speed up many types of work.

I predict a smartphone docking station on every desk within 5 years, both at home and at work. Maybe a docking station on every couch, too, tablet form-factor.

Exactly because the smartphone will be the first computer for the next billion users, the points made by the linked article are important.

That argument is not as relevant as evidence of the importance of the invention of the smartphone vs the laptop with a modem.

> Smartphones outsell computers 5 to 1 and for the next billion smartphone users a smartphone will be their first computer.

Nice strawman. This was not at all my point. It's not because something gets market recognition that it's fundamentally new in itself. Most of the time it's simply because the way it's packaged or marketed is more attractive.

Computers are just really fast calculators. Calculators are just weird abaci made out of sand. Modems are just phones for computers. Phones are just smoke signals through a wire. By reducing things to their absolute basics, it's easy to lose track of the fact that reductions in size or increases in speed are sometimes the driving force of progress, far more than the original concept ever was.

> Computers are just really fast calculators.

In what way is a Universal Turing Machine equivalent, stored-program, probably Von Neumann architecture computer in any way "really just" a fast calculator? The computer may contain an ALU, but the ability to change the program makes the computer capable of far more that a fancy ALU (calculator).

There are a lot of people that wish they could stuff the genie called "Turing complete" back in its bottle and go back to the days of selling merely a calculator (or "app"liance), but as Cory Doctorow put it[1], "...an appliance is not a stripped-down computer -- it is a fully functional computer with spyware on it out of the box."

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

When computers first became a thing, that's what people thought of them as. Many did not see their potential outside of raw number crunching. ordinary's position, which I share, is that the "smartphones are just portable computers" sentiment is repeating this mistake.

That's one way of looking at it. Smartphones are portable computers! is another way. The portability and usability changes everything.

It changes everything for consumers. I don't know about people around you, but around me 99% of people just use their smartphone to either 1) play such silly games that they make 80's Pacman look like a piece of Art, 2) use Facebook messaging/email 3) use it as a (poor) camera 4) consulting news/weather 5) use it as GPS for maps/directions.

I see about no productive work happening on smartphones. It's a leisure device at best, or something convenient, but not something that will ever replace a PC with a proper OS and full keyboard.

Sure, there will always be the 1% of folks who does something else with their smartphone, but that's a very, very small minority.

I see nothing wrong with having a consumer-mostly device in my pocket. In fact, I see a lot right with it, as I can use it to communicate with everyone I know in a variety of ways, navigate anywhere I want, and look up whatever information I need just about anywhere.

I don't understand when developers feel threatened by the existence of consumer devices.

Convenience is an incredibly powerful feature.

We had it several years before the smartphone boom. Just a dumb phone that could talk Bluetooth (DUN profile anyone? or PAN), and a palmtop/handheld device that could talk Bluetooth (again, DUN or PAN).

They're used quite differently and that should be the characteristic defining them. A hairdryer and a car are both things built around a motor - yet they are hardly the same.

Lots of general purpose computing chips exist in all kind of devices, yet that doesn't make them computers. The great majority of people uses smartphones still mainly a communications device, just like they used phones before.

You convieniently didnt mention that it also allows their government to know where they are and where they were and what they're saying and what they've said, and what they're reading, and glimpses of what they've seen, forever.

Meh, at some point we've gotta see this as a trade off. And do you know something, I'm really not that concerned that .gov knows my browsing history.

Everyone knows this already and most happily make the trade-off. My gov knows exactly what and when I do something in public, and probably on my phone/desktop. Do I have things to hide? Sure. And I take the proper precautions to ensure its safety because I know the trade I made. Plenty of govs still police your speech, enjoy that ours only hears but does not act.

That's a government problem, not a smart phone problem.

As developers shouldn't we view it as a smart phone problem? When trying to reach Poitras and Greenwald Snowden turned to a technical solution, encryption, for what is a government problem, spying on private communications. Using a VPN to bypass the Great Firewall is certainly easier than tearing it down. A VPN isn't a permanent solution, you can see we play a cat and mouse game with the GFW, but we should use our talents in the most effective way possible. Whether or not developing technical solutions to government problems is the best use of our skills I do not know.

>"No thanks." ?

If you then showed them a real computer, nobody in their right mind would have said "yes." The thing about smartphones is, they don't actually do anything new. The only thing better about them is the form factor, they sacrifice everything else in comparison to a real computer. None of those things you listed are inherent to smartphones.

>The smartphone is one of the most significant inventions of the last 100 years.

This is hilarious. Oh yeah sure, nukes are pretty forgettable compared to smartphones, because now anyone can post on Hacker News from while on the toilet.

> Oh yeah sure, nukes are pretty forgettable

Stop trolling. GP said "one of the most".

Do you think he would trade that for a horse?

Most people don't want or need root access to their smartphone but will complain (no matter how much you tell them security is their responsibility when acting as root) when installing random software they found on the internet results in their banking details being stolen followed swiftly by all their money.

There are products you can buy in pretty much every category if you need a general purpose computing device, but most people are better off with a locked down device that reduces significantly the amount of harm they can inadvertently expose themselves too.

(As an aside, I use an iPhone and can perform - with varying degrees of hassle imposed by iOS' restrictions - many of my day to day "creation" activities, with the bigger annoyance coming from small screen size than the locked down nature of the device. In some cases, in fact, the tools available for mobile OSes are far better than those on the desktop/web due to the incentive created by app store ecosystems.)

What does having an ability to gain root access have to do with installing random malware apps?

You can easily have a device with disabled root access and a curated store as a default and make gaining root access an added functionality (similarly how Android Nexus phones require you to issue a fastboot oem unlock command).

Where does this idea that the only alternative to not having some non-technical people install malware is to forbid root access to EVERYONE else?!

A large number of malware sites will walk you through side loading and bypassing your security to install their app which may be a compromised game or app like a Trojan. Not having this access is the only way to deal with this.

No it isn't. Just like random scammers leading people to give them money doesn't mean everyone should be banned from having a bank account or a credit card.

Some minimal level of responsibility of action from a users side isn't unreasonable. Being locked out from your own hardware because there are a few uneducated users out there is absurd.

Not to mention that now there are actually viruses and exploits out there that install themselves through security holes on users devices and the users can't remove them because they're locked out!

Care to provide some examples of iOS Viruses and exploits that install themselves and are un-removable due to restricted user experience? I have never seen any of those before.

No problem: http://blog.binamuse.com/2014/09/coregraphics-memory-corrupt...

If you got an older iPhone, it's best not to open random PDFs anymore.

neat bug, although only the iPhone 4 and earlier would be unpatchable for it, and those devices are pretty much stuffed from a security standpoint anyway as they're vulnerable to the old DFU mode jailbreaks...

I was kind of thinking more of examples of malware where people were actually using the lockdown of the OS to stop users removing it, but hey I said exploits and that's an exploit.

On the other hand: Have you ever heard of examples of malware which told the use to root their phone?

I think CyanogenMods solution, where root access has to be enabled in the Developer Settings, which have to be enabled by tapping the Android version number 6 times, is the perfect solution: My mum would stop immediately doing such a complicated thing if she wanted to install something.

I'm not sure I've seen one that told users to enable root, but from what I've seen of the android malware scene large parts of it rely on users installing software from non-Google sources and their lack of ability in discerning a good app. from malware. (one example of many http://arstechnica.com/security/2015/11/new-type-of-auto-roo...)

That seems to me to illustrate the point of a locked down environment fairly well...

Ah I see. Let's hope Google is going to move the "install apps from 3rd party sources" switch to the Developer Settings in the future.

Yes, actually. My ex, sister, and nephew all got bit. Wan't American netflix on your phone, do x, y and z. Want to play games free, just follow these simple steps. You're not seeing it because you probably have a good BS detector and google/research first. But they very much exist.

Good to know :) Were these steps to enable installing apks from 3rd party sources or really rooting the phone though?

it's because the demographic you're talking about is vanishingly small, and therefore apple does not care about it. do you notice them hurting for customers?

i installed linux when i was 12. i've been working in this field for nearly 20 years. i'm abnormal, as 'techie' as they come, and i really just don't give a shit about having root access on my iphone. in fact i pretty much use it for a handful of things, primarily messaging, and that's it. i view my phone as a fancy microwave oven.

from a business point of view, you might as well ask amazon for root access on their hypervisors, or network switches. some people give you that. others don't, because they just care about the people who want that.

> it's because the demographic you're talking about is vanishingly small, and therefore apple does not care about it. do you notice them hurting for customers?

How do you know?! There are billions of people out there not using Apple devices, how do you just claim that the demographic is vanishingly small? How did you measure it? Apple doesn't even own half of the market.

Apple would rather be profitable on 10% market share than unprofitable on a 90% market share.

I think it would be hard in practice to allow root access but limit it to people who know what they are doing and understand the risk. People will follow arbitrary instructions to modify settings and enter commands (that they don't understand) for the most trivial things and from the most untrusted groups (for example: to install pirated software, to customise their user interface, etc.), and will merrily click past every warning without reading it.

As a result, there will be more malware if you even make enabling root access an option. It isn't surprising that Apple and others are happy just not catering to that small segment of the market.

> I think it would be hard in practice to allow root access but limit it

This is largely solved, I think, by the current system. People who know/want/understand the risks, can have a rooted phone. But it is not trivial for the average layperson.

I would believe (partially) in the argument of security, if locking down phones was not used for what, in my view, is a clear case of planned obsolescence.

Phones are unique devices in generally requiring you to buy new hardware after 2 or 3 years if you want up-to-date software. This is wasteful and infuriating. My 13 year old PC is still able to run the latest version of Ubuntu, and does a pretty good job at it.

I really really wish Nokia had gone the N900/N9 route. Or now that they somehow acquire Jolla. For us, developers, phones are small computers. There's no difference. Locked down devices are simply restricting our ability to do things. We need something different.

> Phones are unique devices in generally requiring you to buy new hardware after 2 or 3 years if you want up-to-date software.

That's totally software's fault. I find it kinda hilarious that my sister is looking for a new smartphone because her few years old Samsung is laggy while all she does is chatting with friends and watching their pics - things people did on dog slow PCs from the '90s.

I think this is ultimately a consequence of locked down hardware.

If manufacturers released drivers for your sister's device, your sister would be able to install a different operating system which would satisfy her needs.

Most people probably don't need free speech either, but we don't remove the possibility anyway.

There are also plenty of examples of mobile devices being infected even though the user didn't have root access.

We don't remove the possibility of open hardware either, there are options for partially or completely open smartphones (as a quick web search will attest) but the most popular products sold by Samsung, Apple, et al. are not.

Equally, as for free speech, there are options for completely uncensored speech (although fewer than you think, and even then if you say certain things you'd better hope they can't be traced back to you or have an escape plan) but the most popular ways of communicating (whether online or off) are also locked down to a significant extent.

So it's not actually much different for speech vs. access to devices. Feel free to argue for anarchy if that's what you want, but let's not pretend that smartphones represent a special and particularly nefarious restriction of important freedoms.

This is ridiculous. Name ONE option for a "completely open smartphone". I've spent the last 4 years in search of just ONE open phone and the closest we've come is the Neo900 (stalled, out of money) the Freerunner (production run of 100?), OsmocomBB running on an ancient candybar (illegal), and this hobby project [1] that is more toy than anything viable.

The Nokia n900 was the last "openish" phone to come out and they stopped making those in 2011 when, guess what, they were bought by Microsoft.

[1] http://www.seeed.cc/rephone/

Pyra might be the best chance to get a N900-like device. Not too alike though, as it's not really a smartphone. Sad times.

You probably meant GTA04 phones instead of Openmoko Neo Freerunner - the latter was sold in more than 10 000 devices.

Yes, not counting GTA04, N900 was pretty much the last phone out there that you could call "openish". However, I can tell that Neo900 is not quite done yet and even though with time passing by it obviously gets less exciting than when it was announced, I'm still looking forward to it.

I hope you're right Sebastian :( I've been following the progress, Joerg, you, and everyone else pretty religiously and there's nothing I'd love more than that phone! I miss the n900.

Good argument, except: On Android, currently, we have 3 completely separate "App with no permissions" to "Full bootloader unlock" exploit chains. (in 5.1)

Malicious people always find a way to abuse your system.

Restricting freedom for security means you will get neither.

I always find fantastic how these kinds of arguments can be made blatantly ignoring that they basically are a plea for authoritarian governments.

Do you realize how bad basic freedoms are? Most people are better off without them, because many would harm themselves. And can you imagine the gains if instead of letting people speak for themselves, we has a single entity vetting everyone's discourse? Man, dictatorship is so great, so efficient.

Vote Trump, get a despot - have Americans live with the consequencies of locked down technology, surveillance.

The difference is that you purposefully opt-in to a smartphone, but can't opt-in (at least, not on an individual basis) to a regime. Would a totalitarian state be as objectionable if people had to chose to move there, and could leave as easily as one can change phones?

There are consistently laws to purposefully remove digital rights for the people (think encryption tools). With this argument, you justify that rights should be taken from everybody for the sake of the majority, and there's no opt-in anymore.

I don't understand your point.

People who are born in such a regime usually don't get a (easy) opt-out but I digress.

My feelings towards AAPL was pretty mixed from day 1 and has changed surprisingly little over the past few years. I genuinely applaud their take on many issues such as strong encryption and the ability to side-load your own apps from source. On the other hand I am very alarmed by the fact that backing up apps from iOS device is no longer possible from iOS9. It might be an improvement for security, version control or whatever, but it made me very reluctant to pick up my iPad again knowing that I have less control of the platform than ever before.

Keep in mind that iOS devices must phone home for activation and repeat the process every three years. It is rather unlikely yet not entirely impossible that one day Apple will cease to provide activaton for older devices and render them useless. In that sense I don't really own my iPad but paid a premium for the priviledge to able to use it, only as long as Apple allows me to. Suffice to say I refuse to be subject to the same tyranny again.

People who are born in such a regime usually don't get a (easy) opt-out but I digress.

That's my point - it's not useful to compare the loss of rights in states to the loss of rights in smartphone platforms, because the latter are easily opted-out.

The point people are making is that if it's the only thing on the shelf it's not easy to opt out.

http://www.ubuntu.com/phone/devices

https://shop.goldelico.com/wiki.php?page=GTA04%20Complete

(soon?) http://neo900.org/

Hope springs eternal!

Hope? I'm fine with my Nexus tablet and feature phone.

The argument is "it's an allowable trade off for a hardware product to be locked down and for consumers to decide whether they still want to buy it given the restrictions" not "all hardware must be locked down and all software approved by corporations/government"- the latter is clearly not OK.

You fail to recognize the political implications of individually opting for locked-down solutions. If many people opt-in for a locked solution, they essentially remove the possibility for others to adopt free solutions -university, businesses, have to be able to communicate with the maximal number of people.

The human brain comes with built-in hardware for dealing with social challenges. It is probably not 100% trustworthy for large-scale society because of the recent appearance of such a structure [1], but it exists.

There is obviously no such built-in hardware support for analyzing software-imposed risks. If such hardware existed, it's not actually the consumer's behavior that would change, it would be the software producers, because the software engineers would feel that bit of their brain poking them and produce much less insecure software in the first place.

So, I don't think the argument translates as well as you say in real life.

[1]: Proof: There exist a large number of people who disagree with $YOU about the optimum nature of government. You are self-evidently correct, of course, and they are wrong. So a lot of people are running on self-evidently faulty hardware for large-scale society.

I fail to see how these scenarios are even remotely analogous. Closed systems are what the consumer has happily chosen for their phones, which they vote for with their dollars. Our system of government is what people have chosen -- and you will note that it is not "open". I can't walk up to the Senate floor and present a bill, nor can you. The system for doing that is closed. If you want to be a part of if, you have to be vetted by the people.

I have yet to have a customer bring me an Android or an iOS device that was ridden with browser toolbars, malware popups, or link re-directors. I probably get 4 or 5 customers a week with this problem in Windows 7, 8, or 10. Any random business or small town cop shop I walk into is guaranteed to have at least half of their computers infected with something or other. People practicing law who are totally oblivious that their search has been hijacked by Conduit or one of its clones. This is because Microsoft is much more open than iOS or typical Android installs. Everything most consumers get on smartphones comes from vetted stores owned by the OS developer. While there have been a few things that have snuck under the radar with both Google and Apple, for the most part if you submitted Conduit to the App Store, I'm pretty sure someone from Apple would drive to your place and punch you right in the face. And this is why people prefer the closed ecosystem. They want to get work done in their field and not hassle with doing work in another field they don't care about, like IT.

Windows gets full of malware because "download executables from the internet and run them" is the expected way to install Windows software, so the process for installing Conduit is no different than the process for installing 7zip or Adblock.

What you're making the argument for is a package manager with vetted packages, not a prohibition on advanced users installing anything outside of the package manager using a different method.

You're equalling basic human rights with the freedom to modify a tool (which the computer is). If you step back a bit you'll recognize that computers aren't the only important thing in your life.

Many people own cars and there's lots of proprietary things about them. Does that mean car owners are living in an authoritarian world? If those people just didn't ride cars they would be so much more free! It's the power to tinker with the cars, not the power to use that makes them free!

Electronics generally contain chips that are proprietary and that we can't change. And we usually can't change the firmware of those devices. Nobody seems to be complaining about that (except firmware in computers because that's supposed to be software again or something). Apparently we don't see how we're living in such an authoritarian world.

Computers and smartphones are also tools. Just like with the stuff before, the most important thing is that they do their job in a good way. Being a toy to tinker around with isn't one of them, at least for me. And that's the only thing your so called freedoms really give you.

I've got a Jolla phone running Sailfish, which is reasonably open. I'm happy with it because as an advanced user I can enable developer mode and modify or fix things. It's a stable and usable system. But Jolla doesn't seem to be doing so well right now. Before that I had a Nokia N9, the only Maemo phone, precurser to Sailfish. Another capable although minimal system. That didn't go anywhere either, because Nokia sold out to Microsoft – who by the way don't seem to be doing so well either in the mobile space.

Also Firefox seems to have thrown the towel in the ring already.

I'm waiting to see what Ubuntu comes up with in the phone/tablet space. It's certainly taking a long time.

I don't understand that with all the people concerned about rights and privacy, and all the open-source affectionados, there just doesn't seem to be that much of a market for alternatives to the big two of Android and Apple iOS.

Is it because of locked-down hardware? Or that Linux on desktop and mobile is not a (funding) priority? Or are people that addicted to downloading low-quality apps (i.e. the "eco-system")? Or is there simply not enough demand?

> Before that I had a Nokia N9, the only Maemo phone

The N900 begs to differ with that statement. It ran Maemo 5, and (in my personal opinion) was the best phone of its era hands down.

Not to mention the N9 was marketed as a MeeGo device, not a Maemo device.

Allow me to FTFY...

"of it's era" = "so far"

A hardware keyboard IS highly deairable, backspace/tab/ctrl/arrow keys ARE extremelt useful, a file manager(stock) removes necessity of numerous utility(sic) apps. A removable battery/ext storage port do NOT ruin design so much as it fosters future dependence. A cell radio that does voice & data on request IS preferred by those who do not choose to share evwry nuance of their digital existence. To name just a few points.

edit: almost forgot, a working iteration of a resistive touchscreen is a far superior experience... when implemented correctly. Still marvel how great my n800 still feels when cuing up tunes in the truck.

I think because Android already IS open-source. Why would I need an alternative to reinvent the wheel?

When using F-Droid [1] with a custom ROM and no Google Apps, Android is as open-source as Ubuntu, Sailfish or Firefox OS. The one big problem left is proprietary drivers, and this hasn't been fixed be these three alternatives yet. IIRC Sailfish and Ubuntu use the same proprietary Android drivers.

[1] https://f-droid.org/

Have you ever tried to compile it? With the current residential bandwidth caps in the US it's not even practical to download the (100GB) source.

I'm living in Germany, downloading 100 GB wouldn't be a problem for me. But no, haven't tried to compile it yet. I'm trusting CyanogenMod.

Also I guess very few people are compiling Sailfish, Ubuntu or Firefox OS from source either ;)

The openness of Jolla is an illusion. Sailfish OS is barely open source: sure the core components are but when we move to the UI, you can hardly find any open code there.

Android on the other hand is fully open source.

"Smartphones are unapologetically devices for consumption"

I see. The author has never noticed anyone taking pictures with their smartphones.

And Snapchat is also pure consumption. Except that users are taking pictures (and videos). And modifying them. And transforming them.

Fair point regarding creation, specifically A/V content. What are your thoughts on the rest of the argument beyond that point?

nothing I do on my smartphone relies on the cloud more than what I did on my PC.

I've been told Facebook is the most popular iPhone app by time open. Facebook did not become more cloud-centric with the smartphone, it was always a web site. Its place in the cloud has nothing to do with battery life.

The only apps I can think of that used cloud computing instead of local computing are voice recognition. And that was likely driven by the desire to have a huge corpus of data for learning rather than on-device battery life.

And even if they were, what is the problem? Printed books are unapologetically devices for consumption, yet I love them.

Consider that smart phones have only been around for a little more than a decade. It took several decades of development for general-purpose computers to become viable to the mainstream, so the smart-phone technology is just in its infancy.

While the battery consumption issues are definitely a problem, progress is being made to curb them:

http://news.mit.edu/2016/neural-chip-artificial-intelligence...

Really we need innovation in the hardware space in addition to less bloated and more refined APIs. Perhaps more efficient Virtual Machine layers that sit on top of the OS layer. Or even get rid of those entirely and force C++ only, but then the precious security sandbox is gone. In any case, it seems a lot of the OS changes being made are feature-driven more than anything. They are trying to compete on features instead of stabilizing and refining the core. Or, maybe we need a new mobile OS design and some open hardware to support it. Personally, I think BB10 had a lot going for it with QNX and C++ APIs, but because they don't have the precious "apps" consumers demanded it became even more bloated with the sluggish android runtime.

What's more, Device manufacturers push higher-resolution displays and faster CPUs and GPUs--all things that impact battery life. But why not improve upon these gradually while bolstering battery life instead? Consumers won't buy it that's the problem and hardware manufacturers just want to sell units to satisfy shareholders.

The problem is no different than the junk-food industry: consumers don't know what's best for themselves or what they need, yet they develop strong opinions about what they want and companies, hungry for market share meet those demands.

> hardware manufacturers just want to sell units to satisfy shareholders.

Sure. Don't underestimate the importance of staying in business, or having enough market share to attract developers.

This person would be happier moving to a pre-computer environment - take a look at their pet hates: https://violations.devever.net/products - including:

* AMD x86 CPUs

* Intel x86 CPUs

...leaving, ARM CPUs, I guess? Windows ARM machines are also on the list. (And surely ARMs should be blacklisted according to his reasoning; he is unhappy with Intel's secure enclave, while ARM has similar features).

Some people will never be happy.

I have seen Kernel programmers walk around with MIPS laptops.

> Some people will never be happy.

... with overengineered, potentially buggy and vulnerable junk stuck into their devices which serves no purpose to them and can't be controlled or disabled.

I'm not sure why distaste in x86 suggests one prefers pre-computing environments unless you really internalize x86 as computing, which many people don't.

Look, I use x86 CPUs. I don't have much choice in the matter. But frankly, this stuff needs to be tracked, because there's too much of it to keep in my brain anymore, and if you look at Intel CPUs in particular, the level of malevolence seems to increase with every new tick/tock.

Although there are some interesting moves in the works: https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Talos-Se... Expensive though.

From the About page:

"The initial focus of Violations Tracker is on things that act against the interests of people who own or use items of technology, and in the interests of the manufacturer or other entities."

It seems he's just making note of anti-user practices on various devices and software, e.g. "Amazon can delete content remotely" on Amazon Kindle devices. Makes sense to me.

>leaving, ARM CPUs, I guess?

Or POWER8.[0]

[0]https://raptorengineeringinc.com/TALOS/prerelease.php

The irony in this article is, due to the lack of a sensible line width, it is much easier to read on a phone than a PC

Just don't fullscreen the browser ;)

I don't like my freedom of screen width being encroached on.

Perhaps browsers should have p { max-width: 72ex; } by default. And a user setting for this, just like default font size.

You might be sitting too close to your monitor if you can't read across it comfortably.

I took the CSS from bettermotherfuckingwebsite.com and turned it into a bookmarklet. Works alright at least on this page: https://jsfiddle.net/49uzxkeu/

You are doing God's work.

Off topic (sorry): Can someone explain to me why firefox's "readable view" is randomly not available on some pages, such as this one? I had to manually add "max-width: 700px" to the html element to read this without straining my eyes.

[And funnily enough, author complains about ruining web design when his page is far more readable on a vertical-layout smartphone browser than a 1680x1050 resolution monitor...]

The content consumption/creation distinction is a useful one, and I agree that phones are definitely more geared toward consumption. Still, I think the author drastically underestimates the benefits of smartphones, especially when it comes to the non-technical crowd.

Let's see what's been using my phone's battery lately. In decreasing order of usage:

• Nike Running

• Strava (cycling app)

• Safari (mostly Hacker News)

• Mail

• Messages

• Notes

• Health

I also use imiwa (Japanese dictionary), Anki (spaced repetition), Maps, Dark Sky (an amazing weather app), and Kindle. Thanks to my phone, I take more photos. I read more books. I can summon an Uber. Yes, some of these uses are purely content consumption, but many are incredibly useful. While a dumb phone and some dedicated devices could do many of these things, they couldn't do them as well. For example, if someone texts, "Where are you?" I can reply with my GPS location and a map. That feature alone has saved me tons of time and frustration.

Even if all the issues raised by the author are valid (I don't think they are), there's still the fact that without my phone, I wouldn't be quite as knowledgeable, as cultured, or as healthy. Those are the criteria we should use when evaluating these devices, not idealogical ones.

pfffft... the first line shows an extremely limited world view.

Plenty of people are creating using smartphones. Sure, no one is programming on a smartphone, but plenty of people are creating art via the cameras and on-device editing tools. And doing so much more spontaneously than when you had to awkwardly carry around a camcorder waiting for inspiration to hit.

Similarly, lots of people only use PCs for consumption. It is their reddit/hulu/netflix device.

Both PCs and smartphones are used for creation, just for different types of creation.

Yes I see people taking pictures with their phones but do you really call this creating art? I think it gives them the _illusion_ that they're creating something, and maybe that makes them happy, but personally I think it's an act of self-delusion, and quite annoying too.

I would agree with this. From my experience, most people in my demographic use smartphone cameras for sharing moments on Facebook, Snapchat, etc. which directly fuels content consumption. Relatively few seem to really aspire to be hobbyist photographers.

Yeah, before the smartphone, all photography was serious. Nobody wandered around with a 35mm compact taking photos of their friends and family and holidays in Disneyland. Everyone was trying to make great works of art with their cameras.

Better email the Smithsonian and tell them to take all that photography out of the American Art Museum. Ansel Adams was merely under the illusion that he was creating something, but it was just an annoying act of self-delusion.

Photography isn't really proper art, especially if done using a smartphone, right?

It's absolutely horrible that we have come to accept that not having full control over our devices is acceptable in any way. This will sadly be the leverage to completely end general-purpose computing.

Why is a mobile device not just a small form factor? Why does it also have to remove all our rights at the same time?

Because the market has spoken and clearly wants what Apple and Samsung and HTC are selling. The user base of Hacker News isn't that of the world. Not everyone does their job in front of a computer, and the idea of making this, to them, miraculous device in their pocket a computer is terrifying. They don't want full control of the computer they already have at home.

Answering your question: It doesn't have to remove rights, but the economics of making a device that doesn't makes that device unfeasible.

> Because the market has spoken and clearly wants what Apple and Samsung and HTC are selling. The user base of Hacker News isn't that of the world.

Solution: define the world as "everybody on Hacker News".

The author has a couple of valid points, the one I definitely agree with the most is the one about centralization. I'm tired of hearing about some cool new app/program that sounds really great, but when I go check it out, it almost always turns out to be tied to the cloud in some way. It makes me want to say "Guys, great software, but can't I just buy it and run it on my own hardware without having to trust you with all my data?"

On the other hand, many of his points are also definitely geek-only (especially the one about not controlling one's phone). While I myself tend to agree (which is one reason I personally do not own a smart phone either), most people really don't want or need full root access to their computing platforms.

> "Guys, great software, but can't I just buy it and run it on my own hardware without having to trust you with all my data?"

More importantly: "Guys, great software, but how am I supposed to use this after you go out of business?"

Or get bought out by one of the corporate behemoths and killed off in 18 months.

Is it 2008 again? Small, efficient cars work just fine for a lot of people for most day-to-day tasks, not everybody wants to drive a truck all of the time.

If we talk education OK, but things have gotten much better since the iPhone/iPad first came out: you can buy your kids a Raspberry Pi Zero for $5 (a $5 truck!) and plug it into an old TV so they can start exploring the endless possibilities of a mostly open general purpose computing device - seriously, how cool is that?!

That said, programming isn't the only creative thing you can do with a computer - e.g. iMovie on iOS was great the last time I used it, I also learned to play my first piano songs on the keyboard with Garageband (on my phone)!

Glad to know somebody else also recognising position:fixed problem. It's really a nightmare. Is it really difficult to understand for their product managers to see that blocking top 20% of user's mobile screen just to hang a navigation which serve no purpose whatsoever is not cool.

I assume they do it because other people do it. Because Facebook, LinkedIn, whatsapp, twitter and instagram are supposed to make you cool. Why would you break your site usability this way just to remove the need to copy the URL when you post it somewhere else?

I'm not sure that this article is that contentious. Modern smartphones are unabashedly consumer devices made for the mass market and several of the criticisms in this article are features that most people don't want/need.

What most people want/need from a smartphone is a device that lets them do things (e.g. send messages, keep up with friends, make phonecalls, browse the Internet) without getting in their way. They're not really in the market for a general purpose computing device like a PC.

If you want that kind of device in a smartphone there are less mainstream options, but I don't regard it as surprising that larger companies don't actively cater to them (it's a niche market place)

Personally I've got a range of computing devices that I use for different tasks. When I want to read a book, or surf the Internet I use my iPad. When I want to write some code or do my technical job, I use Linux.

Now there's the obvious argument that people should have the freedom to control all their computing devices, but that freedom comes at a cost, which is that freer devices are, I would suggest, harder to maintain.(i.e. you need to understand more about the operation of the device in order to manage it). If you're a technical person, you may not see this as a problem, but remember mass-market consumers aren't necessarily very technical...

> "Mom I have told you thousands of times! Configure, make and make install, not configure and make install!"

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11086290

If you running configure and make as root you could actually just invoke make install instead of make; make install.

Also I wouldn't make install without a local prefix, something like ./configure --prefix=/home/$USER/usr/ or something along the lines. I mean common prefix is /usr/local, but still you shouldn't install anything globally without using your package manager.

But I am neither getting freedom nor security with smart phones. My 2 year old smart phone have never received a security update. It has become a piece of crap just within 2 years.

The iPhone receives plenty of security updates, and does so relatively quickly after the fix has been implemented.

Not only isn't this relivant it isn't even true or at least very misleading.

Apple patches the newests version of iOS. Sometimes older versions get a security update here or there, maybe. So you'd have to be running the latest version of you want security fixes. Which isn't always possible due to compatibility or performance/stability.

If your iPhone is 3 or more years old you can forget any support from Apple whatsoever.

the 4S from 2011 runs the latest iOS

The iPhone 4s wasnt discontinued until September 9, 2014. The 4s is the first iPhone to last 4 generations but 4s users have complained (and even filed a lawsuit) about the performance of iOS9 on the 4s.

I guess the reason is cost. There are times I want to reinstall on older operating system, and Apple seems to go out of their way to make it difficult? In some cases impossible.

Why not please your customers? Give them what they want? I don't even think the average customer would need a TOS of all the negatives using an older operating system brings.

They have a huge war chest. If a customer wants to be on the operating system that came on their device ten years ago; why make it difficult?

Could it be they want us to upgrade/buy regularly? For myself, I don't think I will ever buy another new Apple product. I will still give them as gifts though.

I'm guessing you have an Android device? Yep those Android security is nasty. the conficts of interest between the OS manufacturer, the handset manufacturer and the carrier have caused a load of fragementation and lack of support.

My personal opinion is that, unfortunately, regulation is the only way to solve that issue, as the market does not appear to be addressing it well.

Yeah unfortunately! A 10 year old desktop Computer running Lubuntu can be far more secure than my phone

Can this problem be solved by installing a custom ROM, such as CyanogenMod? I've only used Nexus Android phones, so am curious how to stay updated if using a phone from an OEM.

Wait.. Android goal is to provide security to novice users by taking away their freedom. Now why they want me to rely on advance solutions to secure myself.

But wait I'm novice who can't decide what is best for himself :(

> Now there's the obvious argument that people should have the freedom to control all their computing devices, but that freedom comes at a cost, which is that freer devices are, I would suggest, harder to maintain.(i.e. you need to understand more about the operation of the device in order to manage it). If you're a technical person, you may not see this as a problem, but remember mass-market consumers aren't necessarily very technical...

That's a common fallacy perpetuated by Apple and similar companies but it's simply not true. Having the ability to unlock your device, install apps after you enable unknown sources and hange other parts of it do not have to come at the cost for "average user" (whoever that is). You can make a secure simple default and still not waste development time and resources locking down the devices.

Sorry but I entirely disagree with you. From a security perspective allowing software installations form unknown sources is absolutely a concern for average users.

It's hard enough for IT professionals to maintain the security of general purpose computing devices, let alone non-technical users achieving the same goal.

Lets take a real-world exmaple. Look at the incidence of malware on a platform that allows unrestricted software installation (e.g. Android), with one that doesn't (e.g. iOS).

The problem is that making informed choices about whether a given piece of software is "trustworthy" is extremely difficult. Delegating that to a 3rd party (e.g. Apple) is for most people, likely the best option.

And now compare it to OS X installations. Or Linux. A platform that doesn't have a rampant malware problem and still isn't completely locked down.

We managed to somehow survive 30 years of unprecedented innovation and computer usage and NOW we suddenly need locked down devices where a single company decides which applications may be used on them and can forbid and innovative competition at will?

Why would you defend that?

You can't seriously compare iOS users to OS X and Linux users. iOS is for the masses while the other two have a relatively high percentage of tech savvy users.

lol you're not in the security industry are you?

OSX and Linux are both vulnerable to malware and have incidences of it, however (for desktop) they're relatively small targets, so get less attention. The idea that they're somehow resistent to malware is amusing.

and yep times are changing. I started in IT in 1995 and the environment now is massively more hostile than it was then, also the number of users has gone up a lot too, so there are a lot more people who aren't well placed to secure general purpose computing devices.

I'd argue that there's plenty of competition and if someone wants to use a nice open computing device, they can. The fact that most people choose not to, should tell you something about their priorities.

In some ways I agree but it's mostly a pervasive error in perception. Often smartphones are over-marketed as productivity enhancing devices, and that somehow smartphones and tablets are making PCs obsolete.

I see them as overpriced for what they provide and I agree with him that a lot of the power available in a smartphone's hardware goes under-used.

People keep yelling that smartphones are insecure, and I wouldn't necessarily say they are wrong when your adversary is a TLA, but they are much safer than desktop computers.

If you look at what a modern exploit kit is targeting, it is most certainly not mobile devices, it is very much desktop browsers and plugins.

They have far less malware than desktops, despite the scare tactics about how much malware has been in app stores in the past, this has largely been resolved in reputable app stores.

Partly because app stores actually let companies examine the software online before people install it, so now there is malware scanning for every single thing you install.

But mostly because these devices have enforced permissions models where users will get suspicious if a random app wants to read your SMS messages.

Sure, a determined adversary can hack your phone, but they can hack your desktop too, and that's exactly what they're doing.

>With a PC, I don't have to perform some arcane operation to actually have control of the device. Moreover, it seems to be common to discriminate against people who have the gall to “root” their device, or to disable some functionality of the device if such “rooting” is performed.

Guess what? Most computers come with unfree operating systems, you need to perform an arcane operation (install Linux) to regain control, and many sites actively discriminate against Linux, including bank sites. (First result I find is http://stealcode.blogspot.com/2008/07/citibank-doesnt-like-l..., it's admittedly old but still proves a point.)

Edit: also, much of my internet commenting, including this one, is done from smartphones. Does that count as creating?

Windows provides incomperably more control than any of the stock mobile OSes.

Than iOS, sure, but more control than stock android, given the inherent limitations of the hardware? I think not.

You can make your own programs and install outside apks without rooting, just need to change a setting.

There's slightly more control in that programs can modify other programs when running as root on Windows, but not on Android. But I don't think that can be described as "incomparable". What specific features are so huge that you don't think a comparison is possible?

Can you, on stock Android, just go and delete system files? Or even do something as simple as editing hosts? Kill system processes? Make multiple users with various rights? Set file/folder permissions? Share files over local network? Install drivers for new hardware?

And just for the record, I'm talking about 7, not 10.

Comparing the amount of (sub)items listed in control panels with what you get in the settings of most stock Androids should give enough of a hint ^^

You can definitely share files to network, and install drivers (apps) for new hardware. Except new hardware often can't be installed directly, but that's more of a hardware limitation similar to laptops than an OS thing.

See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hp.android... for an example of a "driver" for new hardware.

Editing hosts isn't possible without rooting, but you can get the same effect by running a DNS server on device and changing Android to use it.

I challenge your assumption that we should look at unrooted android versus Windows. Which of those things can you do on Windows without being an administrator? Unrooted stock is sandboxed, but so are Windows nonadmin accounts.

Obviously I mean sharing (and everything else) without installing some 3rd party application from who knows where. I remember looking into that when I was testing an Xperia for some security system.

See, this is why I bloody hate when people call everything "app". There's a distinct difference between "a driver" and "an application". A driver can interface with applications or it can be bundled with one, but they're not the same thing. And I'm quite sure that "driver" you linked to operates on one-way application level similar to sending an email to the printer which then does all the work itself. And it has to use that "share" function, but I guess that's expected as there's no "print" one, heh.

And really, having an own DNS server is not only different effect (because it works only if you use that server, plus it can be circumvented more easily), but it's also a completely new element. Not very practical.

Admin account is the default on Windows. That's what you get when you install it (by default anyway) and using it doesn't void any warranties.

And that's not even all the things, heh.

It's a bit weird to complain about a missing default feature as a "freedom" problem.

How would you define the difference between driver and app without mentioning any OS details?

>And really, having an own DNS server is not only different effect (because it works only if you use that server, plus it can be circumvented more easily), but it's also a completely new element. Not very practical.

You can set up a DNS server with another app, and change your network to use it.

>Admin account is the default on Windows.

A complaint about defaults, rather than what's possible, is not a complaint about freedom.

The warranty issue is a good one. But that has to do with freedom of the sale contract, not freedom of the phone. My phone came with no warranty because I got an old refurbished one, voiding the warranty means nothing to me and doesn't impinge on my freedom.

I've never said anything about "freedom"...

Driver is used by applications as an interface between the OS and the hardware.

It's not just that it's default. The OS was clearly designed with that in mind, whilst Android makes it pretty clear that rooting it is undesirable.

If you root it and if you get access to the shell, then you can probably do everything I asked about. But you have to go through hoops and loops to achieve that state.

Or, of course, you can use 3rd party solution, but that doesn't count as a capability of the OS.

I liked many facts that are provided in this text. Kinda feel the same way about many of those things. But! I kinda do not have courage to leave smartphone and go for standard cheap cellphone ala 15 years ago. Because I would then have to carry an iPod with me... So music and emails, (I am still student so it is relatively rare occasion to have to respond from phone) are reasons why I am still bind to it. But time I spend on phone is low. Like really low. Especially low since I bought new MacBook, and I usually carry it with me, so those moments when I am forced to use phone for anything (besides listening to music while in transport) are extremely rare. Probable once or twice a month.

I always felt there is something wrong with all those smartphones. Mostly because I had a feeling they are time wasting devices (don't get me wrong there are still a certain percent of people who do real work and are very dependable on smartphone and that's ok, but I am not one of them, as for now at least...). When you look at all those apps people install, like 5 different IM apps, 5 social network apps, 10 games, 5 productivity apps... like what the hell? I used to "consume" phone like that, but after few years got really tired, so I introduced life rule that made me feel much better about these devices. Do not install anything that you do not need (Thinking like "Oh, this could come in handy for X situation", no!). Use one app for one task... So I use stock apps and one app for every need I have. So it makes it 5 additional apps besides default ones. And after all that decluttering I found that I simply do not use smartphone as smartphone. I use it as a phone. (Only "heavy usage" could be music where I have Spotify, SoundCloud and Music app installed). I kinda felt better, like I had few more hours packed in a day, so it would be better for me to spend them differently, sit down, order some coffee in cafe and stare through the window, better than staring at 4.7 inch screen, scrolling dozens of unimportant informations...

Those reasons are all less technical but equally important in my opinion.

> When you look at all those apps people install, like 5 different IM apps, 5 social network apps, 10 games, 5 productivity apps... like what the hell?

I agree, this is so wrong, broken. It shouldn't be like that.

Does the author also not own a television? What did the author think of older cell phones since the same argument applies? The same arguments have applied long before smart phones as well. Did the author not like CD players? Perhaps he/she railed against newspapers too.

The first argument is based on a terrible premise that only exists to support authors decision to not have a cell phone.

The second argument is just as pitiful as clients have nearly always been centralized. Just because your favorite protocol isn't used often on the device doesn't make this terrible argument stand up.

The third argument... I can't even remember what it was because it was stupid, or perhaps my eyeballs rolled so far into the back of my head that I wasn't able to read anymore.

> They have ruined web design.

Ironically, the site itself looks super good on a smartphone. I didn't check the source (because I'm on a smartphone...), but it doesn't seem to have any CSS styling applied to it.

I had to resize my browser window in order to read this article in my PC. I don't get this kind of "geeky" designs, is there a technical reason why they don't even add basic CSS? I'm not talking about making the articles look "good", but making them readable.

It is an incredibly modern advent this idea that you can never actually use the entire screen to render text for anyone except for mobile viewers.

If you cannot read across your screen, you are probably sitting too close to it. I'd rather have wider text that I have to turn my eyes slightly to see all of then narrower text that requires active scrolling.

And I don't know of a single OS that you cannot snap your browser window to half the width of your monitor on the edge, which would make this as presentable as anyone in this comment section wants without the site maintainer having to assume everyone wants narrow text.

I'm not sure I agree. There's a reason newspapers, magazines, and other traditional media use narrow columns as well...it's much easier to read.

Traditional news presents information with more vertical space in the first place. The balance is between effort exerted to scroll text that is horizontally compressed vs effort moving your eye across the screen.

If you were to put your content on the screen in such a way that you were not padding with whitespace, but instead were doing a multi-column layout like a newspaper, that would be the best of all worlds I imagine, but it would look extremely disjointed to viewers and you would have to lock the vertical scrolling. But websites are not optimizing space for readability with columns - they are just padding the text body, creating more hand work in exchange for less eye work without considering their efforts are making people exert more total work when they have to scroll more, whereas traditional media is not just padding whitespace, it is introducing vertical columns of text adjacent one another.

200-character-long-lines don't fit in an eye's useful field of view. The problem is that websites have multiple columns of varying fixed width, so that a narrow window will give some websites a tiny actual line-width.

I quite like this style for technical blogs/pages.... I don't have my browser full screen allot of the time though.

btw here is the style sheet for that page :P https://www.devever.net/~hl/style.css

I don't understand this post. Smartphones give you access to the Internet at all times. They are not very well-suited to creation, but are fairly well-suited for communication and consumption. Either that's what you're looking for in a device, or it's not. It's quite clear that consumers want these devices, so what's the problem?

I would never replace my computer with a smartphone, but that hardly seems to be a valid argument for why one shouldn't "like them".

I don't get why this has so many points right now.

I've never actually owned a smartphone. Well.. that's not true. I had one of the first internet connected phones (I think) back in 2001. I used the internet like 10 time on it. It was (as you can imagine) pretty horrible.

Fast forward to now. I don't want the internet at all times. I don't want a $100 a month phone bill. I don't want a $500 device that can fall in the toilet. And most especially, I can't abide little tiny screens. I have $12 Nokia flip phone. My monthly phone bill is less than $25 on pay by minutes. I also have an internet phone at home which costs maybe $30 a year or so and I use for most outgoing calls.

I look at everyone, (including my GF who couldn't live without her smartphone) and wonder what it is I don't get. Sure, mobile net could come in handy at times. So I went and got a nexus 7. It hasn't been powered up in 6 months and that was just to make sure a web app I was working on displayed correctly. I'm a tech guy. Not a Luddite (I don't think). But I just really can't stand smartphones for some reason. All that poking at a little tiny screen... when I have a keyboard and 2 27" inch monitors in the next room along with a couple of laptops. A spiral notebook at the cost of 33 cents works really well for keeping shopping lists and notes. And the form factor is a lot better too. I guess I'm getting old. I just don't get it.

As an Android user with a fairly vanilla Moto X install of L, I'm pretty satisfied with my ability to change the OS. F-Droid is a big victory here too, with regards to being able to find F/OSS mobile apps.

I can't say anything nice about iOS's app ecosystem.

All that aside, this is a hilariously misdirected rant on par with Stallman. The purity of the vision of freedom advanced by RMS (or the OP) is to be admired for it's theory, but no more capable of being reality than Marx's vision for Communist Russia.

What's your usecase for f-droid ? For most apps there,except ad-blocking, you can find nicer versions in the play store.

Because F-Droid only indexes open source software and lists the license. On the play store, who knows what state the source is in for a given app.

Ok, so these seem biased, because majority of Android smartphones can in fact be use as equal devices - you can connect a keyboard, fire up VIM or anything else in chroot and you are good to go. If battery power is what you are after - not only there are amazingly long lasting android phones, there are aftermarkets batteries for any model with removable lid.

He even directly addresses the point iOS devices are blackboxes.

So yeah, I call bullshit on this one, even thou I can see where he is coming from with this.

Normal people don't plug keyboards in to their tablets and phones.

Creation doesn't mean necessarily "programming". Design, art and music creation, photomanipulation... We have many surrogates of that on our smartphones. Although I think that considering iPads, iPhones and smartphones barely as devices for consumption is a limited vision, I have to admit that the discrepancy and "inequality" of these devices is evident. The problem is: most of the people wouldn't be creators anyway. Those who are on a Pc/Mac, usually are those who try and find ways to be creators on their smartphones and tablets.

By the way, you don't necessarily have to "call bullshit" on someone who simply put forward a singular/unusual vision that happens to be different than yours. You can simply "disagree".

Have you ever written, debugged, tested, and deployed a mobile app solely from a smartphone? That's the point he was making. They're unequal in that the apps on them can't be made by them.

I think a lot of these issues actually could be addressed.

Right now, it's essentially a choice between iOS and Android. No serious third platform (Windows Phone, Tizen, BBX, third-party Android ROMs like Cyanogen, etc.)

Apple is decent (but not great) user experience, but has a few serious flaws: Apple's morality policing (and other restrictions) keeping apps users do want off the platform, as well as restricting people to using Apple cloud services for a lot of functionality, and not allowing some core OS functionality to be overridden. Apple's cloud services would be less of a problem if they didn't suck.

Android (well, the two versions; Google vs. the open version) have much more flexibility, but kind of suck. (way better than they used to be, but still inferior to iOS on a strict functionality basis).

I think it's inevitable that more and more computing moves to mobile (the next 2b people on the Internet may ONLY use mobile). Maybe Apple's cloud and policies will improve. Maybe Android will improve in quality. Maybe a new platform will emerge.

"Locked down" is awesome IFF it is locked down to the owner; if the owner has to do some small amount of work to lock down a different config, that's ideal. The "owner" might be an individual for a personal phone, or a corporation for a fleet of phones.

Just because you won't outrun your chain, doesn't mean you're not a slave. Maybe a happy one, but still a slave nonetheless.

>They have ruined web design. But I should probably write a whole article on that. Suffice to say however that I am very, very tired of the epidemic of (often massive) position: fixed headers on websites nowadays.

I have a blackberry, these bars eat up a lot of screen space on small devices break the page-down functionality. Can't stand them.

I agree, fixed headers are terrible on mobile devices, But I think it's a little far to say that they have "ruined web design".

I agree with most of his points.

I also hate the ergonomics. Screens are too small, and input methods are slow and error-prone.

For me the only reason why I hate smartphones is that they don't offer me much, and the battery life is a huge problem. The only thing they offer is exclusive apps that I can't use on PC, and since I'm a tech guy I need to use them to be aware of the tech of today.

You can emulate Android on a PC :)

Yes. But you never be sure how they exactly work... as an example I tried only famous apps on the beginning and only lately I knew that apps can crush and freeze... I don't know what I except, it's embarrassing to never except that...

Here's a good argument about smart devices; To be practical they require a lowering of security.

think google/facebook etc logins. Think lastpass.

I bought a crappy tablet from amazon, and was just about to add my credentials to it (http://www.ibtimes.com/amazon-selling-40-android-tablets-com...), then realised if the tablet was compromised, anyone able to remote-in to it would have access to one hell of a lot through my single-sign in accounts.

Security for these things is improving, but it's still not there yet.

> anyone able to remote-in to it would have access to one hell of a lot through my single-sign in accounts.

How is this different to desktop, where most people autofill or lastpass all their accounts?

It's possible motherboards can be compromised as well, though I've not seen so many reports as such. Another aspect to this is for a regular PC, you often install your own OS, while the tablets have a pre-built customized android,many many features locked down.

A really weird thing happens when I try to access this site. In Safari it fails with the error, "Safari can't open this page because it cannot establish a secure connection to devever.net." It also breaks the back button. WGET also fails with "Unable to establish SSL connection." OpenSSL does this:

    [ron@mighty:~] openssl s_client -host www.devever.net -port 443
    CONNECTED(00000003)
    write:errno=54

But it works in Firefox and Chrome without even a warning.

Smartphone are really bad for power users. Android is good, but to me it doesn't allow users to really do what they want with it.

It works well, but if you look at its software design, it's miles away from what you could do with linux.

I just WISH there was some code editor designed for a touchscreen. I have this idea of a graphical code editor like scratch.mit.edu, except the editor already has this code hierarchy, and it shows text directly. This would be perfect for a touchscreen.

These are all reasons why I wouldn't replace my laptop with a smartphone, but that's not what a smartphone is for in the first place.

This doesn't make any sense. Smartphones are completely different devices than PCs. They shouldn't even be compared.

Good thing is just that we can do so much more on a smartphone that we needed a PC before, and by that, I mean sitting in a desk.

And no, smartphones aren't for media creation OR consumption. Smartphones are for interpersonal communication first.

You guys should check out this HN thread. It deals with some of the same issues we're talking about here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11036843

> They are unequal devices.

I guess what the author is trying to say, but a better wording would be asymetric.

This article reminds me of this http://blog.codinghorror.com/all-programming-is-web-programm...

I don't like staring at the small screen that will damage my eyesight along the way, I also don't like some unnecessary time wasted on it.

However its benefits outweighs those drawbacks way much, so no, I do like my smartphone.

Most of these reasons can be applied to modern cars, apartment complexes, smart TVs, etc. Title should be "why I don't like this century"

speaking of web design - did smartphones ruin that blog's design?

> Supposedly, with Android you are free to install software from arbitrary sources ...

Certainly. Go to Settings -> Security and tick "Unknown sources" option.

> With Android devices there is a distinction between “rooted” and “unrooted” devices, which sounds suspiciously similar to “jailbroken” and “unjailbroken”.

Sounds like it, sure. But as majority of top Android manufacturers have an official page [1][2][3][4][5] describing how to unlock their bootloaders so arbitrary OS can be installed, that similarity disappears.

> With a PC, I don't have to perform some arcane operation to actually have control of the device.

Ask your average PC user how to install a different OS, or even how to re-install the same OS and you'll soon find, the process is "arcane" on all platforms. Also note that I found all the official links I listed, to unlocking various android phones, in 5 minutes.

> Moreover, it seems to be common to discriminate against people who have the gall to “root” their device, or to disable some functionality of the device if such “rooting” is performed.

Nothing stops a PC app developer to put in checks on what ISP you're connected to for example or whether your user has root access. I use Cyanogenmod on my phone and not one app so far has discriminated against me having root access. Point is that it's very uncommon.

> I believe there are even online banking applications which reserve the right, in their terms, to detect if a device is “rooted” and refuse to operate on them.

Yes, they are the developers and they set the terms. There are also banks whose websites simply reject a particular browser by name, not because it lacks a certain functionality.

[1]: http://www.htcdev.com/bootloader

[2]: http://developer.sonymobile.com/unlockbootloader/unlock-your...

[3]: http://developer.lge.com/resource/mobile/RetrieveBootloader....

[4]: https://motorola-global-portal.custhelp.com/app/standalone/b...

Why "smartphones"? If he uses mobile phone which he does not consider "smartphone", he is hypocrite because most of the listed problems apply to them ever more than to so-called "smartphones". If he does not use any mobile phone, he just should name the article "Why I don't like mobile phones".

Really? The issues OP lists:

* For consumption but not creation - a 'dumb' mobile is even more so, you're stuck with the built-in functionality and can't install any other software.

* Not real network clients due to battery limitations - arguably true for 'dumb' phones as well but they don't have the 'powerful CPU and fast network connection' that OP bemoans wasting.

* Massive centralization / shift to "the cloud" - 'dumb' phones have limited or no online presence.

* Ruined web design - 'dumb' phones have little or no web browsing capability and web pages don't target them.

* Insecure - can't really argue that one.

* Malevolent / locked down - technically applies to 'dumb' phones but they were never advertised as general purpose software platforms.

I'd say most of his points stand.

>Why "smartphones"?

Because smartphones are replacing general purpose computers.

Oh just to inform you, at least support HTTP too, your HTTPS is broken.

My problem with modern smartphones is that they are turning from productivity-focused devices into toys...

"Smartphones are unapologetically devices for consumption."

The vast majority of social media posts being written, photos and videos being taken and edited, and music being recorded and performed with these devices show this is wrong. Anyway, how did most people use their desktop and laptop computers 10-15 years ago at the peak of popularity of those devices?

"They are not real network clients."

This isn't even actually his complaint. His complaint is that smartphones have too-limited battery life. The smartphone battery life we have today would have been considered a miracle 10 years ago.

"They have led to massive centralization."

True enough. Unfortunately, that's how the money which funds the Internet gets made. That said, there's nothing stopping the author from using his smartphone in a distributed manner and helping to build the infrastructure to support the same.

"There are no secure smartphones."

There are no secure networked computers, period.

"They have ruined web design."

I'm not sure web design in general has ever been all that great. The people who practice the art are severely restricted between the demands of their employers and the limitations of the platform. Smartphones have driven the latest changes in fashion, sure. Fashion will change, and the older you get, the less you'll care for it.

"capabilities are all too often restricted by device manufacturers or carriers."

It's true. But I don't think the smartphone is the problem. Microsoft and Intel started talking up the locked-down hardware that only runs trusted code approach 15 years ago or more. Smartphones came along soon thereafter, and are designed along the same lines. It's frustrating, but for a certain class of device, one that you want to Just Work for handling the basics of human communication, I think it's a reasonable tradeoff.

There's still plenty of hardware that lets you do anything you want with it. It's critical that such devices remain available, but with the rise of DIY style hardware--Raspberry Pi and Arduino et alia--I'm very hopeful. The gap between these solutions and high-priced high-performance components will only narrow over the next decade.

Ultimately, though, unless you're manufacturing the hardware entirely by yourself, you have to trust someone. You don't want to trust Apple. But we have to trust the companies who make our wifi chips, our graphics chips, our CPUs, our USB chips. Even our cables soon may be sophisticated enough that they might include the hardware necessary to stream what we're displaying on our monitors directly to the NSA and the MPAA.

Good luck!

I don't like smartphones also, but I hadn't thought of any of these reasons.

Old man yells at cloud

used a iphones for multiple years, but dont need it nowadays. dunno, just dont need it anymore.

tl;dr - why i don't like toasters

I love my nokia I bought 1€ on the black market in poland that is charged once a week, have the radio, and a correct mp3 player that you can use as an usb key and is not locked, brickable.

In fact I bought 4 of them. I am now awaiting the moment someone will try to smug my phone and show him my wonder and expect him to say: keep your trash!

Just for anyone thinking I love nokia, just remember how cumbersome their software were to use. They are so shitty, I don't have a data plan, thus I am making savings on the accessories, the phone (i dont fear to break it) and the communication plan. ~400$/year

Compared to my old habits, I am sparing money. I can backup my music, I can load music easily and I don't care anymore.

The morale of my story is : don't complain about a market when you are driving it.

So called geeks nowadays are a joke that have high incomes, and shape the market of computer and electronics appliance by early adopting the most stupid ideas possible that cost the most.

The inability of "geeks" to influence positively with their habits of consumption a market on which they are supposed to be more knowledgeable than the mass makes me wonder about the technology they adopt in companies for producing. They really seem to not care about costs, recurrent expanses, adequation to the needs.

How to troll for views 101.

wow the head up my own butt is high in this one... :O

This is an awful article. It's written assuming you agree with the author already.

How else would you write an article that expresses your purely subjective opinion? It isn't titled "Why you don't like smartphones."

Sounds like an old person rants about "the good old days".

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