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Comment by codelitt | Hacker News Reader

People keep saying mobile is the future, however, I just can't imagine desktops leaving us anytime soon. If I'm on the go, then sure I want it on my mobile device, but 99% of the time when I'm at work I want quick and easy access either through an app or the browser on my desktop. If a service I use doesn't have a desktop app, then it likely won't receive any of my attention until I'm out of the office.

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Exactly this: I wanted to send an annotated Google Map to someone. I started whilst on a train trip and with a series of silly screenshots (using an offline map app after having my network go up and down etc.) I got about half way done in 20 minutes. I got to my desk and restarted from scratch and got it done in about a minute. Obvious I know.

My point is my strange use-case (an annotated map) was an artifact I could assemble at a desktop from pre-existing bits I already had to hand, but with (current) mobile so many degrees of freedom are removed. Unless someone has (1) identified a mass need exactly the same as yours, and (2) made an app that does exactly that you are out of luck.

> Unless someone has (1) identified a mass need exactly the same as yours, and (2) made an app that does exactly that you are out of luck.

So true. And even if there was the need, and the app was made, you would never be able to find it in the app store without knowing it's exact name.

> Unless someone has (1) identified a mass need exactly the same as yours, and (2) made an app that does exactly that you are out of luck.

While this may be particularly true of mobile right now, I feel the above statement is, and has always been, true of software in general.

It's still early days for mobile, despite the amazing capability that's already there. It will get there eventually.

Until someone releases a revolutionary new way of interacting with a mobile device, larger devices—with dedicated, larger, more comfortable input and output methods—will always be more efficient. Software isn't the issue.

Possibly but there are fundamental limitations to having a small screen and no proper keyboard. I also annotated a map the other day on the macbook and have no great desire to do it by prodding the 4" bit of glass on my iPhone.

Desktop will always be around. I just think we are moving back to the 80s and 90s where only the "Super Tech" person owned them and the rest just didn't need them.

Mobile has replaced a lot of the way people spend time but for my interest and needs desktop is king. I don't watch movies on my desktop (YouTube yes) but I also don't do video editing and data science on a phone.

Also "desktop" is much less stuck on desks than it was. I'm typing this from an 11" macbook air lying on the grass in a park tethered to 4G via the phone so the thing's pretty mobile although it's "desktop" from the software point of view. I think that may be where the futures headed rather than people just using ios/android.

No I 100% mean desktop. I still have never personally bought a laptop (Work gives me them). I prefer the faster machines with dual monitors and awesome mouse and keyboard ready to go all the time.

I agree with you completely. At some point the laptop became 'the default computer'. I went laptop-only for most of the span 2006 - 2011, before adopting a workstation (with dual 1440p monitors, a nice keyboard, a mouse, and my precious Linux) as my primary computing device again.

I couldn't go back for anything. I simply couldn't. I have a fairly light and portable laptop with a 13" screen that I carry around from time to time, and it's a vastly more constrained computing experience.

You will find that the vast majority of people doesn't care for faster machines. I think Microsoft's Continuum is the way to go. People will just connect their huge displays + mice/keyboards to their phones to avoid the trouble of syncing data.

I think PC gaming has been growing in popularity, i dont see that being overtaken by mobile anytime soon, as i dont see mobile being competitive with desktop GPUs anytime soon (let alone RAM, cpu, cooling, power availability, etc)

Also, with the growing trend of 'cord-cutting' i think more and more people are hooking their laptops up to their TVs and watching netflix and youtube that way. Though the trend in that space seems to be pointing more toward curated ecosystems like roku, apple tv, etc.

But i think eventually for pretty much anything else the hardware and software will reach a point where you can dock your phone into some cradle and that will be your desktop environment also - this has been tried and failed many times, but its usually because the performance just isnt there to be competitive with real computers.

>Also, with the growing trend of 'cord-cutting' i think more and more people are hooking their laptops up to their TVs and watching netflix and youtube that way. Though the trend in that space seems to be pointing more toward curated ecosystems like roku, apple tv, etc.

I have been doing this for some time now. My laptop hooked up to my TV serves me for gaming (helps that a lot of PC games support controllers now), consuming content and music all without being crippled by consumer hardware restrictions.

Target market may be a factor here as well? Notice where the rollout started: India[0]. This goes along with Google's push to support the Next Billion Users[1]. I'm sure the team working on Allo and Duo want to support people that move regularly between Desktop and Mobile, but at the same time they want to reach out to people that are just starting to connect to the internet. Allo's initial target market may not be the HN crowd.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12545596

[1] https://www.techinasia.com/googles-reach-billion-users

I think it's a pipe dream to imagine that all future interactions will be through mobile devices like phones. The way I see it mobile is adding extra time spent with tech instead of replacing desktop entirely. People spend more time online then they used to, a lot of it due to mobile devices becoming common place. Some time that used to be spent on desktop is migrating but not all of it. Desktop and Laptops will be a thing for a long time.

Another thing I find annoying is we went from mobile first to mobile only for a lot of things. The point of mobile first was to ensure that the less capable devices were not second rate citizens to desktop. Not that they are the only thing customers will use to access services.

Either you are misinterpreting those people, or they are wrong. The point is we were doing 100% of everything on desktop. However it turns out mobile is a better platform for >50% of tasks, that's why it's king.

> it turns out mobile is a better platform for >50% of tasks

For the tasks we do >50% of the time, maybe. But no way it's better for >50% of the tasks.

I'd agree with you, wrong choice of words on my side.

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