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Comment by daveguy | Hacker News Reader

data convergence is the future, not interface convergence. I think they made a serious mistake conflating the two.

You should be able to shift your view of a document from a desktop to a laptop, but that doesn't mean the fundamental interface from one should be shoe-horned into the other.

That could mean a phone that is docked, but when you have 10x the screen real estate, a keyboard and a mouse the interface should be different when docked vs when not docked.

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Agreed. I used to bevery enthusiastic about continuum in Windows. But now, I've come to realize that the interface better be separate for different usecases - plus, no one want to plugin their phone and use it for work. What I want is seamless takeover from one device to another - something like Apple's continuity but way better. In today world this is all scattered into different components*, the first company that does everything can lock in a huge revenue stream.

a) Files - Dropbox b) Activity - Various browser sync for bookmarks, history (and passwords) c) Handoff - Mac is pretty good here. Windows has no equivalent.

> I used to bevery enthusiastic about continuum in Windows. But now, I've come to realize that the interface better be separate for different usecases - plus, no one want to plugin their phone and use it for work.

You seem to have a misunderstanding of how continuum works in Windows. The interface is separate when you hook up a phone into a dock (it's a desktop interface) and the newer devices can also do it wirelessly.

Windows went with a "similar UI language" for all platforms but still maintained huge differences between each platform because that made sense. It was never the same UI.

I have to say that I find the concepts of "convergence" presented so far by various companies a bit much though.

As you said, unified interfaces aren't that important. I'd be perfectly happy with a phone that runs a Linux desktop while docked and gives me an Android GUI/Stack while in "portable mode". The only thing really needed then would be the possibility to open the Android part in a window in the "Desktop mode", so one could still do messaging etc. while docked.

Personally, I think that would already get us 80% there. The much bigger hurdle (and afaik the one Canonical had trouble with) is then establishing a market position.

I disagree - data convergence is already here if you want it. Device/UI convergence is the pinnacle of everything to me. Meaning my phone should be able to power everything from a laptop shell to a monitor. That was the exciting part, not just an interface. No one cares if context on UI changes per device implementation - we already deal with that daily.

I agree. I want my phone to have a phone interface and my computer to have a computer interface. I also want to switch seamlessly between the two.

Who cares if you have the same interface on your phone and PC. I mean seriously, there is absolutely no point and you end up wasting time designing some sort of interface that doesn't suck on either platform.

Agreed.

Incidentally, what you describe as data convergence is part of a theoretical computing model I call PAO: http://tiamat.tsotech.com/pao

This was what was being attempted. The UI would be optimal for a phone, until you docked it at which point it would adjust to take advantage of the new peripherals and larger screen. Developers could write an interface that morphed, or even completely different UIs, for the different environments.

And why developer would in an ecosystem of mostly free app?

This is a ton of added complexity to developers without any real return but for ubuntu.

And ties programs to ubuntu flavored linux, unless obe is willing to do even more work for free.

And maybe multiple non-touch monitors, where the comfortable mobile interface feels cartoonish.

> That could mean a phone that is docked, but when you have 10x the screen real estate, a keyboard and a mouse the interface should be different when docked vs when not docked.

At least in the demos I saw, the mobile UI would turn into a traditional Ubuntu Unity look, with floating windows and keyboard+mouse interaction.

So it sounds like they were working in the direction you describe.

The dumbest move, IMO, was not using Wayland and working with that dev community to improve it's functionality on mobile (one of the reasons given for Mir). Shuttleworth seems to point this out in the post.

Turns out rolling yet another display server rankles noses and takes a lot of dev cycles.

We have a solution for data convergence, SD cards.

You mean dropbox.

Yeah, that's good for a lot of people too. Github/Gitlab is great for software projects. I have rsync for my music collection, etc.

You mean Nextcloud.

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