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Comment by gok | Hacker News Reader

I always find the “make it this size and you’ll rule the world” quote interesting. The users I know who really love their iPads/tablets are closer to @alankay1’s generation. Younger generations don’t have much use for device that can’t fit in a pocket. I wonder how much the interest in iPad-sized devices came from years of using paper about that size.

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Fitting in a pocket is a great advantage for a portable device, to everyone.

The market seems to be saying: if I need something that I have to lug around, I might as well have a keyboard. i.e. a laptop.

Another effect is people are doing everything they can on a phone, because of the convenience. This leads to slightly larger phones every year, and now a 5.5" phone is no longer considered a "phablet", and apple is rumoured to having a 6.5" phone next (their smallest tablet is 7").

So... tablets will rule the world, but they'll be "phones". The barrier to adaption was changing consumer behaviour... as always.

I agree.

I've been using an iPad mini with Cellular as my phone-replacement mobile device since the day iPad mini came out. It fits in my pocket (not as comfortably as a phone, but well enough).

My only other device is a 15" MBP.

To be more accurate, the iPad mini is 7.9", not 7" though. And 4:3 aspect ratio. So in area, it's still much bigger than a 6.5" 16+:9 phone would be.

iOS and Android turn tablets into oversized phones, so no surprise they lose against phones - they have the same (or usually worse, at a given price point) capabilities while being larger, thus less convenient to carry and more fragile.

These days I'm not using much Windows for desktop (HN took over the time I had for games), but I do sincerely hope this OS will live on for at least couple more years, because Microsoft is the only company that knows how to do tablets. Seriously. A proper operating system, with real capabilities and proper user interface that can make use of the tablet form, makes a world of a difference. And I say that as someone who owned a decent Android tablet in the past. As someone who's friends and family with people owning currently decent Android tablets. My little Windows 10 el-cheapo tablet/netbook I picked up second-hand for ~$130 is much more useful than the top-of-the-line Samsung tablet offering. Hell, it already earned me many times more than its own value back, as it's good enough to do some meaningful dev work on the bus/train.

Windows did try the same as Android and iOS with Windows RT, thankfully that was a disaster. Netbooks are ridiculously useful, I used to have a 15 minute bus ride to work with an Asus EEE and would manage to fill that 15 minutes with active moonlighting development time every day. The work I did on that bus became the frontend for what now 10 years later is a $50m company.

I realise I'm making a slightly different point as I'm purely talking about netbooks/laptops. But having the full power of an OS on a tablet is definitely the way to go.

Certainly that's one of the bad points about iOS and Android they are so locked down that you have to jump through hoops if you wanted to use them as a work machine.

For my current job I bought myself a $350 refurbished Thinkpad (T430 8GB SSD core i5), this brings me in all my income. You can compare this to my nephew that is paying $1000 for an iPhone X because he got bored of his iPhone 8.

Further to that I bought exactly the same spec Thinkpad for my 5 year old daughter. The Thinkpad T-series are great because you can pour a litre of liquid over them without problem [0] plus they're built like a brick, so basically perfect for kids. My daughter immediately covered the grey brick with shiny stickers and gave it a name (she has an iPad, but that's always just called 'iPad'). It has the full capability to do everything she'll ever need in theory for the rest of her life/career. Further to that it's got Ubuntu installed and I can then install Sugar [1] for her to use (the same used for One Laptop Per Child).

The possible drawback is that it doesn't have a touchscreen. But with my experiment of buying a laptop with a touch screen I found I pretty much never wanted to use the touch screen, it's a slower interface than keyboard and mouse. You want the screen in front of you at arms length but then you have to reach with your arm to touch the screen.

I can now teach her over the years what it means to have real freedom with your software and hardware.

[0]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0U5n2WaMMHo

[1]: https://sugarlabs.org/

Sadly, netbooks seem to be gone. Even chromebooks are full-size, full-weight.

Do you know of termux.com, for linux without rooting? It's basically a linux distribution, adjusted for android's slightly odd filesystem. The app itself is tiny, and you install from its repository. e.g. there's latex, youtube-dl, curl, vim, clang, ecj, python, ruby, perl, lua, erlang etc.

A bluetooth keyboard completes the DIY linux netbook... sadly, bluetooth keyboards are also almost gone, presumably as people adjust themselves to "touch" typing.

I have both a recent iPad and a Dell 2-1. For "consumption" I find my iPad far more usable. The 4/3 screen is preferable to the 16:9 screen on my laptop and of course it's a lot lighter. The battery life of my iPad is amazing.

For the occasional typing, I use my same mini Bluetooth keyboard for my computer and my iPad.

I had an original iPad bought in mid 2011 but it didn't get much use - it was no more than a "big iPhone".

But a lot changed since then.

- Cellular connectivity is a lot cheaper. I pay $20 a month for unlimited data with T-Mobile.

- I got rid of cable and use Netflix/Hulu/DirecTv and Plex.

- PluralSight is available and I use that for watching technical videos.

- The screen resolution is a lot better for ebooks. - better productivity software from Apple, Microsoft and Google.

- iOS has made iPad specific improvements - split screen, picture in picture, and drag and drop.

"Younger generations don’t have much use for device that can’t fit in a pocket."

They do when they're trying to create something more complicated than a social media post.

I know students who have written essays, put together presentations, etc solely on their phones.

If you really believe that the only thing “younger generations” do is post on social media, I suggest you spend more time around high schoolers (for example), particularly those with limited financial means.

What were the titles of those essays? I'm curious what people are writing about.

One of my students submitted an essay today entitled "On 'Democracy' and How Humans Lie" which was written entirely on their phone about inequality in the US

I phrased my comment specifically trying to avoid sounding like I was saying that's the only thing they do. Guess I didn't do it right.

It's awesome that those with limited funds can still get stuff done, and phones are great for consuming information, but I don't think there's much argument against the efficiency gain that hardware keyboards, mice and larger screens with multiple windows give when you get into things that require fine tuning and multi-tasking like drawing, coding and video editing.

It read fine to me. I didn't read any implication that young people don't do anything more complicated than social media posts - only that when do they could use a larger device.

(sorry I know posts like this don't make interesting reading, I just know how frustrating it can be when you put effort into writing something to avoid being misunderstood but still get taken the wrong way... so wanted to point out that at least for this reader the negative connotation was not there)

I can’t imagine writing something much more substantial than a couple of paragraphs. Typing is fine, but editing is so slow without a mouse.

Man, imagine what editing was like in the typewriter era! I assure you, I got good at not needing as much editing. Two drafts and done.

Until Mike Nesmith's mother changed the world :) But even then, trying to realign using that red line hovering half an inch off the surface of the paper made the mistakes obvious :/

Here, how a kid in Africa used a Nokia feature phone doing T9 typing, before he could eventually get a job doing Android development.

https://hanselminutes.com/615/developing-on-not-for-a-nokia-...

Limited financial means is the key here. A decent smartphone costs as much as a lower-end computer; for kids, there's a good chance it was either-or proposition in terms of which device they get to own (instead of sharing with family).

Reminds me of a friend who, few years ago, was a teenager of limited financial means. He earned his first real $50 through a phone. His laptop broke, and he didn't have anyone to borrow one from in time, so he ssh'd into a remote machine from his phone and did the work (some data wrangling task) this way. Where there's a will, there's a way.

But still, that in no way suggests phones are good at text editing or productive work. They're capable enough, if you have lots of will and no other option.

The iPad that could rule the world hasn't been made yet. Once iOS and OS X completely merge, then we'll see.

It's sized for creating things, but running the OS of a device made for consuming things.

Is it the OS or the input?

It has been, it's called Microsoft Surface. It's sized for creating things and is running on the OS made for productive work. But it's expensive and made by a company that's not very much liked by people.

Well, the thing about liking Microsoft is pretty much regional, just like Apple's or Google's love.

It also has bad reviews and details like that really matter.

That's an excellent point. It's funny how Microsoft has a reputation for making poor copies of things, but that hasn't really been the case for 20 years. They're often the ones to innovate now. Sadly, they don't seem to be able to get the traction with their innovations that they once did with their copies.

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