Comment by bamfly | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bamfly | Hacker News Reader

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All I can figure is difference in perspective is because such a large part of the potential of i-devices (or phones and tablets more broadly) for creation involves using them as a tool to get something done in the real world, and/or for the kinds of creative tasks that get overlooked by the hackerspace crowd (running an Instagram, say, involves lots of creation; tradespeople and home DIYers routinely use phones and tablets to help get things done in situations where a laptop wouldn't be a useful alternative; that kind of thing). Desktop computers are mainly good, outside of industrial uses, for creating more stuff for computers. I-Devices shine when most of your task's not on a computer, and the computer's just one of many tools at your disposal. If "creation" is making stuff for computers, they seem bad. If "creation" happens in the real world and the computer's just a tool to help with that, and nothing more, they're pretty appealing. A smart slab of glass packed with sensors that can become different tools. Super handy, and a "real" computer couldn't replace it.

For most creation-oriented tasks I do that aren't computer-centric, I'd much rather have an iPhone or iPad than a laptop. They're great tools for creation & work, just not so much for creating stuff for computers, certain exceptions aside, and for those they're mostly just about as good as a laptop, or even not-very-good but usable in a pinch, not better.

Desktop computer have some advantages that the so-called i-devices lack even for tasks that are not computer-centric.

The main one for me is the longevity of your data. It is connected to the control over your data you have in a desktop OS. Good luck finding what you did five years ago in an app in some device and reproducing it now. You are at the mercy of some proprietary format the app creator chose, the availability of the app at a later stage, whether you saved your work in a cloud service, whether you kept your old device running, the operating system updates you installed, .....

With a desktop you can archive your work, whatever it might be, in sequences of bits that reside in your disk. Open source software and virtual machines go a long way for helping reproducibility.

Not all tasks benefit from reproducibility and longevity but I'd argue they include a lot more than computer programming

This adds a lot of great color to your perspective, but the summary becomes essentially: An iPhone makes a great metronome, but a terrible recording studio replacement. I'm not sure that's saying too much, because the latter is so much more ambitious than the former? That's really the dilemma for those of us disappointed in iOS creation, we want it to be more ambitious, and competitive with things laptops can do.

> A smart slab of glass packed with sensors that can become different tools.

…as long as they’re sanctioned by the platform owners.

iOS shines when you create something, for while someone has already created software to create.

Desktop shines when you create something novel.

It's as simple as that -- there are tons of things people have created really polished iOS "happy path" software to create on, but they're not general purpose creators.

Specifically because anything general purpose threatens Apple's App Store toll gate, and thus cannot be allowed to exist.

What are the creative apps on Android that Apple is not allowing to exist on iOS?

Android isn't desktop.

Neither is iOS

Yes, that was the original point.

GP was talking about desktop, not which android is not, but to give a serious answer: I can run a full linux terminal on android, run vscode-server (has to be in a VM, but still) and edit and compile my code. All without needing a connection to some remote "cloud".

If apple would just get over themselves and allow sideloading (or, gosh, a terminal!), it would go a long way to improving iOS usability for creatives.

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