My 24 year old HP Jornada can do things an iPhone still can't do

Thinking of the people I know, about a third of them don't personally have any kind of real "PC" kind of computing device (laptop/desktop). Many get by with just their phone and a tablet, not even a laptop. They might have a work laptop, but that's usually only for work-related tasks; they don't have any permanent desk setup in mind for computing. This percentage of people is growing, not shrinking.

And to think, I've got that much exposure to people with that kind of computing lifestyle, and yet nearly half of my friends are people in PC gaming culture and go to things like massive LAN parties and watch game tournaments on Twitch.

I'd say people who have gaming PCs are an enthusiast of sorts. Step out of professional contexts and gaming PCs and a lot of people don't even bother with laptops these days. Having a dedicated space in your home for computing seems to be more and more rare these days.

In areas where you do very much see phone and no laptop being common or the norm, the trend is towards increasing laptop ownership, not declining laptop ownership. It’s not a matter of phones displacing laptops so much as phones being more important and accessible.

The new life breathed into an older Samsung device by the installation of LineageOS is what I consider the proof of this.

Overall it's entirely subjective, however. I prefer minimal base Android so that I can choose which apps are allowed to annoy me with their various reminders to create an account, log in, look at these new features, rate me, etc.

Other (less technologically savvy) family members love their Samsung apps and the ecosystem, and just find my setup to be confusing or overly complicated.

My experience with their latest stuff has been that they do still have a lot of bloat and duplicated functionality, but the base experience is much closer to stock Android than what I remembered from their older phones. To put it differently, it looks and feels similar to the near stock Xperia 1 ii I switched from but has all sorts of little differences.

I actually find myself using a lot of the functionality too, so it feels a bit less "bloated" to me.

I haven't really noticed ads though. They do recommend stuff, eg their camera app has a bunch of modes and the "Expert RAW" mode was shown in the app but required a download from their app store. I don't really count those since they're somewhat more relevant than say, Windows advertising candy crush on the start menu.

With Samsung I can plug in a USB-C to HDMI cable and duplicate my screen with zero effort. And with DeX, apparently I can turn my phone into a desktop?! I never tried before last week but when I plugged in aforementioned cable, I get a DeX prompt. Exit, and I see the screen. Hit "enable DeX" and it turns on a mode that shows something like a desktop screen on the external display.

Perhaps the fact this isn't known or operationalized by companies means it has a ways to go, or that laptops are easier for remote workers. But it's cool stuff.

I am in Canada and have never seen ads or bloatware on Samsung phones. I currently use a Galaxy Z Fold 3 connected to a lapdock via USB-C video out. DeX is a very nice desktop environment for the phone.

Samsung has to package certain applications with their device to allow Google Play, like Chrome. Google has convinced people that their browser is the norm (not the perfectly fine Samsung Internet) and that any manufacturer making their own apps to compete with theirs is "bloat".

The well-integrated Samsung calendar is a lot better than Google Calendar, but Google forced companies for years to install their version as well, despite their failure to capitalize on the unique hardware features of some devices. The same is true for many other Google apps.

I don't think I've seen random ads in Samsung's pre-installed apps. Samsung Health on my (non-Samsung) phone started advertising their new phone at me, which disturbed me, but it seems to have stopped doing that soon after all by itself. My guess is that they received more backlash than anticipated.

I'm pretty sure I could give Samsung Dex to a lot of people and they'd be fine using it as a daily driver for their computer. It does everything most people want out of Windows (a browsers and light office work) and it's not nearly as bad as some other attempts. With modern smartphone CPUs, the UI is smooth and responsive, and Samsung's design makes me a little jealous as a Linux user because it's honestly just better. I'd even go do far as to call it better than Windows 10's UI in some ways.

If you're ever near a store that had Samsung tablets on display, I recommend you try putting one of the demo units in Dex mode. It's a toggle in the quick toggles and it'll turn the tablet into a full desktop (which is perfectly fine for the massive screens tablets have these days!).

Hell, if Jetbrains keeps developing their remote coding platform, I bet I'd be able to do programming work from a tablet and a sleeve as if I was working on my Linux laptop.

adb shell pm disable-user --user 0 name.of.the.packet

Just be careful not to disable the ui, adb or something else that is essential. I haven't found anything that can't be disabled, yet. Always backup your important data in case you have to reset to factory defaults.

My purchasing and usage habits for mobile devices is to get something new that is mid or low-range, use it until I notice performance issues, or the bloatware does something I don't like, then flash a custom ROM.

That's served me pretty well in the past, but I may still have hangups from teething pains with rooting devices and compatibility issues on custom ROMs back in the 2010's

Now, Samsung Dex is doing what Microsoft wanted to do, but very few people know about it. That probably has to do with how uncommon USB-C docks are, and how many of those docks use DisplayLink instead of a normal standard to do video. It's a real shame, because a modern phone is more than powerful enough for most people's computer work.

I've heard many people having the same take, we wanted something that "just works".

But to step back, this also means, we don't care as much about raw perfs, we care less about new paradigms, we don't need the bleeding edge, and expect our devices to be stable and useable for 10 years, basically be "classics". And I also know if my mavbook burns down today, I can go to a store, buy the latest 13" laptop and be back where I was in 1 hour at most. They're utterly replaceable.

That's basically what we want from appliances.

I you care in any way shape or form to push the envelope, macs won't be your choice. The best GPU won't be there, the best CPU isn't (Apple's ARM is good, but not as powerful as the top of the line desktop CPU at full wattage), the best form factors aren't there, the most innovative apps didn't go there.

Some companies do crazy things with macs, but they're in a extreme minority. And Apple 100% doesn't care about markets that have no scale.

What I'm arguing for is people who voluntarily buy devices which are locked down for themselves and their loved ones because we'd rather put sensible restrictions in place for ourselves.

There are people in the world who grew up with and are used to platforms that have filing-cabinet abstractions (files and folders) and let them run their own code and customisations. Similarly, there are people in the world who grew up with devices that don't expose files and folders as readily and instead present things through apps and search.

How many of the latter category could even accurately define what a "file" is? Do they even need to? Probably not, because they get just fine with a different set of abstractions and tools. Just because that isn't to your taste doesn't mean that they don't work fine for other people — there's a world of less technically-minded people out there who get by just fine with an iPad at home for the things they want to do. To them, computing has _never_ been more accessible than it is today and not having to worry about things like folders and files is actually a superpower.

Who is disrespecting the users now?

Like pictures. Maybe I'm wanting to browse by date. Maybe I'm wanting to browse by events and albums. Maybe I'm wanting to browse by photos with these two people in them. Maybe I want to browse by pictures with boats in them. So should I arrange my photos in directories by date, or by album, or by some kind of classification and then date (family/2023/bobs_birthday)? It sucks! Its a terrible process. And by count of files, photos and videos are the vast majority of the files I care to access!

And then its a similar thing with stuff like music, or movies, or all kinds of things. Folder structures are very rigid, things like links are all kinds of fragile and annoying to work with often.

For the most part, the vast majority of my files I'd prefer to have them all in some kind of database with tags and be able to query them based on the context of what I'm doing. Open a photo editor app? Ok, show me photos, probably recent ones first until I put some other search in it. Not just a file browser sitting in a home directory in a folder full of other folders with all kinds of other files that aren't even pictures.

IMO, for personal files, folders are bad. I don't mind a lot of these interfaces that try and hide the underlying file structure, so long as when I need to I can muck about in there as well, if it still exists.

You've gone and conflated user and application permissions. I was talking about owner permissions. The device owner should always have the ability to backup any file on the system. Only Apple controls the entire system. They can and should give this control to the owner.

Why would I use an app that requires unnecessary permissions?

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

No ads. Sure, it tries to group things by categories and searching at the very top, but its still easy to see "Storage devices" which lets me navigate the actual folder structure. My Pixels have come with USB-C male to USB-A female adapters which allow me to plug in things like flash drives, memory card readers, cameras, external hard drives, even other Android devices and access the files through the Files app.

I cannot backup my worlds without either using a third-party tool, or paying Microsoft $4 for the privilege of uploading my world to their server (Realm), changing my storage location to External and then downloading it back. Ridiculous.

I pretty much never use it on my Mac, all the apps I use show the filesystem in a sidebar and have a fuzzy search feature. Even Apple apps (like Xcode) have that so clearly they're aware of how bad the file picker is.

https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/thinkrealitya3/?orgRef=https%25...

Snaps, on the other hand? Yeah there's certainly some controversy there. The clear aim there is a walled garden distribution. But the good thing is that you can just not use Ubuntu. Nobody is forced to use Ubuntu.

I don't know anyone with a Sonos. Yamaha's multi-room audio hasn't had any problems for me.

If you're going to be using Google or web apps, why even bother paying the Apple tax?

I'm sure all of these tasks are a little easier with a bigger screen and real keyboard but they aren't impossible to do on a phone. Plus, record keeping on paper still exists and isn't difficult if your volume is small. You could even run something like a dropshipping business where you don't do any physical work and hire freelancers to do things that usually require a real computer like graphic design. Or maybe you just own a larger business with people under you that handle all the day-to-day work while you do big picture stuff in meetings or contact clients via email.

why? my oneplus has 12 GB of RAM, 8 cores, and 256 GB of storage (plus expandable with SD card). It's plenty capable for development/desktop use. I've done dev on a raspberry pi with 4 GB and 4 cores, I don't see why the oneplus wouldn't be a more than acceptable "laptop"

I thought about getting a Magic keyboard and pairing that and the Ergo to the iPad as a lightweight SSH solution for traveling.

You could do the same with a phone

Because many people can do everything they need on their undocked phone already.

For me, my phone is an auxiliary device and my preferred device is the computer. But I'm sure I'm in the minority.

https://www.samsung.com/us/apps/dex/

Garmin has made a brand of themselves doing this. Every sport activity, there's a running watch, a golf watch, a whatever the hell watch, a gps this, a gps that, a bike computer, whatever, all bespoke and siloed for a few activities, when really they could just sell you a single slab that connects to a gps and could do whatever. But then, they'd only be selling you one product and not dozens.

Corporate legal entities are merely granted a license to operate within defined sandboxes. If society and its politics refuses to design sandboxes that will serve it well we should not expect to see the benefits of the invisible hand or whatever positive attributes might be associated with the design.

It is not rocket science. The first and most powerful rule which is related to this discussion is simply: don't give any toddler too big a sandbox. It gets on their head and the outcome is that the entire family suffers.

Which is precisely I'm talking about regulations trying to ensure competitors have access and a chance.

Im not denigrating files and folders. Im not upset that desktop is the name, its fitting for the metaphor they were going for, its just a silly use of my screen - most of the time the "desktop" should be under actually useful windows that are doing actual useful work. Hell if i wanted a grid of clickable things I'd install something like EWW and have a button that poped up that grid instead - the problem with the desktop (besides being a bad metaphor) is that it's functionality should be overlay not underlay.

"HN isn't representative of general public"

"We don't need file browsers because the general public doesn't use it"

"You shouldn't be able to install Emulators because the general public doesn't"

If we follow this reductive line of reasoning, nobody would ever do anything on an iPhone besides buy stuff. The iPhone supports hundreds of features that aren't representative of the general public, Apple chooses to deny you this one because they are afraid of it hurting their bottom line.

I teach IT at a university, undergrads and grads. All of this is exactly correct. The oddest thing is explaining to people my age (I'm 46) how many of my IT students are likely less knowledgable about those kinds of basics (despite having other, to me odd, skills, like fake instagram accounts and such)

And that capability seems orthogonal to the App Store. I don’t see any reason we need a monopolistic app store on our phones to get good security. You don’t need anyone’s permission to make a website. Why can’t applications work the same way?

The walled garden is the fact that you can't sideload apps or alternative stores at all. Everything you've mentioned is simply app store requirements.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QUYODQB_2wQ

> Fewer privacy violations

The only reason Apple booted Facebook tracking is to become the next Facebook in tracking with its ads. (1) (2)

(1) https://www.theverge.com/2022/10/26/23425637/apple-pauses-ga...

(2) https://appleinsider.com/articles/22/08/21/apple-maps-could-...

Both of which can run any software of your choice, which demonstrates that walled gardens aren't necessary for usability.

But we can't use a third party app on the PC (you can find plenty to install, but they all use the same underlying iTunes software), or on the phone (some WiFi media transfer apps exist but don't work well for years of bulk data), or even just browse the file system like Android. So our only option is apparently paying for iCloud to get our media off the phone now, resetting, and hopefully putting it back on - which I don't have high hopes for since we had an issue in the past where iTunes bricked a phone when restoring from backup [IIRC iTunes didn't do the right system call to stop the Windows PC from sleeping, so it slept mid-restore, and next time we plugged it in, it automatically backed up the broken partial restore wiping the good backup].

this is exactly my fear

The people who present Android vs iOS as a matter of personal choice are being slightly disingenuous. They are pretending that this choice is a natural inevitable result and will always exist. Their whole reasoning that iOS is "ok" is based on the fact that Android - another totally independent ecosystem, exists. And let's not forget, it's one which Steve Jobs vowed to sue out of existence.

The "android" of that ecosystem is the Meta Quest devices. At the moment, yes, you can sideload there and Zuckerberg is on the record saying he will maintain an open ecosystem. Yet it's still very tenuous. The sideloading experience is very poor, worse than Android (something you sideload can't appear as a first class citizen on the device - there's no way to have it show up in the main app menu, random permissions don't work sometimes etc). And the Quest OS layer is not open source - only the underlying Android OS.

The technical hurdles required for VR/AR are much bigger than general computing. It's not at all clear to me that an open alternative will emerge. So we are potentially headed into an era where effectively there's no option for general computing that isn't locked down and owned by a Mega corporation. And all these iOS users who are preaching tolerance of Apple's approach will have been the key enablers of this dystopia.

You keep saying this. Do you have any actual evidence?

This is possible since iOS13 I think. I use my GPG keys in a YubiKey to unlock my Pass for iOS app.

I'm unsure why side loading would break the dynamics of their walled garden either. All that does is give both customers and developers the choice of forfeiting the benefits like discoverability, comfort and likely a bunch of App Store-exclusive APIs like IAPs and in return allow access in cases where Apple doesn't approve. I can already guarantee that most developers won't budge an inch from the App Store as the lack of discoverability and the annoyance of downloading an app file and clicking through Apple's warning popups just to install it would effectively kill their app.

Your (very strange) analogy reminds me of when I was in 3rd grade, and we were having lunch. There was a substitute teacher that day. I had peanut butter and jelly (packed by my mom), and started putting some potato chips inside it. The teacher came over, asked what I was doing, and said "stop; we don't do that here".

It was a dumb thing for her to say then, and it's dumb to tell us what we can and can't do with our devices now.

We just want that for free. It doesn't have to be trivial to enable and certainly shouldn't be something that can happen by accident.

Apple could still explictly disallow that behavior on the app store and also disallow them from linking to another source directly from the app, just like on the Play store. Meta could be free to live their desires outside the app store (inside the existing app sandbox obviously) and take the hit on discoverability and willingness from users to budge.

But it's not walled garden that's doing it, it's sandboxing that does. Apple holds the keys and distributes the revocation lists, so they have a say in what runs on their devices. Walled garden is all about who has a say in this.

The question is - will you personally download a privacy-violating app in that weird manner via a corporate account or something? If yes, then I can see how exactly you personally want a walled garden for yourself. If no then it really sounds like you want Apple ecosystem rather than a walled garden per se.

(I'm intentionally not talking about some Average Joe, as it's hard to argue about hypothetical figures.)

Avoiding widely used social apps is a great solution. Stop encouraging people to use such apps and believe in a false sense of security. Facebook on your phone at all is giving them far more data than alternatives such as a sandboxed desktop environment, or using a hardened browser. You are not protected by Apple from Facebook here. You just bought into the latest marketing scheme by Apple in their aggressive move to really start prioritizing Apple Ads as a huge moneymaker.

And I say all of this as a huge Apple fan, with multiple Apple devices in rotation. But this encouragement of using the likes of Facebook because "Apple keeps me safe" needs to stop immediately. It was never true and is harming people from seeking proper alternatives.

Hackers don’t complain about fees they complain about the inability to have such fees subsidized by Fortune500 companies.

This is what happened for years when hackers and wiseguys would pirate Microsoft products…up in Redmond they just kept the score and passed the bill onto the big corporate clients who’d never pirate anything out of fear of lawsuits.

This is how things work in every realm, the catious elite subsidise the risktaking poor.

What’s the point of suffering walled garden if it’s not even bulletproof?

Android is a viable system however to use it securely as a device that has your life on it you are going to have use it as a walled garden or spend countless hours doing everything yourself.

And the overall experience will be worse especially when higher end devices cost as much if not more than an iPhone.

When I bought my first iPhone it was the first product that I paid a large chunk of my savings for and which I really hated in several ways, but I needed in other ways. It's a necessary evil.

I need a phone - I got a smart phone because it was the only sane fiscal decision... and when I got that phone I was presented with the options of iOS or locked down Android.

This may just be a Canadian thing but I think it's important to not present this as a completely free choice. If you're on a budget and you need a phone to occasionally communicate with the outside world you're going to be forced into getting a smart phone - the only choice is Android vs. iOS.

If it has the hardware to do it, why should it be locked in software?

Why should I need to buy two cars just because of software?

I don't get the point you make about data retention. On android.i can install myriad blockers, browsers and apps to protect myself.on iPhone, I get whatever apple has deigned to grant their users.

> One where it is comparatively very difficult to drain your full store of data and your wallet by installing shitware.

God forbid we treat other people with respect and not consider your average person is a complete idiot that’s being protected by dystopian big brother knowing better than you.

Requiring a similar activation process would be beneficial, but once activated, the restrictions shouldn't be so onerous.

Apple fucked Facebook because iPhones only allow Apple the power to fuck Facebook. Meanwhile software history is full of examples of abusive corporations being put in their place by casual side projects. I don’t think this dichotomy is real, I think we could both have control of our devices and prevent facebook from stalking us, maybe even more effectively than Apple.

Epic tried to stare down Google, wielding peak Fortnite as a crowbar, and Epic still came back to the Play Store with its tail between its legs.

The App and Play store still offer phenomenal discoverability (warts and all).

Sideloading wouldn’t be a default and thus something only a tiny percentage of users does, probably deterred even further by the myriad of warnings Apple will spam at you.

Why do I need an iPhone to not be fucked by Facebook?

They did this because Apple wants to boost its own ad revenue.

"The adoption of Apple Search Ads by advertisers grew 4% to 94.8% year-over-year"

"Apple announced this summer that it will add two more advertising slots to the App Store. Developers will be able to buy ad space on the central “Today” page as well as on individual app pages"

"In order to know which ads to show which users, Apple collects their account data, information about in-store purchases, search queries, news stories they read, as well as the information about their device and location."

"Apple’s Anti-Tracking Transparency only applies to the apps that use third-party data to track users. Since Apple’s tracking stays within its own ecosystem, the company’s native apps are not subject to the policy."

Basically in order to conquer a nation, you need to get rid of its existing rulers. That is what Apple is doing boss, they don't care about you. But naive opinions like yours really do help them in propping up their image.

Why would you want to outsource enforcement of individual rights (to privacy) to private companies?

Privacy should be enforced by the government (like it is in the EU), not by buying hardware from companies who sell stands for 1000 dollars.

You could win gold with the mental gymnastics used to get to your conclusion.

Many of us are in the ecosystem not out of personal choice, but out of necessity (be it professional or social).

To get a blue bubble you must give up control over your mobile life to Apple.