Google turns Android into a desktop OS in 5 steps | Hacker News Reader

Google turns Android into a desktop OS in 5 steps

zdnet.com

I've wondered why google hasn't attempted convergence earlier. It seems like the natural next step for PCs. But it seems like the motivation here is ultimately to use AI as they mention in step #5.

I wonder if something like https://www.razer.com/concepts/project-linda would ever get big in a world where everyone keeps their PC in their back pocket. Or maybe people would just settle on more of a stylus + nexus-size phablet if in the future handwriting-to-text models could get good enough to compete with a keyboard? Maybe this is a job for folding phone + tablet detachable keyboard/hinge.

Project Linda looks pretty cool and relatively practical since it lets you keep everything in one device. I have a PC, laptop, and mobile phone. This might bring it my devices to two.

Phones are getting so powerful that it seems like the logical next step.

They have attempted it, multiple time, I think the first time was with tablet support for Gingerbread.

There was a big trend of "convergence" a few years ago (ios, ubuntu unity...), but everyone realized that it is totally stupid in real life. You usually take the lowest common denominator to be your OS for all devices. That gives a bad experience in the most competent device (ie the computer).

Like for example, you will only have full screens apps or hardly multitasking.

But i guess that everything old is new again, and there are some people at Google that believe that it will give them a better chance of promotion than fixing bug and issues with existing Android os.

> a big trend of "convergence" a few years ago

This is a good comment. It’s true but wasn’t that 10+ years ago. The points you make aren’t as true anymore. Phones could support limited multitasking. I don’t need all of the tabs I use for work when doing personal things. Or to separate tasks by windows. For home I mostly just need to do bills. Maybe reading or writing.

It is a trend I saw countless of times in my professional experience: let's do exactly the same thing as before, but it is now, so it is not the same and so we expect a different outcome. And in the end, the result is the same and the project abandoned soon after being released.

"For home I mostly just need to do bills. Maybe reading or writing." If so, why do you use a computer and not a phone or a tablet? (or maybe just an eink reader).

I think that a lot of people are "switching" to the computer when they want to do things that go beyond what you do on your phone in the bed. And especially in a professional context.

Common things are like:

- I want to write a letter, and looking at the website at the same time to copy elements.

- I want to work on an excel sheet, while looking at pdf documents and websites. For example i'm doing a monthly expenses excel sheet, and i want to look at all my bills, connect to providers website when i don't receive bills. This kind of experience is very very painful on a mobile OS, because the constant "window" switch to go from excel to each info in each document is terrible.

How much of this is what Google is doing, and how much is what this guy wants Google to do?

The "How" got dropped off the title, it's an article explaining what this guy wants, not an article saying Google turned Android into anything.

Ah. It's not, then, how Google plans to displace Microsoft on the desktop.

Samsung's DEX does a very good job of creating a desktop interface for the android experience. Its not perfect, but very close. It covers almost every aspect of the items listed in the article.

Why do quality of life ML features (like the multitasking assistance mentioned) have to be branded the same as the LLMs and chatbots the companies release?

Apple does this with Siri Suggestions and this author wants Google to follow this trend.

I find this is just confusing, but then again I don't work in marketing.

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