> Both GNOME Shell in the phone context and Plasma Mobile are evolutionary dead ends.
That's a hell of a hot take. Could you elaborate on why you think so?
That's a hell of a hot take. Could you elaborate on why you think so?
And/or, it's a simple matter of time/money being spent on streamlining the experience. It's not like Sailfish OS is perfect (Qt6 migration is way overdue), but Jolla has already figured out lots of integration details which will become teething problems for Droidian and such. Including, but not limited to VoLTE support.
That doesn't mean that the two can't be served by the same UI framework, but at minimum you need two sets of widgets and separate desktop/mobile layouts in order to not either make the desktop experience dumbed down or end up with a mobile experience that's awkward to use with touch.
The padding and control size in GNOME feels completely goofy on a desktop machine for example and reduces the usability of 12"-13" laptops with how much space is eaten up by blank space.
For the record, I agree. But I've been playing with Apple's new Liquid Glass UI on macOS / iOS and I think they've done a pretty good job of defining platform-agnostic UI primitives and layouts with some platform-specific rules when needed.
It's a big redesign that covers desktop / mobile / tablet / TV. They did a pretty clever job of it, though the desktop experience suffers slightly (of course).
> though the desktop experience suffers slightly (of course).
This is the part that makes it not work. The Liquid Glass transition isn't the only thing that's negatively impacted desktop UI in macOS, but also the several revisions of iOS-7-like flat designs since 10.10 Yosemite with a slow but constant march of papercuts. So even in the prior version (Sequoia), a great deal of damage had already been done. Tahoe's Liquid Glass compares less favorably against the much more "desktoppy" 10.9 Mavericks.
I'm just trying to look at it from Apple's eyes. From their perspective, I think, they're trying to design a UI framework that exists beyond any particular device form factor. UI design in the abstract, where specific platforms are particular manifestations of their Platonic UI ideal.
So you have something of a broad convergence of macOS / iOS / iPadOS / visionOS / etc. design elements, like rounded application windows, UI widgets (button/toolbar/...), ecosystem stuff (app widgets, live activities), and Apple technologies (Control Center, Spotlight, Siri, notifications).
Layout is (mostly) grouped relative to display size, not interaction method (like touch v. mouse). Similar display sizes have similar application layouts. Large = (macOS, visionOS, tvOS, iPadOS), medium = (iOS, iPadOS [small devices], CarPlay), small = (Apple Watch). Large display layouts tend to have the menu bar, toolbars, and side bars.
I could go on but it's getting late. This might be a half-baked idea, but I'm pretty sure this is more-or-less how Apple is approaching their platforms now with the Liquid Glass redesign.
Have you tried modern Gnome/GTK+ 4 applications? You can resize the window to a tiny size and it seamlessly "scales down" to a phone layout. Very handy even on a desktop. Yes, there are real differences besides size (phone UI needs a lot of inactive padding around tap areas because finger taps are imprecise; it greatly prefers swipes to taps, while a pointer-based UI prefers clicks to drag'n'drop; phone UI needs long taps as a secondary action, etc.) but they're minor in the grand scheme of things.