Phones are dominant now and have passed the PC generation by - in number, not capability. The concept of copy/paste/save for arbitrary data lives on for the non-tech masses only in the form of screenshots and screen recording features.
Adolescence is a very good word to encompass it, lots of awkward experiments trying to make the latest thing stick along with some of them getting discarded along the way when we grow out of them, they turn out not to be (broadly) useful or fashion moves on. What I wonder about is if the personal computer has hit maturity now and we're past that experimental phase, for most people it's an appliance. Obviously you can still get PCs and treat them as a workstation to dive into whatever you're enthusiastic about but you need to specifically go out and pursue that, where the ecosystem might be lacking is a bridge between the device most have as their personal computer (phone/tablet) and something that'll introduce them to other areas.
Otherwise, I don’t think I get your point - maybe you could clarify?
> Phones are dominant now and have passed the PC generation by - in number, not capability.
And I'm saying phones have passed PCs in capabilities. Don't put words in my mouth, not all of them, obviously. I'm just pointing out that a desktop with a 5090 and 42" widescreen monitor doesn't fit in my pocket, and that fitting into my pocket is a capability that some people value.
If it were a powerful, useful device that I could load my own software onto and make programmable without jumping through a bunch of hoops, instead of the ad-laden crapware that resulted from primarily two megacorps duking it out over how to best extort billions from app developers and users for their own benefit, then sure, I'd agree.
But phones aren't awesome little PCs, they're zombifying the majority of the public. They also, incidentally, are insidious little snitches busy at work trying to monetize every single thing about our daily lives.
Yes, and corporations are doing all the same stuff to our PCs as well.
The general public doesn't know how to program. They don't know what variables are, that they have types, they think functions are what rich people call a dinner party or corporate event. On computers, where there are no such restrictions, the majority of the public haven't suddenly become hobbyist programmers in their spare time.
If you're so blinded by hate because there are hoops (which there absolutely are), and you refuse to jump at all, not even a little bit, simply on principle, I mean, you do you. Meanwhile, there are people who aren't the majority of the public, but that want to do things that able to get into tech learning to code despite the epic of Apple vs Google vs Gilgamesh flattening towns. It would be great if it were easier because the phones were more open, but at some point you gotta go with the serenity prayer.
> If you're so blinded by hate because there are hoops (which there absolutely are), and you refuse to jump at all
It's not necessary to bring that energy to HN and I'm going to nope right on at the point you accuse me of not being technical enough.
Because you're technical, the iOS restriction that code must be signed seems insurmountable, because it is. But if you know less about computers, you'd find bitrig or swift playgrounds or Pythonista. And knowing even less, you get into building web apps. For what people want to do and create; they don't know frontend from backend and are just getting their feet wet, a phone does alright.
Could it better at it? Absolutely, no question about that! But so could everything else in life. It depends on where on the spectrum you exist, A laptop is better than a phone for writing code for a lot of reasons, but when we're looking at the bigger picture, a phone is better than nothing.
There are also various handheld PCs.
There might be a resurgence of some kind of device like a PC.
Seeing iPadOS gain desktop features, and MacOS starting to adopt more and more iPadOS type features clearly shows the desktop, laptop and tablet experiences will be merged at some point by Apple at least.
When it's not impeded by DRM, that is
I would love to be able, myself, decide if it's fine to capture a screen for an application but I'd also would love to protect me or my non-tech-savvy relatives from accidentally share sensitive info (e.g. banking) when screen casting.
In my opinion there should be a waiver buried deep in the settings that allows me to disable such protections with a grace period of a week or so. Grace period is crucial because scammers are able to make people do virtually anything under stress and hurrying.
gets me
https://imgur.com/a/bseFwX3 on iOS 18, and https://imgur.com/a/Ksbz3zW on iOS 26
Maybe you're holding it wrong?
Nemo auditur propriam turpitudinem allegans
- Get URLs from (shortcut input) - Get contents from (URLs from previous step) - Save (contents of URL) to Photos
Set to accept URLs and appear in share sheet.