It's not mobile that has the limited version of the Internet - it's the PC

ben-evans.com

6 points·cgoodmac··3 comments

The author is mixing up two things: APIs and sensors and doing a bit of hand-waving across the join.

APIs are a solvable/solved problem - there should be no reason why web apps can't follow the same model for sharing contacts, accessing the camera etc.

Sensors? Depends which you mean. Web apps can get location data to a certain degree and can probably fall back to just asking in some scenarios.

What other sensors? I'm not aware of many killer social applications using my accelerometer or barometer.

There's a germ of an interesting idea here. More meat on it please.

I'm not sure more meat would help. Sensor data and contact lists don't define "the internet".

Perhaps he should rewrite the article and replace the word "Internet" with "Facebook". Yes PC's are a cut down version of Facebook simply because the Facebook mobile app has probably asked for all sorts of permissions of your phone and you've "granted" those permissions because you had no choice. Is that a better internet for the user, or better for Facebook? We know the answer.

>...a smartphone can work out much more. It can see who your friends are, where you spend your time, what photos you've taken, whether you're walking or running and what your credit card is.

Except a PC knows who your friends are (email clients, Skype, other IM), the OS and browser know "where" you spend your time, PCs have a photos directory, and your browser might know what your credit card is.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com