I kinda do that with Samsung DeX. You plug it into a USB-C dock and it basically turns the phone into a computer. With Android apps running in little windows (not MS windows). It's amazingly useful, it's a bit like Microsoft's old convergence idea but it actually works.
I use it at work when I forgot to put my laptop in my bag (at home it's hidden in a dock behind my screen so it happens from time to time). I can work a whole day with meetings, doing some MS Office work etc. And if I need real Windows I can connect to a VDI. I could technically work like that every time I go to the office, the only reason I don't is some AD admin work that is not allowed in a VDI. It works technically but it's an internal rule thing.
I also use it on the go with an Xreal Air and a foldable keyboard. I have a whole computer with me for the weight and bulk of less than an iPad <3 It's awesome.
Apple could easily do similar, however their do really thrive by selling as many devices as possible so I doubt they would do it.
I bought a pair of viture pro glasses thinking I could use them with my (linux) laptop / (android) phone when travelling as a large external monitor.
But they were usable for coding, too difficult to read the text, too shakey. Would just give you a headache.
It's a cool idea but I decided the technology wasn't there yet and ended up returning them.
Xreal One glasses anchor the screen (i.e. it stays in place as you look around), have specific (and adjustable) tech for text clarity, have low chromatic distortion, and do things entirely onboard in the hardware. I've been able to use them for hours comfortably, and have gotten corrective lens inserts to avoid having to use my glasses with them.
They now have a 32:9 mode for ultra wide resolution, which is a real boost to using my work laptop. My aging phone doesn't play as nice as it used to with this mode, but it's a real win having 3 windows arrayed comfortably.
I code and read documents for a living, and I love these things.
The display isn't huge either, the viture pro looks like it has a much bigger viewing angle so I can imagine the pixels are too spread out to show a decent resolution, like with most VR headsets (except the vision pro).
I use corrective lenses in them. I see the Viture have diopter adjustment but that wouldn't work for me as I have astigmatism.
Anyways there is Tmux, but if I wanted to do actual work, like with my stack: nodejs, docker container (with a postgres, a redis)... I am not sure it would work. Haven't done it so far but I'd be curious of other's experiences.
Also an Xreal and a foldable keyboard and you can just work anywhere with a chair and a desk
I also wanna try running some windows game on it, apparently it's working-ish at and Valve might improve that part of the ecosystem too
I hope that in the future, buying 2 devices will not be required and instead just buying one powerful one + optional peripherals will be ok.
Personally I prefer tmux anyway. I'm not a dev but if I do develop something we have to use a remote login box anyway, our workstations are completely locked down.
For me a webbrowser, Android apps like office and teams, obsidian and a few others and tmux are enough. It's not a complete workstation replacement but even at home I have way more than one computer. My daily driver for web stuff, a powerful pc for gaming and 3D design, an old LTSC box for microcontrollers and several others.
I’m out of the loop, why couldn’t a particular mobile CPU run a terminal?
Can you run ordinary desktop apps though? What is useful about mobile apps designed for a small screen on a big screen? On my phone actual desktop apps (like LibreOffice or desktop Firefox) can be used.
That is to say, yes. And with that you can also run windows applications, e.g. through Winlator.
I was able to run Intellij IDEA, but of course ymmv as the application really has to be available for Android arm64.
In the meantime before its repair, I shoved my SIM card into an old flipphone I had in the tech graveyard drawer. I've actually really liked the limited flipphone experience. It's a mental breath of fresh air to not have a time/focus black hole in my pocket at all times. It made me realize that I've had a pretty bad relationship with my smartphone in terms of how much time I wasted on it. I'm considering keeping the flipphone as my primary phone. Maybe smartphones do too much.
Whilst I may not represent the average person, I have no need to check bank statements or manage insurance immediately, so I can wait until I'm at a 'real' computer to do it more conveniently and easily and with a bigger screen and keyboard and mouse.
GPs point about the 'relationship with the smart phone' seems to be pertinent. "need to install an app" to do these things only makes the point stronger.
Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect.
The snide around "clicking on links is dangerous" and locking down the bootloader is unwarranted, because for most people a phone is not a toy (or at least, not just a toy) - it has their communications history, their bank information, their passwords, any many more. And it's really easy to steal people's phones on the subway. This isn't about freedom of computing, this is about the fact that an iPhone in BFU is nearly as secure as a GrapheneOS phone.
There are many problems with Apple software. It's buggy, uses proprietary formats that you can't export, and interoperable with open standards. It's bad, and is the primary reason why I won't buy another iPhone, but Macs have that same problem. On the other hand, being cryptographically locked-down is an optional feature. If you don't like it, buy a computer without that feature. It's harmful to us, to tinkerers and people who want to see how things work, but the average person does not care at all and just wants to be able to open LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs without having their 401k get drained.
But that's the thing, where can I buy a phone without a locked-down operating system? GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel is basically the only option right now, and this still has problems thanks to hardware attestation in a lot of apps that the ecosystem forces us to use.
This is largely because Apple has dictated the direction of smartphones for the past two decades. All of our expectations for control over our phones are completely out of whack compared to other computers.
Somehow we managed to survive without the majority of society being scammed out of their life savings before Apple came in with the iPhone and locked down iOS, and yet now people are earnestly defending the notion that 90% of people should not even have access to the filesystem on their own device.
I would, sadly, challenge this. If anything, our desktops and laptops are the exception now. Phones, TVs, game consoles, set top boxes, cars, Amazon echos, ebook readers, tablets, security cameras, autonomous devices like vacuum cleaners — when I think of the myriad devices we interact with that have a computer in them, they are all as stringently locked down as possible.
Only a tiny amount of apps force you into hardware attestation, and these are mostly around banking, mobile payments and the like. So just use a separate, locked down device for those (where the anti-fraud protection of a locked-down system can be a benefit) and your more open day-to-day device for mostly everything else. A hidden advantage is that the dedicated device for secure uses is not something that you're forced to carry with you; you can leave it in a secure place instead.
What on earth are you talking about? People have been getting scammed since the days of AOL! What an insane perspective. It's not about total money lost from scams. It's about the amount of impact it has on the individuals who get scammed. What's the problem with Russian roulette after all? Most people playing Russian Roulette are absolutely fine! The point is that the damage done to the few people who get scammed is so high, we ought to care about their lives too. At the end of the day, it might end up being us... it probably won't, but it might.
Yes, monopolistic network effects are a problem, but that can be handled with regulation.
If that were the entire reason, the straight-forward thing would be to give the user tools to secure the phone, such as setting a password and encrypting data based on that password.
It wouldn't make sense to spent enormous amounts of resources to "secure" the phone against its own user, yet that is what they do.
I think a more honest explanation is that they aren't just securing their own corporate power, but also the power and business models of all kinds of app developers - this way, developers can sell trivial UI improvements as "premium features" or even put in deliberate anti-features and the user can't do anything about it.
Games can put in loot boxes and microtransactions, YouTube can declare that keeping a song playing and putting the phone away is a premium feature and movie rightsholders can decide the exact circumstances under which a movie may be watched.
That's all before the ubiquitous tracking and data collection.
Everyone wins, except the user...
> and just wants to be able to open LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs without having their 401k get drained.
So do I, even if I'm a tinkerer. That's what sane permission settings and - if you like - a locked bootloader are for. What you don't need for that is to restrict the owner from unlocking the bootloader.
And, somehow, the indignity of being forced into paying apple a 30% tax for a market they wholly own never comes up alongside other paternalistic arguments....
There's definitely problems but the solution isn't to make the iPhone a general purpose computer. We definitely need to defend the existence of general purpose computing at a time where regulation is likely to begin encroaching on it, but the promise of the App Store is "pay a 30% tax and any app you download here will be safe." In my mind, at least, that's the promise, and perhaps one solution to the situation would be to erect consequences to breaking that promise.
All of this to get custom fonts in their messaging app or some other little feature they saw on someone’s phone.
I started getting a lot of requests for help from people who had broken key functions on their phones or even bricked them entirely.
Even today there’s a culture of downloading Android builds from long forum threads on XDA developers and other forums and hoping they’re not compromised.
Yes, and this is normal and right. They're expressing curiosity, and in the process also actually exercising ownership of their devices.
It's how most of us here learned computers, too.
The only problem in this picture, really, is that we've allowed - or even helped - software and platform vendors to disempower regular users so much that "to get custom fonts in their messaging app" they need to do something high-risk.
Most of what regular people try to do is like this anyway - something that should be a basic functionality, that used to be basic functionality, but has been taken away from users for their "safety" or because "sekhurity" or such.
Is there anything like that in the Android world? I'd love an alternative Android distro the supports writing notes with the S-Pen from the lockscreen. Where does one find such a thing?
I did that this month. I wouldn't do that for a device I use for anything sensitive, but I have a niche use case for my old Nexus 5, and it needed to be running at least Android 8.
And why should the entity locking down the design be the same entity as the one selling it? Is that a feature too?
You can't imagine a world where people can install different services by different providers to protect their devices? And have some actual competition? And therefore choice?
This is not an honest portrayal of iOS. iOS is locked down period. "By default" makes it seem like there's a choice involved anywhere, and there isn't.
But let’s be real here. They should have unified everything 5 years ago. Your phone should plugin to a screen and be a “netbook” level device and anything 13 inches and up should be running MacOS. The iPad should have a real affordable keyboard.
These limitations are no longer designed to make the product better.
It is kind of silly that people buy raspberry pis to run their NAS, while they trash ther infinitely more capable iphone every couple of years.
Should we all expect Toyota to design their ECUs to be used as a NAS?
However, the article touches on ideas like using an old phone as a server. It would be nice if on first boot a user could choose if the device will be a phone or a generic device. This way, when I decide to upgrade my phone, my old would could be reset and then setup with macOS to use for wherever I want. The alternatives are to sell it, recycle it, use it as an overpowered iPod touch, or throw it in a drawer for 10 years.
Buggy sure, but proprietary formats? Calendar entries can be imported or exported as iCalendar .ics (RFC 5545), contacts as vCard .vcf (RFC 6350), photos as .jpeg or .heif (ISO/IEC 23008-12), books use the open .epub (ISO/IEC TS 30135), iTunes dropped DRM for purchased files in 2016 and uses mp4 (ISO/IEC 14496-14:2020) (though not sure what Apple Music streaming uses). TextEdit uses .rtf (a closed Microsoft format), and Pages, Numbers, Keynote use their own formats (as other office software does), but they import and export to many common formats. Notes imports and exports markdown (and you can always print/export as pdf).
What are the "proprietary formats that you can't export"?
ETA: Oh, Messages, yeah. To export those, you have to copy/paste a conversation, or use a 3rd party app, fair enough.
Apple achieved what was nearly impossible by getting iPhone capabilities on a carrier’s network. (They did another impossible feat with the iTunes Store and selling tracks for 0.99)
iPhone capabilities caught up to most people’s computing needs but at the core these are still devices that need to be approved to run on a carrier’s network with basic service contracts. So they are locked down.
Phone networks have always been crusty legacy things when you look at it from a modern computing lens
Carrier approval is not the reason phones are locked down. If it were then rooting android devices wouldn’t be possible.
And so is their god damn computer!
The ONLY reason why we treat phones differently from computers has no relationship at all with what's at stake, it's purely because Apple felt they could get away with it for phone, while they estimated that people would stop buying macs right away if they did the same thing for computers. It's literally that simple.
This would mean millions of devices
You mention Graphene is more secure so what exactly am I gaining from not being able to install it other than my phone being trash once it's out of support
You can't. (Last time I checked.) The backup is encrypted in the cloud, and the only way to download it is to restore it to a phone.
Whereas I can just plug in my iPhone and get a full backup, complete with sqlite manifest, completely accessible. Text messages, photo library, everything.
> Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form
Come on now. This is so naive. Why not lock your computer down too? If its so proconsumerist
> Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form [...]
I think you've mixed up 'side effect' with 'primary motivation'.
I would say most people in tech who aren't interested in fiddling with their phones have no issue with this either and frankly intentionally prefer more locked down options, all things considered.
It's fine to criticize abusive practices that companies engage in, but I tire of the narrow-mindedness of some people who measure everything according to their personal interests. Like, expand your mind, man.
You don't understand the argument of why people might want to install their own OS on a device they own. And then say you won't buy another iPhone because you don't like their software... It sounds like you _do_ understand the argument.
I greatly dislike Apple software, but I think their hardware is quite nice. I would buy apple hardware if it wasn't handy-caped by their OS.
It used to be said that Apple was a hardware company that happens to make an OS. This argument never made sense to me, because while they make good hardware they very clearly don't want people to use it.
A laptop is more than the sum of its parts. Your phone overlaps with it on a technical level, but format is important.
Granted, its not as good of a "feel" as a laptop. But for the price and the features its great. You can get a good aftermarket track-pad and use that. I use a wireless mouse, because it lets me also use it as a monitor+mouse+keyboard for my Steam deck so I can play FPS games.
Then when confronted with scenarios where I had no stable surfaces I realized why the LAPtop form factor reigns supreme.
Peripheral add-ons like the NexDock are very nifty, but at that point you are suffering from the same physical constraints of a phone + laptop lifestyle. All with zero of the benefits of a locally accessible, more mature, and capable OS.
Still not a laptop, but for me it's enough that I haven't used my private laptop since getting the Fold 7 half a year ago. Extreme portability can cover for a lot of other UX problems.
* A19 Pro CPU (the NEO only has the A18 Pro)
* 12GB of RAM (the NEO only has 8GB of RAM)
* 128GB of NAND storage for iOS (ok this is less than the NEO)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Studio_Display#Technical...
At the same time I have multiple old phones laying around, Pixels, iPhones, Galaxy that are out of date, have cracked screens or worn out batteries.
Each one of these old phones have same or more computing power than a $300 mini-pc, but I can't use them because I can't just ssh into them and install an app...
Sad, really.
Additionally, Pixels support a Linux VM and has a desktop mode (I'm running GrapheneOS, it may still be that these features have to be enabled through the developer settings).
of course you can. just ask your agent. it took me 1 hour to vibe-code and install an Android app on my locked down Android.
In an analogous way, I feel like I'm in that part of the millennial generation that is more comfortable doing things on a PC than on a phone. Sure I can informally browse airline tickets and cars on my phone, or upload some docs for my , but when things get serious, I'm switching to a PC to complete it.
There's something about doing things on a phone that just does not feel... robust? Maybe I am just too accustomed to the phone experience being minimal, or minimized in some way compared to the desktop experience.
You can even see the same with games. All these kids growing up playing games on their iPads are really good at using those crappy touchscreen controls to play. Do you think they'd find using a physical controller comfortable? Maybe after a lot of practice, but why switch if you're already good at using the touch controls?
She prefers a phone, but has difficulty even doing most of the things you or I would want to accomplish. It is mysterious to her, because the phone makes it difficult and sometimes even nearly impossible, and so she acts like that is impossible. When the google screen only shows you two results, you give up if there's no clear answer in two results. When the phone screen shows 20 words on it, you think reading 1500 words is an ordeal. Cluttered pages not quite fixed with adblock can have the clutter ignored on a large monitor, but when there is no adblock and the screen is 3 inches wide, the clutter drowns out the signal completely.
Phones may be an entire computer, but they are a deliberately crippled computer that makes reading text input difficult, writing text input even more difficult, and makes thinking most difficult of all.
An Android phone, even with a stock OS would get him more of the capabilities one would expect from a desktop PC, but he chose an iPhone. Some Android phones let the user unlock the bootloader easily and gain root, but he chose an iPhone. With an unlocked bootloader and a well-supported device, it's possible to install a third-party Android distribution with even more freedom, but he chose an iPhone.
Maybe he likes the iOS UX or app selection better, but if that's the deciding factor then I don't think using the phone as a Real Computer (tm) is really all that important to him.
As long as it's understood as an opinion piece it's tolerable despite – as you note – the “revealed preference”.
## Appliance Computing:
Take "consoles" for instance. I got tired of building gaming PCs, and after another long day of making computers work, enjoy turning on an Xbox Series X and just doing what the box is there for, much as I appreciate the glass slab in my pocket just doing what it is there for, every single time, without fail, for nearly 2 decades now.
I enjoy a TRMNL (https://trmnl.com/) or Arduino as much as the next person, but don't need my PDA-phone to be a general purpose computing device.
## Mobile Computing:
On the contrary, for both business office work and content creation, and leisure travel logistics and media creation, an iPad Pro with keyboard and trackpad would generally be preferable to a Macbook Pro or Air or Neo if people spent the couple weeks necessary to get used to the different computing paradigm.
Once that sinks in, you may find carrying an iPhone, folding bluetooth keyboard with multi-touch pad, and a Switch 2 USB-C + PowerDelivery + HDMI cable means you can field work on any 4K hotel TV or AirBnB monitor:
Like this: https://cabletimetech.com/products/4k60hz-usb-c-to-hdmi-cabl...
With this: https://www.amazon.com/KUNSI-Foldable-Bluetooth-Rechargeable...
But that's better suited for media. iPad Pro + 5G chip + keyboard w/ trackpad is your dual monitor work bet w/ this same cable.
Btw, the point of this particular cable is that power is probably near the TV where the HDMI end goes, with the USB-C where you and your phone or iPad are.
There is: https://puri.sm/posts/my-first-year-of-librem-5-convergence/
The real problem is that there is no market for it.
At the top end on a desktop power usage doubles for lower double-digit percentage gains. You can shave that off and not lose much. Laptops are a lot closer to phones than they are to desktops when it comes to power and thermal limitations*, so re-using a "phone" chip really isn't crazy.
* 100W power usage on a laptop is entering silly territory, but on a desktop that's the bottom of entry-level rigs.
Finally, the ability to allow you to unlock your phone bootloader or to run custom firmware has nothing to do with the silicon. It's a software choice. The trusted software could most certainly decide to disable these safeguards.
Introducing the MacBook Neo.
I have a pile of iphones without battery sitting in a drawer and It would be a really cheap way to run fun stuff.
The only thing that could be worrying is device theft, but a simple CLI tool for the initial device registration after firmware flash might do it.
In before someone explains it's not "exactly" the same. Dex has shown this phone/computer ability in practice long before.
It seems like the viability of running a computer from an A16 really just came to fruition. There's heat, performance, battery life, etc implications that the average consumer can't quite articulate but it matters to them.
Apple's goal seemed to be to decimate the Cheap Plastic Intel Laptop space, and I think they succeeded at catching the industry with their tails between their legs.
You can hook up a mouse and keyboard, maybe even a monitor? I thought I saw it in passing… I still have a lightning iPhone
The fact that iPadOS now has windowing seems like it would only make it work better. iPads can already do everything necessary, so why not the iPhone?
Unfortunately I suspect that if this was ever going to happen, which I would’ve bet against, it’s now let’s likely. I suspect current Apple would rather sell me a Neo then let me use my phone. In other words I think the existence of the product might rule it out under current leadership.
Who knows. I could be wrong. Only time will tell.
A decade or two ago, Intel introduced the Intel Management Engine to new computer processors. Their competitors followed suit. The market has stopped making products without these trusted computing "features" a long time ago. Eventually, you stop being able to choose.
These are the consequences of a computer market led by consumers that don't understand computers. The invisible hand is legally blind.
I am just glad, that we can still run a proper OS on a proper computer. If they made a modified iPad OS for their baby laptop it could have been an ominous sign.
I'd go visit my family in New England (more than one group) and they'd have a 640x480 screen and be doing all their web browsing through 70 vertical pixels because they'd installed 30 toolbars -- and they thought there was nothing wrong with this!
The world was reeling from a cyber war between two German teens who were trying to outdo each other with viral "love letter" programs because people would just click on... anything!
Plenty of us were looking for some platform, any platform, that would deliver us from that nightmare. It wasn't going to be the Sun Ray, it wasn't going to be Linux (talk about frying pan to the fire), it was going to be the iPhone.
Ideally it would be a 40-50 inch 4/5K screen that doubles as a desk of some sorts, but I'll take the monitor/iMac form factor.
I'm not trying to defend Apple here, I'm just curious if there would be some kind of carrier validation issues if you slapped a full desktop OS on a phone.
This feels more like a facebook post that would shock my mom then a HN article...
I mean Samsung DeX has done something similar, but Apple could make a much more powerful version, since they have a real fully-developed desktop and they have apps for both platforms that use a single code base.
They will, of course, never do this, because it would result in losing Mac sales. Though I think less than one would initially think, because a laptop is much handier on the go than carrying a separate display, keyboard, and mouse and the lapdocks or whatever they are called have much worse displays and keyboards.
But Apple will surely never allow such a thing since their main interest is in selling as many pieces of hardware to each of the Apple Faithful as possible. So they with a straight face suggest that a single human needs an iPad Pro (which easily tops $1500 with the eye-wateringly-expensive keyboard and a storage upgrade) and a laptop. Nevermind that they may have the same chip inside.
Both Phosh and PlasmaMobile turn into a "proper" desktop when "docked" (Gnome-like and KDE-like, respectively).
It's not unnecessary, they do it because they make money as gatekeeper.
I think the more accurate view would be an intersection of some of the company wanting to make money off gatekeeping and some of the company wanting to make quality devices that stay functional and malware-free even after you give to a deeply gullible grandparent for a while, and the former using the latter as a transparent excuse much of the time.
A big factor in the success of the iPad and maybe just some degree the iPhone, but especially the iPad, is that it’s “unbreakable”. All out restrictions mean it’s computer people don’t worry will suddenly stop working because they clicked to the wrong link. It won’t get a weird virus from their email.
That is a serious upside for a lot of consumers.
I love this idea. I'd love a tiny full computer that I could dock onto other hardware and just carry around.
https://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/183700272/intel-ma...
Sure App store is not to be understated, but I'd add our phones include way way more personal information than a laptop like NFC for credit cards, personal photos, and all biometric and contact information. Not to mention cellular network connection and generally forms as a soft form of identity. None of these apply to a laptop. So form factor does matter.
BUT even if we unlocked the iPhone, the desire for 'MacOS on iPhone' is actually the wrong thing to ask for. Pete Steinberger had in this interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcwK1Uuwc0U&t=1182) that UI is basically the wrong paradigm in a world where agents should do tasks for us in milliseconds. We should be able run any local services from our phone like grabbing
Good news is we already have this via terminal apps in Android. Now what's left is the ability for agents to run on your device and basically accomplish tasks for you
Yes, I do personally desire that as a niche thing, but the broader point is the nature of a locked bootloader that prevents any third-party software from being loaded / installed without getting an approval from Apple.
Whether the desire is third party apps on iOS outside of Apple-vetted channels, or entirely new operating systems like Linux or MacOS, I’m mainly arguing I should have the right to modify the software however I’d like as the device owner.
Seems like the way things are going is VMs, your phone running iOS can just be a jump box to a Mac VM, no need to dual boot an operating system, no need to lose the security iOS provides. I would rather Apple make software that just lets me tailscale like RDP to my Mac mini on my desk from anywhere using my phone, keyboard, mouse.
Of course, it runs on a separate device, but it gives us an idea of what it would be like to have it there natively.
I used this to make some music in FL Studio on my phone. Well, on my laptop, which I had set up in the office. So I controlled it via my phone.
I feel like mobile versions of stuff is just gimped versions of the real thing. I would almost go so far as to say that I am more productive when using a desktop interface on a smartphone (than the smartphone equivalent of the same software), despite the ergonomic awkwardness.
Android phones are nothing but linux phones and video output (DP over USB-C, earlier MHL) is for many years already included in many phones. I would love to carry one device with everything on it. I would be very happy if that device was like a laptop with detachable core, that acts as phone.
Everyone with an iPhone, no longer needs their laptop/desktop. Just buy a cheap iBook and there's a good chance it'll already be better than most consumer PCs.
Good example of the economics is that Macbook Neo or iPad Air are cheaper than new iPhone.
iPhone should export display, but more for showing videos or presentations. My Pixel 10 has USB-C display and I haven't used it, but I have computers for all purposes.
Apple should spend more effort making the iPad usable for work. It would be good candidate for USB-C display, but with iPadOS.
I'm skeptical that there's "no demand" for that kind of functionality rather than a lack of good implementations. Look at how popular wireless CarPlay and Android Auto are. They're essentially the same functionality, but tailored to an in-car experience instead of desktop.
- https://support.apple.com/guide/keynote-iphone/present-on-a-...
I have traveled with just my iPhone and can get by but don't really love it.
If Apple releases a $300 lapdock tomorrow, basically a screen, keyboard, battery, that allows using your iPhone as a normal general purpose computer with OSX - why would anyone buy a laptop/desktop?
HNers are significantly more technical than the median consumer and are used to text and keyboard interfaces - a large portion of humanity isn't. You see this with Foundation Models as well - most have started to shift away from only concentrating on text to TTS and STT usecases.
Also, DeX style monitor screen share with a Bluetooth keyboard has been supported since iOS 15.
Additionally, a major portion of Apple's desktop revenue is coming from poweruser and specialist demand - IT departments bulk purchasing developer laptops, designers having their entire design workflow within the MacOS environment, and video editors heavily dependent on MacOS.
Furthermore, arguments about how Apple has an incentive not to cannibalize revenue are dumb, given how open Apple is to cannibalizing revenue where PMF exists (eg. the iPad Pro versus lower tier MacBooks or the MacBook Neo versus lower tier iPads).
A Mac is a real computer. I can run any code I want on it. I have root.
An iDevice is like a game console. I can only run App Store apps (without jumping through a lot of hoops). I do not have root (without again jumping through many hoops or ugly hacks).
If Apple wanted to unify the platform they have two choices. The first is to abandon the "real computer" market entirely. The second is to make iDevices real computers by unlocking them.
I suspect they'd rather keep two platforms.
Under the hood they both share a lot of code, so it's not two totally distinct platforms. It's more like two sets of defaults and two "skins."
Looking at the stats, the Win:Mac ratio is 4:1 but Android:iPhone only 2:1 so it might hurt Windows. But if iPhone users are more likely to use Mac or don't use computers much already, then expanding iPhone capabilities would cannibalize Apple business.
Mac is a niche right now, iPhone with OSX could level the playing field.
If you use cloud storage, your laptop already has all the stuff on your phone anyway.
The general public thinks phones and computers are fundamentally different. Heck, I remember arguing this point even on HN back when smart phones were first coming out and being generally on the losing side as people got very excited about "app stores" and such. I see no practical path to getting to the point that enough of us realize that there is simply no reason for our phones to be locked down the way they are that the companies are forced to undo it, especially with our elites pushing with all they are worth to lock things down harder.
The companies take that confusion to the bank.
There have been numerous attempts at making phone/laptop crossovers, where you can plug your phone into a dock and get a computer, or slide your phone into a laptop case, etc. Some of them are even still around, but they're all definitely second-class citizens. There's a variety of problems that I think they've had in the market, not least of which is the fact that the average person still sees "phones" and "computers" as fundamentally different so the product makes no sense to them, but another issue that I think has held them back is that the product inevitably work by porting the limitations of the phone into the computer, rather than porting the freedom of the computer into the phone.
In the USB-C era, there is no excuse for every phone not having a mode where you can plug it into any ol' USB-C hub/dock and be able to get a desktop environment, even down to the "middle-of-the-line" phones. It would require in most cases no extra hardware. They just don't.
Part of why Apple's products are often praised for their design is that they do a few things really well and focus on those things, instead of trying to do absolutely everything. Consider the iPod, the iPhone, Apple TV, etc -- they're all pretty focused on doing certain things and Apple's really polished the experience. The Mac desktops and laptops kind of stretch this by allowing more things, but they still largely try to focus the user into certain workflows, via the plethora of apps that come standard with macOS and the vendor lock-in that they push.
Making a phone that can also be a full computer goes against these design principles. Apple's closed the gap a bit in recent years by making macOS and iOS a bit more similar than they used to be, but they're still pretty different. If you're on a M1/2/3/4/etc processor laptop and you've tried using an iOS-specific app (not ones that's designed for both phone and desktop) on it, you'll see some of those differences (interfaces tuned for touch are weird with a mouse, things are sized wrong for desktop, file restrictions can be weird, keyboard input can be lacking, etc etc etc), and it's not enjoyable. Going the other direction, the first thing that pops into my head is: how in the world would the mac desktop be represented on iOS? I'm someone who keeps a lot of files on his desktop, grouped in different sections of the screen for different reasons, and I have no idea how that would be represented on a relatively tiny phone screen (at least in a way that didn't destroy my intentional groups). There are other aspects of macOS that would prove tricky to have analogs on a phone screen, too, but this reply is already getting so long that very few will read it...
Now that's not to say that it's impossible. In fact it probably isn't. But there would be compromises (and those compromises would be on top of the compromises already present in iOS/macOS). To do it well, it'd be a much bigger project than most people realize. It's not just changing a few options and letting us use our phone that way. It'd be more akin to designing the first iPhone. Note that it's not just Apple who hasn't done this yet. Literally _no one_ has done it well yet. I truly hope one day Apple (or someone else, even) does it well, since that'll be a glorious day. But it'd be a huge project, so I'm not holding my breath.
One, I avoid Apple products as they are locked down and overpriced
The other, that it's probably worthwhile to push for apple to open these products up more - especially would be nice if more old hardware could be "opened" to reuse and avoid them being e-waste
Is this true? Does Asahi support any A series chip (or the A18 Pro specifically)?
For me, the iPad would have died if the Neo had a 12" screen. Only the iPad mini remains a useful form factor.
Wait, does Asahi even run in this thing, or is that unfounded speculation?
The MacBook Neo is a great example of just how fungible these categories are, at least as far as the SoC that runs them is concerned. I paid for my iPhone in full, there is no reasonable justification for why I can’t repurpose it / modify it as I see fit.
Apple did patent a design for a dock in a monitor for a portable device to slot into. It’s gotta be getting close to expiration now. I think the trick is heat dissipation.
My friend who is a macOS programmer years ago had an idea for a startup mode for iMacs where instead of just being a screen, the storage and video card would also be accessible over the thunderbolt bus, so you could plug a laptop in and have multiple video cards at your disposal.
Try saving my side project to your home screen : Habit.am - works really nicely once you're logged in.
If you’re a U.S. citizen, it’s worth studying what this country’s foundational freedom means specifically, why and why not something else, such as consumer rights.
I think anyone who has devoted their life to computing, in all its forms, over the past 20 years should agree: There doesn't exist an operating system that I feel adequately does all of that under one roof. The closest is Android. And that's what I don't get out of posts like this: Android does exist. What do you want out of Android that Google/etc are keeping from you? Samsung has Dex. It kinda sucks. Google allows free-range application installations (and fortunately that recent effort to block it is dead); that's great. I guess there's no real/root UNIX terminal? Bro, I struggle to envision a world where any device I have that has a root shell is also one that I don't inevitably fuck up, even if only temporarily, its ability to receive phone calls from my doctor about the results of a colonoscopy.
The bigger problem that I see right now is that, at least from the perspective of the iPhone: Apple is dropping the ball on their stewardship of this bedrock experience.
Vendors keep them open today only because there is a historical exception, but make no mistake if the laptop computer was first introduced to the masses in 2008 you would be downloading apps through official stores and paying a 30% fee on all transactions and would only be able to do a tiny fraction of what is possible on them today.
To me the surprise isn't that the phone is locked down, but that Apple allows MacBook Neo to do so much. Just look at its iPad counterpart.
That's the effect of a complete lack of antitrust. In the US corporations can do the fuck they want
