On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 18:51:41 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
On 06/21/2015 05:07 AM, Joakim wrote:
>
> Simply dumping more features on top of the old web stack
> is a recipe for failure.
>
Meh, it seems to be working for them so far ;) But I agree,
it's a bad approach, and hopefully will finally collapse.
What's amazing is how long this house of cards keeps jiggling on,
and even worse, how many people actually think it's something
worthwhile! It can't be destroyed soon enough.
> Very responsive because they're made up of trivially simple
line art,
> perhaps.
I happen to like that aesthetic style, really. :) But of course
an image format needs to be more general.
Actually, I like that "cartoon" style too, wish more people used
it. I'm guessing they don't only because it's considered too
simple or not as serious. But I bet SVG would be slow even for
that, particularly if it was animated.
I really liked the new Fisher-Price style of desktop Windows 8,
along with better visualizations like the graph when copying
files. Damn sight better than the OSX-aping Windows 7, with the
unnecessary glass and reflections everywhere, though it was
pretty at first.
> On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 07:38:02 UTC, Nick Sabalausky
wrote:
>> On 06/21/2015 01:42 AM, Joakim wrote:
> I have almost 50 GBs of storage on my tablet, between the
built-in flash
> and an SD card, about half what I have on my ultrabook.
50GB? That's it? I have more than that in music alone. (And no,
streaming music services is not an improvement. Although it is
occasionally a nice supplement.)
My two most recent laptops, I've upgraded to 1TB HDDs. Anything
less than that in local storage feels cramped. Plus then I have
an old desktop with about 2.5-3TB between three drives. And
three USB3 drives ranging from a few hundred GB to 1TB. And a
USB2 @ 250GB.
Heh, I'd say you're pretty unusual. Whenever I ask normal people
how much disk space they have, they have no idea, and when I
check their devices for myself, they're inevitably only using
around 10-20% of the 16-32 GBs on their tablets or 80-500 GBs on
their laptops.
> If I weren't
> filling that 50 GBs up with many GBs of HD video,
VMs also soak up a lot of space. (just sayin')
I'm up to 22 GBs of VMs right now.
> that's plenty of space for most people.
To marginalize desktops/laptops, mobile doesn't need to win
over "most people". Those are the people they've already won
over. It exactly us dev and power users that they need to win
over now. And they can't do that by settling for whatever works
for "most people".
The vast majority of current desktop/laptop users are only stuck
with them because they bought them before mobile took off or they
need a multi-window UI for certain apps or certain desktop
software that hasn't been ported to mobile yet, ie there's no
fundamental reason they couldn't use mobile devices instead.
Of the 300 million PCs sold last year, I'd say 95+% could make
the transition to mobile devices once they have multi-window UIs
and all the same software. The remaining 3-5% may never make the
transition.
> As for peripherals, you're talking printers and
> scanners? Do people even use those anymore? :)
Yes. They're not sexy and don't generate "buzz", but that
doesn't mean they aren't relied on. (Personal observation: The
modern fashion-oriended tech sector seems to have major trouble
recognizing that "buzzworthy" and "important" are not the same
thing).
Seems like most of those are going to wifi/bluetooth connections
that are easily controlled by mobile devices also.
> If there's any demand
> for those at all, the dock for your smartphone will have a
USB hub that
> supports them.
>
Yea. ONE usb port (that needs an adapter to be able to use just
about anything out there besides charging) for everything to
get funneled and crammed into: charging, HDMI, external
storage, printer/scanner, jtag (arduino and such are big these
days), optical disc (yes, these are still useful), adpators for
whatever new protocols and connectors inevitably come along,
etc. And that one-port-only means that you *also* need a hub in
addition to everything else. Rendering the whole mess
considerably less convenient than an actual all-in-one device:
the laptop.
Well, if you're docking the smartphone at your desk anyway,
having a USB hub with several ports built into the dock is not a
big deal. As for on the go, yes, you'll need to bring some sort
of adapter with you, but new connectors like USB Type-C are
geared for that.
I don't think this ports issue moves the needle for most people,
and most peripherals these days are moving to wireless anyway.
> As for devs, they're a small percentage of the computer-using
public,
You're looking at it wrong (IMO): Devs (and non-dev power
users, don't forget there's a lot of them too) are a very
significant portion of modern-day desktop/laptop users. They're
the biggest reason why desktops/laptops haven't already been
marginalized. Therefore, if mobile is going to replace
desktop/laptop, it MUST support developer needs and support
them WELL, not just in a half-hearted way. We devs and power
users may be a minority, but we're a very large minority, and
we happen to be crucial to everything the everyday-Joe majority
users rely on. Mobile *cannot* marginalize us without throwing
away it's own chance at ubiquity.
I disagree, as I said above, I peg the group you're talking about
at less than 5% of current desktop/laptop users. And most devs
are not really power users: some python/django dev is not going
to be rocking a desktop as powerful as the Mac Pro anyway.
They'd be fine with a tablet, like this guy:
http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/working-on-android/
> But even devs, most of whom certainly aren't using massive
rigs with
> Xeons and 32 GBs of RAM, will make the switch.
Right, that may very well happen. But again, that will require
mobile to adopt the remaining features that have been keeping
us on laptops/desktops, and thus become a hybrid. You're stance
seems to be that multi-window UI is just about the only one
left. I think there's much more than that.
I don't see it.
> Not much left if you ask me, just multiwindow UIs, which
could have been
> done at least a year earlier, and transitioning the few
remaining
> desktop apps that haven't made the mobile transition yet.
>
Well, I guess that's where we disagree.
Yep, once multi-window UIs come to mobile, we'll see who's right.
:)
>> And I think that's the biggest question mark, as they seem
quite
>> loathe to accept that mobile-style (or really, iOS-style,
which
>> everyone else in mobile copied wholesale) isn't universally
superior
>> for everyone in every way. This attitude will prevent them
from
>> reaching parity and replacing desktops/laptops until for as
long as
>> they choose to cling to it. How long they'll cling to it is
the question.
>
> "mobile-style" is a very vague term, presumably you're
referring to the
> prevailing mobile touch GUIs.
That, plus the whole overall approach - gatekeeping,
lock-downs, nearly-zero buttons/keys, minimal I/O ports,
minimal expandability, neat-total vertical integration
(business-wise), etc. Ie, "The way Apple designed the iPhone".
Most of that is because those aren't things most users care
about. In fact, they prefer a more locked-down device, as long
as it's more stable and doesn't get corrupted easily. It's why
most people buy sedans with automatic transmission, not a sports
car with manual.
Now, of course there are better ways to do some of those. You
could have gatekeeping without it being done by one company,
Apple. They'll have to lock it down a little less when it's
docked, for example, you'll have constant power and wouldn't want
apps to be as aggressively killed. As for expandability, that
ship has sailed: most people don't care for it, which is why even
Samsung ditched the SD card slot in the recent Galaxy S6. I
wouldn't call Android vertically integrated, maybe Samsung, but
there are a lot of other component and software vendors.
That's a disparate grab bag of "mobile-style," but I'd say
nothing there prevents mobile devices from killing off the
desktop/laptop PC.
>> But suppose, sooner or later, they've finally managed to
improve
>> enough to render the traditional line of desktops/laptops
obsolete. It
>> *WON'T* be a case of "mobile killed desktop". Because they
will have,
>> by necessity, BECOME just as much desktop as smartphone -
the only
>> difference being the lineage. It would be, in effect,
exactly the same
>> as laptops gaining mobile capabilities and mobile-friendly
UI. Except,
>> oh wait, that's happening too, see MS Surface Pro.
>
> That's what I detailed below: it's not the same and the
failure of
> Surface and other Windows two-in-ones shows that.
>
Well, people don't *see* it as the same.
But no, there's plenty of other reasons for the troubles of
Surface and Surface-alikes. The most notable one being Win8
itself (for about a million reasons). And then the disconnect
between high-price and (for most of the surface models,
particularly the earlier ones) weak hardware specs compared to
even laptops that cost less (yes, surface pro's CPU is beefy,
but that's about it).
It's *not* the approach itself that's wrong. They just haven't
quite gotten all the details right. Just like the current day
"connect keyboard to mobile, use as a desktop"...
I don't think the approach itself will work, though I agree that
Win8 hurt it too. One big problem with the all-in-ones so far is
that the tablet portion is just too big and unwieldy to be used
on its own, at 10.6" to 13".
See, the same argument can be made the other way too: Aside
from a minority of techies such as yourself, nobody's actually
using mobile in the style of "connect a keyboard/mouse, use as
a desktop replacement". You could say it's been a failure *so
far*. But as you know, that doesn't mean the approach is wrong,
it just means there's still a few more details to be ironed
out. Same thing with Surface.
I'd say the difference is that your all-in-one approach has
already been tried, with a lot of marketing behind it. Whereas
nobody has really pushed my approach, with most Android tablets
not supporting multi-window yet. I do agree that Win8 was
botched though, maybe Win10 will do it better.
> and the failure of such devices, both on the Android side
> and especially on the Windows side, seems to show this.
I strongly suspect that if you hold up bluetooth keyboard sales
up to the same "success/failure" standard as these devices
you're referring too, that they would look like "failures" too.
Yep, the bluetooth keyboard approach with Android tablets hasn't
taken off yet either. But they're still waiting on multi-window
UIs, you can't expect it to do well before that.
I really don't believe the problem there was that the idea was
wrong. I think the problem was that people *already* had their
laptop/desktop for their keyboard-oriented needs, and the
mobile systems just weren't yet ready to be a full replacement
for laptops/desktops. The idea was right, but the state of the
market was wrong. It was too early for it. But that will all
change if mobile improves and desktops/laptops become
increasingly marginalized.
Well, what's missing? Mobile chips are powerful enough. For me,
it's just multi-window and the few apps that require it. What
else do you think mobile needs to improve?
> I simply prop
> up my tablet on my desk on the side of something, whereas
most will
> likely just dock them in small holders, either just to hold
them up or
> to provide ports to connect to a larger monitor.
>
Ok, so it's more like re-inventing the desktop then, instead of
the laptop.
Both, as I said, most people using laptops don't need the
keyboard to be physically attached. So they'll just stick their
dock on the table at the cafe, slot the tablet in, and start
typing away on their bluetooth keyboard.
Not if you're just reinventing the form factor by propping up
your monitor^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htablet and pulling out a
keyboard+mouse.
It's just the particular lineage that (might) go away.
Heh, you're really reaching now. :) Most people wouldn't call a
smartphone or tablet in a dock "reinventing the [desktop] form
factor."
>> No, as you already pointed out yourself, the hardware
capabilities are
>> converging as well.
>
> Heh, never said anything of the sort.
Well, somebody was saying that mobile processors have been
getting closer and closer in power to laptops. Which I have to
strongly agree with. Maybe that wasn't you though.
By that rationale, since desktop chips nowadays are as powerful
as mainframes from a decade ago, desktops are really just
mainframes, right? ;) You and Kagamin are really reaching with
these assertions.
>> And then you have on one hand the whole "hooking up a
keyboard/mouse"
>> to a phone/tablet (and monitor too, HDMI-out has become
pretty common
>> on Android)...
>
> What is your point, that because we're still using keyboards
and mice,
> they're "converged?"
Not "converged". "ConvergING" towards some point in between
traditional iPhone (and clones) and traditional laptop. And
yes, *partly* because connecting keyboard/mouse is not
something people have normally done with smartphones (at least
not typically). And also because the gap in processing power is
shrinking. And because you can now connect them to an external
monitor. And because they're gaining desktop UIs. Maybe some
other things too I haven't thought of off the top of my head.
Except that looking at that smartphone that has all those
features that will allow them to kill off the desktop, they'll
look exactly the same as smartphones do now. Really, the only
difference will be the addition of the multi-window UI
capability, nothing else will have "converged." I wouldn't call
that convergence between iPhones and laptops, rather smartphones
simply picking up yet one more feature that allows them to kill
off the desktop/laptop PC.
> A car still moves on wheels yet nobody would say
> it "converged" with a horse and carriage. One feature, the
wheels,
> carried over, but most of it is completely different.
There's really no parallel between that and what I'm talking
about.
Oh, it's pretty much the same. :) Replace wheels with
multi-window UIs and that is exactly the point you're making.
> I think that
> since the underlying device, a smartphone, is fairly
different from a
> mainframe or a PC,
How so? *You're* the one saying (even more than I am anyway)
that they are (or will soon be) suitable replacements for PCs.
How do you reconcile that with now suddenly saying they're
different in a big enough way to be meaningful?
Because they're really only taking one feature from
desktops/laptops, the multi-window UI, in order to replace them.
Otherwise, they will be the same smartphones that they are now,
which you don't call desktops.
> it's far-fetched to say the devices are "hybrid" or
> "converged," simply because they're all using similar input
peripherals
> when used at a desk.
You've completely over-simplified my argument, and are now
objecting that your modified version of my argument isn't valid.
That certainly seemed to be one aspect of your argument, which
you just repeated above.
> But even that is only temporary, as voice and gesture
recognition will
> soon kill off those input peripherals too. :)
God I hope not. :) Touchscreen mini-chicklet keyboards (not to
mention auto-correction) are already clunky and unreliable
enough.
I can't wait. I've gotten fairly fast on a keyboard over the
years, but I can't wait to just use voice.
>> And on the other hand, you have laptops getting their
mainboards moved
>> to the upper-half and becoming detachable from the bottom
half, and
>> getting smaller, lighter, better battery life...
>> That...is form-factor convergence.
>
> That might be actual hardware form-factor convergence, if
anybody were
> buying those two-in-ones, but almost nobody is.
>
Yet. Almost nobody is *yet*. Almost nobody is using their
"smartphone + keyboard" as a desktop/laptop replacement either.
Yet.
But I think we both agree it's clear that where computing, at
the very least *should* go, is somewhere in between traditional
iPhone and traditional laptop. And mobiles and PCs are both
*trying* to reach for some point in-between.
Unless ALL sides turn out to be wrong (which seems unlikely)
then naturally the "winner" will be something that does exist
somewhere in that middle-ground that everyone's reaching
towards. That "winner"'s lineage isn't particularly important
(except to the corporations directly involved), because it will
no longer be strictly a traditional smartphone nor traditional
laptop.
You keep asserting that there's some "middle-ground", when the
truth is that mobile devices will just have to pick up one
software feature to kill off the PC. I don't think that's
"in-between," as it will really be a traditional smartphone.
You and Kagamin seem really bent out of shape by the desktop
being junked, for some personal reasons of your own, so I'll
leave that "Is a smartphone really a desktop once it adds a
multi-window UI" argument here. I've made my viewpoint clear.
