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Why I don't like smartphones

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Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#151

Post by secstate »

As an Android user with a fairly vanilla Moto X install of L, I'm pretty satisfied with my ability to change the OS. F-Droid is a big victory here too, with regards to being able to find F/OSS mobile apps.

I can't say anything nice about iOS's app ecosystem.

All that aside, this is a hilariously misdirected rant on par with Stallman. The purity of the vision of freedom advanced by RMS (or the OP) is to be admired for it's theory, but no more capable of being reality than Marx's vision for Communist Russia.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#152

Post by Chris2048 »

Here's a good argument about smart devices; To be practical they require a lowering of security.

think google/facebook etc logins. Think lastpass.

I bought a crappy tablet from amazon, and was just about to add my credentials to it (http://www.ibtimes.com/amazon-selling-40-android-tablets-com...), then realised if the tablet was compromised, anyone able to remote-in to it would have access to one hell of a lot through my single-sign in accounts.

Security for these things is improving, but it's still not there yet.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#153

Post by stepanhruda »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #24

I don't really see how some of his points support his position. e.g. I don't own a smartphone, because it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly. So is a photoalbum, so is a book, so is a TV, so is a music player. A smartphone is all in one and it's incredibly useful. Beyond that, it is in ways a production device. It's a messaging device, a photo and video taking device, it…

Great response, thanks.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#154

Post by stepanhruda »

nyan4 wrote: post #116
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #24

I don't really see how some of his points support his position. e.g. I don't own a smartphone, because it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly. So is a photoalbum, so is a book, so is a TV, so is a music player. A smartphone is all in one and it's incredibly useful. Beyond that, it is in ways a production device. It's a messaging device, a photo and video taking device, it…

> So is a photoalbum, so is a book, so is a TV, so is a music player Comparing a powerful, expensive, fully programmable computer provided with cameras, GPS, radios with a photoalbum/book/TV is silly. > They're becoming bigger, more powerful, and some can now be plugged in to monitors You could plug a Commodore 64 to a television and write software on it, even if its CPU was probably less powerful than the battery co…

Many TVs are more expensive than many smartphones.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#155

Post by soared »

CydeWeys wrote: post #142
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #125

The section about mobile devices being for consumption instead of creation really resonated with me. I still use my smartphone every day, but none of my uses are related to content creation; it's mostly a time killer while I'm away from a desktop. I've become pretty strict about installing applications on my smartphone. It seems like so many applications just wanna track everything you do and blast ads in your face.…

I am a software engineer today because I learned to program in TI-Basic on a TI-82, a calculator which is so inferior to modern smartphones in all ways that that fact needs no further explanation. And yet the TI-82 came built-in with everything you needed to write and run your own programs, on the device. Modern smartphones do not. In that one sense they are significantly less capable than those TI calculators.

> Modern smartphones do not

Excluding so many apps and web apps that enable you to write and test code on mobile/tablet? Excluding all the content writing and note taking apps? Excluding 'game builder' apps? I don't agree with your point. Android lets you run android sdk anyways.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#156

Post by soared »

Chris2048 wrote: post #152

Here's a good argument about smart devices; To be practical they require a lowering of security. think google/facebook etc logins. Think lastpass. I bought a crappy tablet from amazon, and was just about to add my credentials to it ( http://www.ibtimes.com/amazon-selling-40-android-tablets-com... ), then realised if the tablet was compromised, anyone able to remote-in to it would have access to one hell of a lot thro…

> anyone able to remote-in to it would have access to one hell of a lot through my single-sign in accounts.

How is this different to desktop, where most people autofill or lastpass all their accounts?

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#157

Post by pdkl95 »

ordinary wrote: post #139
ekianjo wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Smartphones are just portable computers. There is nothing new to them apart from the fact that 1) they have internet mobile connection 2) their form factor makes them very practical to carry. Technology-wise, we already had about everything when we had laptops and modems attached to them. It's just become much more convenient but it's still the same concept.

Computers are just really fast calculators. Calculators are just weird abaci made out of sand. Modems are just phones for computers. Phones are just smoke signals through a wire. By reducing things to their absolute basics, it's easy to lose track of the fact that reductions in size or increases in speed are sometimes the driving force of progress, far more than the original concept ever was.

> Computers are just really fast calculators.

In what way is a Universal Turing Machine equivalent, stored-program, probably Von Neumann architecture computer in any way "really just" a fast calculator? The computer may contain an ALU, but the ability to change the program makes the computer capable of far more that a fancy ALU (calculator).

There are a lot of people that wish they could stuff the genie called "Turing complete" back in its bottle and go back to the days of selling merely a calculator (or "app"liance), but as Cory Doctorow put it[1], "...an appliance is not a stripped-down computer -- it is a fully functional computer with spyware on it out of the box."

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HUEvRyemKSg

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#158

Post by bigtones »

ekianjo wrote: post #119
IkmoIkmo wrote: post #24

I don't really see how some of his points support his position. e.g. I don't own a smartphone, because it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly. So is a photoalbum, so is a book, so is a TV, so is a music player. A smartphone is all in one and it's incredibly useful. Beyond that, it is in ways a production device. It's a messaging device, a photo and video taking device, it…

> because it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly. Because it could be something else than just a consumption device (unlike a book or a photo album), as it's technically a general purpose computer. His point makes perfect sense.

It's still a silly distinction and pedantic. A modern car is a consumption device, but it also contains several computers, input and output devices, and significant computing power. But everyone is fine with just driving around in them. A smart phone is way more of a production device with camera and video shooting and editing than a car.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#159

Post by soared »

shpx wrote: post #132
jvandonsel wrote: post #98

If you had offered someone in 1916 a device that they could put in their pocket that would let them instantly communicate with nearly anyone on the planet, tap into a large fraction of the world's knowledge base, read books, navigate across the country, take photographs and movies, and play almost any song ever written, what do you think that person would say? "No thanks." ? The smartphone is one of the most signific…

You convieniently didnt mention that it also allows their government to know where they are and where they were and what they're saying and what they've said, and what they're reading, and glimpses of what they've seen, forever.

Everyone knows this already and most happily make the trade-off. My gov knows exactly what and when I do something in public, and probably on my phone/desktop. Do I have things to hide? Sure. And I take the proper precautions to ensure its safety because I know the trade I made. Plenty of govs still police your speech, enjoy that ours only hears but does not act.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#160

Post by petra »

IkmoIkmo wrote: post #24

I don't really see how some of his points support his position. e.g. I don't own a smartphone, because it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly. So is a photoalbum, so is a book, so is a TV, so is a music player. A smartphone is all in one and it's incredibly useful. Beyond that, it is in ways a production device. It's a messaging device, a photo and video taking device, it…

Also, with regards to openness: First Android does have an option to sideload apps, and while Google can exercise control and limits on the OS, it usually only does so with regards to ad-blockers, and even that only partially.

And are ROM's hard to install ? For the technical user ,No,At least for large enough variety of phones. And as for the non-technical users - they always needed to pay someone or ask a friend when they wanted an OS install, so nothing's different.

And if look deeper, Android is open-source ,so it's undoubtedly offers much more freedom than windows.

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