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Why I don't like smartphones

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Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#251

Post by lmm »

loup-vaillant wrote: post #225
bigtones wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> It's still a silly distinction and pedantic. No, it's a crucial one, for a simple reason: you're not supposed to change the firmware of your car, but you change the software in your palmtop computer quite often. Car firmware is special purpose (let's ignore some high-end multimedia stuff), while your palmtop computer can and does run any program. Nothing technically prevents you from tethering a keyboard, mouse, an…

If the Java compiler doesn't run on android phones then it's only because no-one actually cares enough to make it do so. There's no reason you couldn't run a full IDE on an android device with a keyboard, mouse and big screen tethered to it and use it to work on programs for that device (including updates to the IDE itself), except that it would be dumb; nothing technically prevents you from doing that.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#252

Post by Aoyagi »

ikeboy wrote: post #234
Aoyagi wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can you, on stock Android, just go and delete system files? Or even do something as simple as editing hosts? Kill system processes? Make multiple users with various rights? Set file/folder permissions? Share files over local network? Install drivers for new hardware? And just for the record, I'm talking about 7, not 10. Comparing the amount of (sub)items listed in control panels with what you get in the settings of m…

You can definitely share files to network, and install drivers (apps) for new hardware. Except new hardware often can't be installed directly, but that's more of a hardware limitation similar to laptops than an OS thing. See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hp.android... for an example of a "driver" for new hardware. Editing hosts isn't possible without rooting, but you can get the same effect by run…

Obviously I mean sharing (and everything else) without installing some 3rd party application from who knows where. I remember looking into that when I was testing an Xperia for some security system.

See, this is why I bloody hate when people call everything "app". There's a distinct difference between "a driver" and "an application". A driver can interface with applications or it can be bundled with one, but they're not the same thing. And I'm quite sure that "driver" you linked to operates on one-way application level similar to sending an email to the printer which then does all the work itself. And it has to use that "share" function, but I guess that's expected as there's no "print" one, heh.

And really, having an own DNS server is not only different effect (because it works only if you use that server, plus it can be circumvented more easily), but it's also a completely new element. Not very practical.

Admin account is the default on Windows. That's what you get when you install it (by default anyway) and using it doesn't void any warranties.

And that's not even all the things, heh.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#253

Post by thebaer »

jpindar wrote: post #245
thebaer wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> it's a consumption device rather than both consumption and production, is just silly It's not just the fact that it's an underutilized general computing device; just look at the apps on your phone and tell me the percentage of them that open to a blank "canvas" rather than some kind of stream / feed. On the desktop, you have your text editors, word processors, photo editors, video editors, 3D modelers, IDEs, file s…

Speak for yourself, I have Photoshop, AutoDesk Sketchbook, a python IDE, an audio editor and various text editors, spreadsheet editors, and terminals on my phone. If people don't have those on their phones, it's because they don't want to.

Do you use these tools more on your phone than your computer? Genuine question.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#254

Post by ikeboy »

Aoyagi wrote: post #252
ikeboy wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can definitely share files to network, and install drivers (apps) for new hardware. Except new hardware often can't be installed directly, but that's more of a hardware limitation similar to laptops than an OS thing. See https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.hp.android... for an example of a "driver" for new hardware. Editing hosts isn't possible without rooting, but you can get the same effect by run…

Obviously I mean sharing (and everything else) without installing some 3rd party application from who knows where. I remember looking into that when I was testing an Xperia for some security system. See, this is why I bloody hate when people call everything "app". There's a distinct difference between "a driver" and "an application". A driver can interface with applications or it can be bundled with one, but they're…

It's a bit weird to complain about a missing default feature as a "freedom" problem.

How would you define the difference between driver and app without mentioning any OS details?

>And really, having an own DNS server is not only different effect (because it works only if you use that server, plus it can be circumvented more easily), but it's also a completely new element. Not very practical.

You can set up a DNS server with another app, and change your network to use it.

>Admin account is the default on Windows.

A complaint about defaults, rather than what's possible, is not a complaint about freedom.

The warranty issue is a good one. But that has to do with freedom of the sale contract, not freedom of the phone. My phone came with no warranty because I got an old refurbished one, voiding the warranty means nothing to me and doesn't impinge on my freedom.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#255

Post by tommorris »

izacus wrote: post #58
beachstartup wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it's because the demographic you're talking about is vanishingly small, and therefore apple does not care about it. do you notice them hurting for customers? i installed linux when i was 12. i've been working in this field for nearly 20 years. i'm abnormal, as 'techie' as they come, and i really just don't give a shit about having root access on my iphone. in fact i pretty much use it for a handful of things, primari…

> it's because the demographic you're talking about is vanishingly small, and therefore apple does not care about it. do you notice them hurting for customers? How do you know?! There are billions of people out there not using Apple devices, how do you just claim that the demographic is vanishingly small? How did you measure it? Apple doesn't even own half of the market.

Apple would rather be profitable on 10% market share than unprofitable on a 90% market share.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#256

Post by dublinben »

joosters wrote: post #39

This person would be happier moving to a pre-computer environment - take a look at their pet hates: https://violations.devever.net/products - including: * AMD x86 CPUs * Intel x86 CPUs ...leaving, ARM CPUs, I guess? Windows ARM machines are also on the list. (And surely ARMs should be blacklisted according to his reasoning; he is unhappy with Intel's secure enclave, while ARM has similar features). Some people will n…

>leaving, ARM CPUs, I guess?

Or POWER8.[0]

[0]https://raptorengineeringinc.com/TALOS/prerelease.php

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#257

Post by tommorris »

lottin wrote: post #114
cowsandmilk wrote: post #9

pfffft... the first line shows an extremely limited world view. Plenty of people are creating using smartphones. Sure, no one is programming on a smartphone, but plenty of people are creating art via the cameras and on-device editing tools. And doing so much more spontaneously than when you had to awkwardly carry around a camcorder waiting for inspiration to hit. Similarly, lots of people only use PCs for consumption…

Yes I see people taking pictures with their phones but do you really call this creating art? I think it gives them the _illusion_ that they're creating something, and maybe that makes them happy, but personally I think it's an act of self-delusion, and quite annoying too.

Better email the Smithsonian and tell them to take all that photography out of the American Art Museum. Ansel Adams was merely under the illusion that he was creating something, but it was just an annoying act of self-delusion.

Photography isn't really proper art, especially if done using a smartphone, right?

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#258

Post by tommorris »

vinay427 wrote: post #135
lottin wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes I see people taking pictures with their phones but do you really call this creating art? I think it gives them the _illusion_ that they're creating something, and maybe that makes them happy, but personally I think it's an act of self-delusion, and quite annoying too.

I would agree with this. From my experience, most people in my demographic use smartphone cameras for sharing moments on Facebook, Snapchat, etc. which directly fuels content consumption. Relatively few seem to really aspire to be hobbyist photographers.

Yeah, before the smartphone, all photography was serious. Nobody wandered around with a 35mm compact taking photos of their friends and family and holidays in Disneyland. Everyone was trying to make great works of art with their cameras.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#259

Post by tommorris »

joonoro wrote: post #187
CydeWeys wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> for the next billion smartphone users a smartphone will be their first computer. Smartphones will be their first and last computer. Laptops, let alone desktops, are being permanently bypassed.

>Smartphones will be their first and last computer No, unfortunately smartphones are toys at best. Nobody uses them for real work, just consumption and browsing facebook. When they go to work, they will use a real computer.

I use my iPhone to collect data for OpenStreetMap. If you ever find yourself in London using an OSM-based map, some chunk of it will likely have been created using my pointless silly Facebook twit-machine.

Re: Why I don't like smartphones

#260

Post by zanny »

m52go wrote: post #147
zanny wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is an incredibly modern advent this idea that you can never actually use the entire screen to render text for anyone except for mobile viewers. If you cannot read across your screen, you are probably sitting too close to it. I'd rather have wider text that I have to turn my eyes slightly to see all of then narrower text that requires active scrolling. And I don't know of a single OS that you cannot snap your brows…

I'm not sure I agree. There's a reason newspapers, magazines, and other traditional media use narrow columns as well...it's much easier to read.

Traditional news presents information with more vertical space in the first place. The balance is between effort exerted to scroll text that is horizontally compressed vs effort moving your eye across the screen.

If you were to put your content on the screen in such a way that you were not padding with whitespace, but instead were doing a multi-column layout like a newspaper, that would be the best of all worlds I imagine, but it would look extremely disjointed to viewers and you would have to lock the vertical scrolling. But websites are not optimizing space for readability with columns - they are just padding the text body, creating more hand work in exchange for less eye work without considering their efforts are making people exert more total work when they have to scroll more, whereas traditional media is not just padding whitespace, it is introducing vertical columns of text adjacent one another.

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