“Smartphone” is the wrong name • Hacker News Board

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#41

Post by Zigurd » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 1:48 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #5

Not even phones they're not handheld devices anymore. The lack of physical interface is very sad. Taking pictures, listening to music, even calling someone, all require high attention interaction over an unfit touchscreen. It's a small slate computer.

Your not going to find a lot of people agreeing with this point of view. First, touch UI is generally agreed to be a step forward in simplicity vs pointing devices and keyboards. Babies, old people, and others flummoxed by the mouse seem to agree. Second, the results show that mobility and immediate 24/7 availabaility is valued over any productivty and flexibility advantage of other form factors. Lastly, it looks like touch and personalization are dissolving physical interfaces. Your personalized interface is in your pocket.

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#42

Post by chroma » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 1:48 PM UTC

greggman wrote: post #21

chroma wrote: post #13

> For instance, picture Microsoft in 2001, after it got sued for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. Imagine what would have happened if they sold Windows XP with an exclusive application store. Imagine that every program must be approved by Microsoft to run on XP, and they take a 30% cut. Oh, and no interpreter allowed. > They would have been sued into oblivion, lost half their customers, suffered one hell of a…

Microsoft was considered to have a monopoly (whether you or I agree). As such they were subject to different rules. Apple, especially when iPhone launched, did not have any kind of monopoly on cellphones nor did they have one on PDAs (which is really where smartphones come from, not cellphones). As for people, people didn't sue Microsoft, companies did. People mostly didn't care. Companies like Sun and Netscape cared…

In the paragraphs I quoted, the point was basically: If Microsoft had tried what Apple actually did, it would have been a disaster for Microsoft. I think that's accurate regardless of whether they were a monopoly or not.

> Also malware infested vs walled garden is a false dichotomy

How so? The vast majority of users can't tell if an application is malware. Better for them to put their trust in an authority who can tell (and who can punish authors of any malware that gets through).

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#43

Post by loup-vaillant » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 1:52 PM UTC

pjc50 wrote: post #20

chroma wrote: post #13

> For instance, picture Microsoft in 2001, after it got sued for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. Imagine what would have happened if they sold Windows XP with an exclusive application store. Imagine that every program must be approved by Microsoft to run on XP, and they take a 30% cut. Oh, and no interpreter allowed. > They would have been sued into oblivion, lost half their customers, suffered one hell of a…

The openness of the PC platform was something of an accident. The home microcomputers and the early Macs had their OS in ROM. There were competing PC operating systems (DR-DOS, DESQview, OS/2, etc) but Microsoft managed to kill off all the commercial competition. But that was all pre-"web 1.0". Once computers started becoming routinely networked, we ended up with the malware problem which has driven us here. The user…

> The user is in no position to accurately assess the safety of software

Hate to say it, but I think it is much worse: the "average user" is in no position to asses which software he is clicking on.

When a pop-up appears, many users don't know if it comes from the browser, another application, the OS, some malware, or if it's a pop up at all (could be a Gif clickbait).

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#44

Post by loup-vaillant » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 1:56 PM UTC

chroma wrote: post #42

greggman wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft was considered to have a monopoly (whether you or I agree). As such they were subject to different rules. Apple, especially when iPhone launched, did not have any kind of monopoly on cellphones nor did they have one on PDAs (which is really where smartphones come from, not cellphones). As for people, people didn't sue Microsoft, companies did. People mostly didn't care. Companies like Sun and Netscape cared…

In the paragraphs I quoted, the point was basically: If Microsoft had tried what Apple actually did, it would have been a disaster for Microsoft. I think that's accurate regardless of whether they were a monopoly or not. > Also malware infested vs walled garden is a false dichotomy How so? The vast majority of users can't tell if an application is malware. Better for them to put their trust in an authority who can te…

No uneducated user is safe. And I believe malware on smartphones are not unheard of.

Short term, sure, give in to the walled garden. Long term though? Learning what a computer is might be a good idea.

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#45

Post by loup-vaillant » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 2:04 PM UTC

icebraining wrote: post #7

I agree that naming is important, yet I don't think calling them "palmtops" would have changed anything. Tablets were and often are still called "tablet computers", yet they usually have the same limitations.

True. On the other hand, the name make it a bit easier to protest: they can't say those things are not computers, since can't do anything else.

Alas, we often just say "tablet", so it's still possible to make an artificial distinction between them and "real" computers such as laptops and desktops.

The idea behind "palmtop" is to appeal to the intuitions behind laptops and desktops, and suggest it should be subjected to the same rules (when possible).

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#46

Post by gjm11 » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 2:05 PM UTC

I have for some time had a crackpot theory that language will actually evolve the other way.

We have these things we carry around with us, called "phones"; they are actually general-purpose computing devices and making (what we still call) phone calls is a small part of their purpose. And to an increasing extent these can fulfill almost all our computing needs.

So, fast-forward a couple of decades, assuming no huge technological shifts[1]. Everyone is used to having one of these things that they carry around in their pocket, and scarcely anyone really needs any other general-purpose computing device. We still call them "phones" because we always did -- so now this is the usual term for a general-purpose computing device. And, yeah, there are some people who, because of their unusual needs, have a bigger more powerful one. Well, what are you going to call something like a phone but sized to sit on your desk while you work? Obviously it's a desktop phone, right? And somewhere out there In The Cloud there are whole farms of server phones :-).

And there will be conversations like the ones we[2] now have about how "computer" used to mean a human being who did calculations. "Hey, did you ever look up where the word 'phone' actually comes from? It turns out that back in the 20th century they mostly used them for talking to one another, and it comes from some Greek thing meaning 'sound at a distance'. Weird, huh?"

[1] That's a pretty big assumption, of course.

[2] For sufficiently small values of "we".

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#47

Post by tremon » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 2:15 PM UTC

greggman wrote: post #21

chroma wrote: post #13

> For instance, picture Microsoft in 2001, after it got sued for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. Imagine what would have happened if they sold Windows XP with an exclusive application store. Imagine that every program must be approved by Microsoft to run on XP, and they take a 30% cut. Oh, and no interpreter allowed. > They would have been sued into oblivion, lost half their customers, suffered one hell of a…

Microsoft was considered to have a monopoly (whether you or I agree). As such they were subject to different rules. Apple, especially when iPhone launched, did not have any kind of monopoly on cellphones nor did they have one on PDAs (which is really where smartphones come from, not cellphones). As for people, people didn't sue Microsoft, companies did. People mostly didn't care. Companies like Sun and Netscape cared…

At the time MS was sued IE was the best browser by pretty much every measure

Meh. IE was the browser with the best website compatibility, because Microsoft went out of its way to reimplement half of the HTML standard in its own way, and could use the prevalence of IE to make webdevelopers follow "their" flavour of HTML.

Mozilla's first Firefox release came with the slogan "take back the web". That motto had nothing to do with the excellence of IE.

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#48

Post by icebraining » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 2:26 PM UTC

collyw wrote: post #24

coldtea wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Taking pictures, listening to music, even calling someone, all require high attention interaction over an unfit touchscreen. Are you kidding me? All of those functions are 10x easier to do on the "unfit touchscreen" that on what we had before that (tiny non-touch screens, LCDs, 80's style arrays of buttons, etc). And when it comes to actually taking the picture, changing track or volume etc, smartphones even offer…

Cd's usually only held about 10 -15 tracks, so it was hardly a problem getting lost in folders. Obscure functions on cameras are more likely to be obscure because of menu layouts rather than a touchscreen (its still difficult to find some obscure settings buried in menus whether you have a touchscreen or buttons).

In the latter years, portable CD players often supported CD-Rs with MP3 tracks, so you could have 100+ tracks on a single disc. Have fun pressing "next" until you find the track you need! :)

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#49

Post by pjc50 » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 2:30 PM UTC

greggman wrote: post #21

chroma wrote: post #13

> For instance, picture Microsoft in 2001, after it got sued for bundling Internet Explorer with Windows. Imagine what would have happened if they sold Windows XP with an exclusive application store. Imagine that every program must be approved by Microsoft to run on XP, and they take a 30% cut. Oh, and no interpreter allowed. > They would have been sued into oblivion, lost half their customers, suffered one hell of a…

Microsoft was considered to have a monopoly (whether you or I agree). As such they were subject to different rules. Apple, especially when iPhone launched, did not have any kind of monopoly on cellphones nor did they have one on PDAs (which is really where smartphones come from, not cellphones). As for people, people didn't sue Microsoft, companies did. People mostly didn't care. Companies like Sun and Netscape cared…

PDAs (which is really where smartphones come from, not cellphones).

It's just as much one as the other; let's not forget Symbian?

At the time MS was sued IE was the best browser by pretty much every measure so customers wanted it

[citation needed]! People used it because it was preinstalled.

Re: “Smartphone” is the wrong name

#50

Post by justMaku » Mon, Feb 22, 2016, 2:32 PM UTC

Well, to be honest the best name would be just "PC". Think about it, PC stands for a personal computer. And because a smartphone is in fact a small computer and it's as personal as it gets.