131–140 of 140 posts
Dear Apple, Please make a similar "accessory" for iPhones. I'd gladly pay 5x or more, and I'm probably not alone.
And frankly, for my use, it is just as good. Probably better because in the MacBook case I have an awesome screen and decent keyboard.
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> You're making the mistake of assuming that because occasionally new products are dismissed incorrectly Well your mistake is that my assumption is less correct than yours. What makes you 100% sure that your dismissals are correct? Right now the market hasn't proven either of us right. Give it 3-5 years. Right now the Kickstarter campaign is in my favor. > Yeah, you haven't actually enumerated real problems that this…
> What makes you 100% sure that your dismissals are correct? Nothing. I said in my first comment that I could be wrong. I'm pretty confident that this is not anything but a niche product at best, but I could be missing the use case. > I can argue that you're ignoring problems I bring up just because it doesn't apply to you personally. Having to carry a laptop everywhere is a real pain point which increases depending…
It still solves a problem that exists, which is maybe why they've already met there Kickstarter goal 10 times over. People in developing nations may have different problems this would solve.
> A better analogy than regular headphones might be noise-cancelling headphones.
A new convoluted analogy isn't going to change the fact that "this isn't a viable product because it's 'useless without a phone'" is a terrible argument.
> If you can pick up one for $30 in a few years, I might feel differently.
So now you're saying it's viable but just too expensive? It's going to hit that price one day and maybe even below.
> If you can install an app and use it for this, you can install an app and use it for sync. Sync isn't rocket science.
This is definitely not true outside of techies.
> by the time this device hits a reasonable price point, chromebooks and laptops will still be close.
I think I've already pointed this out, but detractors of the Chromebook used the same reasoning as to why Chromebook would die. They were wrong.
> If you mostly want to watch movies and play games, you can also buy a tablet for $50 and probably be happier than you would with either of these options.
Since it's just a screen and keyboard, you do realize that this is a cheaper tablet right? The only reason it's not cheaper now is because only one company is aware of this device class's future and potential. Besides, I've already proven my point that people in developing nations spend money on non-life critical electronics.
> because there's no developing area I'm aware of using North American plugs and an English qwerty keyboard.
There's a country called the Philippines that meets this criteria with a population of 100 million. Even if that didn't exist, have you seen an East Asian keyboard? It's basically a western keyboard with extra ideograph (hanzi/kanji) characters on top of the letters. Repurposing this device with a different keyboard and power cable wouldn't be hard. Nitpicking unimportant details can stop people from seeing the big picture.
> I think they're targeting the US audience because you've got to market something like this to people with significant disposable cash because it delivers little actual value beyond novelty.
Yes for now, and apparently people here do see value in it.
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So, a live boot pen drive?
True. With a phone attached to it.
It's nice not having iOS or Android on your phone.
With these vintage phones and previously free manufacturer software installed on the laptop or desktop, you have always gotten the full internet wherever you had cellular service from your provider. This was even before cellular providers became ISPs, and there were no data plans yet. No free minutes either, you paid by the minute, talk, text or analog data.
The earlier smartphones communicated with the laptop using the COM port which was still ubiquitous, or for wireless used infrared which became standard on most business laptops. This was still when very few students could afford laptops, as they were priced at twice the cost for half the performance, and none were yet designed to sell for under $1000. It was dial-up and had nothing to do with your cellular provider, you also needed an ISP of which AOL was a common business choice. These early Sony-Ericssons still contained an analog modem. The Motorolas also did, which I think were the biggest of the real smart phone vendors, at more attractive prices from more carriers.
You still had direct access to analog fax machines, up until the arrival of "free minutes plans". Shortly thereafter T-Mobile & AT&T disavowed all knowledge of and support for fax capability, but it still worked for years, until their network became more digital. Real faxing was not intended to be part of the internet anyway, it was supposed to be much more secure and private than that. But that's been lost for years, you can't fax to or from a portable device to a landline without the internet any more, and a landline has the highest expectation of privacy by a wide margin.
Still, at least with Windows 98 up into Windows 8.1 you have always been able to do the portable email and browsing and the whole internet thing. Will be trying it with Windows 10 soon. Of course it's Bluetooth now or USB instead of infrared or COM port.
When the iPhone came out, besides the defects where you didn't have a forward-compatible Memory Stick or SD card socket, and it wasn't intended to bring internet access to a computer (not even a Mac), you couldn't even bring spare phone batteries. Plus you could only get the internet where there was 2G, 3G, 4G coverage, which was still spotty and not nationwide, even if it was much faster.
Be careful what you settle for.
With the Sony-Ericssons and Motorolas you got the fast broadband where available, otherwise for early iPhones most of the USA was dead to the internet. And of course for the PC or Mac the phones are bootable USB mass storage devices once you properly format the phone's Memory Sticks and install DOS, Windows, or Linux on them.
It has always made sense to some operators for the phone to be the accessory to the traditional laptop. With a pile of charged batteries you can be completely wireless and/or without other power for a long time, depending only on coverage from your own "private" cellular account for communication.
After all, IIRC that was the purpose of a "smart phone" to begin with, portable internet, with at least a small screen and keyboard to work with whenever you can't plug it into a real one.
Then some Dells came along with a SIM card socket.
For so many consumers, the arrival of the iPhone meant the beginning of portable internet capability, when it had actually been very well developed previously, especially considering the weaker performance of the underlying network & electronics at the time of development. To others, a milestone beyond which portable internet capabilities might never be as worthwhile as was previously dreamed possible.
>. Any IDE built for Android can be accessed by your Superbook. Is there any semi decent Android IDEs? I can't imagine there's a lot of people who are interested in coding on their phones.
do not forget about running any linux ide in chroot. Phones with 2gb can do. phones with 4gb of RAM are good at it. google e.g. "Linux Deploy" app on playstore
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Re: 1080p. We lived with 480 i in our most-used display for a very long time :-) (comment written on my aging MBP with a 700-something screen, rather than 1080/retina class display)
We also lived in caves for a long time too, I don't see people lining up for that. LCD's are so damn cheap now there's really no excuse for anything under 1080p. I've seen chromebooks with 4K displays for $300.
Now, give me a nice 40 to 50 inch 4K on my desk, and that sounds pretty nice. I can sit back a ways, and not have to focus on something 2 feet away.
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Yeah, you basically invented the netbook a few months too early, and marketed it as an accessory when it was a full-fledged computer hardware-wise. By the way, did the GPL code used on that ever get released, assuming the demo units counted as distribution?
I don't see the point of asking any of these questions in this fashion...
As to the first point, I was personally excited to see a small ARM-based laptop, and dissapointed when it's capabilities and marketing as an accessory led to its denise. Not that the unclear direction of Palm's software at the time helped. It was the right call and yet disappointing.
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We also lived in caves for a long time too, I don't see people lining up for that. LCD's are so damn cheap now there's really no excuse for anything under 1080p. I've seen chromebooks with 4K displays for $300.
Forgot to mention: once you reach a certain pixel density, you really hit the point of diminishing returns. 4K x 2K on a small laptop screen is going to look much the same to my aging eyes as 2K x 1K on that size. Now, give me a nice 40 to 50 inch 4K on my desk, and that sounds pretty nice. I can sit back a ways, and not have to focus on something 2 feet away.