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Your phone is an entire computer

medhir.com

181–190 of 329 posts

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#181

It's very clear that the consumer is getting a worse experience than what is technically possible. There is no good phone-slash-laptop, purely because it's less profitable than locking down the devices and selling them separately.

Allow me to tell you about Samsung DeX. The real problem is that there is no market for it.

I used it for years with a Nexdock. I just don't really use a phone anymore (mostly Daylight computer, where attaching a keyboard and most mostly gets me what I want).

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#182
post #96

Apple's latest monitor is more powerful than the NEO, it has: * A19 Pro CPU (the NEO only has the A18 Pro) * 12GB of RAM (the NEO only has 8GB of RAM) * 128GB of NAND storage for iOS (ok this is less than the NEO) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Studio_Display#Technical...

You didn't mention the part that it costs five times as much.

But it's not even supposed to be a "computer".

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#183
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s only about the right to use your device as you see fit. It is kind of silly that people buy raspberry pis to run their NAS, while they trash ther infinitely more capable iphone every couple of years.

The iPhone is designed to be a good smartphone, not a good NAS. It is silly to expect anyone to compromise the design of a mass market product to support some esoteric MacGyvering entirely unrelated to the original product. Should we all expect Toyota to design their ECUs to be used as a NAS?

A NAS is just an example, here's a better one; I love to use my old phones as wall mounted displays and controls for home assistant, or as remote music players plugged in to some speakers that I can hook into in music assistant. Some of my old phones are more than capable of this hardware wise but are locked to older versions of android and can't run anything built for a newer version, so they end up as ewaste intstead.

I think my next phone is going to be a fairphone or something for this reason.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#184

I really don't understand the argument here. That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation. Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect. The snide around "clicking on links is da…

[flagged]

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#185

I really don't understand the argument here. That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation. Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect. The snide around "clicking on links is da…

>On the other hand, being cryptographically locked-down is an optional feature. If you don't like it, buy a computer without that feature.

But that's the thing, where can I buy a phone without a locked-down operating system? GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel is basically the only option right now, and this still has problems thanks to hardware attestation in a lot of apps that the ecosystem forces us to use.

This is largely because Apple has dictated the direction of smartphones for the past two decades. All of our expectations for control over our phones are completely out of whack compared to other computers.

Somehow we managed to survive without the majority of society being scammed out of their life savings before Apple came in with the iPhone and locked down iOS, and yet now people are earnestly defending the notion that 90% of people should not even have access to the filesystem on their own device.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#186
post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It’s only about the right to use your device as you see fit. It is kind of silly that people buy raspberry pis to run their NAS, while they trash ther infinitely more capable iphone every couple of years.

The iPhone is designed to be a good smartphone, not a good NAS. It is silly to expect anyone to compromise the design of a mass market product to support some esoteric MacGyvering entirely unrelated to the original product. Should we all expect Toyota to design their ECUs to be used as a NAS?

Of course Apple doesn’t want people to use their device in a way that’s not how they designed it. They’re very anal about the user experience, they don’t want kids to install ArchLinux on their grandparents iPhones, and have the grandparents complain that their phone is shit. I get that.

Conveniently, the way they designed the phone allows them to charge 30% of every transaction that happens on the device…

But that’s beyond the point. The point is that the iphone is a capable device, that probably can run macos, and it’s a waste that we’re not allowed to.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#187

I really don't understand the argument here. That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation. Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect. The snide around "clicking on links is da…

> That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation. And why should the entity locking down the design be the same entity as the one selling it? Is that a feature too? You can't imagine a world where people can install different services by different providers to protect their devices? And have some actual competition? And therefore choice?

We almost had that with the browser wars, when Microsoft was forced to have customers choose which browser they wanted when they got a computer. Operating system choice was already lost to Windows, but at least browser, they were forced by EU directive to let the customer choose which one they wanted. Then the game changed, and now it's basically Google or Apple for your smartphone, with a tiny bit of competition that doesn't really count. If the EU really had guts, they'd say that computing devices must let the user install a OS of their choice, at their risk, and businesses would be able to just sell phones, with the option of GrapheneOS alongside Android and iOS or Windows Mobile or FirefoxOS or WebOS. We didn't get that future, unfortunately.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#188

I really don't understand the argument here. That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation. Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect. The snide around "clicking on links is da…

Oh please:

> Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form [...]

I think you've mixed up 'side effect' with 'primary motivation'.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#189

I really don't understand the argument here. That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation. Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect. The snide around "clicking on links is da…

> That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation.

I would say most people in tech who aren't interested in fiddling with their phones have no issue with this either and frankly intentionally prefer more locked down options, all things considered.

It's fine to criticize abusive practices that companies engage in, but I tire of the narrow-mindedness of some people who measure everything according to their personal interests. Like, expand your mind, man.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#190
post #185

I really don't understand the argument here. That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation. Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect. The snide around "clicking on links is da…

>On the other hand, being cryptographically locked-down is an optional feature. If you don't like it, buy a computer without that feature. But that's the thing, where can I buy a phone without a locked-down operating system? GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel is basically the only option right now, and this still has problems thanks to hardware attestation in a lot of apps that the ecosystem forces us to use. This is large…

> hardware attestation in a lot of apps that the ecosystem forces us to use

Only a tiny amount of apps force you into hardware attestation, and these are mostly around banking, mobile payments and the like. So just use a separate, locked down device for those (where the anti-fraud protection of a locked-down system can be a benefit) and your more open day-to-day device for mostly everything else. A hidden advantage is that the dedicated device for secure uses is not something that you're forced to carry with you; you can leave it in a secure place instead.

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