201–210 of 299 posts
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PostmarketOS seems promising...it doesn't have great hardware support right not but I see no reason that couldn't change.
Hardware support is hard, that's why this normally fails, unfortunately.
Windows has had this with .NET apps for... Oh, pretty much since there has been a .NET. I had written several apps for Windows CE that ran both on desktop and mobile (same EXE file, even). Today, you can do it with UWP. It's a shame Windows Phones didn't take off. They had a great UI paradigm and I think Microsoft has done a lot of very hard work that goes mostly unappreciated in the development world, just because G…
> They had a great UI paradigm Many people liked that paradigm. I am not one of them.
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To me the biggest hinderance is no the small screen, but the touch UI. Think of something simple like text editing. Because the UI has to differentiate simple taps and everything else, there is an inbuilt delay between the simple tap, and the more functional tap-and-hold. But since there is only one tap and hold, then it becomes tap-and-hold-and-select-action-from-menu-then-complete-action. Thats how I think of the s…
Have you considered getting a bluetooth keyboard/mouse? It makes text editing on tablets/phones much more tolerable for me.
Not OP... a BT kb/mouse has been a great consumer-friendly boost on larger tablets for me but sadly... lots of applications (on Android) don't really take advantage of this. They are still very heavily optimized for touch-only.
Example: MX Player (my fav Android player) does a great job binding keyboard presses to actions (spaceBar: pause; arrowKeys: forward, back, etc..)
In contrast, VLC for mobile lacks this "polish". Mobile browsers are another example where actions could be optimized for mouse input but I haven't come across a browser yet that acknowledges mice as a separate input source.
fyi (for anyone interested in tablet to laptop conversion to lessen gorilla arm):
Zagg Folio for 10" tablets (basically turns a tablet into a laptop). I picked this up a couple of years ago (not too many available for Android, most are essentially flimsy stands). They also have similar for smaller handhelds:
https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Keyboard-Android-Tablets-10...
The exciting part of this to me is not the ability to run the same software on two devices, but the potential to run two 'kinds' of software on one single device. This unlocks what is for me the most appealing computing fantasy: I have exactly one device to compute with. At home or work, I plug it into my dock, where it pairs to an eGPU/monitor, external storage, keyboard, and mouse, and is my desktop computer. There…
> $4000+ That's an excessive number. Great laptops can be had for under $1000. Obviously, you could spend over $4000, but I don't think this is a reasonable number for most people. Even most 'computer' people. And who still buys tablets anyway?
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I have the GPD Win that I bought a couple years ago, which is more or a less a Nintendo-DS-Sized computer running "real" Windows, and I love it. I can do programming on the train, even while standing up, as well as use all the tooling that I like, including Vim actually. The only limitation for me has honestly been Windows, since I'm more of a Unixey guy. Something that has always bothered me is that smartphones are…
The Nokia N900 used to fill this spot between phone and PC for me. It has a slider keyboard and came with a Debian based Linux distro (Maemo) installed on it. Typing was much more comfortable than with a touchscreen and with a few changes to the Xorg keyboard config it was even suitable for programming. The padding madness wasn't there yet and even though the screen was very small by today's standards, it was used ve…
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Some folks, myself included, reel at the conventional wisdom that a small screen necessarily means reduced functionality. While I agree that it can be difficult to design information-dense UIs for small displays or provide navigability to a large feature set, I strongly applaud efforts to unify computing and work through these challenges. I very much want all of my computing devices to be unified. In fact, I want a m…
I feel like the only computer user in the world who wants his computers to act like computers and mobile devices to act like mobile devices and to maintain a firm line in the sand between them. "Convergence" is a pipe dream because of the differing and mutually exclusive expectations of those different user types, and "one size fits all" programming ends up underserving both segments. The only thing I would change is…
On the other hand, I like the idea of at least being able to run software on all devices and them at least being usable, even with a shitty interface (like having to scroll through numbers on a desktop, Microsoft). This way I can still use familiar tools for non-recurring tasks. Like RDP on a phone might not be fun, but gets the job done.
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Some folks, myself included, reel at the conventional wisdom that a small screen necessarily means reduced functionality. While I agree that it can be difficult to design information-dense UIs for small displays or provide navigability to a large feature set, I strongly applaud efforts to unify computing and work through these challenges. I very much want all of my computing devices to be unified. In fact, I want a m…
A 10” screen has a twentieth the screen estate of my workstation screens, and is the difference of a narrow point of attention and spanning my view. It’s bordering on absurdism to try and utilize the same UI between them, and simply doesn’t match the reality of human perception or tool use. There are certainly uses where it makes sense — people who use just a phone and laptop for the internet and documents, for insta…
Yes, high-def large retina screens now (and I'm looking at one) exceed this, but as a traveller, a 10" tablet with a real goddamned operating system is a total game-changer.
Mind, I don't quite have that. I've got a 9" Android tablet with Termux that is pretty good, despite some profound limitations (mostly of the OS and Apps, some from the input, though a Bluetooth keyboard makes this a tractable laptop substitute most of the time). It's absolutely possible to get Real Work done. Though I'd prefer something bigger and less in my way, and am looking with strong interest at PureOS.
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>I mean, if someone said, "I've successfully ported Vim to Android!", my first thought would be, "Why in god's name would I want to run vim on my phone?"* Vim is available on android through termux. I've used it to write a few things. I actually used it to wrote an app to access my city's transit api because I wasn't a fan of the available ones. With the right keyboard installed it's actually not too bad. Best progra…
At that point why not pull out a laptop? Are you programming on a tablet?
They're designed for use independent of a keyboard. So yes, when you just want to stab at the screen and smudge it with skin oil, you can.
My preferred keyboard is a folio case with an integrated keyboard. I can pop this into a tent-form laptop, or, in a fraction of a second, flip the keyboard out of the way and use just the tablet. No hinges to break.
Major con: There is absolutely no standardisation of tablet form factors and corresponding case and keyboard designs. I've found this maddening to no end. Existing keyboards without exception suck, and Logitech sucks even harder. That said, this doesn't have to be the case.
Either portrait or landscape orientation, without preference on the device, oriented by accellerometer. Inverse portrait/landscape as well.
Incredible battery life. Generally, all day, with heavy use.
Tablets are virtually ideal as communications devices, so long as you're not actually in motion. I might carry a small dedicated phone in addition just for voice comms (restricted to a close whitelist), though in practice I prefer batching my comms and not being interrupted 24/7/365 without relief.
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I'm actually becoming convinced that the right approach is pretty much the opposite and we should be making GUIs that are composable. If you think about it, no one knows the user's use case better than they themselves do. So who is in a better position to determine what functionality is most important to have on their tiny phone screen? Which components need to be bigger and more prominent or smaller and less promine…
But users don't want to be UI designers. I could see a case for an AI that watches the user use the app for a few weeks and automatically designs a UI for them based on their needs. But in general, users don't want to have to do work on top of the work they already do. It's the same reason that despite DVDs having multiple angles for years, and 360° video being easily renderable, almost nobody uses these features. I…
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Hardware support is hard, that's why this normally fails, unfortunately.
I do not doubt that at all. I know almost nothing about systems programming. If I did, I would almost certainly contribute.
The fewer people who see a thing, the uglier the source is.
And as you go down the stack on mobile devices... there are very few people watching, indeed.