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Your phone is an entire computer

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Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#301

Post by FpUser »

xp84 wrote: post #300
FpUser wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"Samsung DEX isn't far off from this" I have the latest and greatest and can attest that the experience is atrocious

I use it on a 4-5 year old Galaxy tablet. it's not perfect, but it's miles beyond the "multitasking" iPads have offered. Disclosure: I haven't tried Apple's 97th attempt to invent a new and alien alternative to the concept of windows that they currently ship on iPads.

>"but it's miles beyond the "multitasking" iPads have offered"

I do not use Apple products so I was comparing it to a regular PC/Laptop

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#302

Post by thefz »

> On my iPhone, there is no such ability. As a US citizen, I must go through the Apple-approved App Store to download / install third-party software. Smells like freedom.

That's the effect of a complete lack of antitrust. In the US corporations can do the fuck they want

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#303

Post by xp84 »

bottlepalm wrote: post #138
xp84 wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would Apple want to sell a lapdock when they could instead sell you the same thing + a redundant SOC (aka, a MacBook) and then high-margin cloud services to sync all of your data between your two differently-shaped computers?

Because most people with iPhones are buying Windows computers, but give them a cheap entry lapdock into the Mac ecosystem and maybe their next more powerful system will be a Mac. Mac is a niche right now, iPhone with OSX could level the playing field.

If Apple could bring themselves to sell a lapdock, it'd have to cost at least $500. We know this because the Magic Keyboard for iPad, just a keyboard and trackpad, is priced at $349 (and it was introduced at that price way back in 2020, so at the time, Apple believed that keyboard was worth $440 adjusted for inflation). A screen to Apple's quality standards, even a 12-13" one, cannot possibly increase that price point by less than $150. So, the Apple in our universe could not produce a lapdock, because in our universe they have a whole laptop at that price point.

On second thought, the reality distortion field is real, so I suppose if they told people their new $600 lapdock was a good value even though it costs as much as the entry-level Mac, they'd still find willing buyers.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#304

Post by xp84 »

FpUser wrote: post #301
xp84 wrote: post #300

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use it on a 4-5 year old Galaxy tablet. it's not perfect, but it's miles beyond the "multitasking" iPads have offered. Disclosure: I haven't tried Apple's 97th attempt to invent a new and alien alternative to the concept of windows that they currently ship on iPads.

>"but it's miles beyond the "multitasking" iPads have offered" I do not use Apple products so I was comparing it to a regular PC/Laptop

I understand - I just mentioned because for me I was aiming to replace the concept of an iPad in my life with that tablet. Honestly though, I ended up inheriting an M1 MacBook Air from my wife after upgrading her, and it has mostly displaced the tablet for most of the uses. Mainly because of the keyboard, and it's just nicer to be able to actually access the filesystem, and indeed, just window management is still superior on a "real" OS.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#305

Post by api »

bottlepalm wrote: post #27
api wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Other than UI and other surface differences, the fundamental distinction between a Mac and an iDevice is... what it is. A Mac is a real computer. I can run any code I want on it. I have root. An iDevice is like a game console. I can only run App Store apps (without jumping through a lot of hoops). I do not have root (without again jumping through many hoops or ugly hacks). If Apple wanted to unify the platform they h…

MacBook Neo has in a way unified the platforms. The only difference is essentially what OS is booted up with the chip.

That’s the difference though. Put macOS on a phone chip and it’s now a “real computer,” just a smaller one.

The M chips are mostly just roided out A chips: higher clocks, better cooling, more P cores, big GPU, and I think deeper pipelines and more cache. The ALU and many other sections are, I think, identical.

Thermal throttling is actually a non trivial limit on phones. Put a heat sink and a fan on an A chip and sustained compute is faster.

The OS and its restrictiveness determines the class of device not the hardware.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#306

Post by scoofy »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #285
scoofy wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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 What on earth are you talking about? People have been getting scammed since the days of AOL! What an insane perspective. It's not about total money lost from scams. It's about the amount of impact it has on the individuals who get scammed. What's the problem w…

We don't save few people suffering high damage from losing a round of Russian Roulette by restricting ability to roll D6, because of then harm a bad roll can do when in form of a barrel of a loaded revolver. Also "only criminals need random number generators". Yes that's how we're treating end user computing.

It is a question of who is "We" because all this seems to imply that the market owes "us" this product.

I would lose my mind and switch to Linux for good if Apple every tried to close their laptops. Why? Because unlike my mom, I'm sitting here writing programs for myself.

On my phone however, I don't want to have to do a bunch of research whenever I need to install something like a parking app. I don't want to have to install a random parking app, but when you need an app to park in the MUELLER - MCBEE garage in Austin, and when I'm visiting and am meeting people for tacos, life is going to force me to install that app. When that happens, I'm happy to be in the walled garden. In fact, I want a walled garden.

I'm happy to have two computers, one open and one closed. They're two different products. For folks who want an open phone, yea, it's basically GrapheneOS or nothing, because when the point of the phone is a completely different use case (random app installs) then the point becomes the ecosystem, and you need to always be able to trust the ecosystem.

When you are trying to tinker with your phone, it becomes a completely different product. The market doesn't owe you that product.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#307

Post by microtonal »

the_pwner224 wrote: post #148
microtonal wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just nitpicking: unlockable bootloaders. The bootloader is locked by default. But you can unlock it without needing Google. Additionally, Pixels support a Linux VM and has a desktop mode (I'm running GrapheneOS, it may still be that these features have to be enabled through the developer settings).

> But you can unlock it without needing Google. Well akshually.... the bootloader is initially not unlockable. You must connect the phone to the internet. Within a few minutes a background process will reach out to Google servers to check whether it was purchased outright or with a payment plan. It will only enable the bootloader unlocking toggle after this step. Phones bought with a carrier contract won't be unlocka…

Thanks for the correction! Though I recently set up and unlocked a new Pixel and I don't recall it. Maybe SKUs for European countries are an exception since such payment plans do not really exist? Or I forgot.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#309

Post by 2muchcoffeeman »

raw_anon_1111 wrote: post #200
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like iPhones because they are a little bit restricted. But let’s be real here. They should have unified everything 5 years ago. Your phone should plugin to a screen and be a “netbook” level device and anything 13 inches and up should be running MacOS. The iPad should have a real affordable keyboard. These limitations are no longer designed to make the product better.

It does have a “real affordable keyboard” - any BT keyboard and mouse. My wife uses both that came from Amazon for $30 bucks each

This is clearly sub-optimal for a tablet. And worse, they are supposed to be a company that has good taste and design.

I bought a knock off cantilever keyboard cover. This is clearly the way to go. Very clever design from Apple. The knockoff works almost as well for 25% of the price.

Re: Your phone is an entire computer

#310

Post by SahAssar »

novok wrote: post #267
FabHK wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple software. It's buggy, uses proprietary formats that you can't export Buggy sure, but proprietary formats? Calendar entries can be imported or exported as iCalendar .ics (RFC 5545), contacts as vCard .vcf (RFC 6350), photos as .jpeg or .heif (ISO/IEC 23008-12), books use the open .epub (ISO/IEC TS 30135), iTunes dropped DRM for purchased files in 2016 and uses mp4 (ISO/IEC 14496-14:2020) (though not sure what…

iMessage lives as a sqlite db at ~/Library/Messages/chat.db , I wouldn't call a sqlite db proprietary per say.

sqlite is a database. You can store things in more or less proprietary formats in it, just like any other database.
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