51–60 of 329 posts
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.
There is: https://puri.sm/posts/my-first-year-of-librem-5-convergence/
Anyone have a theory why Apple hasn't done this yet? They release an 'iBook' which is basically a wired or even wireless lapdock for your iPhone running OSX in a partition. Seems like that would decimate the entire Windows, laptop, even desktop market in short order. Everyone with an iPhone, no longer needs their laptop/desktop. Just buy a cheap iBook and there's a good chance it'll already be better than most consum…
Why would it decimate the Windows market? From my experience, there's a strong correlation between iPhone and Mac usage. Looking at the stats, the Win:Mac ratio is 4:1 but Android:iPhone only 2:1 so it might hurt Windows. But if iPhone users are more likely to use Mac or don't use computers much already, then expanding iPhone capabilities would cannibalize Apple business.
I use the Pixel, but the point is the same. Recently Google added the "Dex" like feature where I can plug in the phone to a monitor and use it as my "entire computer" - at first I was excited, I can go to a coffee shop and leave my laptop behind, but then I looked at getting a bluetooth keyboard, mouse, monitor - with battery, and it's now a worse experience. There are monitor/battery/trackpad combination products fo…
Anyone have a theory why Apple hasn't done this yet? They release an 'iBook' which is basically a wired or even wireless lapdock for your iPhone running OSX in a partition. Seems like that would decimate the entire Windows, laptop, even desktop market in short order. Everyone with an iPhone, no longer needs their laptop/desktop. Just buy a cheap iBook and there's a good chance it'll already be better than most consum…
There isn't much demand for using phone as computer. If you are at home or work, you can buy a desktop computers for cheap. If you are traveling, you need to find a monitor and keyboard. You could carry small monitor and wireless keyboard, but then you are carrying as much as laptop. People who need to work on the road get a laptop. People who need to send email get iPad and keyboard. Good example of the economics is…
If Apple releases a $300 lapdock tomorrow, basically a screen, keyboard, battery, that allows using your iPhone as a normal general purpose computer with OSX - why would anyone buy a laptop/desktop?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The form factor is a major difference. HNers are significantly more technical than the median consumer and are used to text and keyboard interfaces - a large portion of humanity isn't. You see this with Foundation Models as well - most have started to shift away from only concentrating on text to TTS and STT usecases. Also, DeX style monitor screen share with a Bluetooth keyboard has been supported since iOS 15. Addi…
The entire Mac line is a teeny tiny slice of revenue compared to iPhone. Allowing OSX on iPhone would increase the utility of iPhone, leading to more sales.
That assumption is not necessarily true.
What this implies is that there is a market of existing consumers that would not buy an iPhone because it lacks OSX support.
The iPhone portion of Apple's business generates around $144B in YoY revenue in Q1FY27 [0].
Whenever an organization contemplates building a net new capability like the one you mentioned, a quick test is whether it would be able to generate and sustain at minimum the equivalent of 1% of yearly revenue.
If this was a $1B revenue opportunity it would have been implemented, but it's not.
Nor is it a feature that can actively or dramatically increase Apple's market share in most markets.
A good proxy of such demand would have been a sudden increase in iOS users using USB-C screen share and a Bluetooth keyboard to interface with an iPhone in a desktop form factor (something which has been enabled since iOS 15), but such an increase has not happened.
[0] - https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/apple-reaches-a...
Anyone have a theory why Apple hasn't done this yet? They release an 'iBook' which is basically a wired or even wireless lapdock for your iPhone running OSX in a partition. Seems like that would decimate the entire Windows, laptop, even desktop market in short order. Everyone with an iPhone, no longer needs their laptop/desktop. Just buy a cheap iBook and there's a good chance it'll already be better than most consum…
There isn't much demand for using phone as computer. If you are at home or work, you can buy a desktop computers for cheap. If you are traveling, you need to find a monitor and keyboard. You could carry small monitor and wireless keyboard, but then you are carrying as much as laptop. People who need to work on the road get a laptop. People who need to send email get iPad and keyboard. Good example of the economics is…
- https://support.apple.com/guide/keynote-iphone/present-on-a-...
Is this news to anyone? of course it is! The reason that they don't let you run MacOS is absolutely arbitrary, in support of you buying another device. It also allows them to avoid the cost of supporting MacOS in another form-factor. This feels more like a facebook post that would shock my mom then a HN article...
Arbitrary is doing a lot of work. With MacOS you can use an iPad as a touchscreen external monitor. Try it and you’ll learn that it’s not a touchscreen OS. It’s not as simple as “not letting you”.
It would be cool if iPhone could double as a laptop by just adding a monitor and keyboard/mouse and switch over to macOS.
Apple did patent a design for a dock in a monitor for a portable device to slot into. It’s gotta be getting close to expiration now. I think the trick is heat dissipation.
My friend who is a macOS programmer years ago had an idea for a startup mode for iMacs where instead of just being a screen, the storage and video card would also be accessible over the thunderbolt bus, so you could plug a laptop in and have multiple video cards at your disposal.