[HN Gopher] My 24 year old HP Jornada can do things an iPhone st... ___________________________________________________________________ My 24 year old HP Jornada can do things an iPhone still can't do Author : jandeboevrie Score : 187 points Date : 2023-06-15 20:42 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (raymii.org) (TXT) w3m dump (raymii.org) | GenericDev wrote: | Dang. This is the future I wanted to see for mobile devices. | | Really bummed where we're at right now in the mobile ecosystem. | It's crazy to me that even now iOS/Android still obscure your | directories from you, and navigating them is treated as something | to hide from the users despite being an integral part of the | operating system. | | Really wild how these companies leaned into disrespecting their | users. A lot of people might say "It's to help the users and | remove touch points they don't care about", but the truth is that | in making these decisions they have trained users to ignore these | mental models and completely hidden or removed the opportunity to | normalize these aspects of the operating systems and the device. | | Really wish it wasn't this way. | jtotheh wrote: | modern users (for example, kids) are able to get by with their | files in the default folders of the applications and no concept | of a directory tree. And with performant search they don't | worry about it, they just search for the file. I don't know | that that's due to disrespect but it's a thing. | lbrito wrote: | Vastly, vastly different things. | | Throw everything in your home/office into a huge drawer and | try finding that one tax receipt from 2012. Sounds fun? | | Now imagine tree-organized file cabinets. You look up the | labels: Personal finance, tax stuff, 2012. Found it. | | If done right, its basically O(n) x O(log n). With N being | very big and your seek time being very bad. | | Its not because people lost the | ability/knowledge/patience/etc to do this that makes it the | same as the mess we have now. | | Sadly, I think its more likely we'll increasingly rely on AI | helpers to do the mental work for us (like already happens on | Google Photos) instead of putting in the effort with | something like a file structure again. I think its gone. | altcognito wrote: | Mostly because they either don't know any better or they're | resigned that they've only ever been sold a locked down | device. | | It is an abomination. Even the tools apple and Google does | provide are awful at backup and file transfer. | tqi wrote: | > Mostly because they either don't know any better.. | | Who is disrespecting the users now? | vel0city wrote: | Honestly, for a lot of my personal files and documents I | really don't care about the folder structure. Don't get me | wrong, I _do_ , but only because on most systems its the | only reliable way to actually organize the files. But a | directory structure isn't always the optimal way to | organize things for a lot of my access patterns. | | Like pictures. Maybe I'm wanting to browse by date. Maybe | I'm wanting to browse by events and albums. Maybe I'm | wanting to browse by photos with these two people in them. | Maybe I want to browse by pictures with boats in them. So | should I arrange my photos in directories by date, or by | album, or by some kind of classification and then date | (family/2023/bobs_birthday)? It sucks! Its a terrible | process. And by count of files, photos and videos are the | vast majority of the files I care to access! | | And then its a similar thing with stuff like music, or | movies, or all kinds of things. Folder structures are very | rigid, things like links are all kinds of fragile and | annoying to work with often. | | _For the most part_ , the vast majority of my files I'd | prefer to have them all in some kind of database with tags | and be able to query them based on the context of what I'm | doing. Open a photo editor app? Ok, show me photos, | probably recent ones first until I put some other search in | it. Not just a file browser sitting in a home directory in | a folder full of other folders with all kinds of other | files that aren't even pictures. | | IMO, for personal files, _folders are bad._ I don 't mind a | lot of these interfaces that try and hide the underlying | file structure, _so long as when I need to I can muck about | in there as well, if it still exists._ | neilalexander wrote: | To call it an abomination is annoyingly dramatic and "they | don't know any better" is frankly elitist and I am really | tired of these attitudes from HN. | | There are people in the world who grew up with and are used | to platforms that have filing-cabinet abstractions (files | and folders) and let them run their own code and | customisations. Similarly, there are people in the world | who grew up with devices that don't expose files and | folders as readily and instead present things through apps | and search. | | How many of the latter category could even accurately | define what a "file" is? Do they even need to? Probably | not, because they get just fine with a different set of | abstractions and tools. Just because that isn't to your | taste doesn't mean that they don't work fine for other | people -- there's a world of less technically-minded people | out there who get by just fine with an iPad at home for the | things they want to do. To them, computing has _never_ been | more accessible than it is today and not having to worry | about things like folders and files is actually a | superpower. | zozbot234 wrote: | The whole point of the filing-cabinet abstraction is to | reify my access to something in some app. It's not a | purely technical concept, it represents an affordance | that users do care about. We went through this before; | programs used to be written without any generalized | notion of a file, and you'd have to work with things like | "unit" records represented on punched cards, and | "datasets" meaning collections of unit records. There's | no reason to go back to that kind of chaos. | 1970-01-01 wrote: | I still don't understand how move and copy were allowed to be | fundamentally broken for so many years. File management is a | very, very basic OS task. I should never, ever need to | Jailbreak a device to make backups of files. | sn_master wrote: | Because Apple is not selling an "OS", it's selling an iPhone. | Their users are using "apps" and not "programs". | robertoandred wrote: | App and program are synonyms. And application. | acheron wrote: | The difficulty I had just copying things from one phone to | another recently was ridiculous. You're right, this should be a | basic function. I have files I've copied from computer to | computer that were originally from the late 80s. | newaccount74 wrote: | iOS has come a long way, though. There's a local file system I | can access and move files around with. I can run Syncthing on | it (with Mobius). I can even run Linux on it (iSH), including a | package manager. I can use qpdf to decrypt a PDF I downloaded | with Safari, and I can even run Python and compile C code, on | the device, with acceptable performance. | | It's not the same as a real computer (no daemons or cron jobs), | but it can do a lot of the things I want to do when I'm on the | go. The only thing I'm missing is running multiple apps side by | side, but I guess that's hard on such a tiny screen. | sneak wrote: | You can't do any of these things without doxxing yourself to | Apple, as you can't install apps without an Apple ID, and you | can't get an Apple ID without a phone number. | Vrondi wrote: | Samsung does multiple apps side by side for years now. Works | fine most of the time. | aqfamnzc wrote: | Samsung has had the feature for longer like you say, but I | think this is a stock android feature these days! Might be | wrong though. | callalex wrote: | I'm curious what you use that for on a phone screen, and | how frequently? | newaccount74 wrote: | My use case for it would be to answer emails on the go | where I need to look something up somewhere so I can eg. | see the docs while typing a reply. | asdff wrote: | Jailbroken iphones too | newaccount74 wrote: | Huh. I used a Samsung phone as my primary phone for a year, | but I missed that. I'll have to check that out. | Vrondi wrote: | My android devices have all come with basic file system | browsers, but even better, I can choose from a plethora of full | featured apps for full file system access. This is one of the | issues that has kept me away from iphone, though. | scarface_74 wrote: | So exactly why do you need access to _the_ file system? You | have access to _a_ location where you can share files between | apps. Any application that supports access to file picker | gives you access to any of your installed document providers | like iCloud, Google Drive, Box, an attached USB drive, a | network drive and the local device. | | And direct access via the Files app. | | The one thing missing is that admittedly there is no way to | add your own music to the music library on the phone itself. | dheera wrote: | Yep, this is the main reason I use Android. It also means I | can modify things on the OS level to e.g. fabricate false GPS | data and supply it to apps that insist on GPS access to be | functional. | | On iPhones and stock Android phones, apps "know" when you | deny permissions, and can even know when you use the mock GPS | feature. | scarface_74 wrote: | According to the App Store rules for iOS, An app can't | withhold functionality when you deny it GPS access unless | it's required for the app's functionality. | | Why would I use an app that requires unnecessary | permissions? | fmajid wrote: | The SSH client Prompt uses GPS permissions as a round- | about workaround to ensure your SSH connection is not | reaped and closed by iOS while in the background. | scarface_74 wrote: | The easier less privacy invasive and less battery | draining alternative is to play silence in the background | . | robertoandred wrote: | Why would you use an app that insists on having gps access? | dheera wrote: | To stay in touch with friends and family who only use a | certain app for communication and social event planning. | I don't have the energy to convince them and an entire | country to move off said app. | | To get permits to certain wilderness areas that require | GPS permissions to even apply. | | To get on restaurant waitlists before arriving. (Some | restaurants insist on your phone-reported GPS location | being within a certain radius to get on the list. Welcome | to Silicon Valley in 2023) | | Lots of reasons. | aqfamnzc wrote: | Out of curiosity, are you referring to rooted Android, or | some variant that provides the user some protection from | apps "knowing"? GrapheneOS seems to provide some of this | (Storage Scopes, network permission, etc.) but not all. | mixmastamyk wrote: | Don't most of these come with ads? It's not a good situation. | cbeley wrote: | Generally you can exchange some amount of money in return | for not seeing ads... | Krssst wrote: | That's a good way of course, but there's also the option | of using F-Droid. | mixmastamyk wrote: | Is it really a worthwhile platform if you have to buy a | file manager? | | FLOSS file-managers were decent already in the 90s. | cbeley wrote: | I'm pretty happy paying for things I like. Solid explorer | is a great file manager for Android that I also pay for. | vel0city wrote: | I seem to recall very Android phone I've had came with an | app called "Files". If not named "Files", they always had | some kind of baked-in file browser. The last few phones | have been Pixels, I don't remember exactly the specifics of | the one on the Motorola devices I had prior, but on the | Pixel devices its this app: | | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.google.an | d... | | No ads. Sure, it tries to group things by categories and | searching at the very top, but its still easy to see | "Storage devices" which lets me navigate the actual folder | structure. My Pixels have come with USB-C male to USB-A | female adapters which allow me to plug in things like flash | drives, memory card readers, cameras, external hard drives, | even other Android devices and access the files through the | Files app. | TazeTSchnitzel wrote: | Modern Android (11 onwards) no longer allows full filesystem | access for file manager apps. Apps can opt into exposing some | of their files for management by implementing a horrible Java | API designed for cloud storage services. Some vendors' forks | probably disable this change but that's not something that | can be relied on. | | Meanwhile iOS also has sandboxing but at least you can still | meaningfully use normal goddamn filesystem APIs and there's | now a system file manager. | type0 wrote: | There's still Ubuntu touch i.e. UBports, unfortunately not that | many devices are supported. | | https://devices.ubuntu-touch.io/ https://ubports.com/ | 1827163 wrote: | But we have things like the Raspberry Pi, which are very low | cost and completely open to tinkering. Add a keyboard and clip- | on display then you have a tiny but capable development | machine, in a smartphone like form-factor. | jtotheh wrote: | You can write your own apps for your personal iPhone on a mac | (with Xcode,which is free) - granted you have to own a mac. | | Also, the iPhone can do things the Jornada can't....... | 1827163 wrote: | Such as tracking you every moment of your waking life. How | modern technology has become so evil, looking back. Nowadays | every device we have is clearly spyware, from the point of view | of 1999. | freedomben wrote: | TFA says this clearly. The whole point of the article is that | the device can be used to develop and build software for the | device, on the device, without an external system... | type0 wrote: | > You can write your own apps for your personal iPhone on a mac | | Sure and you can write your own apps for some devices on a | mainframe, even today | systems_glitch wrote: | I bought a GPD Pocket 7 when they crowdfunded it. To me it felt | like the first mobile general purpose computing option that | continued where palmtops of the old days left off. For me | personally, its predecessor was a Toshiba Libretto 110CT. | | Netbooks were kind of a step-backwards middle phase for me. | piersj225 wrote: | I might have missed something, does anyone know what happened to | Ubuntu phone? I was hoping that was going to be an alternative to | iPhone or Android. | earthscienceman wrote: | I would legitimately use this or anything like it as an SSH | gateway often. It would be very neat to have. Does anyone know | just how bad the version of Devuan they propose using runs, how | slow? If you aren't using graphics I assume it's probably fairly | quick... fluxbox can't be that bad either, right? | yosito wrote: | > Boy do I miss the good old days, where devices were | programmable by their owners instead of just e-waste consumption | slabs. | | Wow, this quote really hits the nail on the head. | failuser wrote: | The iPhone is popular because of what it can't do, not because of | what it can. Power users need their own ecosystem, but as always | they are too segmented to get it to any usable level, so some old | devices are still as good as it will ever be so someone tech- | savvy. Many people still think that mobile devices peaked with | Psion 5 or N900. | s0sa wrote: | Do one thing well. | | While I think these types of devices are neat, it's not | surprising that this isn't the reality of modern portables. | | It's a (relatively) barely portable, degraded desktop experience. | shortcake27 wrote: | I agree with this to the point that I want to see iOS reverted. | I preferred the days when iOS was extremely limited. The | features it had were perfected and stable. | | Now we're seeing dozens of new features and changes every year. | iOS is becoming confusing, feels less polished, and is full of | bugs. It goes against everything iOS used to be. | concurrentsquar wrote: | I always wanted a Windows CE clamshell laptop, but I just have | not had the time to look at ebay. The small laptops were always | interesting to me. | | Is there a 3D printable case for the Raspberry Pi that is like | one of these? I looked at the DevTerm but I heard that it's not | that good, and anyways it's not exactly the same as this. | fmajid wrote: | The Planet Gemini would be a modern equivalent: | | https://www.www3.planetcom.co.uk/ | | Also GPD: | | https://www.gpd.hk/product | abawany wrote: | I used to be able to do something similar on my Sharp Zaurus | SL5500 with the stock rom: there were various interpreters and | compilers available for it and the built-in keyboard had mappings | for the needed characters so I could write small programs and | then compile and run them right on the device. | johnklos wrote: | I'm not sure I understand the allure of running an OS that has so | many distros that are almost hostile to non-mainstream platforms. | When the volunteers tire of keeping their mini-distros up to date | (and they often do, given enough time), owners of older devices | like these are left with just a few options: not care about | updates (and possible security issues), try to do the work of | applying updates themselves, or abandoning the platform. I don't | see the attraction, except for those who enjoy the challenge of | updating things themselves. | | Another option is NetBSD, which doesn't eject platforms because | they're not popular. It's one thing if the toolchain requires | extensive work, like VAX or ns32k, but if there's enough | interest, it happens. Otherwise, most code is portable, so what's | written for popular architectures works for less common ones. | | I'll have to test the latest NetBSD 10 on my Jornada hardware, | both ARM (earmv4) and SuperH (sh3el). There're even good sets of | pkgsrc binaries for these less common platforms: | | https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/earmv4/ | | https://cdn.netbsd.org/pub/pkgsrc/packages/NetBSD/sh3el/ | RobotToaster wrote: | Wouldn't Gentoo or Source Mage GNU/Linux be similar? | luke-stanley wrote: | I had one of these and a Psion when I was a kid. These days I | have an Android phone. I know about the Astro Slide but my phone | is already great. I have a pocket Bluetooth keyboard but it's not | an optimal size. I'd love a 4 row scissor switch Bluetooth | keyboard that fits in my pocket with my phone. I get such retro | feelings. I'm not entirely stuck in the past. Maybe I'll make use | of an old phone as a remote touch screen keyboard, with Gboard on | an old phone and WiFi keyboard on the new one. I feel like hybrid | physical/swipe keyboard could be interesting though. | whalesalad wrote: | I had a Jornada 680 without the keyboard and it was truthfully a | piece of garbage. Without jailbreaks and Linux they are as good | as a coaster. | | You can jailbreak an iPhone and achieve the same result. | | Don't rly see the argument from the author. | 1827163 wrote: | I had one running NetBSD together with a Cisco Aironet 350 PCMCIA | WiFi card for wardriving purposes. With the driver for the WiFi | card patched to enable monitor mode. Had two different antennas, | a quarter wave dipole, which I made myself, and also an Andrew | QD-2402, a 16dBi antenna (!) that could receive WiFi APs from | more than 20km away, when on high ground. | | You could even develop software on it, compile programs with GCC, | write Perl scripts to do various things, e.g. automatically scan | for and connect to open access points as you walked around town. | I think that script even tested if the access point had Internet | access or not, and blacklisted ones that didn't. Worked _really_ | well, there were so many open access points back in the day. Also | had the "links" / "eLinks" web browser, that was text only. | | And you could also overclock the bus to the Epson video chip, to | allow for faster display updates. The video chip had 2D | acceleration, I might have written an XFree86 driver for that, | but cannot be sure about it. | | I also wrote a flashing tool for the WiFi card, that let you | alter the regulatory domain settings to enable full 100mW power | output, and also change the MAC address stored in Flash. I think | I have the source code to that somewhere... | | It's just so amazing to see that the functionality of that | enormous WiFi card has now been shrunk down to a tiny QFN chip, | an ESP32. | tedunangst wrote: | Why isn't HP still selling the Jornada? | [deleted] | drivers99 wrote: | "Soon after HP's merger with Compaq in 2002, HP discontinued | its Jornada line of Microsoft Windows powered Pocket PCs, and | continued the iPAQ line that started under Compaq." | | "In mid-August 2011, HP announced that they would be | discontinuing all webOS devices." | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IPAQ | | According to the linked source: | | "But then HP encountered the grim reality faced by anyone | trying to compete with Apple in mobile devices: making | competitive hardware is difficult, and attracting developers is | even more so. It's the Catch 22 situation I spoke about in my | earlier webOS analysis: no apps = no customers = no developers | = no apps." | https://web.archive.org/web/20110925012246/http://mobile-dev... | ases wrote: | There was, for a little while, the idea that a mobile device | could seamlessly plug into an external display, with external | input devices, and swap between a "desktop" and mobile mode. I | believe Mozilla tried to invest in this pretty heavily. | | But it went nowhere. I suppose the technical challenges of the | time were too great, and the mobile devices that won the space | were locked down like the iPhone, where it was better to have the | ecosystem that let you sync your mobile device to something more | powerful if you really wanted. | | But given the power inside mobile devices these days, Apple | silicon especially, I think it is sad that this vision never | really came to fruitition. It seems like the perfect sort of | device for most modern users. Something that is open and | unlocked, and you can plug it into bigger things to solve the | problems many other commentors are talking about around | difficulty programming on small screens, etc. | | But that's the whole of modern computing history, I suppose. | [deleted] | MikusR wrote: | Samsung Dex came out in 2017. And does just that. | TillE wrote: | > given the power inside mobile devices | | Lots of power, very little cooling. It's designed to be used in | bursts. If you've ever played a high-end game on your phone, | you'll notice it gets very hot and rapidly drains the battery. | | While desktops are essentially dead outside the enthusiast | space, I'm really happy that everyone still owns a laptop. It's | more or less the ideal computing device, reasonably portable | with its own screen and a real keyboard. | zozbot234 wrote: | > Lots of power, very little cooling. It's designed to be | used in bursts. If you've ever played a high-end game on your | phone, you'll notice it gets very hot and rapidly drains the | battery. | | "Gaming" phones exist that try to address this issue. But | they're expensive, you're paying flagship prices for a brick- | like form factor and a very limited OS update lifcycle | compared to actual flagships. | p1necone wrote: | You could maybe fix this with a cooled dock. I'm thinking of | all kinds of wacky designs involving exposed heat pipes/metal | on the outside of the phone that makes contact with something | on the dock. | wffurr wrote: | Asus makes a cooling attachment for their "gaming phones": | https://rog.asus.com/us/power-protection-gadgets/docks- | dongl... | fuzzy2 wrote: | That sort-of existed though. Windows Phone could do it | (Continuum), and so could select Motorola Android phones (via | Lapdock). | | However, we'll just have to accept that most people don't want | this. It's a niche use case. | kajecounterhack wrote: | For those interested, Motorola's Atrix phone and Webtop | platform were high on this idea: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Motorola_Atrix_4G#Webtop | oh_sigh wrote: | Perhaps it will now that third party app stores will be force | onto apple. Granted, you still won't be able to jailbreak your | iphone by just typing in the root password, but you will | probably be able to install compilers and interpreters onto an | iphone by 2024. | gumby wrote: | > ...but you will probably be able to install compilers and | interpreters onto an iphone by 2024. | | If you live in the EU. | | I look forward to Emacs on the ipad. | xbonez wrote: | Samsung Dex [0] is bringing that vision back, maybe? | | [0] https://www.samsung.com/us/apps/dex/ | RajT88 wrote: | Can confirm. I recently demoted my old Samsung S7 to be Wifi- | only and work stuff-only. MFA, mobile email when I'm not at | my desk, etc. | | When I travel for personal stuff, I now just take my personal | laptop and my phone. If I need to get into my work stuff, I'm | pretty damn effective with all the cloud tooling I can get | into from the browser under Dex. Screen real estate is the | biggest issue which Dex handily solves, with a close second | being things like MS Teams being a little clunky in Dex mode | (not a dealbreaker). It's all more than sufficient when I get | pinged on personal travel, since I'm not likely to need to be | at 110% like I am if I'm working at 2pm on a Tuesday. | | Why would I want to do this? Because every time I take time | off, something goes off and nobody knows what to do about it, | so I get pinged. | lostmsu wrote: | Why do you need DeX, if you bring your laptop. | scosman wrote: | iPadOS is mostly delivering on what you describe. Plug into | monitor, mouse, keyboard, window manager, multitasking. Only | gap is the "open/unlocked" bit, but Apple is making slow | progress there. | | It shows the horse power is there in iPhone. I'd guess it's a | UX decision to limit to iPad - iPad apps can scale up to | monitor size, but I never want to use an app designed for a 6 | inch screen on a 27 inch screen. | dotnet00 wrote: | As others have mentioned, Samsung DeX does this very well. | Plus, there are several apps out there for setting up a near | Linux desktop experience on the device. Previously DeX itself | used to support running Linux applications, it's a shame they | dropped that. | | As a result, along with the ability to access my proxmox VMs if | needed, I've been able to retire my laptop in favor of just a | Galaxy Tab Ultra. | | It's overall pushed me heavily into Samsung's devices. They are | not that much worse than most Android phone makers, have nice | integration with their other devices, but don't lock things | down as much as Apple. The wacom pen support across both the | Ultra tab and phone has also been a huge draw for me. Makes me | wish my desktop pentab also supported the same kind of pen for | seamless interoperation. | vorpalhex wrote: | Samsung has this reputation of being bloatware heavy with a | lot of their default apps having ads. Is that still true? | yaky wrote: | Microsoft attempted Continuum [1] with some of their Windows | Phones. And as of now, PinePhone and Librem5 support USB-C dock | with HDMI output. | | [1] https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/Continuum | teddyh wrote: | It's not completely dead. Software side: | | https://puri.sm/posts/converging-on-convergence-pureos-is-co... | | Hardware side: | | https://nexdock.com/explore-nexdock/ | mbiondi wrote: | You can write python code on an iphone with Pythonista. | FredPret wrote: | ...but should you? | juujian wrote: | Nifty little machine, that aspect ratio is quite strange though. | Such weird, long lines of text. = | w_for_wumbo wrote: | While previous machines had those possibilities enabled to allow | the user to do much more, it also means those possibilities were | wide-open to any third-party software that was installed on the | machine. | | It's not that modern machines can't do those tasks, but that they | generally shouldn't do those tasks. It's not unreasonable for | device manufacturers to sandbox and restrict access to | functionality to protect the majority of their users. | | Even despite these attempts the app stores are full of malware, | just imagine how much worse it could be if these apps could also | compile their own variants and then abuse Bluetooth/Airdrop to | spread it. | asdff wrote: | If apple was concerned about these protections they'd just put | it behind some sort of toggle. Right now its kind of an | extortion situation since they change you money for a developer | license, and void your warranty for jailbreaking. If it was all | for the users benefit then they'd offer to reset a jailbroken | phone back to factory settings at the genus bar instead of | refusing service. | jrm4 wrote: | You don't have to "imagine," you're basically describing most | of the history of viruses and Windows. So what? | | I'm entirely unconvinced by this sensationalist take; I'm quite | certain we've lost more than we've gained from turning general | purpose computers into nanny-state locked down devices. | asdff wrote: | I work with undergraduates sometimes and its amazing what we | can take for granted in terms of computer literacy these | days. Some of these kids haven't touched a desktop OS until | they get into college, at which point they are just using | like google docs and sheets and the filesystem within those | webapps. They don't really get what files are, what file | types are, what folders are even, and look at me like I have | two heads when I say copy and paste some text to a document, | save it, send it over. | | You think they'd be hamstrung for life but honestly, there | isn't much computer literacy in the workforce from what I've | seen, either. They'd fit right in. It just sucks to think | about all the kids who might have gone further with computing | if more of it was exposed to them, instead of locked up | basically until they get into college and demoralized by a | crushing CS curriculum, since highschools and middle or | elementary don't really teach this stuff either. | jrm4 wrote: | Are you me? :) | | I teach IT at a university, undergrads and grads. All of | this is exactly correct. The oddest thing is explaining to | people _my age_ (I 'm 46) how many of my _IT_ students are | likely less knowledgable about those kinds of basics | (despite having other, to me odd, skills, like fake | instagram accounts and such) | noptd wrote: | >It's not unreasonable for device manufacturers to sandbox and | restrict access to functionality to protect the majority of | their users. | | Hard disagree. It's absolutely unreasonable to infantilize | users and lock them out from fully utilizing their purchased | hardware. | russdill wrote: | The title is a bit disingenuous. These are things that the iPhone | can do, and have been possible on past revisions. These are | things that iPhone _won 't_ do. | lmm wrote: | How hard is doing development on Android, really? You can just | build the app and run it, can't you? Equating that with Apple's | genuinely awful stance is lazy and hurts the cause. | freedomben wrote: | I originally started a reply to you to tell you why you're | wrong, but after thinking through the contemporary process, I | agree. It's pretty trivial to install an app and do dev on | android without any external machine, and you can easily plug | in a keyboard and/or mouse and use that too. I agree much with | OP but I think he's being a little too hard on Android | jrm4 wrote: | 100% | | I would still use my Nokia N900, with literally just enough | updating to work on the modern networks, if such a thing were | possible. | TheBrokenRail wrote: | I really hate the modern idea of locking down devices to protect | users from themselves. It's my device and I should be allowed to | install what I want on it. | | Android's better than iOS in that regard, but that doesn't mean | it isn't still terrible. Sure, you can sideload apps, but you | still can't run as root unless your device's manufacturer allows | it. And sure, it might have a built-in file manager, but in newer | versions of Android, you can't read/write to /sdcard/Android/data | without a separate device. | | And this trend is even infecting non-phone devices as well. You | can't install extensions on Firefox if they haven't been signed | by Mozilla. The only way to disable this restriction is to use a | fork or beta version (Developer Edition or Nightly). | activiation wrote: | You can create and compile an Android app on an Android phone... | I'm surprised you can't do that on an iPhone. | | https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aide.ui&hl... | Someone wrote: | I haven't looked at it, but Apple claims you can develop apps | with Playgrounds. See https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/ | voz_ wrote: | [flagged] | fxtentacle wrote: | Try doing THAT with an iPhone ;) | twobitshifter wrote: | You know what though? Shortcuts exists on iOS. What is | shortcuts? It's a visual programming language for making apps | on your iPhone. It allows you to interact and program your | phone in a sensible manner for a small screen. Yeah it doesn't | give you keys to the kingdom, but the types of things you might | want to do to automate using your phone are there. | wilsonnb3 wrote: | The smartphone form factor is just not very good for software | development. Even if the tools existed on the iPhone, nobody | would use them. | | There is a more compelling argument about the iPad not being | able to do software development since it is marketed as a | laptop replacement. | TheFreim wrote: | > The smartphone form factor is just not very good for | software development. | | I believe with some androids you can connect it to a monitor | and have a desktop environment styled mode, though at that | point you'd be better served with a laptop. | freedomben wrote: | > _I believe with some androids you can connect it to a | monitor and have a desktop environment styled mode, though | at that point you 'd be better served with a laptop._ | | why? my oneplus has 12 GB of RAM, 8 cores, and 256 GB of | storage (plus expandable with SD card). It's plenty capable | for development/desktop use. I've done dev on a raspberry | pi with 4 GB and 4 cores, I don't see why the oneplus | wouldn't be a more than acceptable "laptop" | [deleted] | kitsunesoba wrote: | If there were iOS dev tools on the iPhone, I think they'd | probably be built around Xcode's Interface Builder and | resemble something like a touch friendly version of Visual | Basic or REALBasic, simply because the smartphone typing | experience is so ill-suited for writing code. | | On iPad there's Playgrounds, which is kind of an Xcode Lite | that supports Swift and SwiftUI but to do anything | substantial with it you're going to want a physical keyboard | of some kind. | pid-1 wrote: | From a hardware point of view, your average iPhone is | definitely fast enough for many types of development. | | What's really missing is an easy way to connect to | peripherals, plus OS support. Samsumg has something in this | direction, though I heard it's not quite mature: | | https://www.samsung.com/us/apps/dex/ | | https://youtu.be/Ku6eQvYRDrk?t=342 | accrual wrote: | I believe iOS and iPadOS both support standard HID devices | if connected through a USB-to-Lightning or USB-C adapter. | I've used a Logitech MX Ergo on an iPad Mini and thought | that was pretty neat. | | I thought about getting a Magic keyboard and pairing that | and the Ergo to the iPad as a lightweight SSH solution for | traveling. | nehal3m wrote: | I've done some sysadmin work with an iPad, a Magic | Keyboard and a Logitech MX Master 3. Works really well. | Mystery-Machine wrote: | You're missing the point. The point is _NOT_ whether | _ANYBODY_ would use them, the point is that you should own | your device and be able to install any software on it that | you want. | | ...plus I'm sure some people would use it, at least | sometimes. | trostaft wrote: | Indeed, developing directly on the smartphone would be | ridiculous. But, to be honest, I have similar feelings to | developing directly on a laptop. There's no position I can | place it at to have an ergonomic position; I always end up | feeling like I'm hunched over a tiny screen. Which is why, | when I get into work, I dock it and use an external monitor + | kb/m. | | So why can't I use my phone as that intermediary 'compute | brick' I bring around? Sure, it's significantly less | performant, and it would require incredible development work | to make a mobile OS than can transition seamlessly into | desktop. Well, that's exactly why no one does it. | activiation wrote: | > I dock it and use an external monitor + kb/m. | | You could do the same with a phone | asdff wrote: | It really wouldn't require that much work. Just expose the | unix tooling these devices are running under the hood | anyway. Expose the actual file system not a toy one. All of | these complaints kind of go away when you simply jailbreak | your iphone, expose the filesystem for yourself, and can do | whatever thanks to the built in unix ecosystem the device | already runs, but walls off from you normally until its | jailbroken. | jerf wrote: | There's no longer any _technical_ reason why you couldn 't | hook your cell up to a ~$20 USB-C dock and have a full | Android environment with a complete desktop-style setup, | driving your monitor, using your mouse, etc. | | Every year I'm more surprised this isn't happening more. I | get that the empty clamshell laptop you slide a cell phone | into never took off, but this just gets cheaper and cheaper | every year. The drivers exist, the OS capability mostly or | entirely exists, we're just... _not doing it_. With a dock, | you can cobble things together; the TV your dad threw away, a | keyboard you found at goodwill, any old mouse. Incredibly | accessible; anyone with a phone and that level of access to | tech could have a full computing environment. | | I have tasted this with my Steam Deck. I have some limited | uses for it when I take it places but want it to do just a | bit more. I'd love it even more if my cell phone, which has | all the computing power it needs for the uses I have, could | do it. If I was a student, or less well off, being able to | turn my phone into a full computing environment and use it at | its full power would be a great way to save money. The only | two limitations on cell phones at this point are 1. the IO | with the screen and touchscreen and 2. power limitations from | being stuck on battery. Other than that they'd be quite | credible laptops from ~2013 or 2015 no question, possibly | even a few years later. Very capable nowadays. | freedomben wrote: | A lot of Android phones are capable of this (OnePlus, | Samsung) but for reasons I don't understand Google disables | it on the Pixel devices. I was infuriated when I tried to | plug in my Pixel to a USB-C to HDMI cable and went down the | troubleshooting rabbit hole only to find out that something | I used to do all the time on my OnePlus wasn't possible. | gumby wrote: | > There's no longer any technical reason why you couldn't | hook your cell up to a ~$20 USB-C dock and have a full | Android environment with a complete desktop-style setup, | driving your monitor, using your mouse, etc...Every year | I'm more surprised this isn't happening more. | | Because many people can do everything _they_ need on their | undocked phone already. | | For me, my phone is an auxiliary device and my preferred | device is the computer. But I'm sure I'm in the minority. | skydhash wrote: | Apart from dev work, almost off the other apps I use has | a tablet and phone version. But I wouldn't want the phone | version other than staying on top of things. I'm typing | this on the iPhone only because I'm laying on the couch | and too lazy to get up. Even reading an ebook is a pain | on such small screen. | charlesabarnes wrote: | Samsung phones and Dex seems to be what you want. | | https://www.samsung.com/us/apps/dex/ | asdff wrote: | It makes sense for the user but then you've just killed a | lot of products you've convinced users to buy. It's | ridiculus when you consider how many redundant computers | people have in their homes. Smart TV. Watch. Laptops. | Desktops. Phones. Even cars. In a perfect world you'd just | have a central server that all of these dummy screens just | tap into perhaps, either a handheld dock or a little thing | in your closet. However, that would stop us from spending a | grip on all these different product lines, all the | different redundant things. | | Garmin has made a brand of themselves doing this. Every | sport activity, there's a running watch, a golf watch, a | whatever the hell watch, a gps this, a gps that, a bike | computer, whatever, all bespoke and siloed for a few | activities, when really they could just sell you a single | slab that connects to a gps and could do whatever. But | then, they'd only be selling you one product and not | dozens. | Vrondi wrote: | Most people have zero clue this is possible, even on | devices they already own. | [deleted] | jrmg wrote: | I'd choose to use Xcode on Mac, but you _can_ write apps in | Swift Playgrounds on iPad, and even upload them to App Store | Connect for publication in the App Store. | freedomben wrote: | Isn't that just a thin client though? the actual "machine" | is the server and you're just remoting into it? I don't | think I'd consider that "developing" on an ipad since | without the server it's totally dead in the water. I'd call | that developing on a server | asdff wrote: | People have been developing code for the last 50 years with | command line ides. So long as the device has a command line | and privileges its as fine of a platform as any, and orders | of magnitude more performant than the hardware a lot of | developers historically made a career out of. IO should be | easy considering these things already have bluetooth and | could interface with a keyboard. You don't need a mouse for | command line work after all. | neonate wrote: | http://web.archive.org/web/20230615204308/https://raymii.org... | hcks wrote: | Here comes the whining. Listen, nobody is preventing you from | buying an Ubuntu-phone or whatever, root it, install Debian on | it, play Tux Racing for 10 minutes and let it collect dust in | your drawer for eternity afterwards. | recursive wrote: | My 24 year old Discman has a headphone jack. | treprinum wrote: | PinePhone + PineKeyboard might be what you are longing for. Maybe | even Planet Computers Gemini. | detourdog wrote: | 24 years ago one needed all those tools to make the device | useful. Today we have the app store with a small learning curve. | tombert wrote: | That's something I've been saying for a long time. | | It frustrates me a bit when you see these announcements for a | productivity app on iOS, and I'll just sit there thinking "wow, | this is almost as cool as the stuff I had on Windows 98...". | Stuff like Excel have (historically) been substantially worse | than their desktop counterparts on mobile. | | Now, in some ways I do understand _why_ this is; I suspect the | people making the apps figure that if you 're doing "real" work, | you'll probably still defer to a "real" computer running Windows | or macOS or Linux, but that sort of implies that smartphones | _aren 't_ "real" computers. | | My iPhone 12 Pro is so much more powerful than a typical Windows | 98 computer that I'm not even sure how you'd quantify it [1], but | if I had to _actually_ do work, it 's not immediately obvious to | me that the iPhone would actually be the superior option. | Microsoft Office 98 is still pretty usable, early Photoshop is | primitive but still reasonably intuitive, it's not hard to get | proper text editors. | | [1] Obviously you can look at clock speeds and "flops per second" | and stuff like that, but there's other ways that modern computers | are more powerful that are less obvious, like custom | decoder/neural chips, better compilers and more efficient | operating systems, etc. I think the safest thing to say is it's | _a lot_ more powerful. | tbailey wrote: | [dead] | [deleted] | elromulous wrote: | There's something abhorrent about running gcc on windows. | smoldesu wrote: | It's honestly more "abhorrent" running them on Mac. GNU's Not | Unix, Windows is not UNIX, but macOS 10+ is. | opless wrote: | It's indeed a good job, that the default compiler is clang | then ;-) | 2h wrote: | Might want to tell that to the Rust programming language, Go, | Zig and many others. | | You think Windows dev shouldn't happen just because you don't | like it? | dlivingston wrote: | They all use the LLVM backend -- nothing to do with gcc. | | AFAIK there is no native GCC compiler for Windows. You have | to use a pseudo-Linux environment like Cygwin or MinGW. | leshenka wrote: | Not by the fault of their own, though, but because of AppStore's | policy. | zwieback wrote: | Rasberry Pi and some other SoC-based embedded boards allow on- | board development but it's never as much fun as it should be. At | the end of the day I prefer some mixed model where I run VSCode | or similar on the PC and download/remote-debug on the target. | iguana_lawyer wrote: | What are you smoking? You can develop and run python on iPhones. | DrNosferatu wrote: | Isn't running Linux in the iOS browser, to compile with GCC, as | fast as the HP Jornada? | asylteltine wrote: | [dead] | dghughes wrote: | I wanted one of these so bad back in the 90s. I'm surprised I | didn't buy one but I think it cost about $1,000 CAD (stuff here | is much more than in the US). That's about $1,700 today but | really $1,700 now doesn't really compare to $1,000 in the 1990s. | It would probably be at least a month's pay for me back then. | accrual wrote: | It's so cool to see modern workflows and software on old devices. | I chase this through my retro computing hobby, seeing how far I | can take old machines. | | Do any HN users have a recommendation for a lightweight distro | that would run on an SSE1-only Pentium III CPU? The most recently | supported Ubuntu distro is a little too heavy for it. | rad_gruchalski wrote: | > Users should be in control of their devices | | One data point on this whole debacle around Apple walled garden. | It's basically my own opinion, not a blank statement. It won't be | very popular here but whatever. Here it goes: | | The reason why I'm personally sticking with the iPhone is exactly | the walled garden. I had a 3G, the 5, and now the 8 for last 5 | years (there goes the argument about buying a new phone every | year). I bought all of them knowing very well what I'm getting | into and I want it to remain that way. If I didn't want a walled | garden, I'd get an Android phone. | bubblethink wrote: | >If I didn't want a walled garden, I'd get an Android phone. | | I've never used an iphone, but Apple presumably does walled | garden much better than Android. I recently tried to install | google messages from play store (which I haven't used in a | while), and if you search for messages, the top 5 results will | all be different messaging apps that have a blue icon, with the | top one being adware. Embarrassingly, I fell for it thinking | that this is google messages. Play store makes it very hard to | see the vendor of an app. Much like search, this has been SEO'd | to death, and google will put some ad before their own | messaging app. Then they'll cry about Apple not supporting RCS. | dogma1138 wrote: | With an android phone you also primarily getting a walled | garden unless you explicitly looking to pirate apps or are | buying one of the few models with an open bootloader and an | active development community which at that point it's basically | a project phone. | | The main difference is that the walled garden you get with | Apple will be landscaped and taken care off for years and not | arbitrarily abandoned and turned into a drug den. | theamk wrote: | If Apple is walled garden, Android is fenced playground: | there are fences and gates, but they are just to keep kids | in, any adult can open those easily. | | You don't need to root your phone to install random apk files | from the web. There are few clicks in the settings, and then | it just works. You can have multiple app stores, or download | apps from the websites. | rad_gruchalski wrote: | > Apple will be landscaped and taken care off for years and | not arbitrarily abandoned and turned into a drug den | | Exactly. And to anyone complaining about Apple fees. Get this | in your head: running that ecosystem costs money. I get it | that sometimes crap slips through, no system is bulletproof. | But that's where the cut goes to. Yeah, we can discuss if | it's 15 or 30 percent. But you at least get a human to | communicate with on the other side. | JumpinJack_Cash wrote: | > > And to anyone complaining about Apple fees | | Hackers don't complain about fees they complain about the | inability to have such fees subsidized by Fortune500 | companies. | | This is what happened for years when hackers and wiseguys | would pirate Microsoft products...up in Redmond they just | kept the score and passed the bill onto the big corporate | clients who'd never pirate anything out of fear of | lawsuits. | | This is how things work in every realm, the catious elite | subsidise the risktaking poor. | dogma1138 wrote: | It's also important to add that whilst it does happen that | Apple bans accounts from at least my anecdotal evidence is | that it's far more common with Google and then you're | pretty royally fucked. | JPws_Prntr_Fngr wrote: | Sorry, what? Are you talking about the iOS App Store that's | been an unmitigated dumpster fire for like a decade? I | don't even open the thing, ever. It's so filled with | flaming garbage that I will only find and acquire an iOS | app via reddit, HN, or AlternativeTo. | rad_gruchalski wrote: | I don't know what you are talking about. This isn't my | experience and I valued human contact some years ago when | I was doing iOS development myself. Not my experience. | However, I appreciate that my experience may not reflect | the experience of another iPhone user. | TaylorAlexander wrote: | The reason I have the iPhone is that they make better choices | for a lot of things, not specifically that it is a walled | garden. I still wish I could take a system with that design, | then sideload, or root, at my own discretion, without every | update being a risk that the root will be broken. It's a rather | expensive computer and I wish I could use it as a more general | purpose computer for certain things. | bottlepalm wrote: | It kills me how powerful the iPhone is and I can't play Quake | or emulated games on it.. really makes you feel like you're | like a second class user. | | Also my iPhone could easily power a great desktop experience if | the software wasn't so locked down. | | Very sad, 15 billion transistors in my pocket and I can barely | use them to their potential. What kind of future is this? | eropple wrote: | _> I can 't play Quake_ | | https://github.com/tomkidd/Quake-iOS | | _> or emulated games on it._ | | https://docs.libretro.com/guides/install-ios/ | | You can build and deploy IPAs yourself, or you can use | AltStore and similar. | | _> Very sad, 15 billion transistors in my pocket and I can | barely use them to their potential. What kind of future is | this?_ | | One where it is comparatively very difficult to drain your | full store of data and your wallet by installing shitware. | theamk wrote: | So why did you buy it then? There are plenty of other phones | which can do this, pretty much any moden Android phone will | do. And Samsung phones even have "desktop mode" (DEX) which | give a desktop experience. | | This is like complaining: "my tractor has 600 HP and yet it | cannot even reach 80MPH. Very sad.", or "My Ferrari has 600 | HP, why can't it tow that 30 ton trailer. What kind of future | is this?" | rad_gruchalski wrote: | But you knew about all of that when you bought it, and you | still paid for it. | TaylorAlexander wrote: | Something can be a good choice and still have room for | improvement. This is how we think about how things can be | better. | rad_gruchalski wrote: | The original premise of an iPhone was that closed | experience. It was an improvement over the mobile market | that existed back then. I remember because I had my fair | share of Philips, Alcatel, Nokia, and ipaqs. What I'm | afraid of is that some actions and reactions of a--let's | be honest--insignificant number of power users who want | to root their phone is going to break the experience for | the majority of the regular users. Progress is welcomed | but let's not forget: the road to hell is paved with good | intentions. | kevinh wrote: | The original iPhone had no App Store and thus no way to | get third-party native apps at all. I don't know that the | original premise is at all relevant now. | tomcam wrote: | Do you feel that all consumers who purchase an iPhone are | aware of these limitations? | amelius wrote: | Simple reason. Lack of choice. | | When I bought my first iPhone it was the first product that | I paid a large chunk of my savings for and which I really | hated in several ways, but I needed in other ways. It's a | necessary evil. | memefrog wrote: | Android is another choice. It may not have been around | when you bought your first iPhone, but that was 16 years | ago. | munk-a wrote: | Well it depends. Personally I was a flip phone user until | my last one finally kicked the bucket and the Canadian | telecom monopoly presented me the choice of purchasing a | new "network compatible" flip phone for 250$ and paying | 25/mo or getting a leased to own phone on a 40/mo plan. | | I need a phone - I got a smart phone because it was the | only sane fiscal decision... and when I got that phone I | was presented with the options of iOS or locked down | Android. | | This may just be a Canadian thing but I think it's | important to not present this as a completely free choice. | If you're on a budget and you need a phone to occasionally | communicate with the outside world you're going to be | forced into getting a smart phone - the only choice is | Android vs. iOS. | [deleted] | xmprt wrote: | Just curious. What benefits do you see yourself getting by | having a walled garden? | robertoandred wrote: | Giving side eye whenever someone mentions installing an | antivirus on their android | cmdli wrote: | Something very specific to a walled garden is that app | developers are forced to play by the garden's rules. | Facebook/Google/etc are forced by Apple to reduce their | tracking, spam apps are less common, and generally apps are | forced to support the latest APIs. I'm not saying Apple is | some benevolent dictator, but it at least has helped curb | certain abuses by other megacorps. | selectodude wrote: | Not having to worry about shit. There are dozens, if not | hundreds of mobile devices I can buy where I can root and | have full access to them. I just don't trust myself to be | able to secure them properly. I am happy, no, thrilled, for | the opportunity to offload that risk to Apple. | ajsnigrutin wrote: | You are aware that iphone is a phone, that could be rooted | just by visiting a website and clicking on a button? | showdeddd wrote: | How can clicking an HTML element root my iPhone? | ajsnigrutin wrote: | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JailbreakMe | | https://www.pcworld.com/article/486995/jailbreakme_30_how | _do... | teolandon wrote: | When someone talks about unspecified iPhones in the year | 2023, they are probably not talking about iPhone 4 or | older. | jkubicek wrote: | If those links are accurate, JailBreakMe hasn't been an | issue for over a decade. | josephg wrote: | I see this as a weakness of the Unix security model, not a | benefit of the walled garden. Personally I'd love a future | where apps on my laptop are sandboxed just as thoroughly as | iOS apps. I want to be able to install and run desktop | software from the internet without worrying about it | exfiltrating or cryptolockering my data. Running an | application should be just as secure as visiting a website. | | And that capability seems orthogonal to the App Store. I | don't see any reason we need a monopolistic app store on | our phones to get good security. You don't need anyone's | permission to make a website. Why can't applications work | the same way? | redundantly wrote: | Higher quality applications. Fewer privacy violations. Lower | chance of identity theft. Better overall security. Longer | life cycles for new features. Even longer cycles for | critical/security updates. Reduced effort to maintain and | keep secure. | | On top of that, but not because of the walled garden aspect: | Better parental controls. Consistent user experience | (although for this one it helps to have the walled garden). | Better device interoperability across the ecosystem. | redmerchant2 wrote: | For me, "it just works." The amount of time configuring a OSX | vs Windows work computer was huge. | | For personal use cases it's the same. Smartphones are so | advanced that there's not that much functionality I'd get. | The benefit from customizability of an Android is less than | the stability and ease of access of an iPhone. Maybe ad | blocking is the only issue, YT on the phone is unusable, but | I have a pi-hole for my home network so I don't mind. | | I still have a rooted Android and a jail broken iPad to mess | around with. But beyond some nerdy stuff or hacking a mobile | game, it's mostly a gimmick. | orangecat wrote: | _The amount of time configuring a OSX vs Windows work | computer was huge._ | | Both of which can run any software of your choice, which | demonstrates that walled gardens aren't necessary for | usability. | rad_gruchalski wrote: | I don't want to manage the OS on my phone. I want it to work. | Get up in the morning, make a call, read some websites, check | weather, mail, maps, have music in the car. That's it. I | don't want to manage sd cards, memory, processes, I don't | need a text editor, shell, ssh, openssh, ..., on the phone. I | rarely buy apps and games. I want a solid OS working for | years. | | Frankly, everybody keeps saying that iPhones are e-waste. | Well, without starting a flamewar. I have managed more | Android e-waste for the family than Apple. Just my mother had | 5 different Android phones in the last decade. 4 of them | laying dead in the drawer next to me. | CharlesW wrote: | > _The reason why I 'm personally sticking with the iPhone is | exactly the walled garden._ | | Exactly. I can and do buy plenty of general-purpose computing | devices that I can install anything I want on. | | If I wanted to buy phones that I'd _also_ needed to sysadmin, I | could do that. But I don 't want that, and I find it a bit | silly that the author thinks governments should eliminate | appliance-style devices as a choice. | abecedarius wrote: | So what happens if the Vision Pro becomes the best interface | to general-purpose computing, Apple still insists on "owning | the experience", and their patents prevent full competition | from devices whose experience _you_ can own? | | I lean towards your philosophy but I worry that a near- | duopoly on advanced devices plus IP restrictions and the like | will keep us who value control over our own Turing machines | stuck with laptops and desktops. | zozbot234 wrote: | > If I wanted to buy phones that I'd also needed to sysadmin, | I could do that. | | Is "sysadmin-ing" a phone really that big of a barrier? | Ideally, you'd just install Mobian (i.e. Debian Mobile) on a | device, security patches would install automatically via | unattended-updates, and every two years you would be prompted | to initiate a version upgrade. Proprietary apps would be | available from Flatpak repos with strong sandboxing applied. | That's essentially the same level of 'sysadmin-ing' any | iOS/Android user has to do. | rad_gruchalski wrote: | Don't you see a problem with that? Sure, if I really wanted | to have debian on the phone, I'd get a capable Android | device and sideload something. Would my wife do it? Would | your average John Doe do it? Why would an average user ever | want to do it? One of the selling points of the original | iPhone was exactly that: shit is taken care of. The phone | will just work. | zozbot234 wrote: | Plenty of 'John Doe' types are using feature phones these | days, _because_ they 're uncomfortable with the | proprietary 'app' ecosystem that Apple and Android | devices come with. A fully supported Debian Mobile device | would essentially be a highly reliable feature phone, | with selected smartphone features added to it that | actually work _for_ the user and not against them. | rad_gruchalski wrote: | Great for them. Leave my walled garden alone. Considering | the volume at which iPhones sell I'm pretty confident | that's the sentiment from millions of users. | | Edit: When I'm somewhere hundreds of kilometers away from | home, sitting in the car parked on the side of the road | in the forest and trying to connect with people to figure | out where I need to go to exactly, I want maps, email, | browser, and phone. In that situation I really don't care | about debian, flatpak and stuff. I just want the device | to do what it was designed for. | vel0city wrote: | They're using feature phones which are 100% proprietary | and actively fight anyone from sideloading any app at all | because they're uncomfortable with Android's ecosystem, | which by comparison lets you install pretty much whatever | you want if you just enable developer mode on the device? | | No. People who choose feature phones do so because they | don't want to deal with apps _at all_ on their mobile | device. Not iOS apps, not Android apps, not Debian apps, | not Ubuntu apps, not Symbian apps, nothing. They 're | wanting a phone that's just a phone, even more of an | appliance than an iPhone. They probably wouldn't care | about the phone running Debian at all, and they | _absolutely_ won 't care about running GCC to compile | their own apps on their phones. | TylerE wrote: | "Ideally" is doing a lot of heavy lifting in your comment. | Of course, I find even vanilla android a terrible UX. | randlet wrote: | Poe's Law. | ecefour wrote: | My thoughts exactly. I like to tinker, but when it comes to my | phone I just want it to work. I find that the iPhone works | best. | zerr wrote: | I hear there are plenty of trash on Apple App store nowadays, | comparable to Play store. | type0 wrote: | There is, but the good ones are usually better on iOS | (support, battery life). That's not because iOS is terribly | good, rather because Android is unusually crappy and that | attitude propagates into apps and the whole ecosystem. | giobox wrote: | This is a false choice - there's no reason the iPhone can't be | both a walled garden-type device _and_ support alternative OSes | /software, just like a computer. | | We know because this exact strategy works just fine on Apple's | other computer platform, the Mac. Personally, I hate that our | phones, which increasingly are our _personal computer_ , are | often no longer just a general purpose compute device to use | how I want, _if i want_. | | The walled garden also relies enormously on Apple - a publicly | traded for profit enterprise - being a benign benefactor, which | to date has been (relatively) true. The future on a long | timescale may not be so nice. Were this to change, you don't | easily have a say in alternative software. | | Why shouldn't you be able to install a linux distro and turn | your old iPhone or iPad into a really power-efficient home | server-type appliance, _if you want to?_ My old MacBook is | doing exactly this. | jzb wrote: | Is what you want a walled garden or just the iOS garden that | happens to be walled? | | Android allows side loading, etc., but in practice it's a | walled garden too. Just slightly shorter walls and more lax | caretakers. | | I prefer iOS to Android myself, but it's in spite of the walled | garden - not because of it. | kayodelycaon wrote: | I like the walled garden because it prevents apps like | Facebook from vacuuming up all the data on my phone without | my permission. If Apple didn't have some barrier against bad | actors, things would be pretty dire. | | And no sandboxing isn't the solution here. Facebook will just | find ways around it. They did some pretty egregious bullshit | and had consumers side-loading privacy-violating apps via | their corporate account. Apple very publicly revoked their | certificate for it. Without the walled garden, Apple would | have no leverage to stop bad actors like Facebook. | | And avoiding widely used social apps isn't a good solution | either. The network effects effectively removes me from | communities that use it. | paulryanrogers wrote: | Recent Android releases are approaching parity and Play | Store terms could likewise restrict PII. Incentives are | also coalescing as Apple expands to services and Google | tries to win over privacy conscious customers. | rad_gruchalski wrote: | I'm consciously choosing the walled garden. Look, I'm a power | user. I write software for 20+ years and I like the freedom | of choice on the desktop and the server. If Apple started | doing some yanky stuff with macos, I'd switch to Linux, sure. | But for my phone, I want that walled garden. | pknomad wrote: | Same here. | | I like the walled garden. I like the curated experience. As far | as I am aware, me liking these things for my phone and | subsequently voting with my wallet doesn't prevent someone else | enjoying another ecosystem that doesn't have these things (i.e. | Android). | | People forget how awful the Android experience could be. | https://threatpost.com/google-booted-700000-bad-apps-from-it... | | I already manage computers for work; I don't want to do it on | my free time too. | bluescrn wrote: | With phones I've stopped caring. I don't do serious work or | serious play on a phone, it doesn't have a big enough screen or | suitable input devices. | | The iPad (especially the Pro), on the other hand, would be a | far better device if it wasn't so locked down. The hardware is | wasted on such limited 'apps'. Ideally, the iPad Pro would run | a full MacOS and be able to quickly switch between desktop mode | (when you have a pencil and/or keyboard) and an iOS compatible | mode when it's being operated by fat fingers on the | touchscreen. | mattmaroon wrote: | Most Android devices are pretty much a walled garden too. | jrm4 wrote: | I strongly believe this is an entirely false dichotomy; and I | think the Steam Deck will prove this, if it hasn't mostly | already. | collsni wrote: | Have fun living in your walled garden. Hopefully you aren't | this way with your news! :) | gjsman-1000 wrote: | _> The reason why I 'm personally sticking with the iPhone is | exactly the walled garden._ | | I was thinking about this and video games lately. The Nintendo | Switch, Xbox, PlayStation; they have some pretty mediocre games | if you go looking. But it's still nothing compared to the | biggest attempt at a fully open platform for games (OUYA; and | long before them, Atari). That went well... and so, even the | App Store, you can find bad apps and scams, but every time we | have a store that has no enforcement it's amazing how quickly | things get overrun. | | It's sometimes shocking how some developers can be such | lowlifes, that they will take a game and do an asset swap fifty | or a hundred times to make a buck by crowding the storefront. | Or just release games shamelessly that are completely | nonfunctional or have nothing to do with the advertising. It's | just stuff you can hardly believe people who program games | would ever make. Where's the sense of shame for releasing | things that are objectively garbage by every criteria and | charging $30 for it? (Again, just look at the OUYA when they | tried. 90% of it made _Superman 64_ look like a masterpiece.) | causality0 wrote: | Those old palmtops sure bring back memories. I'd probably still | have one as a hobby device, except for the fact they all came | with ghosty, smear-y DSTN screens whose black-white response time | is better measured in seconds instead of milliseconds. | 1827163 wrote: | You could alter the video timings on the Jornada a bit, by | writing to the video chip registers directly. That would | slightly improve its abysmal contrast ratio. | jeron wrote: | I'd like to see someone make a modern day Jornada out of the | UNIHIKER that's also on the front page | can16358p wrote: | Yup. I always wanted to develop, compile, and run programs on a | small screen device that is meant to be a personal communication | and media consumption device! | | Just because a device's hardware is capable of something doesn't | mean it makes sense to implement it. The whole article feels | clickbait to me TBH. | jrm4 wrote: | And who should have that power of implementation? You, because | of your opinion? The companies? Or the people who bought and | paid for the devices? | | It is emphatically not the case that there exists any | meaningful difficulty or cost to do the implementation. Just | open/root the devices for those who choose to do so and let | them go. Or would you rather limit freedom? | can16358p wrote: | Opening up a device just because a very niche user base (HN | isn't representitive of general public) has a proof-of- | concept use case that isn't productive in most cases, that | would bring maintenance issues and possible attack vectors? | | I'm glad Apple doesn't do that and focus on what generally | matters. | smoldesu wrote: | > Just because a device's hardware is capable of something | doesn't mean it makes sense to implement it. | | I disagree. If a device's hardware is capable of something, it | should be implemented as soon as possible. Now, it shouldn't be | _forced_ on everyone, but having options available has | traditionally improved software quality a lot. Even if that | capability is bad, exposing it sooner is better than realizing | it too late. | rhn_mk1 wrote: | Meant by whom? To some, device they carry in their pocket _is | meant to be_ a light hacking tool. That modern devices can 't | do that even if the owner wants it is a travesty. | can16358p wrote: | Those some can buy (or build) tailor-made devices or root an | Android if no other options are available. | | For 99.9% of the people, stability and security is more | important. | arp242 wrote: | It's not really about development as such, at least for me, | it's about "I can do whatever I want" and development is just | an example of that. | OJFord wrote: | > smaller than a netbook | | Wow, I'd forgotten about netbooks! What a brief craze in | hindsight - but it was a craze, they were hardly niche. Like if | the iPhone 3G and 3GS and the Nokia N95 and something else came | out, but then that was it for 'smart phones'. | hondo77 wrote: | It can also do things my watch, refrigerator, car, iPod, washer & | dryer, and smart lightbulbs can't do. Know why? Because they're | not meant to write and compile programs on. Why would anyone want | to write software on the ergonomically constrained (for writing | software) iPhone? Just because? Gotta do better than that. | PopePompus wrote: | Well, I run iPython on my Pixel phone a _lot_. When I 'm at | home, I can ssh into the phone and edit files etc with a real | keyboard and desktop display. I have many Python functions | defined which allow me to do quick, but fairly complex, | calculations on-the-go. I also mount the phone's filesystem | using sshfs on my desktop machine. That automatically happens | whenever the phone connects to my home WiFi. Much of this may | be possible on an iPhone too, for all I know, but with a Pixel | phone, a Linux desktop and a bunch of Raspberry Pis doing home | automation stuff, I only have to know Linux. So I hardly ever | write software using the phone's screen and virtual keyboard | (although I do occasionally do it), but I write quite a bit of | code on the phone using the desktop machine to provide better | I/O. | hahajk wrote: | His reason is that if he can program it, he is no longer at the | whims of the manufacturer. They decided that two timers were | "bad UX?" He can theoretically add it back in. | | I used a bullet journal for a while for the same reason. No | longer was I waiting for an update to a todo app, or voting on | features. If I wanted to add a "feature" to my todo list, I was | in full control of doing so. | pathartl wrote: | Honestly, the iOS tweaking community is a great | representation of why you should be able to have control over | your devices. Over the years many of these tweaks have been | integrated into iOS as standard features. Granted, many of | these were "duh" features like wallpapers, custom keyboards, | Control Center, wireless iTunes syncing, etc: | https://ios.gadgethacks.com/how-to/60-ios-features-apple- | sto... | ChildOfChaos wrote: | Oh shock horror. | | The iPhone doesn't do something a niche nerd does... what a | surprise. | type0 wrote: | ah, don't be childish | zwieback wrote: | Much as this makes me happy (I started at hp when this thing came | out) I have to say that a phone is not the same as a PDA or other | embedded device. A lot of the difficulty of developing on a phone | is that the appstore model and ubiquitous connectivity pretty | much mandates a much higher level of firewalling and sandboxing. | If you get a separate phone you won't use for making calls and | texting then jailbraking and doing on-board development isn't | that hard. | 0xbadcafebee wrote: | Modern technology sucks. Most developers still use a hypertext | document viewer as the interface for most applications. That | hypertext document requires more RAM to run than I used to have | total in hard drive space (for operating systems that also had | hypertext document viewers, that rendered the same visual result | as today). All new protocols have to run over port 443; I doubt | there's been a new protocol port registered with IANA in 5 years. | Smart devices have no keyboards and rely on swiping on glass. | Everything runs off an internet connection so you can't really | leave your house or a major city and keep things working, to say | nothing of vendor service outages. Android _could_ run regular | old Linux and apps and give you a desktop, but it doesn 't, | because we are not holy enough to receive a useful user | interface. Samsung had DeX in their phones like 10 years ago but | apparently that's done for, and good luck finding any modern | devices that support the standards needed to do things like | output video, audio, ethernet, etc via USB-C. Bluetooth is still | total garbage. We still have no audible user interfaces other | than shitty cloud-vendor-specific "assistants" (even though I | made my own audible user interface 15 years ago for a Car PC with | nothing but open source tools). We still pay the same amount for | a computer today that I paid for one 20 years ago (although | adjusted for inflation I guess those older ones were more | expensive). Computers today do exactly the same thing they did 20 | years ago: save a document or image or video over a network, | display it, print it. The only difference is they now do it in a | much slower, more wasteful way. And programming is still a thing. | To make a new program, a bunch of humans have to sit around | typing out lines of text into a screen, and going through a | laborious process to compile and test it all, and it's still full | of bugs. | | We could have much better technology. The proof is right there in | the article, from 24 years ago. We don't have anything better | because we just suck at making technology. We have resigned | ourselves to wasting time and making crap. | sophacles wrote: | I have a 20 year old laptop. Literally, I bought it for $1700 | in 2003. It doesn't run any software better than the $20 | raspberri pi I also have. It certainly doesn't run software | better than the $1200 desktop I built recently - that one can | play games on one monitor while web browsing on another | (sometimes I'll kick of a compile on that machine between | matches and neither seems to be hurt too bad by both things | running, if I tried that on the old laptop I'd probably have to | call the fire department). | | Of course my desktop machine doesn't actually have a "desktop" | (a silly name for a place to hold random icons, a misguided | attempt to make computers 'familiar' for folks who didn't quite | get it by using a bad metaphor) - it just shows me windows and | pops up a pretty menu to choose apps when I press a button. It | has 32GB of ram, and even when running games and lots of | browser windows and tabs I rarely use more than 16GB of them -- | including the fs caches. | | When the old laptop was current, I would use it for dev, and | send compiles off to a distcc cluster. Using that cluster I | could get a linux kernel built in a couple hours from scratch - | I can do the same on my single desktop machine today, but in | way less time (and there's a lot more code). Similarly, I would | rip CDs and queue up the wav for each track so the cluster | could pick them up and encode them as flacc and mp3. I'd rip a | stack of CDs until my drive was mostly full, and go to bed. In | the morning the encoding was almost finished. Last time I had a | device that could read CDs a few years ago, the bottleneck was | reading the CD, and a whole stack of CDs would finish in less | time than just ripping would 20 years ago. I have "slow" | internet at home, so saving them to some internet drive might | make the whole process take the same amount of time as the | ripping process in the past. | | I'm sorry you're disappointed we don't have flying cars yet, | but it's a bit absurdist to claim tech has gotten strictly | worse and that the old days were better - because the tech | today is literally orders of magnitude better than it was 20 | years ago. | Prcmaker wrote: | For me the most amazing part here was the briefly mentioned spec | of having a CFL backlight. I would have never considered that, | but for the era it makes perfect sense. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2023-06-15 23:00 UTC)