[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.
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