this post was submitted on 03 Jan 2024
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That’s so interesting. I hope that once they lose control of iOS, they allow iPads and even iPhone to run full macOS when docked.
It could work like the steamdeck where it can be in desktop or handheld mode. When in handheld mode, certain apps that run in the background, like Dropbox would stop running to maximize battery life or something.
This would be great. I really hate the direction smartphones have went
We have power in our pockets that would make mincemeat of older PCs, and yet we barely use it.
Apple has the best use case for it, pretty much all of their software is for ARM anyway, and they have full control over their hardware and software. But of course we can't cannibalise Mac sales, can we?
Google could do it too. What they should have been doing was drifting more towards the mainline Linux kernel with each Android update, and bringing ChromeOS closer to it too. But nah, Google seems content just doing what they're doing now. They'll only do it if Apple does it first.
Microsoft bailed on phones long ago, but given how much they keep bloating windows I'm unsure they'd give mobile/PC convergence the proper showcase it deserves either.
Multiple Linux distributions are currently putting groundwork in place for mobile/PC convergence, but it's slow-moving and there aren't really any "real" Linux phones out there to run them on anyway.
So many things like this in computing boil my piss. We could have it so much better.
Smart phones would make mincemeat of older PCs? More like modern PCs. It’s pretty crazy when you consider how much more powerful and iPhone is than a laptop for around the same price.
Sure, if you shop smart you can do better, but still it’s more power than almost anyone needs.
I guess another reason Apple hasn’t done it as they would probably need to increase the amount of ram in the phones to make them run really well.
Yeah when I say old I don't mean 90s PCs, I mean pretty much any laptop that's not being sold. And even plenty of the weaker ones currently being sold.
A low end laptop, maybe, but anything you need power to do would be rough given the thermal limitations and comparatively weaker processor in the iPhone. I do agree that most could get away with a docked phone instead of a desktop if the implementation was good enough.
Apple's been moving toward unifying their OSes for over a decade now. They're playing the long game. They probably still have another decade (or two) to go.
Apple's stance now is clear: developers need to make universal apps if they want them to run on both platforms, using tools and frameworks that are common to both. It's much easier to make an iPad app run well on a Mac than vice-versa. I use some Mac apps that were ported from iPad, and the experience ranges from "okay" to "perfect", depending on how much care the devs put into it. This is obviously the future of Mac software development, but it would require rewriting many apps almost from scratch. Apple's not going to pull that rug out from under us anytime soon.
The next natural step would be to allow iPads to use the "desktop" UI of universal apps when connected to a keyboard and mouse. But I don't think we'll ever see iPads running arbitrary Mac apps. When I think of the Mac-only apps I use, I just don't see how they'd run on iPad. How am I gonna run BBEdit on an iPad when there are hundreds of menu items, and a ton of UI elements that are like 8 pixels square? Never mind the lack of a real file system.
Microsoft tried this with Windows 8. It went poorly. The experience of using desktop apps with a touch screen sucks, and trying to make desktop UIs touchscreen-friendly across the board just handicapped desktop users. Apple has a better strategy here. They're slowly molding the software ecosystem to make this Not Suck.
I doubt it will be a decade or 2 we are basically there on iPad and android can do this. If Apple opens the flood gates on this devs will jump aboard quickly.
How so? You mean running a full Linux VM or something? Android doesn't run any desktop apps natively.
if you mean the tablet UI mode, yeah, that's an easy thing for Apple to implement. I think they already have, more or less. iPadOS already has mouse support.
I’m referring to Samsung and dex mode. There are phones that do this, I just don’t know the official name.
Dex mode and spoofing magnetic strips are the two things I really miss about using a Samsung device.
What do you think about the s20 as a device today?
I have an iPhone 15, but I need to have a backup phone on hand for my work. I was thinking of selling my old xr and getting the s20 as they cost about the same.
Not sure if it’s just better to hold onto the xr.
My wife is still using her S20+ and has no intention of changing anytime soon. I think it's still a really solid device that should stick around for a while.
Does she ever use the dex mode? This is particularly interesting to me, but it doesn’t seem that many people use their phone that way.
She doesn’t, but she doesn’t have a usecase for it. I used it a lot. My work takes me to a lot of different sites run by my company and all our desk workstations have a USB-C dock with monitors, a mouse, and a keyboard. So, if I was unexpectedly without my laptop, I could work reasonably well with just my phone plugged in.
Thanks, it's too bad that Apple hasn't implements this yet.
They aren't restricting iPads to iPadOS because of the App Store, but because they want to sell Macs to those who want to use macOS, ideally in addition to an iPad. I don't see it happening.
I think they don’t know how to sell an iPad with macOS that restricted to the App Store.
I think they make way more money from the App Store than selling macs.
I think they were trying to find a way to combine the two lines and make them 100% App Store only.
Would be nice. iPad is not a wholly terrible experience to run docked, but it still leaves a lot to be desired compared to a desktop OS.
There's no way they'll "lose control of iOS" though. Worst case scenario, they make some concessions like allowing third-party stores, but then just follow Google's lead and make it as unappealing as possible to sideload apps or install other app stores (and still have their own defaults that can't be removed).
This, aside from sideloading, would make me actually consider an iPhone.
For me, it is sideloading only. I personally loath android, but I use it for the sideloading. Once apple allows it fully, I'm getting an iphone.