5 ms·

As soon as I saw Ubuntu Edge back in 2013, I have been dreaming of the day something like Continuum is a reality and not just for Windows. For Linux and MacOS

As soon as I saw Ubuntu Edge back in 2013, I have been dreaming of the day something like Continuum is a reality and not just for Windows. For Linux and MacOS as well. Hopefully, it's not to far off now.

notadoc 10y ago
Greatly agreed. Being able to dock a phone and turn it into a fully functioning desktop is a phenomenal idea and feels like the natural progression. I don't think we'll ever see that with the Mac though unfortunately, and I suspect Apple would never introduce a cursor and windowing system into iOS either.
- dogma1138 10y ago
  Can't you already do that today with any phone with an hdmi out and a Remote Desktop client?
- criddell 10y ago
  It's a neat idea, but I think it's an idea ahead of it's time still. There have been docking laptops forever and even that doesn't seem to have taken the world by storm. My PC is configured with terabytes of slow storage, gigabytes of fast storage, a fast CPU, a fast GPU, and applications that need lots of storage and a fast video card and big screens. I'm unconstrained on size and power consumption and optimized for performance and my efficiency. Meanwhile, my phone makes all kinds of compromises in order to be small and run all day on a single charge. If being able to dock a phone is a good idea, why not go one step further? Make a watch that's your PC. When you sit down at a keyboard and monitor at Starbucks, it pairs with your watch and you get to work. Make the phone be nothing but a remote speaker, microphone, and display for your wrist computer. Your desktop is just a remote keyboard, mouse and display.
  - nambit 10y ago
    Alternatively, make everything a remote keyboard/mouse/display for your home computer. Even another desktop computer.
    - criddell 10y ago
      It doesn't make a lot of sense to me because the software I run on my watch is nothing like the software I run on my desktop. To use the typical car analogy, it feels like designing a motorcycle that you can attach a second set of wheels and a cabin to turn it into a car. Or a second set of wheels and a bed to turn it into pick up truck. Or wings to become an airplane. Or a hull to become a boat.
      - int_19h 10y ago
        But the reason why you run different software on your watch is because it cannot be a desktop. What if it could? All your examples sound ridiculous, because we know that there's no technological way to make it work well. But suppose there was one. Wouldn't you want a car that could turn into a monster truck, minivan, boat or airplane, if all of these actually worked well? Especially if it was all for a fraction of the combined cost of these things today?
        jodrellblank 10y ago
        Not really, honestly. My car is useful. An adaptable car would take more design effort, so likely cost more. I have no use for a monster truck, a boat, I can't pilot an aeroplane, and if I did sink or crash-land my car then I'm out one car that I have use for, and need. (Wheras, if I hire and crash a boat now, my car is still fine). And I don't want to imagine the insurance, MOT, or servicing cost for a vehicle which has to meet flight safety regulations but which is also waterproof and which has brakes able to stop a full minivan. Minivan, might have limited use - but where would I keep the minivan part while it isn't on my car? And if I had somewhere to keep it, I may as well get a trailer or a roof-rack right now to get most of the benefit for almost none of the cost, or hire a minivan for a day if I need to carry more people instead of more stuff.
        int_19h 10y ago
        I think you're stretching the analogy beyond the limit of its usefulness :) A phone is always on you anyway, usually in your pocket. What disadvantage do you see from making it the "universal compute unit", so to speak, driving your tablet, your laptop etc - which then just become combo display/entry devices? If you don't need a device in a particular form factor, then you just don't buy one, and the question of storage doesn't arise. People can make arrangements depending on their specific use cases - someone might do phone/tablet, another person might do phone/laptop, yet another would span the full gamut with phone/tablet/laptop/desktop etc. And if you think that you don't need something, and then later find out that you actually do, it's easy to add that capability. Cost is not really an issue here. Phones today are already powerful enough to serve as compute devices for all desktop tasks for the majority of the users, so we're not talking about anything more expensive than usual. And those user for whom it is not the case - developers, 3D designers, hardcore gamers etc - can still have dedicated devices, where it makes sense (i.e. usually for a desktop and/or laptop).
  - xj9 10y ago
    personal compute mesh.
  - EpicBlackCrayon 10y ago
    I disagree. Most people can get what they need done on something like a Chromebook which have comparable specs to the devices in their pockets. It's more so that the interface of the app, which is based on the screen size of the device is inconvenient. For instance, you wouldn't want to type a paper or do spreadsheets on your phone.
    - criddell 10y ago
      Most people don't write papers or create spreadsheets. Their phone is their computer. The market that Microsoft seems to be after seems small to me. You already can do Chromebook like stuff with a phone and bluetooth keyboard and I do see people using that combination, just not very often. What are the applications that have an interface that will scale well between a 4" handheld display and three 28" desktop 4k displays?
      - scholia 10y ago
        They don't: there are different UIs for different screen sizes. Your data is in the cloud (eg a Word Document in OneDrive on on Azure) and you can access it from a full desktop program on a PC or Mac, from an app on iOS or Android, or via a web browser on any device that has one. This is a cross-platform vision that works both online and offline (unlike Google) and that ultimately doesn't care which device you use (unlike Apple).
        criddell 10y ago
        But that's not the vision from the article ("Microsoft is about to turn a phone into a real PC") or this thread. Take a phone and plug in a bigger display and keyboard and mouse and suddenly it's a desktop computer. So a single application is going to need to cope with a 4" touchscreen display with no keyboard or mouse as well as a multi-monitor setup without touch, but with a keyboard and mouse.
        scholia 10y ago
        > So a single application is going to need to cope with a 4" touchscreen display with no keyboard or mouse as well as a multi-monitor setup without touch, but with a keyboard and mouse. Yes, it reflows. You use the app when it's in phone mode, and you get the full desktop-style UI when in Continuum mode. There are several demos online. See for example, from April 2015 (so it's surprising you haven't seen it before): Windows 10 Continuum for Phones LIVE DEMO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc1efHpPIVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc1efHpPIVo More recently: Enhanced Continuum For Phones demo (Build 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv5Y9vNOSMc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv5Y9vNOSMc
  - pjmlp 10y ago
    > It's a neat idea, but I think it's an idea ahead of it's time still. There have been docking laptops forever and even that doesn't seem to have taken the world by storm. Probably not the world, but the customers I deal with, surely yes. Laptops with docking station have been my work tool since 2006.
    - criddell 10y ago
      I'm not saying the market doesn't exist, just that it's probably not going to take off. I too use a dock (or port expander) but haven't had a lot of luck since I started moving to high-dpi displays a few years ago. Do you have a laptop that can drive a couple of 4k displays?
      - pjmlp 10y ago
        It might probably, a Thinkpad workstation, W510. However I am yet to get an employer or customer, having 4k displays, or allowing more than one external display.
      - imtringued 10y ago
        The latest macbook pro can drive 2 4k displays per USB C port. https://www.startech.com/AV/Converters/Video/thunderbolt-3-to-dual-displayport~TB32DP2 https://www.startech.com/AV/Converters/Video/thunderbolt-3-t... I don't know if apple fixed the incompatibility problem with older thunderbolt 3 devices though.
- unfamiliar 10y ago
  If they bumped the storage options, I see no reason why the phone couldn't run iOS and the plugged-in desktop-phone run macOS. Photos, email accounts, chat logs, etc could easily point to the same data on disk so you have two operating systems working off the same user data. A lot of the UI infrastructure for this is already there in the form of iCloud shared photo libraries and iCloud drive, which lets you access files in each app's container. Performance-wise, the iPhones are coming into line with the low end macs, and Apple is in a unique position with the Mac App store and past experience with chip changes (Rosetta) that it is a real possibility. It seems like a task that the Apple of yesteryear could have easily pulled off. I'm not sure the current Apple has the vision or ability to pull this off though.
  - JustSomeNobody 10y ago
    To build on what you say, once one plugs in their iPhone and MacOS boots and is on display, the iPhone touch screen itself could then be used for the trackpad. I could see a keyboard/dock combo where one could drop in their iPhone.
    - jamesmcintyre 10y ago
      This is a very "un-Apple" approach, I'd be surprised to see a configuration like that. Instead I'd only see the potential for Apple to switch the macbook line to a specially designed ARM chip. They wouldn't say it's to make it cheaper to manufacture, instead they'd claim "now that we control the entire hardware stack we can do things we couldn't do before". They'll claim their special ARM chip gives almost 2x battery life, better security, etc. And since most Pro's aren't using macbooks there'd be less fear of incompatible pro software- as long as you have the iLife suite, ms office suite, adobe suite and browser running you'll satisfy 95% of macbook users. Apple would then use this transition to pressure Intel into much lower prices for pro-range cpu's or at least pressure them to do things with their cpu's that a next-gen ARM chip couldn't. I don't see Apple blurring the lines of mobile/desktop UX simply because the ARM chip now enables the opportunity but I do see them moving their macbook line to ARM for cost reduction and increased leverage over Intel.
  - 10y ago
derekp7 10y ago
This is something I've wanted for a few years now (even before the Edge). But the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. To explain, let's examine a couple variations. First, you have your phone which connects to a dock, which lets your keyboard and monitor connect to the phone. Now, replace the dock with a full computer, but uses the phone for storage. If you had these two systems side-by-side, could you tell which one you were using? I guess that there is something to having your state be saved, so you can take your phone off the cradle, connect it to another device, and resume all your open apps. But the same could be done if the cradle is a full computer, and undocking the phone does a suspend-to-disk (remember the phone is the storage device). You'd just have to have that action integrated into the undock button. But overall, I think I would be better served by having the phone be the storage device for my desktop computing environment, instead of also being the CPU, GPU, storage, RAM, network, usb, and everything else.
- blisse 10y ago
  The end goal isn't whether state is ubiquitous or not. It is still that you don't need to buy a computer anymore, you can just buy a phone which does everything a computer does. Everything until that point is a compromise because the technology isn't there yet, but Microsoft also can't afford to not be ready the moment the technology is there, so they're iterating on it now to make sure they will be.
- intended 10y ago
  Don't think of just the American markets, think of developing markets. India is mobile first. Most people don't have a PC, and may never have a PC.
  - wklauss 10y ago
    Would they need it?
    - intended 10y ago
      I'd say the more important question is: Can microsoft afford to not target it? As for the answer to your question: Sure, why not? theres many limitations to a small screen. If all you need is a screen and keyboard dock, then why not? You'll get cheap "phone docks" at home, and it would be like carrying your brief case to and from work. If it works of course. Big if.

notadoc 10y ago

Greatly agreed. Being able to dock a phone and turn it into a fully functioning desktop is a phenomenal idea and feels like the natural progression. I don't think we'll ever see that with the Mac though unfortunately, and I suspect Apple would never introduce a cursor and windowing system into iOS either.

dogma1138 10y ago
Can't you already do that today with any phone with an hdmi out and a Remote Desktop client?
criddell 10y ago
It's a neat idea, but I think it's an idea ahead of it's time still. There have been docking laptops forever and even that doesn't seem to have taken the world by storm. My PC is configured with terabytes of slow storage, gigabytes of fast storage, a fast CPU, a fast GPU, and applications that need lots of storage and a fast video card and big screens. I'm unconstrained on size and power consumption and optimized for performance and my efficiency. Meanwhile, my phone makes all kinds of compromises in order to be small and run all day on a single charge. If being able to dock a phone is a good idea, why not go one step further? Make a watch that's your PC. When you sit down at a keyboard and monitor at Starbucks, it pairs with your watch and you get to work. Make the phone be nothing but a remote speaker, microphone, and display for your wrist computer. Your desktop is just a remote keyboard, mouse and display.
- nambit 10y ago
  Alternatively, make everything a remote keyboard/mouse/display for your home computer. Even another desktop computer.
  - criddell 10y ago
    It doesn't make a lot of sense to me because the software I run on my watch is nothing like the software I run on my desktop. To use the typical car analogy, it feels like designing a motorcycle that you can attach a second set of wheels and a cabin to turn it into a car. Or a second set of wheels and a bed to turn it into pick up truck. Or wings to become an airplane. Or a hull to become a boat.
    - int_19h 10y ago
      But the reason why you run different software on your watch is because it cannot be a desktop. What if it could? All your examples sound ridiculous, because we know that there's no technological way to make it work well. But suppose there was one. Wouldn't you want a car that could turn into a monster truck, minivan, boat or airplane, if all of these actually worked well? Especially if it was all for a fraction of the combined cost of these things today?
      - jodrellblank 10y ago
        Not really, honestly. My car is useful. An adaptable car would take more design effort, so likely cost more. I have no use for a monster truck, a boat, I can't pilot an aeroplane, and if I did sink or crash-land my car then I'm out one car that I have use for, and need. (Wheras, if I hire and crash a boat now, my car is still fine). And I don't want to imagine the insurance, MOT, or servicing cost for a vehicle which has to meet flight safety regulations but which is also waterproof and which has brakes able to stop a full minivan. Minivan, might have limited use - but where would I keep the minivan part while it isn't on my car? And if I had somewhere to keep it, I may as well get a trailer or a roof-rack right now to get most of the benefit for almost none of the cost, or hire a minivan for a day if I need to carry more people instead of more stuff.
        int_19h 10y ago
        I think you're stretching the analogy beyond the limit of its usefulness :) A phone is always on you anyway, usually in your pocket. What disadvantage do you see from making it the "universal compute unit", so to speak, driving your tablet, your laptop etc - which then just become combo display/entry devices? If you don't need a device in a particular form factor, then you just don't buy one, and the question of storage doesn't arise. People can make arrangements depending on their specific use cases - someone might do phone/tablet, another person might do phone/laptop, yet another would span the full gamut with phone/tablet/laptop/desktop etc. And if you think that you don't need something, and then later find out that you actually do, it's easy to add that capability. Cost is not really an issue here. Phones today are already powerful enough to serve as compute devices for all desktop tasks for the majority of the users, so we're not talking about anything more expensive than usual. And those user for whom it is not the case - developers, 3D designers, hardcore gamers etc - can still have dedicated devices, where it makes sense (i.e. usually for a desktop and/or laptop).
- xj9 10y ago
  personal compute mesh.
- EpicBlackCrayon 10y ago
  I disagree. Most people can get what they need done on something like a Chromebook which have comparable specs to the devices in their pockets. It's more so that the interface of the app, which is based on the screen size of the device is inconvenient. For instance, you wouldn't want to type a paper or do spreadsheets on your phone.
  - criddell 10y ago
    Most people don't write papers or create spreadsheets. Their phone is their computer. The market that Microsoft seems to be after seems small to me. You already can do Chromebook like stuff with a phone and bluetooth keyboard and I do see people using that combination, just not very often. What are the applications that have an interface that will scale well between a 4" handheld display and three 28" desktop 4k displays?
    - scholia 10y ago
      They don't: there are different UIs for different screen sizes. Your data is in the cloud (eg a Word Document in OneDrive on on Azure) and you can access it from a full desktop program on a PC or Mac, from an app on iOS or Android, or via a web browser on any device that has one. This is a cross-platform vision that works both online and offline (unlike Google) and that ultimately doesn't care which device you use (unlike Apple).
      - criddell 10y ago
        But that's not the vision from the article ("Microsoft is about to turn a phone into a real PC") or this thread. Take a phone and plug in a bigger display and keyboard and mouse and suddenly it's a desktop computer. So a single application is going to need to cope with a 4" touchscreen display with no keyboard or mouse as well as a multi-monitor setup without touch, but with a keyboard and mouse.
        scholia 10y ago
        > So a single application is going to need to cope with a 4" touchscreen display with no keyboard or mouse as well as a multi-monitor setup without touch, but with a keyboard and mouse. Yes, it reflows. You use the app when it's in phone mode, and you get the full desktop-style UI when in Continuum mode. There are several demos online. See for example, from April 2015 (so it's surprising you haven't seen it before): Windows 10 Continuum for Phones LIVE DEMO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc1efHpPIVo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sc1efHpPIVo More recently: Enhanced Continuum For Phones demo (Build 2016) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv5Y9vNOSMc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tv5Y9vNOSMc
- pjmlp 10y ago
  > It's a neat idea, but I think it's an idea ahead of it's time still. There have been docking laptops forever and even that doesn't seem to have taken the world by storm. Probably not the world, but the customers I deal with, surely yes. Laptops with docking station have been my work tool since 2006.
  - criddell 10y ago
    I'm not saying the market doesn't exist, just that it's probably not going to take off. I too use a dock (or port expander) but haven't had a lot of luck since I started moving to high-dpi displays a few years ago. Do you have a laptop that can drive a couple of 4k displays?
    - pjmlp 10y ago
      It might probably, a Thinkpad workstation, W510. However I am yet to get an employer or customer, having 4k displays, or allowing more than one external display.
    - imtringued 10y ago
      The latest macbook pro can drive 2 4k displays per USB C port. https://www.startech.com/AV/Converters/Video/thunderbolt-3-to-dual-displayport~TB32DP2 https://www.startech.com/AV/Converters/Video/thunderbolt-3-t... I don't know if apple fixed the incompatibility problem with older thunderbolt 3 devices though.
unfamiliar 10y ago
If they bumped the storage options, I see no reason why the phone couldn't run iOS and the plugged-in desktop-phone run macOS. Photos, email accounts, chat logs, etc could easily point to the same data on disk so you have two operating systems working off the same user data. A lot of the UI infrastructure for this is already there in the form of iCloud shared photo libraries and iCloud drive, which lets you access files in each app's container. Performance-wise, the iPhones are coming into line with the low end macs, and Apple is in a unique position with the Mac App store and past experience with chip changes (Rosetta) that it is a real possibility. It seems like a task that the Apple of yesteryear could have easily pulled off. I'm not sure the current Apple has the vision or ability to pull this off though.
- JustSomeNobody 10y ago
  To build on what you say, once one plugs in their iPhone and MacOS boots and is on display, the iPhone touch screen itself could then be used for the trackpad. I could see a keyboard/dock combo where one could drop in their iPhone.
  - jamesmcintyre 10y ago
    This is a very "un-Apple" approach, I'd be surprised to see a configuration like that. Instead I'd only see the potential for Apple to switch the macbook line to a specially designed ARM chip. They wouldn't say it's to make it cheaper to manufacture, instead they'd claim "now that we control the entire hardware stack we can do things we couldn't do before". They'll claim their special ARM chip gives almost 2x battery life, better security, etc. And since most Pro's aren't using macbooks there'd be less fear of incompatible pro software- as long as you have the iLife suite, ms office suite, adobe suite and browser running you'll satisfy 95% of macbook users. Apple would then use this transition to pressure Intel into much lower prices for pro-range cpu's or at least pressure them to do things with their cpu's that a next-gen ARM chip couldn't. I don't see Apple blurring the lines of mobile/desktop UX simply because the ARM chip now enables the opportunity but I do see them moving their macbook line to ARM for cost reduction and increased leverage over Intel.
- 10y ago

derekp7 10y ago

This is something I've wanted for a few years now (even before the Edge). But the more I think about it, the less sense it makes. To explain, let's examine a couple variations. First, you have your phone which connects to a dock, which lets your keyboard and monitor connect to the phone. Now, replace the dock with a full computer, but uses the phone for storage. If you had these two systems side-by-side, could you tell which one you were using? I guess that there is something to having your state be saved, so you can take your phone off the cradle, connect it to another device, and resume all your open apps. But the same could be done if the cradle is a full computer, and undocking the phone does a suspend-to-disk (remember the phone is the storage device). You'd just have to have that action integrated into the undock button. But overall, I think I would be better served by having the phone be the storage device for my desktop computing environment, instead of also being the CPU, GPU, storage, RAM, network, usb, and everything else.

blisse 10y ago
The end goal isn't whether state is ubiquitous or not. It is still that you don't need to buy a computer anymore, you can just buy a phone which does everything a computer does. Everything until that point is a compromise because the technology isn't there yet, but Microsoft also can't afford to not be ready the moment the technology is there, so they're iterating on it now to make sure they will be.
intended 10y ago
Don't think of just the American markets, think of developing markets. India is mobile first. Most people don't have a PC, and may never have a PC.
- wklauss 10y ago
  Would they need it?
  - intended 10y ago
    I'd say the more important question is: Can microsoft afford to not target it? As for the answer to your question: Sure, why not? theres many limitations to a small screen. If all you need is a screen and keyboard dock, then why not? You'll get cheap "phone docks" at home, and it would be like carrying your brief case to and from work. If it works of course. Big if.