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Mobile devices are very constrained. The OSes are locked down, the screens are small, high CPU apps are out, and input is slow and cumbersome. After trying a l
by api 9y ago
Mobile devices are very constrained. The OSes are locked down, the screens are small, high CPU apps are out, and input is slow and cumbersome.
After trying a lot of apps I have found that a smart phone has only a few functions:
1. Talking and texting.
2. Taking pictures and video.
3. Maps and directions.
4. Music, movies, ebooks.
5. Brief interactions with services like Uber, Lyft, AirBnB, Los Angeles metro, etc.
6. Casual web browsing. (I want a bigger screen and a keyboard for anything in depth.)
7. edit: Casual gaming.
Looking at how most other people use phones I don't think I am alone.
These devices are limited and I don't think it took us long to exhaust their potential. There just isn't much else a phone can do well (and that locked down vendor fiefdoms will allow).
The PC era on the other hand gave us a long, wide, and deep trench of innovation that is still not exhausted. PCs are more open, more extensible, and have a much wider IO path to the human in the chair. The breadth of what a PC can do is incredible.
(The main problem with PCs is antiquated, insecure, bloated operating systems. Fix that and I think you'd see even more innovation.)
Of course I have been a mobile skeptic since the iPhone. I just saw the next incarnation of the feature phone. Since it was still locked down by carriers and vendors and since its bandwidth to the user is poor I knew it would not deliver lasting innovation.
- dyarosla 9y agoYou forgot the biggest smartphone market: 7. Games
- api 9y agoI guess I don't game much, but yes that can be added too. Still there is a huge gap between phone games and PC and console games.
- dyarosla 9y agoThere definitely is a gap but not in the way I think you meant; in case you were not aware, mobile games are now the biggest market segment of video games period (console, PC included)
- justonepost 9y agoConsidering you missed the #1 market, maybe your research techniques might be lacking?
- aranjedeath 9y agoAlso, for clarity, the browsing and gaming done on phones isn't casual.
- Giorgi 9y agoExactly. I always cringe when I hear "build mobile first" that's just stupid, "flappy-bird" era is dead, agreed! - but there are so much more potential for full blown websites (or "webapps") that require PC/laptop and larger screen.
- api 9y agoMobile could be more innovative if it were more open and modular. Think of all the hundreds of things that would never have happened on the PC if they were as closed as phones.
- adrianratnapala 9y agoI suspect there is money to be made selling a "just a phone". That pretends to do only your list above and heavily optimised the the usability an reliability of that subset. Any user-visible changes to those apps would be done only very conservatively. It would be a lie though. Since it really would be a Turing complete phone, with lots of programs on it. That was true even of the old Symbian phones, and items from 3-6 go well beyond what they did. Nonetheless, I think there is benefit to be gained by trading flexibility for reliability. One business difficulty/opportunity is how do you pick out services like Uber, AirBVnB etc. I suspect the solution is profitable, but user hostile: lock them into a vendor when they buy their phone.
- tmnvix 9y ago8. Mobile wifi hotspot. I loathe using my phone for most things. Any opportunity I get it is hotspot + laptop.
- TeMPOraL 9y ago> The main problem with PCs is antiquated, insecure, bloated operating systems. Fix that and I think you'd see even more innovation. In a way, it's a feature, not a bug. The security of mobile devices is created by the very same thing that limits their usefulness - by OS being vendor-controlled, fully sandboxed and locked down, so that users (via programs acting on their behalf) can't break it. I'm not sure if it is even possible to have a secure system that allows you to do anything interesting on it.
- tekjenitalor 9y agoI never really got the feature-phone for anything more than data and voice either. When you add in the downsides for those mobile features: MRC,1k for a decent phone, and the moving targets all the app providers put out it's easy to see through the facade to a bubble market based on peoples low tech IQ and attention deficit: both encouraged in/by other popular media. The only upside is it's easy to track you with these devices by those who care about you the most: big $$ and big brother.