6 ms·

>Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be. Really ? Ask any non technical user to open an app that is not on the desktop, or to find

>Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be. Really ? Ask any non technical user to open an app that is not on the desktop, or to find a picture hidden in some random folder.

airstrike 7y ago
Ask anyone to do any real work – i.e. to be productive – on mobile and watch them struggle, at least in relative terms vs. how they'd fare using a real computer.
zzzcpan 7y ago
Smartphones cannot cheat Fitts's law, they will always be much slower to use than desktop computers. > Ask any non technical user to open an app that is not on the desktop, or to find a picture hidden in some random folder. What does it have to do with productivity? Ask them to find a picture 100000 times on a smartphone and on a desktop having similarly capable software but with smartphone/desktop specific UI features. But you didn't suggest that, because I'm sure you intuitively realize how ridiculous this comparison is.
- TuringTest 7y ago
  > Smartphones cannot cheat Fitts's law, they will always be much slower to use than desktop computers. Why would Fitt's law have anything to do with smartphones being slower? If anything, it is the opposite. A phone screen is smaller, so all targets will be close to each other - and Fitt's law says these will be faster to access than on the large screen of a desktop. BTW, that's also why interfaces on mobile have big icons with lots of white space around them - Fitt's law says that bigger targets are faster and easier to reach.
  - zzzcpan 7y ago
    To fit equivalent desktop functionality to the smartphone you have to make targets either smaller, which will make them impossibly slow to use, or hide them behind other targets, which again will make them slower to use requiring hitting multiple targets instead of one. I.e. can't cheat Fitts's law. > targets will be close to each other Close to each other targets are effectively smaller targets, because the area you are hitting them with has some dimensions and has to fit in a smaller area to avoid hitting closer targets too.
    - TuringTest 7y ago
      But in desktop everything will be far away, so it doesn't provide any advantage either. And hitting the targets that are visible will be faster on mobile.
- on_and_off 7y ago
  What does discoverability has to with productivity ? Is that a serious question ?
sli 7y ago
> non-technical Do non-technical users typically do a lot of actual work on their mobile devices? Ask a developer to write a full software suite on a phone and you'll get basically the same response that you're describing, just from the other direction. This analogy just doesn't work because it's simply the statement that people who don't know how to do X will struggle to do X.
- on_and_off 7y ago
  >Do non-technical users typically do a lot of actual work on their mobile devices? What does it has to with anything ? the discussion is about desktop UI. And non technical users are a large chunk of people doing work with computers .. devs are a minority. I am not sure why I need to mention this point, but looks like that's where we are. > it's simply the statement that people who don't know how to do X will struggle to do That's a tautology .. if the only test for an UI is whether it is usable with step by step instruction, there is no distinction between e.g. MSDOS and Windows 10.

>Desktop is far more productive than mobile ever will be or can be. Really ? Ask any non technical user to open an app that is not on the desktop, or to find a picture hidden in some random folder.

airstrike 7y ago

Ask anyone to do any real work – i.e. to be productive – on mobile and watch them struggle, at least in relative terms vs. how they'd fare using a real computer.

zzzcpan 7y ago

Smartphones cannot cheat Fitts's law, they will always be much slower to use than desktop computers. > Ask any non technical user to open an app that is not on the desktop, or to find a picture hidden in some random folder. What does it have to do with productivity? Ask them to find a picture 100000 times on a smartphone and on a desktop having similarly capable software but with smartphone/desktop specific UI features. But you didn't suggest that, because I'm sure you intuitively realize how ridiculous this comparison is.

TuringTest 7y ago
> Smartphones cannot cheat Fitts's law, they will always be much slower to use than desktop computers. Why would Fitt's law have anything to do with smartphones being slower? If anything, it is the opposite. A phone screen is smaller, so all targets will be close to each other - and Fitt's law says these will be faster to access than on the large screen of a desktop. BTW, that's also why interfaces on mobile have big icons with lots of white space around them - Fitt's law says that bigger targets are faster and easier to reach.
- zzzcpan 7y ago
  To fit equivalent desktop functionality to the smartphone you have to make targets either smaller, which will make them impossibly slow to use, or hide them behind other targets, which again will make them slower to use requiring hitting multiple targets instead of one. I.e. can't cheat Fitts's law. > targets will be close to each other Close to each other targets are effectively smaller targets, because the area you are hitting them with has some dimensions and has to fit in a smaller area to avoid hitting closer targets too.
  - TuringTest 7y ago
    But in desktop everything will be far away, so it doesn't provide any advantage either. And hitting the targets that are visible will be faster on mobile.
on_and_off 7y ago
What does discoverability has to with productivity ? Is that a serious question ?

sli 7y ago

> non-technical Do non-technical users typically do a lot of actual work on their mobile devices? Ask a developer to write a full software suite on a phone and you'll get basically the same response that you're describing, just from the other direction. This analogy just doesn't work because it's simply the statement that people who don't know how to do X will struggle to do X.

on_and_off 7y ago
>Do non-technical users typically do a lot of actual work on their mobile devices? What does it has to with anything ? the discussion is about desktop UI. And non technical users are a large chunk of people doing work with computers .. devs are a minority. I am not sure why I need to mention this point, but looks like that's where we are. > it's simply the statement that people who don't know how to do X will struggle to do That's a tautology .. if the only test for an UI is whether it is usable with step by step instruction, there is no distinction between e.g. MSDOS and Windows 10.