4 ms·

Apple should of made the iPhone dockable years ago. They could own the PC market right now. There’s no reason I should have a separate laptop or desktop with an

Apple should of made the iPhone dockable years ago. They could own the PC market right now. There’s no reason I should have a separate laptop or desktop with an iPhone 11 in my hand.

randyrand 6y ago
whats the advantage? A tad cheaper? I gladly prefer to be able to use my phone and laptop simultaneously for different tasks and will pay that premium.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  Don't know why you got downvoted. I makes a lot of sense to tightly integrate desktop and phone (answer and make calls from the desktop, continue browsing on any other device) but it makes little sense to demand the phone to also be a good desktop, as those are two conflicting engineering goals.
- trixie_ 6y ago
  Depends how it is 'attached'. If it were wirelessly attached you could use both. Similar to how wireless CarPlay works.
B1FF_PSUVM 6y ago
I believe HP tried a dockable Windows phone a few years ago. Looked neat. It's a pity that Windows phone failed, it was pretty good and we could use a third choice. Edit: 2016 HP Elite X3, e.g. https://www.cnet.com/reviews/hp-elite-x3-preview/ https://www.cnet.com/reviews/hp-elite-x3-preview/
- trixie_ 6y ago
  Asus tried too. Many companies tried to make MP3 players before Apple as well. The point is execution, and I believe it is a slam dunk for Apple. Majorly upsetting the balance of PC ownership.
rbanffy 6y ago
You will still want a keyboard, trackpad, and at least one screen. At that point, you might as well add a CPU and some memory, flash and battery and have a full laptop that can sync with (icloud does an excellent job at that) and charge your phone. Many companies tried dockable phones and it never worked well. The cost of a dock is more or less the same as the cost of a desktop as smart or smarter than a smartphone.
- trixie_ 6y ago
  Other companies tried mp3 players, and then there was apple. A cost of a desktop dock would be nothing compared to the cost of a tower. The mouse/keyboard/monitor you'd have to buy either way.
  - rbanffy 6y ago
    The design constraints of a phone are much different from a desktop computer or a laptop. A good phone is not a good laptop and the corpses along the way more or less prove that. A phone will run a benchmark faster than a laptop for a couple minutes. Keep it under pressure for an hour - say, render a 4K video with a couple layers - it'll have nowhere to dump the excess heat. There is one way to really pull it off, however - when plugged, the phone hands over processing and RAM to the docking station (maybe via an image transfer from one hypervisor to the other), but there is very little to be gained here - coordination between the two, the way Apple already does it between macOS and iPhone, is a great experience. If the hypervisors keep the memory image in sync, say, every second copying dirty state to the phone, you can even unplug it without risking much.
    - trixie_ 6y ago
      People watch videos and play 3d games on their iPhones for hours now already. Absolutely no need to make a dock more complicated than a dumb proxy for input/output devices.

Apple should of made the iPhone dockable years ago. They could own the PC market right now. There’s no reason I should have a separate laptop or desktop with an iPhone 11 in my hand.

randyrand 6y ago

whats the advantage? A tad cheaper? I gladly prefer to be able to use my phone and laptop simultaneously for different tasks and will pay that premium.

rbanffy 6y ago
Don't know why you got downvoted. I makes a lot of sense to tightly integrate desktop and phone (answer and make calls from the desktop, continue browsing on any other device) but it makes little sense to demand the phone to also be a good desktop, as those are two conflicting engineering goals.
trixie_ 6y ago
Depends how it is 'attached'. If it were wirelessly attached you could use both. Similar to how wireless CarPlay works.

B1FF_PSUVM 6y ago

I believe HP tried a dockable Windows phone a few years ago. Looked neat. It's a pity that Windows phone failed, it was pretty good and we could use a third choice. Edit: 2016 HP Elite X3, e.g. https://www.cnet.com/reviews/hp-elite-x3-preview/ https://www.cnet.com/reviews/hp-elite-x3-preview/

trixie_ 6y ago
Asus tried too. Many companies tried to make MP3 players before Apple as well. The point is execution, and I believe it is a slam dunk for Apple. Majorly upsetting the balance of PC ownership.

rbanffy 6y ago

You will still want a keyboard, trackpad, and at least one screen. At that point, you might as well add a CPU and some memory, flash and battery and have a full laptop that can sync with (icloud does an excellent job at that) and charge your phone. Many companies tried dockable phones and it never worked well. The cost of a dock is more or less the same as the cost of a desktop as smart or smarter than a smartphone.

trixie_ 6y ago
Other companies tried mp3 players, and then there was apple. A cost of a desktop dock would be nothing compared to the cost of a tower. The mouse/keyboard/monitor you'd have to buy either way.
- rbanffy 6y ago
  The design constraints of a phone are much different from a desktop computer or a laptop. A good phone is not a good laptop and the corpses along the way more or less prove that. A phone will run a benchmark faster than a laptop for a couple minutes. Keep it under pressure for an hour - say, render a 4K video with a couple layers - it'll have nowhere to dump the excess heat. There is one way to really pull it off, however - when plugged, the phone hands over processing and RAM to the docking station (maybe via an image transfer from one hypervisor to the other), but there is very little to be gained here - coordination between the two, the way Apple already does it between macOS and iPhone, is a great experience. If the hypervisors keep the memory image in sync, say, every second copying dirty state to the phone, you can even unplug it without risking much.
  - trixie_ 6y ago
    People watch videos and play 3d games on their iPhones for hours now already. Absolutely no need to make a dock more complicated than a dumb proxy for input/output devices.