4 ms·

Tiny screens and keyboards on touch screens will never be the best for authoring activities, even for most of the activities you've listed, including communicat

by arsome 5y ago

Tiny screens and keyboards on touch screens will never be the best for authoring activities, even for most of the activities you've listed, including communicating. Take my dad for example - not a tech guru, but works in Excel all the time, does renovation planning in Sketchup, etc. Imagine trying to use Excel on your phone to actually do something beyond passively viewing a document. Imagine trying to manipulate a model with any degree of precision. In my experience, anyone who needs to do significant authorship prefers real keyboards and larger screens. Phones and tablets are passive consumption and quick communication devices only, the exact opposite of what we should be encouraging in many ways.

handrous 5y ago
> Phones and tablets are passive consumption and quick communication devices only, the exact opposite of what we should be encouraging in many ways. They are really far from being "passive consumption and quick communication devices only". They're outstanding tools & aids for all kinds of things, most of which desktops and laptops are much worse for. What's with HN and labelling phones and tablets a "consumption devices"? It's wildly incorrect, to the point that it doesn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny.
- orwin 5y ago
  They do are mostly consumption devices though. And passive ones at that. I use my phone for according, that's one active use. I really can't use it for planning hikes, but i guess i could (it just that after 4 days without sun, i'm always happy to have a map with me, so i'll have to plot the hike on the map anyway). I guess i could have two activ use. I use it to get alert when a combo high tide+wind+temperature+nothing in my schedule, but really, i coded this on my PC, run it through my server and just use my phone company API to receive a text message, so that's passive too. Research on wikipedia when i'm not sure about a name or something? Its consumption, but active consumption. All my other uses are passive or are about communication, and takes 80% of my time on the phone. Please xplain to me other uses? I guess i could use it for photography, but i don't really care.
  - handrous 5y ago
    - Photography and video (capture and editing—is a desktop nice for that? Sure, but the desktop can't also be your camera) - Art (sketching/"painting"/et c) - Music (tuner, recording, accompaniment, sheet-music display, composition, synth, metronome) - A vast array of essentially secretarial functions (especially for phones) that aid all kinds of activities (reminders, lists, taking dictation, voice-recording, calendar stuff, organizing information) - Construction, home projects, crafting of various sorts, and car repair (my phone is a: level, tape measure, notebook, calculator, flashlight, and reference manual) - Tablets are pretty good for writing, with a wireless keyboard. Arguably better than a laptop per se (because you can position the screen separately from the keyboard for better ergonomics), but worse than a desktop or docked laptop with a large screen. — Hiking, walking, outings in the city—navigation, wildlife & plant identification, ride hailing. I'm far from a phone/tablet power-user and I use them for all kinds of stuff. If I had to live with only one personal computing device—well, it'd have to be a phone, because they're indispensable for all kinds of interactions with third parties that assume you have a cell phone, but if I had two the other would be an iPad Pro, no question whatsoever. I'd feel crippled with only a laptop or desktop, for almost every task except tinkering with computers, which I care about doing outside of work less with each passing year. Most of the actual benefits of computing, in my personal life, as in, what makes my life easier, or helps me accomplish things, are better-available or only available on phones and tablets, and much of the rest is good-enough on those that I'd have trouble justifying a desktop or laptop just for those tasks. The main exception is fiddling with computers. Laptops and desktops are good for fiddling with computers (and not only that, to be clear—3D modeling and such remain much better there, too, for example—but that's really all I use them for, as far as productive use). I think I also have a fundamental problem with classification of things into "consumption" or "creation", because it seems like successful and good and actually useable by and useful to normal people applications of computing tend to end up in the former, even if it's in service of tasks that aren't "consumption", like, "oh, navigation is just consumption" or "payment reminders are just consumption" or "AR sensors automatically measuring things for you is just consumption". Isn't the point that computers do what we need without our having to write a program from scratch every time? Shit, I thought computers doing stuff for us with, ideally, no commands or effort required, was the whole point of what we all do (I mean, that and selling ads, obviously). For that matter, many of the benefits that a computer gives me over pencil and paper, for writing software, is "consumption"—that is, the output from tools I didn't write and often didn't even deliberately invoke, like code navigation, documentation look-up, hints, autocompletion, warnings, auto-formatting, et c. But those things are still tools aiding in creation. I don't like dismissing phones and tablets as "consumption devices" because they're not great for programming, when they are outstanding tools, far superior to a laptop or a desktop, for all kinds of other activities.
- spideymans 5y ago
  A close friend of mine is an event coordinator. She shoots photos and videos on her iPhone. She edits the content directly on her iPhone and uploads the content to social media. And of course, the iPhone is her primary communication and organizational tool. She has a Mac, but it might as well be a $1,100 thin client for Google Docs, as that is the only productive thing she does on it. I have no doubt she'd get by fine with an iPad or Chromebook (although I wouldn't recommend either at this point).
spideymans 5y ago
>Phones and tablets are passive consumption and quick communication devices only, the exact opposite of what we should be encouraging in many ways. Passive consumption and quick communication is exactly what a lot of end users use PCs for. A tablet would be very viable for these users.

by arsome 5y ago

handrous 5y ago

> Phones and tablets are passive consumption and quick communication devices only, the exact opposite of what we should be encouraging in many ways. They are really far from being "passive consumption and quick communication devices only". They're outstanding tools & aids for all kinds of things, most of which desktops and laptops are much worse for. What's with HN and labelling phones and tablets a "consumption devices"? It's wildly incorrect, to the point that it doesn't stand up to a moment's scrutiny.

orwin 5y ago
They do are mostly consumption devices though. And passive ones at that. I use my phone for according, that's one active use. I really can't use it for planning hikes, but i guess i could (it just that after 4 days without sun, i'm always happy to have a map with me, so i'll have to plot the hike on the map anyway). I guess i could have two activ use. I use it to get alert when a combo high tide+wind+temperature+nothing in my schedule, but really, i coded this on my PC, run it through my server and just use my phone company API to receive a text message, so that's passive too. Research on wikipedia when i'm not sure about a name or something? Its consumption, but active consumption. All my other uses are passive or are about communication, and takes 80% of my time on the phone. Please xplain to me other uses? I guess i could use it for photography, but i don't really care.
- handrous 5y ago
  - Photography and video (capture and editing—is a desktop nice for that? Sure, but the desktop can't also be your camera) - Art (sketching/"painting"/et c) - Music (tuner, recording, accompaniment, sheet-music display, composition, synth, metronome) - A vast array of essentially secretarial functions (especially for phones) that aid all kinds of activities (reminders, lists, taking dictation, voice-recording, calendar stuff, organizing information) - Construction, home projects, crafting of various sorts, and car repair (my phone is a: level, tape measure, notebook, calculator, flashlight, and reference manual) - Tablets are pretty good for writing, with a wireless keyboard. Arguably better than a laptop per se (because you can position the screen separately from the keyboard for better ergonomics), but worse than a desktop or docked laptop with a large screen. — Hiking, walking, outings in the city—navigation, wildlife & plant identification, ride hailing. I'm far from a phone/tablet power-user and I use them for all kinds of stuff. If I had to live with only one personal computing device—well, it'd have to be a phone, because they're indispensable for all kinds of interactions with third parties that assume you have a cell phone, but if I had two the other would be an iPad Pro, no question whatsoever. I'd feel crippled with only a laptop or desktop, for almost every task except tinkering with computers, which I care about doing outside of work less with each passing year. Most of the actual benefits of computing, in my personal life, as in, what makes my life easier, or helps me accomplish things, are better-available or only available on phones and tablets, and much of the rest is good-enough on those that I'd have trouble justifying a desktop or laptop just for those tasks. The main exception is fiddling with computers. Laptops and desktops are good for fiddling with computers (and not only that, to be clear—3D modeling and such remain much better there, too, for example—but that's really all I use them for, as far as productive use). I think I also have a fundamental problem with classification of things into "consumption" or "creation", because it seems like successful and good and actually useable by and useful to normal people applications of computing tend to end up in the former, even if it's in service of tasks that aren't "consumption", like, "oh, navigation is just consumption" or "payment reminders are just consumption" or "AR sensors automatically measuring things for you is just consumption". Isn't the point that computers do what we need without our having to write a program from scratch every time? Shit, I thought computers doing stuff for us with, ideally, no commands or effort required, was the whole point of what we all do (I mean, that and selling ads, obviously). For that matter, many of the benefits that a computer gives me over pencil and paper, for writing software, is "consumption"—that is, the output from tools I didn't write and often didn't even deliberately invoke, like code navigation, documentation look-up, hints, autocompletion, warnings, auto-formatting, et c. But those things are still tools aiding in creation. I don't like dismissing phones and tablets as "consumption devices" because they're not great for programming, when they are outstanding tools, far superior to a laptop or a desktop, for all kinds of other activities.
spideymans 5y ago
A close friend of mine is an event coordinator. She shoots photos and videos on her iPhone. She edits the content directly on her iPhone and uploads the content to social media. And of course, the iPhone is her primary communication and organizational tool. She has a Mac, but it might as well be a $1,100 thin client for Google Docs, as that is the only productive thing she does on it. I have no doubt she'd get by fine with an iPad or Chromebook (although I wouldn't recommend either at this point).

spideymans 5y ago

>Phones and tablets are passive consumption and quick communication devices only, the exact opposite of what we should be encouraging in many ways. Passive consumption and quick communication is exactly what a lot of end users use PCs for. A tablet would be very viable for these users.