3 ms·

It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just economics. There is no money in it so there is no funding available for it. Things like Librem are practically basement operati

by api 3y ago

It’s not a conspiracy. It’s just economics. There is no money in it so there is no funding available for it. Things like Librem are practically basement operations compared to Apple, Samsung, and Google. Mobile software is far harder and more costly to produce than desktop because the small form factor and rapid casual use cases mean there can be zero tolerance for bad UX. The amount of effort that goes into just getting things like touch keyboard and touch gestures just right is monumental. The tolerances are very tight. PCs with big screens and keyboards can support I/O paradigms that are much less demanding of perfection or require much less polish to make usable. A PC can just put some buttons on the screen or use a command line and that works fine. A phone UI needs obsession.

Gigachad 3y ago
It wouldn't surprise me if Apple has spent more time and money on the iOS keyboard than Purism spent on the entire phone + software. Modern phones are probably the most advanced products humanity has ever produced.
- api 3y ago
  What efforts like Purism should do is greatly reduce their scope. Make a device that does the basics which would be phone, text, basic web, and maybe a media player or support in the web browser for this use case. At first anything else could be accessed via the web, and maybe look at introducing PWAs as a way to do basic apps. Keep the GUI as simple as possible with the smallest number of options and features as possible and focus more on perfecting what is there. Ship a more minimal better polished product. If you don’t have the resources to perfect it, drop it. Make anything more custom or advanced configurable via ssh, but make the core features entirely usable without doing that. At first you might not even have an App Store, just a CLI package manager you can access from a PC with ssh. It’d basically be a hackable minimalist phone. Someone who just wants a privacy oriented minimal phone could use it as is and power users could ssh in and hack on it.
  - SoftTalker 3y ago
    I think maps/navigation is a must. Without that, I’d just use a $30 feature phone
  - Gigachad 3y ago
    At this point I think the task is simply impossible, the minimum required features on a phone are too high now. If it doesn't have all day battery life, maps, and have a good camera, it's useless. So all you'll still have a real phone with you anyway. We may as well be talking about an open source, community developed trip to the moon. There are no viable intermediary steps. You either have billions of dollars to find it, or you can't do it. If you only care about a portable hackable device, the steamdeck is probably the product for you.
    - tmtvl 3y ago
      Fun fact: according to Wikipedia the revenue of Apple in 2022 was 394.3 bn USD*, while the GDP of Finland was 321.2 bn USD**. In other words Apple could outspend a member of the EU. I don't think a crowd-sourced community project can match that. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc. ** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland

by api 3y ago

Gigachad 3y ago

It wouldn't surprise me if Apple has spent more time and money on the iOS keyboard than Purism spent on the entire phone + software. Modern phones are probably the most advanced products humanity has ever produced.

api 3y ago
What efforts like Purism should do is greatly reduce their scope. Make a device that does the basics which would be phone, text, basic web, and maybe a media player or support in the web browser for this use case. At first anything else could be accessed via the web, and maybe look at introducing PWAs as a way to do basic apps. Keep the GUI as simple as possible with the smallest number of options and features as possible and focus more on perfecting what is there. Ship a more minimal better polished product. If you don’t have the resources to perfect it, drop it. Make anything more custom or advanced configurable via ssh, but make the core features entirely usable without doing that. At first you might not even have an App Store, just a CLI package manager you can access from a PC with ssh. It’d basically be a hackable minimalist phone. Someone who just wants a privacy oriented minimal phone could use it as is and power users could ssh in and hack on it.
- SoftTalker 3y ago
  I think maps/navigation is a must. Without that, I’d just use a $30 feature phone
- Gigachad 3y ago
  At this point I think the task is simply impossible, the minimum required features on a phone are too high now. If it doesn't have all day battery life, maps, and have a good camera, it's useless. So all you'll still have a real phone with you anyway. We may as well be talking about an open source, community developed trip to the moon. There are no viable intermediary steps. You either have billions of dollars to find it, or you can't do it. If you only care about a portable hackable device, the steamdeck is probably the product for you.
  - tmtvl 3y ago
    Fun fact: according to Wikipedia the revenue of Apple in 2022 was 394.3 bn USD*, while the GDP of Finland was 321.2 bn USD**. In other words Apple could outspend a member of the EU. I don't think a crowd-sourced community project can match that. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Inc. ** https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finland