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If the iPhone or iPhone Pro could be connected to a USB-C dock with a keyboard, mouse and external monitor (or two) and display full fat MacOS; It would be the

If the iPhone or iPhone Pro could be connected to a USB-C dock with a keyboard, mouse and external monitor (or two) and display full fat MacOS; It would be the most impressive mobile device ever created. I could imagine companies issuing iPhones with MDM and corporate credentials preconfigured. As a developer, that would be a pretty cool workflow. I already ssh into a remote box to get faster development performance (even from my M1) - a powerful mobile device that could be used as a thin client would be crazy cool.

menshiki 3y ago
>display full fat MacOS That will never happen. iPadOS though... You never know.
midasz 3y ago
Always thought we'd go the way of our phones being thin clients - doesn't even need to be powerful right? I previously did development work on a VDI which ran on some cloud. Expected it to be laggy but it worked perfectly.
knallfrosch 3y ago
That's what we always hear, and it just never happens. For developers that cost the company upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, it just doesn't matter whether you issue them a $1,000 iPhone and a $2,000 PC, or a top-of-the-line $2,000 phone. We already have thin client solutions, and virtual machines, and remote development and, and, and...
FrozenSynapse 3y ago
Kind of what DeX does for Samsung.
- arnon 3y ago
  I love Dex. All workplaces have a USB-C hub that powers everything, and it just means I can skip the laptop. Slack, Chrome/Firefox, Miro, Zoom - it's all there.
- niutech 3y ago
  Or Ubuntu Touch (UBPorts).
chipsa 3y ago
I doubt MacOS, but... the USB-C port on the new ones does support DisplayPort over USB-C, so you should be able to plug it into a dock with all of those. I'm sure there will be experimentation with what that means exactly, but an iPhone as a thin client might actually be doable very well next month.
cjmcqueen 3y ago
I'm still waiting for this too... I suspect I will be waiting a very long time.
Ruarl 3y ago
This is all I want from my next phone.
perilunar 3y ago
This. My phone is already more powerful than my 9 year old laptop (but less storage), and doesn't get used nearly as much. So much wasted potential.
mrtksn 3y ago
That's just too niche of a use case IMHO. Samsung is doing it anyway but I'm yet to see anyone using it. Companies seem to prefer thin client solutions where the employees simply connect to the office workstations. That way, they don't have to provide expensive light and powerful computers, anything that can connect to the internet and stream the image of the desktop does the job and they don't have to deal with the security implications of having to manage a device which is outside of the company network. Sure, the iPhone can act as the think client but you still need to provide the screen, keyboard and mouse so maybe just slap a cheap computer to those and don't bother with providing company phone which would definitely be more expensive. So the use case boils down to people that for some reason have access to a screen, keyboard and mouse in many places but don't have computers at these places so they provide their phones as computers. Alternatively, maybe people who would like to save money by having one computer for everything is also a target audience but AFAIK Apple doesn't go after people who want to save money.
kimburgess 3y ago
You can already do that with an iPad (sans fat OS). If you're using Blink Shell (https://blink.sh https://blink.sh) the external display is independent of what's on the iPad too, which works really neatly. This is the exact setup I used as my main dev machine in a previous role. Would be very nice to see if this works on the new iPhones. A thin client with decent security in your pocket with keyboard/mouse/display at both home and work seems like a very approachable computing setup. Photo for reference: https://twitter.com/_______kim/status/1348736952330301440 https://twitter.com/_______kim/status/1348736952330301440
- jonfw 3y ago
  Blink shell is interesting but I need the same filesystem for my terminal, IDE, email, chat, and web browser to be effective. That's the real trouble with the remote dev environment- invidual tools can work fine but nothing integrates as well as localhost
iamjake648 3y ago
> I could imagine companies issuing iPhones with MDM and corporate credentials preconfigured This is already happening with iPhones & iPads, the Dev tools just aren't anywhere close to being able to match macOS. I'm sort of surprised Apple hasn't at least ported Xcode to be able to run on iPadOS.
amhenk 3y ago
This is my dream computing experience. No laptop, no desktop, just your phone and you plop it on a dock with maybe an external SSD and GPU for games. I feel the cloud could even enable this to some degree but that feels kind of gross. It would be so cool to have something like this though.
- niutech 3y ago
  Ubuntu Touch provides this convergence.

menshiki 3y ago

>display full fat MacOS That will never happen. iPadOS though... You never know.

midasz 3y ago

Always thought we'd go the way of our phones being thin clients - doesn't even need to be powerful right? I previously did development work on a VDI which ran on some cloud. Expected it to be laggy but it worked perfectly.

knallfrosch 3y ago

That's what we always hear, and it just never happens. For developers that cost the company upwards of hundreds of thousands of dollars per year, it just doesn't matter whether you issue them a $1,000 iPhone and a $2,000 PC, or a top-of-the-line $2,000 phone. We already have thin client solutions, and virtual machines, and remote development and, and, and...

FrozenSynapse 3y ago

Kind of what DeX does for Samsung.

arnon 3y ago
I love Dex. All workplaces have a USB-C hub that powers everything, and it just means I can skip the laptop. Slack, Chrome/Firefox, Miro, Zoom - it's all there.
niutech 3y ago
Or Ubuntu Touch (UBPorts).

chipsa 3y ago

I doubt MacOS, but... the USB-C port on the new ones does support DisplayPort over USB-C, so you should be able to plug it into a dock with all of those. I'm sure there will be experimentation with what that means exactly, but an iPhone as a thin client might actually be doable very well next month.

cjmcqueen 3y ago

I'm still waiting for this too... I suspect I will be waiting a very long time.

Ruarl 3y ago

This is all I want from my next phone.

perilunar 3y ago

This. My phone is already more powerful than my 9 year old laptop (but less storage), and doesn't get used nearly as much. So much wasted potential.

mrtksn 3y ago

That's just too niche of a use case IMHO. Samsung is doing it anyway but I'm yet to see anyone using it. Companies seem to prefer thin client solutions where the employees simply connect to the office workstations. That way, they don't have to provide expensive light and powerful computers, anything that can connect to the internet and stream the image of the desktop does the job and they don't have to deal with the security implications of having to manage a device which is outside of the company network. Sure, the iPhone can act as the think client but you still need to provide the screen, keyboard and mouse so maybe just slap a cheap computer to those and don't bother with providing company phone which would definitely be more expensive. So the use case boils down to people that for some reason have access to a screen, keyboard and mouse in many places but don't have computers at these places so they provide their phones as computers. Alternatively, maybe people who would like to save money by having one computer for everything is also a target audience but AFAIK Apple doesn't go after people who want to save money.

kimburgess 3y ago

You can already do that with an iPad (sans fat OS). If you're using Blink Shell (https://blink.sh https://blink.sh) the external display is independent of what's on the iPad too, which works really neatly. This is the exact setup I used as my main dev machine in a previous role. Would be very nice to see if this works on the new iPhones. A thin client with decent security in your pocket with keyboard/mouse/display at both home and work seems like a very approachable computing setup. Photo for reference: https://twitter.com/_______kim/status/1348736952330301440 https://twitter.com/_______kim/status/1348736952330301440

jonfw 3y ago
Blink shell is interesting but I need the same filesystem for my terminal, IDE, email, chat, and web browser to be effective. That's the real trouble with the remote dev environment- invidual tools can work fine but nothing integrates as well as localhost

iamjake648 3y ago

> I could imagine companies issuing iPhones with MDM and corporate credentials preconfigured This is already happening with iPhones & iPads, the Dev tools just aren't anywhere close to being able to match macOS. I'm sort of surprised Apple hasn't at least ported Xcode to be able to run on iPadOS.

amhenk 3y ago

This is my dream computing experience. No laptop, no desktop, just your phone and you plop it on a dock with maybe an external SSD and GPU for games. I feel the cloud could even enable this to some degree but that feels kind of gross. It would be so cool to have something like this though.

niutech 3y ago
Ubuntu Touch provides this convergence.