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Nothing on mobile is okay. I know everyone loves their smart phones but they really are terrible computers in every way except for portability. Use a computer w
by superkuh 3y ago
Nothing on mobile is okay. I know everyone loves their smart phones but they really are terrible computers in every way except for portability. Use a computer when you actually want to do things. Smartphones are just for when you're literally unable to use a real computer.
- hutzlibu 3y ago"Smartphones are just for when you're literally unable to use a real computer." When I am lying on a couch or in bed, I could use a laptop or tablet, but for just surfing a bit, a mobile phone is just more handy. But sure, smartphones or tablets are not really useful for anything productive.
- graemep 3y agoI recently bought a PineTab2. Its a pretty rough around the edges experience (hardware is fine, but Plasma Mobile is still lacking compared to Android) BUT with the case with a keyboard it is far better for writing anything. Not as good as my desktop, but a lot better than most mobile devices. I usually use Whatsapp web and the Signal desktop app at my desktop when I want to write more than sentence or two. A physical keyboard makes it so much easier. For example, I left making my comments here today until I sat down at my desktop. If you must use a phone for typing more than a tiny bit, buy a keyboard for it. Even a little bluetooth keyboard is a lot better. I am tempted by phones with keyboards. I used to have a Blackberry a long time ago and there are Android phones in similar formats.
- tetris11 3y agoYearly reminder that Nokia perfected the slideout keyboard on their N900 model over 10 years ago
- tomjen3 3y agoThey are much, much better for photos. I will even say they are better for most videos chats. They are better music players. They are better GPS nav systems.
- bluGill 3y agoThey are better readers as well. Often reading is followed by some form of writing though and then they are terrible.
- brookst 3y agoIndeed. They are also better (virtual) tape measures, contactless payment devices, crash/fall detectors, emergency rescue summoners, and, yeah, phones. Turns out different form factors are better at different things.
- mrob 3y agoThey are better for taking photographs simply because they're smaller, but for every other aspect of photo viewing, management, and editing, they are worse. They have a tiny screen, insufficient local storage and compute, and no keyboard or mouse. They're not better music players. Sound quality can be identical because phones support USB DACs, but again, everything else is worse. On a real computer I can easily search my library just by typing. There's no way to find specific tracks that fast on mobile.
- Pxtl 3y ago> insufficient local storage My phone has 128gb. How is that not enough for photo editing?
- mrob 3y agoRaw photographs are tens of megabytes each, and it's not unusual to take hundreds per session.
- dredmorbius 3y ago
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoOne of the most important watersheds in my career, was reading Jenson's The Simplicity Shift[0], many moons ago. It was written pre-iPhone, and talked about the brutal necessity of reducing mobile UX to the very barest essentials. I find that I am revisiting a lot of this stuff, when writing Apple Watch apps. [0] https://jenson.org/The-Simplicity-Shift.pdf https://jenson.org/The-Simplicity-Shift.pdf (Downloads the entire booklet as a PDF)
- scottjenson 3y agoThis is a lovely thing to read on a Sunday morning, thank you!
- ChrisMarshallNY 3y agoNo, thank YOU! [EDIT] And, since I have you on the horn, There seems to be a PDF error, where the first page (The Challenge) is repeated twice.
- scottjenson 3y agooooh, interesting! I'll check it out, thanks!
- nameless_me 3y agoThank you for sharing this work. I look forward to reading it.
- thih9 3y agoSliders are okay. Editing photos in lightroom mobile works fine. Interfaces that are about swiping and sliding - from match 3 games, through tinder, to scrolling feeds - are very responsive.
- crazygringo 3y ago> Smartphones are just for when you're literally unable to use a real computer. Which is literally extremely frequent, since we often need to do stuff on the go. Which is why an article like this is so important -- we should improve, not give up. There's no reason to think text editing on a phone has reached its final form.
- TheHappyOddish 3y ago> since we often need to do stuff on the go Do we though? It is a fair assumption, but I urge you to stop and inspect. We didn't "need" to do most things we do on the go 20 years ago, do we now? If we're being honest, most people using their smartphones on the go are not for critical situations.
- dTal 3y agoYou can buy quad core x86 "laptops" - real computers - the size of a phone. How much more "on the go" do you need?
- pawelmurias 3y agoI have big hand so tiny keyboard on a teeny-weeny keyboard won't be usable at all. Desktop Linux is super shit
- superkuh 3y agoThe reason I think it won't get much better is that the size of smart phones will not change. It is size that's really the issue for text editing. No space for a real keyboard, no space for a real display.
- fomine3 3y agoFoldable is a way to have a big screen, though the problem is also not much solved for tablets.
- myk9001 3y agoMaybe we can look at it as an opportunity for inventing a fundamentally different approach to text editing on mobile? In another topic on HN people are discussing how software gets more bloated over time, because throwing more powerful hardware at a problem is easier than optimizing the software. As mobile devices aren't likely to get much bigger or get equipped with a mouse and keyboard anytime soon -- in other words, we don't seem to have a hw solution -- isn't it the perfect moment to try something novel and different? Sure, it isn't a given someone will come up with a great, new approach soon enough. Still seems worth it looking at this as an opportunity.
- mcronce 3y agoIf slide-out keyboards were still a thing they wouldn't be nearly as bad but we had to get rid of those because being thinner is the most important thing in the world
- postmodest 3y agoAnd then because on screen keyboards suck so bad we had to make phones BIGGER which meant they needed to be THINNER which meant cameras needed to stick out, and here we are, in a world where an iPhone Pro Max takes up the full height of my jeans pocket and digs into my hip when I sit down. Yeyyy.
- robinson7d 3y agoiPhone mini was a thing for a while. It still has the stuck out camera but otherwise only a bit larger than the iPhone 5 from 9 years earlier. I wish they hadn’t ended it on the 13, because I also feel phones are getting too large.
- fragmede 3y agoOr, there just isn't the market for a current gen mini and an SE.
- robinson7d 3y agoThat’s for sure why it was discontinued. I’m sad it’s gone, but I do understand I’m a minority in that feeling. I was just offering it as a counter point (from as recent as last year) to the onscreen keyboards necessitating huge phones that the comment I replied to was suggesting. Plus an option that is still modern enough to use. Using the mini keyboard isn’t much worse than the pro. It’s feasible, these minis type well, I don’t think it’s the reason for bigger, thinner phones with cameras popping out. I’d blame content more.
- postmodest 3y agoI am going to run my 13 mini into the ground. I honestly miss the OG iPhone size.
- dclowd9901 3y agoIt’s an interesting take. I had to stop and think for a second “is there anything I prefer a phone for”, and yeah the only positive of using a phone (for me) is portability and multi functionality (being a de facto camera/camcorder/recorder).
- dredmorbius 3y agoStrong agreement: <https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/880e5c403edb013918e1002590d8e506 https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/880e5c403edb013918e100...> (Largely targeted at tablets, though it also applies largely to smartphones, and has a specific comparison including them.) Even a minimal notebook computer vastly exceeds any smartphone or tablet.
- hackernewds 3y agoReductive argument. Smartphones are way better platforms for something like TikTok or Twitter than desktop. Or an alarm clock app
- nonethewiser 3y agoThe input is low bandwidth. It’s communication with thumbs.
- mhb 3y agoMy saw is a bad hammer.
- mrguyorama 3y agoThen why is everyone so insistent that the future of house building and nail nailing the saw?
- tgv 3y agoBut you wouldn't complain you can't use a saw to drive nails in the wall, would you?
- mhb 3y agoExactly. It would be like complaining that a phone isn't a good tool for text editing.
- prng2021 3y agoWhat an absolutely lazy assessment of technology. I’d say using those two appendages we call legs to move around while still being able to do many things you use a desktop computer for is a revolutionary piece of technology. Do you really want to carry a Walkman around along with a backpack with a Rand McNally map to guide you so you don’t get lost in a neighborhood you’ve never visited? Maybe watch a portable DVD player on your way to/from work on the subway to pass the time? Carry some quarters so you can call someone at a pay phone or pay for a parking spot?
- pcthrowaway 3y ago> I’d say using those two appendages we call legs to move around while still being able to do many things you use a desktop computer for is a revolutionary piece of technology. The above poster did acknowledge that smartphones absolutely win out in portability. Obviously you're stuck with mobile UIs for things like navigation, directions, location information, and a lot review apps, ordering a car, etc. Consequently, the user experience for those things is often better on a mobile phone than it would be on a desktop (if a desktop UI is even provided) For anything involving typing more than an address, you're almost always better off with a Desktop application. There's nothing "lazy" about pointing this out
- prng2021 3y ago> Obviously you're stuck with mobile UIs for things like navigation, directions, location information, and a lot review apps, ordering a car, etc The "etc" in your statement could be expanded to 100 additional useful things in everyday life. Given that, how can you agree with their original posters statement that mobile devices are terrible for everything except portability? It's such a ridiculous understatement.
- n_ary 3y ago> but they really are terrible computers except for bottom-of-the-barrel androids, most drcent smartphones cost equivalent to a decent computer. I refuse to accept the garbage UX on an equivalent device which charges me such money and then dumb it down with tracking and ad shenanigans over usefulness. P.S. My own opinion and it is very OK to 150% disagree with me.
- chunk_waffle 3y agoMy "phone" is really just a camera+GPS that my wife sometimes calls me on when she can't find me in a store. I dread typing on it, hell I dread _talking_ on it even.
- larodi 3y agolet's say only large few lines of text are okay, and some images are... okayis. everything else is a magnificent display of massive UI failure, sadly it took us 20 years to actually start talking about this seriously.
- harlanji 3y agoI've been using a little $220 laptop for the past 15 months or so. Wasn't even the cheapest one at the nearby big box store. Way cheaper than most smart phones. In that time I've learned Python and made like 20 apps, done all the job applications and Google Voicing I've needed to do. I don't even have a working mobile phone anymore. Plenty of battery life, like 6 hours on full bright. Not hard to find ways to plug it in, draws like 20W from my Jackery 160 which is the smallest model yet big enough to charge it a few times. The computer is not much bigger than a big iPad. I just have a little backpack to carry it in, too small to look homeless (tho I am homeless). Not that my experience will change the opinion of mobile addicts. It's an IYKYK kinda thing (if you know you know).