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I really don't get how people do research work (like finding good flight tickets, or comparing hotels to stay in for a trip) without a computer. I really cannot
by j1elo 1y ago
I really don't get how people do research work (like finding good flight tickets, or comparing hotels to stay in for a trip) without a computer. I really cannot stand seeing websites in a small screen without the ability to quickly open 4 browser windows with 4 tabs each for different combinations of dates, for example.
- flyinglizard 1y agoPeople use computers, just not Macs. Which is a shame because it feels like where Apple has the largest advantage compared to their competitors, being that high end Android phones are rather nice and the barrier to making a good tablet is quite low but a laptop is a whole different ball game, and Apple is far ahead of the rest.
- ponector 1y agoOr rather not buying laptops as often as phone. 2015 Mac or other premium laptop is good enough for internet surfing.
- agentcoops 1y agoI bought my dad a Mac laptop when I got my first job out of college and he used it for well over a decade. I even later got him a MacBook Air and he kept using the old one for years yet out of habit… I imagine that’s not an uncommon pattern for non-programmers who aren’t gamers.
- mathgradthrow 1y agothey will pry my 2014 MBP from my cold dead fingers
- JKCalhoun 1y agoPerhaps a lot of people use their "work computer". Me, I was in on the ground floor with laptops (and desktops) and so prefer them. Kids though?
- moduspol 1y agoI have literally watched my in-laws plan and book a vacation from their smartphones. From their house, where they also have computers. They're quite different from my side of the family, but the biggest thing is that they've never been big planners. Everything is by the seat of their pants. If you're like that, you're probably OK with taking one of the first three SEO-optimized search results and making it work. Meanwhile, I'm not booking anything until I have a proposed itinerary.
- jdross 1y agoHow often do you get a meaningfully better result than google.com/flights? Outside of booking with points, it's all basically the same thing and I can book on google on my phone in under a minute
- dghlsakjg 1y agoI live in a place where I have to fly to a nearby bigger airport to go anywhere outside my province. In other words, everything is a compromise on routing, layovers and cost. When I lived in a big city, it was just timing and cost that mattered. Frequently it isn't that google flights on a phone doesn't find the same flight, its that it is much easier to figure out the tradeoffs with more screen real estate. E.g. I can see that a flight is cheaper, but it involves mixing airlines, and a terminal change that I probably can't trust on a tight schedule in winter.
- ellisv 1y agoFor tasks like planning travel I often am trying to optimize multiple goals at once. I might find cheaper flights on certain days but more expensive hotels. This is much easier on larger screens because you can view more information side by side.
- asdff 1y agoIt's not that you get a meaningfully better result. It is that you can open an arbitrary number of results and trivially compare them side by side. Essentially multitasking multiple concurrent searches and scenarios. Smartphones limit you to one view at a time on the screen and make it somewhat clumsy to flip through tabs in comparison.
- ajmurmann 1y agoIs this because they don't have macs or because they spent more on the other stuff? My M1 macBook is 4+ years old and still going strong. How many phones do average people buy in that same time?
- oceanplexian 1y agoI'm not going to list specific apps since I don't want to be a shill, but in the last few years the web has become increasingly hostile with ads, fake reviews, bad information (Especially sites like Reddit.com). A lot of places that used to have good information have since been astroturfed. And Search Engines like Google will happily serve them up on the front page of any relevant web search. "I don't get why the kids these days book their travel using an app" is this generation's "I don't understand why people don't use travel agents". There are better sources of information and that information has moved to walled-garden mobile apps.
- lostlogin 1y ago> I don't understand why people don't use travel agents I laughed. Just used a travel agent.
- wingworks 1y agoShill it out my dude. I want to know where the good stuff is hiding.
- jachee 1y ago> I'm not going to list specific apps since I don't want to be a shill If you’re not getting paid to promote them, you’re not a shill. Honest recommendations are welcome!
- lm28469 1y agoYou don't really have to buy a new laptop every year though. If it wasn't for my work provided laptop I'd still use my 2015 mbp
- portaouflop 1y agoI still use my thinkpad from 2012. It runs fine with Linux on it, i had to replace the hdd and some other parts but otherwise it’s holding up. Granted I only do very simple stuff on it, no dev work, video or gaming. Mostly browser, reading, writing, music and chatting
- piskov 1y agoYou don’t have to buy a phone every year either
- ajross 1y agoPeople do research work without a mac. A Windows box or Chromebook to do the stuff you want is less than half the cost of an Air, and a MBP is priced out of everything but status-conscious executive (and para-executive) consumers and FAANG-adjacent tech folks.
- risyachka 1y agoNah people just don’t do research work. Maybe one in 100k does
- JustExAWS 1y agoMy wife and I travel a lot, we aren’t that price sensitive. We are going to fly Delta where we both have status and stay in a Hyatt or Hilton brand hotel where I have status. It takes us less than 10 minutes to make travel plans on our phones.
- apatheticonion 1y agoI feel exactly the same way. There are personal finance management softwares that are mobile exclusive. Like, have you tried doing data entry on a phone? Who is using these products?
- atrus 1y agoThe vast majority of people.
- asteroidburger 1y agoThe camera on the back of the phone actually helps quite a bit with said data entry.
- apatheticonion 1y agoI normally ingest csv files exported from my bank - then have to manually tag and relate them (like internal transfers). I have a bunch of scripts to help and wrote a custom web scraper to pull the data, automating much of this, but much is still quite manual.
- agumonkey 1y agofinance apps will soon automate that kind of things, and most probably the phone app will have it before the web version there's resource rot it seems, desktop/web have less than the phone, and it shows hp printer/scanner app is way leaner than anything they've ever released on windows (not saying much but still), same for my bank app it's a bit faster, and better designed (features and ui)
- rkomorn 1y agoI'm with you, but I guess users don't care (and I really don't get it). None of the mobile finance apps I've used even have half the reporting ability I want (presumably because users don't care, and not because it wouldn't fit on the screen).
- blahgeek 1y agoSpeaking from a developing country with a large population of less educated people, I think you would be surprised to find out that a majority of the people in the world simply don't do "research work". Successfully booking a flight ticket from a straightforward app on their phone is already at their limit (BTW, ~80% of people in the world have never taken a plane). For most other "research" requirement like planning a trip, they would just search on tiktok to see what those influencers have to say (or nowadays, ask the AI)
- reaperducer 1y agoI really don't get how people do research work (like finding good flight tickets, or comparing hotels to stay in for a trip) without a computer. For a lot of people, time is more valuable than money. They get on their phone and complete a task and move on. Spending an hour comparing a dozen tabs on a computer to save $30 on a flight is less important than spending that time with their loved ones.
- rrgok 1y agoYes exactly this. My time is more valuable than the research and headache. I would understand if you saved $500 or more. If you are frequent flyer, that would add up.
- Razengan 1y ago> I really don't get how people do research work … without a computer People used to do it in their heads. Einstein, Tolkien, Hawking, Newton, Shakespeare, Euclid, Archimedes. With paper being an storage medium they occasionally saved to :) > (like finding good flight tickets, or comparing hotels to stay in for a trip) Heck I was doing EXACTLY that on an iPhone while loafing at a friend's just now, because I wanted to make the most of my time and I don't want to carry my laptop/iPad anywhere. Lightweight XR glasses would be the best of both worlds.
- rk06 1y agoyou mean very intelligent and very smart people used to do it in their head without computer or calculator these days only idiots would do so on pen and paper only
- omnee 1y agoThat's an exceptionally high bar of talent and creativity. For the 99.999+% of us, the computer and the mobile has made completion of many tasks highly efficient. Like surfing HN on a lazy Saturday morning...
- gessha 1y agoSocrates famously frowned upon the written medium and preferred his memories for storage
- csomar 1y agoVery few people do any research work. They usually click whatever platform they are already in (ie: mytrip.xxx) and just book the ticket there and probably pay using Apple Pay straight from their phone.
- fishmicrowaver 1y agoWhenever I travel I'm also coordinating with at least 2 other people. That may include my wife/extended family, or friends. I may jump on my desktop for research, but ultimately I'm sending a browser tab to my phone to share via txt with others.
- sunaurus 1y agoI hate submitting any kind of form on any website from my phone, because I can't open dev tools and see if there were any errors in the response which were invisible in the UI.
- CamelCaseName 1y agoYou don't need a lot of space to see everything, because you can store information in your memory. You narrow down your options by having knowledge like "I have points on these airlines so I want to fly on Star Alliance which has partners that fly out of (quick check) these airports, so let's plan the itinerary in this way..." I just got back from traveling the last 3 months (40 flights, 6 continents) and planned all of it from my phone. From flights, to hotels, to visas. And it's simply better than a laptop. 4 tabs in 4 browsers means you're distracted, you're not pruning useless information, you don't know what you don't know. I do 95% of my work on my phone too, and I wouldn't have it any other way.
- autoexec 1y agoI get the feeling that people don't do research work. They buy whatever is affordable that gets advertised to them first. They can't even tell the difference between ads and search results. Their devices are primarily for media consumption and they create little if anything. They have zero need for most of the computing power their devices offer, could get by just fine on a phone from 10 years ago if it were still being supported, and they really only want the latest models for social status reasons.
- hwj 1y agoThis. Searching the internet on a phone feels like exploring the world through the eye of a needle.