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At some point these phones are powerful enough that we need to be able go get a desktop experience that can run macOS. Why is a 600 dollar neo more capable for

At some point these phones are powerful enough that we need to be able go get a desktop experience that can run macOS. Why is a 600 dollar neo more capable for productivity than a 2000 dollar iphone with a much beefier chip?

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spiralpolitik 25d ago
This is Apple's Achilles heel. If another company could release something like the Duo that seamlessly switches between phone, tablet, and desktop experience and make it Apple quality then Apple are in trouble. The technology is all there since the days of Ubuntu Touch. Sadly I don't think there is a company in a position to build such a device that could compete.
- MBCook 25d ago
  I don’t think Apple will ever do it. I personally would like to see the phones behave like iPads when connected to screens and mice and such. I don’t need it to pretend to be a full Mac. But we all know they’re on the same OS at this point. iOS and iPadOS are completely identical, and this only makes it more obvious.
  - armadyl 25d ago
    This is what I want. If the Duo did something like convert into an iPadOS-like environment I’d buy it day one and sell my non-fold iPhone and iPad. But I don’t want macOS on an iPhone/iPad. If I wanted a device with poorer hardware security that ran an OS with a fundamentally weaker security model I’d just buy a MacBook and be done with it.
    - MBCook 25d ago
      Even if most people never use it, they already have everything they need. And they could market it as a big feature. Basically no one knows Samsung Dex exists. They could be the ones to bring it to the attention of the mainstream. I like the idea that if I was stuck in a car dealership or something for service, I could just plug into a laptop docking station with USB-C and use my phone on a bigger screen. Realistically, I’d probably never do it. But they also might be afraid it would cannibalize Macs, especially now that they have the Neo. And it would certainly just be one more thing to test and keep working.
      - hankbond 25d ago
        IDK how a 2000 dollar phone would cannibalize macbooks more than a 700 dollar entry level macbook. It's possible that the audience for anyone that would plug in their phone to a KVM setup is just too niche to care. Just seems like with computing being so expensive these days, I really want to get the most out of my devices. Running android in a DeX mode is fine, but its still android. Now that MacOS is already optimized to run on mobile chips, it seems so limiting that it can't run on iPhones just because of customer segmentation.
        armadyl 25d ago
        iOS/iPadOS has way more optimizations under the hood than macOS does in order to keep heat/battery life/performance not poor, the most obvious feature being the way apps and tabs get killed or refreshed in the background. I don’t think Apple should or even would allow any sort of bare metal macOS mode on their mobile devices, but at least for iPads with M chips I could see them offering macOS via VMs. We know hardware acceleration works, there’s a working virtualization app that runs macOS at native speeds on jailbroken iPads. I get why they do it, but it sucks that at least at minimum we don’t have a mode that turns it into basically iPadOS when connected to an external monitor, even if the performance and heat problems would be worse. But making that feature available and exclusive to the Duo would have made it more appealing.
        MBCook 25d ago
dwrodri 25d ago
Canonical was simply 14 years too early, but we are rapidly apporaching this vision: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/02/ubuntu-for-android-canonical-brings-ubuntu-desktop-to-docked-smartphones/#:~:text=The%20new%20Ubuntu,the%20user%E2%80%99s%20phone. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/02/ubuntu-for-android-c...
starky 25d ago
I mean, we still have the ridiculous separation between the Macbook Pro and iPad Pro with the same processors where you have to choose between a fully featured OS or a touchscreen. We are a long way from an iPhone being used in that way.
thraway3837 24d ago
It's coming. It's not a hardware problem. It's a software problem. The OS has to switch seamlessly between the iPhone experience and a macOS experience where a full desktop/terminal/install anything is available. Merging the two is not an easy task considering how different the use cases are for both the OSes. Samsung DEX is also not great, it allows some basic stuff but is not going to replace your Macbook. I think though that we are very close, perhaps < 5 years. Would be amazing to connect this thing to a Studio Display, keyboard and mouse and just act like it's a Mac Mini.
juiceland 23d ago
In the first place, the laptop had a 38 year head start in terms of form-factor refinement. The laptop was also born as a productivity device. The design language around dual screen folding phones is still being developed.

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spiralpolitik 25d ago

This is Apple's Achilles heel. If another company could release something like the Duo that seamlessly switches between phone, tablet, and desktop experience and make it Apple quality then Apple are in trouble. The technology is all there since the days of Ubuntu Touch. Sadly I don't think there is a company in a position to build such a device that could compete.

MBCook 25d ago
I don’t think Apple will ever do it. I personally would like to see the phones behave like iPads when connected to screens and mice and such. I don’t need it to pretend to be a full Mac. But we all know they’re on the same OS at this point. iOS and iPadOS are completely identical, and this only makes it more obvious.
- armadyl 25d ago
  This is what I want. If the Duo did something like convert into an iPadOS-like environment I’d buy it day one and sell my non-fold iPhone and iPad. But I don’t want macOS on an iPhone/iPad. If I wanted a device with poorer hardware security that ran an OS with a fundamentally weaker security model I’d just buy a MacBook and be done with it.
  - MBCook 25d ago
    Even if most people never use it, they already have everything they need. And they could market it as a big feature. Basically no one knows Samsung Dex exists. They could be the ones to bring it to the attention of the mainstream. I like the idea that if I was stuck in a car dealership or something for service, I could just plug into a laptop docking station with USB-C and use my phone on a bigger screen. Realistically, I’d probably never do it. But they also might be afraid it would cannibalize Macs, especially now that they have the Neo. And it would certainly just be one more thing to test and keep working.
    - hankbond 25d ago
      IDK how a 2000 dollar phone would cannibalize macbooks more than a 700 dollar entry level macbook. It's possible that the audience for anyone that would plug in their phone to a KVM setup is just too niche to care. Just seems like with computing being so expensive these days, I really want to get the most out of my devices. Running android in a DeX mode is fine, but its still android. Now that MacOS is already optimized to run on mobile chips, it seems so limiting that it can't run on iPhones just because of customer segmentation.
      - armadyl 25d ago
        iOS/iPadOS has way more optimizations under the hood than macOS does in order to keep heat/battery life/performance not poor, the most obvious feature being the way apps and tabs get killed or refreshed in the background. I don’t think Apple should or even would allow any sort of bare metal macOS mode on their mobile devices, but at least for iPads with M chips I could see them offering macOS via VMs. We know hardware acceleration works, there’s a working virtualization app that runs macOS at native speeds on jailbroken iPads. I get why they do it, but it sucks that at least at minimum we don’t have a mode that turns it into basically iPadOS when connected to an external monitor, even if the performance and heat problems would be worse. But making that feature available and exclusive to the Duo would have made it more appealing.
      - MBCook 25d ago

dwrodri 25d ago

Canonical was simply 14 years too early, but we are rapidly apporaching this vision: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/02/ubuntu-for-android-canonical-brings-ubuntu-desktop-to-docked-smartphones/#:~:text=The%20new%20Ubuntu,the%20user%E2%80%99s%20phone. https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/02/ubuntu-for-android-c...

starky 25d ago

I mean, we still have the ridiculous separation between the Macbook Pro and iPad Pro with the same processors where you have to choose between a fully featured OS or a touchscreen. We are a long way from an iPhone being used in that way.

thraway3837 24d ago

It's coming. It's not a hardware problem. It's a software problem. The OS has to switch seamlessly between the iPhone experience and a macOS experience where a full desktop/terminal/install anything is available. Merging the two is not an easy task considering how different the use cases are for both the OSes. Samsung DEX is also not great, it allows some basic stuff but is not going to replace your Macbook. I think though that we are very close, perhaps < 5 years. Would be amazing to connect this thing to a Studio Display, keyboard and mouse and just act like it's a Mac Mini.

juiceland 23d ago

In the first place, the laptop had a 38 year head start in terms of form-factor refinement. The laptop was also born as a productivity device. The design language around dual screen folding phones is still being developed.