While I agree that it can be difficult to design information-dense UIs for small displays or provide navigability to a large feature set, I strongly applaud efforts to unify computing and work through these challenges.
I very much want all of my computing devices to be unified. In fact, I want a model where I have one computing device and multiple views ("terminals" if you wish) [1]. But a consistent experience as Purism is pitching, and which Microsoft attempted with Windows 8 + Windows Phone 8, are viable first steps. There is learning to do here and it's great to see people taking on the challenge.
> I mean, if someone said, "I've successfully ported Vim to Android!", my first thought would be, "Why in god's name would I want to run vim on my phone?"
Sure, but if they find it useful, fun, or just plain cool, I applaud it. I want more desktop-class computing capabilities on my phone-sized device and I routinely find myself deferring important actions until I can get in front of a "real computer." Many things are just too challenging or limited on today's mobile operating systems. Even with "convergence," as Purism calls it, there will still be cases where I simply want to use a larger screen, so I'll defer until I can dock the device and use some large form-factor I/O devices. But with the stance Purism is taking, I would no longer experience the frustration of software limiting me even when I am willing to endure the limitations of my hardware.
I don't use my phone for much of anything but calling and bored web browsing anymore, but I'd genuinely love for my iPad to be more functionally useful, but the issue above is similar to a lot of other interaction limitations. I really can't imagine using any mobile app on my desktop, and I can't imagine using any of my desktop apps on mobile (admittedly the desktop apps I use are on the more complex side things.)
Right. We used to do perfectly serviceable work on extremely small screens, sometimes displaying as few as 40 columns and a dozen rows of text, and with keyboards that were so painful to type on that most commands would be abbreviated to 2 or 3 characters. Current versions of Linux still include a "quirk" for supporting an uppercase-only text mode that was common on early terminals and microcomputers. So no, hardware capabilities are not an inherent obstacle here. Providing an information- and interaction-dense UI on such limited devices is definitely a challenge that will require some added work, but the kind of 'convergence' that Purism is talking about is a necessary building block.
"Convergence" is a pipe dream because of the differing and mutually exclusive expectations of those different user types, and "one size fits all" programming ends up underserving both segments. The only thing I would change is that mobile needs to do more to expose users to internals (things like access to the proper file manager), rather than hiding and abstracting away every detail that might confuse grandma.
The biggest obstacle to a genuinely productive UI on mobile, I find, is the lack of pervasive and easy confirmation and error-recovery for potentially-unwanted inputs. System management interfaces (e.g. community-built "recovery/modding" environments) get this right (everything that's potentially unwanted gets a "perform a swipe to confirm input" prompt), but almost nothing else does.
It’s bordering on absurdism to try and utilize the same UI between them, and simply doesn’t match the reality of human perception or tool use.
There are certainly uses where it makes sense — people who use just a phone and laptop for the internet and documents, for instance — and arguments to be made for consistency in styling or icons, but there’s also a lot of use cases where they’re different kinds of tools, even if both use computer chips, and it makes sense to have different UIs.
I appreciate Microsoft offering the other option in Windows 10: that I can use a tablet UI in tablet mode and a desktop UI in laptop mode.
"We don't believe in sort of watering down one for the other. Both [The Mac and iPad] are incredible. One of the reasons that both of them are incredible is because we pushed them to do what they do well. And if you begin to merge the two ... you begin to make trade offs and compromises.
"So maybe the company would be more efficient at the end of the day. But that's not what it's about. You know it's about giving people things that they can then use to help them change the world or express their passion or express their creativity. So this merger thing that some folks are fixated on, I don't think that's what users want."
https://www.smh.com.au/technology/users-don-t-want-ios-to-me...
Not OP... a BT kb/mouse has been a great consumer-friendly boost on larger tablets for me but sadly... lots of applications (on Android) don't really take advantage of this. They are still very heavily optimized for touch-only.
Example: MX Player (my fav Android player) does a great job binding keyboard presses to actions (spaceBar: pause; arrowKeys: forward, back, etc..)
In contrast, VLC for mobile lacks this "polish". Mobile browsers are another example where actions could be optimized for mouse input but I haven't come across a browser yet that acknowledges mice as a separate input source.
fyi (for anyone interested in tablet to laptop conversion to lessen gorilla arm):
Zagg Folio for 10" tablets (basically turns a tablet into a laptop). I picked this up a couple of years ago (not too many available for Android, most are essentially flimsy stands). They also have similar for smaller handhelds:
https://www.amazon.com/Bluetooth-Keyboard-Android-Tablets-10...
On the other hand, I like the idea of at least being able to run software on all devices and them at least being usable, even with a shitty interface (like having to scroll through numbers on a desktop, Microsoft). This way I can still use familiar tools for non-recurring tasks. Like RDP on a phone might not be fun, but gets the job done.
Yes, high-def large retina screens now (and I'm looking at one) exceed this, but as a traveller, a 10" tablet with a real goddamned operating system is a total game-changer.
Mind, I don't quite have that. I've got a 9" Android tablet with Termux that is pretty good, despite some profound limitations (mostly of the OS and Apps, some from the input, though a Bluetooth keyboard makes this a tractable laptop substitute most of the time). It's absolutely possible to get Real Work done. Though I'd prefer something bigger and less in my way, and am looking with strong interest at PureOS.
An absolute ton of people use actual computers with 12" - 14" screens including for complex tasks they just switch tasks more which is probably less efficient but hardly impossible.
They may opt to dock their machine at home/work for a larger work area but as it happens many tasks may cross both environments.
For example at home you may have many windows visible at once one of which is a document you are reading or a video you are watching another an editor in which you are writing documentation or code. After you undock you may wish to continue SOME of the tasks on the smaller screen for example watching the video or reading the document but opt to defer others until you have richer input and display options.
Lets go a level deeper. Your device is a general purpose computer. It could in theory run 2 entirely different UI stacks that run on the same OS and access the same files. Its the files that are the vital thing. If you create a video in one stack and merely watch it in another what of it.
Convergence is merely the idea that you will eventually be able to carry a small enough cheap enough computer in your pocket that it wont make much sense for many people to lug around 2 different portable computers.
This seems as inevitable as computers going from buildings to something we lug around in the first place.
citation needed. The majority of applications I need would work just fine on a powerful smartphone.
Using a keyboard has been absolutely wonderful though. It's even saved me a few times when I didn't have my laptop with me and had to ssh into work servers for issues.
So echoes of, but not at all constrained like, computers from that era.