On 06/21/2015 06:29 AM, Kagamin wrote:
> On Saturday, 20 June 2015 at 19:00:08 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>>
>> The highest-DPI devices I use nowadays are mobile devices and, in my
>> experience, websites are the ones who most often get it wrong.
>
> I mean only design possibility, which is not taken advantage of in
> modern web, unfortunately.
>

I think the history of the web all the way up through now proves quite well that web devs *will never* standardize on any sort of "proper way to do things" unless some outside factor forces it.

>>  That's usually related to tiny text, but that affects the overall
>> layout too.
>
> Designers like their 5-pixel fonts and believe everybody will appreciate
> them. But I think pixel-oriented design is a flawed design choice for
> web, web wasn't designed to work that way.

Uhh...not these days. These days they mostly all love their gigantic one-inch fonts. Half the websites I visit, I have to zoom *out* just to make reading it reasonably comfortable.

(Meh, and then on mobile I have to zoom waaay in before attempting to click on any links, because mobile device manufacturers seem to think my fingers are every bit as slender and precise as a resistive or active stylus. Seriously, when my contract's up I'm moving to a Galaxy Note. F* this Sh* ;) )

On 06/21/2015 05:07 AM, Joakim wrote:
>
> Simply dumping more features on top of the old web stack
> is a recipe for failure.
>

Meh, it seems to be working for them so far ;) But I agree, it's a bad approach, and hopefully will finally collapse.


> Prefetching and caching is used by _all_ app runtimes, whether Java or
> Objective-C.  They don't change the fact that the web frontend is much
> slower and difficult to work with.
>

Plus, on the web, doing stuff in the background tends to have a much bigger negative impact on responsiveness than it does outside the web.


> Very responsive because they're made up of trivially simple line art,
> perhaps.
>

I happen to like that aesthetic style, really. :) But of course an image format needs to be more general.


> On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 07:38:02 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> On 06/21/2015 01:42 AM, Joakim wrote:
>>
>> No, there's more to a desktop/laptop than just processing power and
>> keyboard/monitor/mouse. The mobile devices are also (currently) shit
>> at storage space (not to mention virtual memory) and peripherals. And
>> then for devs, ie the people who actually make all this stuff in the
>> first place, there's even more improvements needed.
>
> I have almost 50 GBs of storage on my tablet, between the built-in flash
> and an SD card, about half what I have on my ultrabook.

50GB? That's it? I have more than that in music alone. (And no, streaming music services is not an improvement. Although it is occasionally a nice supplement.)

My two most recent laptops, I've upgraded to 1TB HDDs. Anything less than that in local storage feels cramped. Plus then I have an old desktop with about 2.5-3TB between three drives. And three USB3 drives ranging from a few hundred GB to 1TB. And a USB2 @ 250GB.


> If I weren't
> filling that 50 GBs up with many GBs of HD video,

VMs also soak up a lot of space. (just sayin')


> that's plenty of space for most people.

To marginalize desktops/laptops, mobile doesn't need to win over "most people". Those are the people they've already won over. It exactly us dev and power users that they need to win over now. And they can't do that by settling for whatever works for "most people".


> As for peripherals, you're talking printers and
> scanners?  Do people even use those anymore? :)

Yes. They're not sexy and don't generate "buzz", but that doesn't mean they aren't relied on. (Personal observation: The modern fashion-oriended tech sector seems to have major trouble recognizing that "buzzworthy" and "important" are not the same thing).


> If there's any demand
> for those at all, the dock for your smartphone will have a USB hub that
> supports them.
>

Yea. ONE usb port (that needs an adapter to be able to use just about anything out there besides charging) for everything to get funneled and crammed into: charging, HDMI, external storage, printer/scanner, jtag (arduino and such are big these days), optical disc (yes, these are still useful), adpators for whatever new protocols and connectors inevitably come along, etc. And that one-port-only means that you *also* need a hub in addition to everything else. Rendering the whole mess considerably less convenient than an actual all-in-one device: the laptop.


> As for devs, they're a small percentage of the computer-using public,

You're looking at it wrong (IMO): Devs (and non-dev power users, don't forget there's a lot of them too) are a very significant portion of modern-day desktop/laptop users. They're the biggest reason why desktops/laptops haven't already been marginalized. Therefore, if mobile is going to replace desktop/laptop, it MUST support developer needs and support them WELL, not just in a half-hearted way. We devs and power users may be a minority, but we're a very large minority, and we happen to be crucial to everything the everyday-Joe majority users rely on. Mobile *cannot* marginalize us without throwing away it's own chance at ubiquity.


> But even devs, most of whom certainly aren't using massive rigs with
> Xeons and 32 GBs of RAM, will make the switch.

Right, that may very well happen. But again, that will require mobile to adopt the remaining features that have been keeping us on laptops/desktops, and thus become a hybrid. You're stance seems to be that multi-window UI is just about the only one left. I think there's much more than that.


> Not much left if you ask me, just multiwindow UIs, which could have been
> done at least a year earlier, and transitioning the few remaining
> desktop apps that haven't made the mobile transition yet.
>

Well, I guess that's where we disagree.


>> And I think that's the biggest question mark, as they seem quite
>> loathe to accept that mobile-style (or really, iOS-style, which
>> everyone else in mobile copied wholesale) isn't universally superior
>> for everyone in every way. This attitude will prevent them from
>> reaching parity and replacing desktops/laptops until for as long as
>> they choose to cling to it. How long they'll cling to it is the question.
>
> "mobile-style" is a very vague term, presumably you're referring to the
> prevailing mobile touch GUIs.

That, plus the whole overall approach - gatekeeping, lock-downs, nearly-zero buttons/keys, minimal I/O ports, minimal expandability, neat-total vertical integration (business-wise), etc. Ie, "The way Apple designed the iPhone".


> As I pointed out, the UI will need to be
> adapted for desktop monitors.
>

Definitely.


>> But suppose, sooner or later, they've finally managed to improve
>> enough to render the traditional line of desktops/laptops obsolete. It
>> *WON'T* be a case of "mobile killed desktop". Because they will have,
>> by necessity, BECOME just as much desktop as smartphone - the only
>> difference being the lineage. It would be, in effect, exactly the same
>> as laptops gaining mobile capabilities and mobile-friendly UI. Except,
>> oh wait, that's happening too, see MS Surface Pro.
>
> That's what I detailed below: it's not the same and the failure of
> Surface and other Windows two-in-ones shows that.
>

Well, people don't *see* it as the same.

But no, there's plenty of other reasons for the troubles of Surface and Surface-alikes. The most notable one being Win8 itself (for about a million reasons). And then the disconnect between high-price and (for most of the surface models, particularly the earlier ones) weak hardware specs compared to even laptops that cost less (yes, surface pro's CPU is beefy, but that's about it).

It's *not* the approach itself that's wrong. They just haven't quite gotten all the details right. Just like the current day "connect keyboard to mobile, use as a desktop"...

See, the same argument can be made the other way too: Aside from a minority of techies such as yourself, nobody's actually using mobile in the style of "connect a keyboard/mouse, use as a desktop replacement". You could say it's been a failure *so far*. But as you know, that doesn't mean the approach is wrong, it just means there's still a few more details to be ironed out. Same thing with Surface.


>> And then you need some place to set the phone/tablet. The natural
>> choice is to dock it into the keyboard, ideally with some sort of
>> hinge. At which point you've just re-invented the laptop form factor.
>
> I disagree that the keyboard is the natural place to dock the
> phone/tablet,

Well, ok, *one* natural place, maybe not "the" natural place ;)


> and the failure of such devices, both on the Android side
> and especially on the Windows side, seems to show this.

I strongly suspect that if you hold up bluetooth keyboard sales up to the same "success/failure" standard as these devices you're referring too, that they would look like "failures" too.

I really don't believe the problem there was that the idea was wrong. I think the problem was that people *already* had their laptop/desktop for their keyboard-oriented needs, and the mobile systems just weren't yet ready to be a full replacement for laptops/desktops. The idea was right, but the state of the market was wrong. It was too early for it. But that will all change if mobile improves and desktops/laptops become increasingly marginalized.


>  I simply prop
> up my tablet on my desk on the side of something, whereas most will
> likely just dock them in small holders, either just to hold them up or
> to provide ports to connect to a larger monitor.
>

Ok, so it's more like re-inventing the desktop then, instead of the laptop.


>> The usefulness of laptop form factor won't go away, People will just
>> start failing to recognize that it's just a laptop in new clothes with
>> a few more tricks.
>
> It will go away, for the reasons I've given.

Not if you're just reinventing the form factor by propping up your monitor^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htablet and pulling out a keyboard+mouse.

It's just the particular lineage that (might) go away.


>>> All that is converging is the software UIs, where mobile devices will be
>>> able to display apps appropriately both for constrained touchscreens and
>>> larger monitors controlled by a keyboard/trackpad.  Only in that last
>>> sense are mobile devices converging, by adding software UIs to work on
>>> large screens.
>>>
>>
>> No, as you already pointed out yourself, the hardware capabilities are
>> converging as well.
>
> Heh, never said anything of the sort.

Well, somebody was saying that mobile processors have been getting closer and closer in power to laptops. Which I have to strongly agree with. Maybe that wasn't you though.


> Anyway, it's funny that you
> respond to a quote limited to software and UIs by going on about
> hardware again, never mentioning software. :)

No, you're misunderstanding me (deliberately?) You said "All that is converging is the software UIs". I'm saying "No, that isn't the only thing converging." Obviously I'm not going go on about the part we already agree on (software UI convergence), why would I?


>> And then you have on one hand the whole "hooking up a keyboard/mouse"
>> to a phone/tablet (and monitor too, HDMI-out has become pretty common
>> on Android)...
>
> What is your point, that because we're still using keyboards and mice,
> they're "converged?"

Not "converged". "ConvergING" towards some point in between traditional iPhone (and clones) and traditional laptop. And yes, *partly* because connecting keyboard/mouse is not something people have normally done with smartphones (at least not typically). And also because the gap in processing power is shrinking. And because you can now connect them to an external monitor. And because they're gaining desktop UIs. Maybe some other things too I haven't thought of off the top of my head.


>  A car still moves on wheels yet nobody would say
> it "converged" with a horse and carriage.  One feature, the wheels,
> carried over, but most of it is completely different.

There's really no parallel between that and what I'm talking about.


> I think that
> since the underlying device, a smartphone, is fairly different from a
> mainframe or a PC,

How so? *You're* the one saying (even more than I am anyway) that they are (or will soon be) suitable  replacements for PCs. How do you reconcile that with now suddenly saying they're different in a big enough way to be meaningful?


> it's far-fetched to say the devices are "hybrid" or
> "converged," simply because they're all using similar input peripherals
> when used at a desk.

You've completely over-simplified my argument, and are now objecting that your modified version of my argument isn't valid.


> But even that is only temporary, as voice and gesture recognition will
> soon kill off those input peripherals too. :)

God I hope not. :) Touchscreen mini-chicklet keyboards (not to mention auto-correction) are already clunky and unreliable enough.


>> And on the other hand, you have laptops getting their mainboards moved
>> to the upper-half and becoming detachable from the bottom half, and
>> getting smaller, lighter, better battery life...
>> That...is form-factor convergence.
>
> That might be actual hardware form-factor convergence, if anybody were
> buying those two-in-ones, but almost nobody is.
>

Yet. Almost nobody is *yet*. Almost nobody is using their "smartphone + keyboard" as a desktop/laptop replacement either. Yet.

But I think we both agree it's clear that where computing, at the very least *should* go, is somewhere in between traditional iPhone and traditional laptop. And mobiles and PCs are both *trying* to reach for some point in-between.

Unless ALL sides turn out to be wrong (which seems unlikely) then naturally the "winner" will be something that does exist somewhere in that middle-ground that everyone's reaching towards. That "winner"'s lineage isn't particularly important (except to the corporations directly involved), because it will no longer be strictly a traditional smartphone nor traditional laptop.


>>>> Of course, that's dependent on the phone/tablet folks actually
>>>> managing to pull it off. Which is certainly a possibility, I agree,
>>>> but I'm not convinced they'll necessarily manage to, at least not in
>>>> the short term.
>>>
>>> It's around the bend and frankly should have been done sooner.
>>>
>>
>> Never underestimate the power of corporate ineptitude ;)
>
> I agree with the sentiment, just not sure what you're trying to indicate
> with the "corporate" qualifier.  "Ineptitude" alone would have sufficed. :)

Well, I'm not aware of any small mom-and-pop business putting out major OSes or devices. So non-corporate is irrelevant here, hence the arguably-unnecessary qualification.

On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 18:51:41 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On 06/21/2015 05:07 AM, Joakim wrote:
> >
> > Simply dumping more features on top of the old web stack
> > is a recipe for failure.
> >
>
> Meh, it seems to be working for them so far ;) But I agree, it's a bad approach, and hopefully will finally collapse.

What's amazing is how long this house of cards keeps jiggling on, and even worse, how many people actually think it's something worthwhile!  It can't be destroyed soon enough.

> > Very responsive because they're made up of trivially simple
> line art,
> > perhaps.
>
> I happen to like that aesthetic style, really. :) But of course an image format needs to be more general.

Actually, I like that "cartoon" style too, wish more people used it.  I'm guessing they don't only because it's considered too simple or not as serious.  But I bet SVG would be slow even for that, particularly if it was animated.

I really liked the new Fisher-Price style of desktop Windows 8, along with better visualizations like the graph when copying files.  Damn sight better than the OSX-aping Windows 7, with the unnecessary glass and reflections everywhere, though it was pretty at first.

> > On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 07:38:02 UTC, Nick Sabalausky
> wrote:
> >> On 06/21/2015 01:42 AM, Joakim wrote:
> > I have almost 50 GBs of storage on my tablet, between the
> built-in flash
> > and an SD card, about half what I have on my ultrabook.
>
> 50GB? That's it? I have more than that in music alone. (And no, streaming music services is not an improvement. Although it is occasionally a nice supplement.)
>
> My two most recent laptops, I've upgraded to 1TB HDDs. Anything less than that in local storage feels cramped. Plus then I have an old desktop with about 2.5-3TB between three drives. And three USB3 drives ranging from a few hundred GB to 1TB. And a USB2 @ 250GB.

Heh, I'd say you're pretty unusual.  Whenever I ask normal people how much disk space they have, they have no idea, and when I check their devices for myself, they're inevitably only using around 10-20% of the 16-32 GBs on their tablets or 80-500 GBs on their laptops.

> > If I weren't
> > filling that 50 GBs up with many GBs of HD video,
>
> VMs also soak up a lot of space. (just sayin')

I'm up to 22 GBs of VMs right now.

> > that's plenty of space for most people.
>
> To marginalize desktops/laptops, mobile doesn't need to win over "most people". Those are the people they've already won over. It exactly us dev and power users that they need to win over now. And they can't do that by settling for whatever works for "most people".

The vast majority of current desktop/laptop users are only stuck with them because they bought them before mobile took off or they need a multi-window UI for certain apps or certain desktop software that hasn't been ported to mobile yet, ie there's no fundamental reason they couldn't use mobile devices instead.

Of the 300 million PCs sold last year, I'd say 95+% could make the transition to mobile devices once they have multi-window UIs and all the same software.  The remaining 3-5% may never make the transition.

> > As for peripherals, you're talking printers and
> > scanners?  Do people even use those anymore? :)
>
> Yes. They're not sexy and don't generate "buzz", but that doesn't mean they aren't relied on. (Personal observation: The modern fashion-oriended tech sector seems to have major trouble recognizing that "buzzworthy" and "important" are not the same thing).

Seems like most of those are going to wifi/bluetooth connections that are easily controlled by mobile devices also.

> > If there's any demand
> > for those at all, the dock for your smartphone will have a
> USB hub that
> > supports them.
> >
>
> Yea. ONE usb port (that needs an adapter to be able to use just about anything out there besides charging) for everything to get funneled and crammed into: charging, HDMI, external storage, printer/scanner, jtag (arduino and such are big these days), optical disc (yes, these are still useful), adpators for whatever new protocols and connectors inevitably come along, etc. And that one-port-only means that you *also* need a hub in addition to everything else. Rendering the whole mess considerably less convenient than an actual all-in-one device: the laptop.

Well, if you're docking the smartphone at your desk anyway, having a USB hub with several ports built into the dock is not a big deal.  As for on the go, yes, you'll need to bring some sort of adapter with you, but new connectors like USB Type-C are geared for that.

I don't think this ports issue moves the needle for most people, and most peripherals these days are moving to wireless anyway.

> > As for devs, they're a small percentage of the computer-using
> public,
>
> You're looking at it wrong (IMO): Devs (and non-dev power users, don't forget there's a lot of them too) are a very significant portion of modern-day desktop/laptop users. They're the biggest reason why desktops/laptops haven't already been marginalized. Therefore, if mobile is going to replace desktop/laptop, it MUST support developer needs and support them WELL, not just in a half-hearted way. We devs and power users may be a minority, but we're a very large minority, and we happen to be crucial to everything the everyday-Joe majority users rely on. Mobile *cannot* marginalize us without throwing away it's own chance at ubiquity.

I disagree, as I said above, I peg the group you're talking about at less than 5% of current desktop/laptop users.  And most devs are not really power users: some python/django dev is not going to be rocking a desktop as powerful as the Mac Pro anyway.  They'd be fine with a tablet, like this guy:

http://bergie.iki.fi/blog/working-on-android/

> > But even devs, most of whom certainly aren't using massive
> rigs with
> > Xeons and 32 GBs of RAM, will make the switch.
>
> Right, that may very well happen. But again, that will require mobile to adopt the remaining features that have been keeping us on laptops/desktops, and thus become a hybrid. You're stance seems to be that multi-window UI is just about the only one left. I think there's much more than that.

I don't see it.

> > Not much left if you ask me, just multiwindow UIs, which
> could have been
> > done at least a year earlier, and transitioning the few
> remaining
> > desktop apps that haven't made the mobile transition yet.
> >
>
> Well, I guess that's where we disagree.

Yep, once multi-window UIs come to mobile, we'll see who's right. :)

> >> And I think that's the biggest question mark, as they seem
> quite
> >> loathe to accept that mobile-style (or really, iOS-style,
> which
> >> everyone else in mobile copied wholesale) isn't universally
> superior
> >> for everyone in every way. This attitude will prevent them
> from
> >> reaching parity and replacing desktops/laptops until for as
> long as
> >> they choose to cling to it. How long they'll cling to it is
> the question.
> >
> > "mobile-style" is a very vague term, presumably you're
> referring to the
> > prevailing mobile touch GUIs.
>
> That, plus the whole overall approach - gatekeeping, lock-downs, nearly-zero buttons/keys, minimal I/O ports, minimal expandability, neat-total vertical integration (business-wise), etc. Ie, "The way Apple designed the iPhone".

Most of that is because those aren't things most users care about.  In fact, they prefer a more locked-down device, as long as it's more stable and doesn't get corrupted easily.  It's why most people buy sedans with automatic transmission, not a sports car with manual.

Now, of course there are better ways to do some of those.  You could have gatekeeping without it being done by one company, Apple.  They'll have to lock it down a little less when it's docked, for example, you'll have constant power and wouldn't want apps to be as aggressively killed.  As for expandability, that ship has sailed: most people don't care for it, which is why even Samsung ditched the SD card slot in the recent Galaxy S6.  I wouldn't call Android vertically integrated, maybe Samsung, but there are a lot of other component and software vendors.

That's a disparate grab bag of "mobile-style," but I'd say nothing there prevents mobile devices from killing off the desktop/laptop PC.

> >> But suppose, sooner or later, they've finally managed to
> improve
> >> enough to render the traditional line of desktops/laptops
> obsolete. It
> >> *WON'T* be a case of "mobile killed desktop". Because they
> will have,
> >> by necessity, BECOME just as much desktop as smartphone -
> the only
> >> difference being the lineage. It would be, in effect,
> exactly the same
> >> as laptops gaining mobile capabilities and mobile-friendly
> UI. Except,
> >> oh wait, that's happening too, see MS Surface Pro.
> >
> > That's what I detailed below: it's not the same and the
> failure of
> > Surface and other Windows two-in-ones shows that.
> >
>
> Well, people don't *see* it as the same.
>
> But no, there's plenty of other reasons for the troubles of Surface and Surface-alikes. The most notable one being Win8 itself (for about a million reasons). And then the disconnect between high-price and (for most of the surface models, particularly the earlier ones) weak hardware specs compared to even laptops that cost less (yes, surface pro's CPU is beefy, but that's about it).
>
> It's *not* the approach itself that's wrong. They just haven't quite gotten all the details right. Just like the current day "connect keyboard to mobile, use as a desktop"...

I don't think the approach itself will work, though I agree that Win8 hurt it too.  One big problem with the all-in-ones so far is that the tablet portion is just too big and unwieldy to be used on its own, at 10.6" to 13".

> See, the same argument can be made the other way too: Aside from a minority of techies such as yourself, nobody's actually using mobile in the style of "connect a keyboard/mouse, use as a desktop replacement". You could say it's been a failure *so far*. But as you know, that doesn't mean the approach is wrong, it just means there's still a few more details to be ironed out. Same thing with Surface.

I'd say the difference is that your all-in-one approach has already been tried, with a lot of marketing behind it.  Whereas nobody has really pushed my approach, with most Android tablets not supporting multi-window yet.  I do agree that Win8 was botched though, maybe Win10 will do it better.

> > and the failure of such devices, both on the Android side
> > and especially on the Windows side, seems to show this.
>
> I strongly suspect that if you hold up bluetooth keyboard sales up to the same "success/failure" standard as these devices you're referring too, that they would look like "failures" too.

Yep, the bluetooth keyboard approach with Android tablets hasn't taken off yet either.  But they're still waiting on multi-window UIs, you can't expect it to do well before that.

> I really don't believe the problem there was that the idea was wrong. I think the problem was that people *already* had their laptop/desktop for their keyboard-oriented needs, and the mobile systems just weren't yet ready to be a full replacement for laptops/desktops. The idea was right, but the state of the market was wrong. It was too early for it. But that will all change if mobile improves and desktops/laptops become increasingly marginalized.

Well, what's missing?  Mobile chips are powerful enough.  For me, it's just multi-window and the few apps that require it.  What else do you think mobile needs to improve?

> >  I simply prop
> > up my tablet on my desk on the side of something, whereas
> most will
> > likely just dock them in small holders, either just to hold
> them up or
> > to provide ports to connect to a larger monitor.
> >
>
> Ok, so it's more like re-inventing the desktop then, instead of the laptop.

Both, as I said, most people using laptops don't need the keyboard to be physically attached.  So they'll just stick their dock on the table at the cafe, slot the tablet in, and start typing away on their bluetooth keyboard.

> Not if you're just reinventing the form factor by propping up your monitor^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htablet and pulling out a keyboard+mouse.
>
> It's just the particular lineage that (might) go away.

Heh, you're really reaching now. :) Most people wouldn't call a smartphone or tablet in a dock "reinventing the [desktop] form factor."

> >> No, as you already pointed out yourself, the hardware
> capabilities are
> >> converging as well.
> >
> > Heh, never said anything of the sort.
>
> Well, somebody was saying that mobile processors have been getting closer and closer in power to laptops. Which I have to strongly agree with. Maybe that wasn't you though.

By that rationale, since desktop chips nowadays are as powerful as mainframes from a decade ago, desktops are really just mainframes, right? ;) You and Kagamin are really reaching with these assertions.

> >> And then you have on one hand the whole "hooking up a
> keyboard/mouse"
> >> to a phone/tablet (and monitor too, HDMI-out has become
> pretty common
> >> on Android)...
> >
> > What is your point, that because we're still using keyboards
> and mice,
> > they're "converged?"
>
> Not "converged". "ConvergING" towards some point in between traditional iPhone (and clones) and traditional laptop. And yes, *partly* because connecting keyboard/mouse is not something people have normally done with smartphones (at least not typically). And also because the gap in processing power is shrinking. And because you can now connect them to an external monitor. And because they're gaining desktop UIs. Maybe some other things too I haven't thought of off the top of my head.

Except that looking at that smartphone that has all those features that will allow them to kill off the desktop, they'll look exactly the same as smartphones do now.  Really, the only difference will be the addition of the multi-window UI capability, nothing else will have "converged."  I wouldn't call that convergence between iPhones and laptops, rather smartphones simply picking up yet one more feature that allows them to kill off the desktop/laptop PC.

> >  A car still moves on wheels yet nobody would say
> > it "converged" with a horse and carriage.  One feature, the
> wheels,
> > carried over, but most of it is completely different.
>
> There's really no parallel between that and what I'm talking about.

Oh, it's pretty much the same. :) Replace wheels with multi-window UIs and that is exactly the point you're making.

> > I think that
> > since the underlying device, a smartphone, is fairly
> different from a
> > mainframe or a PC,
>
> How so? *You're* the one saying (even more than I am anyway) that they are (or will soon be) suitable  replacements for PCs. How do you reconcile that with now suddenly saying they're different in a big enough way to be meaningful?

Because they're really only taking one feature from desktops/laptops, the multi-window UI, in order to replace them.  Otherwise, they will be the same smartphones that they are now, which you don't call desktops.

> > it's far-fetched to say the devices are "hybrid" or
> > "converged," simply because they're all using similar input
> peripherals
> > when used at a desk.
>
> You've completely over-simplified my argument, and are now objecting that your modified version of my argument isn't valid.

That certainly seemed to be one aspect of your argument, which you just repeated above.

> > But even that is only temporary, as voice and gesture
> recognition will
> > soon kill off those input peripherals too. :)
>
> God I hope not. :) Touchscreen mini-chicklet keyboards (not to mention auto-correction) are already clunky and unreliable enough.

I can't wait.  I've gotten fairly fast on a keyboard over the years, but I can't wait to just use voice.

> >> And on the other hand, you have laptops getting their
> mainboards moved
> >> to the upper-half and becoming detachable from the bottom
> half, and
> >> getting smaller, lighter, better battery life...
> >> That...is form-factor convergence.
> >
> > That might be actual hardware form-factor convergence, if
> anybody were
> > buying those two-in-ones, but almost nobody is.
> >
>
> Yet. Almost nobody is *yet*. Almost nobody is using their "smartphone + keyboard" as a desktop/laptop replacement either. Yet.
>
> But I think we both agree it's clear that where computing, at the very least *should* go, is somewhere in between traditional iPhone and traditional laptop. And mobiles and PCs are both *trying* to reach for some point in-between.
>
> Unless ALL sides turn out to be wrong (which seems unlikely) then naturally the "winner" will be something that does exist somewhere in that middle-ground that everyone's reaching towards. That "winner"'s lineage isn't particularly important (except to the corporations directly involved), because it will no longer be strictly a traditional smartphone nor traditional laptop.

You keep asserting that there's some "middle-ground", when the truth is that mobile devices will just have to pick up one software feature to kill off the PC.  I don't think that's "in-between," as it will really be a traditional smartphone.

You and Kagamin seem really bent out of shape by the desktop being junked, for some personal reasons of your own, so I'll leave that "Is a smartphone really a desktop once it adds a multi-window UI" argument here.  I've made my viewpoint clear.

On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 11:56:13 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> importance of which Wyatt and I discussed above.  Just by webasm being implemented in all major browsers, it would certainly lead to a _lot_ less javascript getting written, once devs actually have a choice of other languages, even if they'd still have to wrap javascript calls for DOM manipulation.

People are already writing less javascript, but without a GC in webasm most languages are better of compiling to javascript or a mix.

> As for Java and Flash, they were very widely used, despite being slow and in their own little world inside the browser.

They were used in very narrow domains.

> might help.  I haven't messed with canvas much, but it's interesting how little it's been used, despite all the hype it got when it was first released.

Well, you can often get more done in less time by using HTML5/CSS. That's the only reason.

> That's what you do when you mash a bunch of disparate technologies together: make them mixable and flexible and let the devs deal with all the complexity and bugs. :)

In a way, yes, but that how things grow when you have an installed base. Evergreen browsers could in theory change it, but we rely on Apple and Microsoft to update browsers for old OSes to get there.

> If speed of parsing and analyzing weren't one of the main issues, why are they even taking this webasm binary approach?  A binary SVG can be made part of the DOM too once it's parsed.

I think the vendors have realized that they need to take babysteps in concert, because there is to much politics involved to accept a "whole-sale solution" like PNACL etc.

IMO it basically means that they all want some kind of IR, but don't agree on the specifics.

>> In the scripting API using text as values might be an issue, but that's a different topic.
>
> Nothing that couldn't be made to work with the appropriate binary encoding.

Not sure what that means. You need to have a different type-system for values so that you can differentiate between units (px, em, etc).

On 06/22/2015 05:16 AM, Joakim wrote:
> I really liked the new Fisher-Price style of desktop Windows 8,

Ugh, now *that* one I don't like. Simplicity is nice, but ugly is just ugly. It looks like a re-imagining of Win1 and Win2 drawn up by a hung-over unicorn ;)

> along
> with better visualizations like the graph when copying files.

That graph is nice. Unnecessary perhaps, but certainly nice.

I really like the new process manager, actually. I wish KDE's was more like that.


> On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 18:51:41 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> Not if you're just reinventing the form factor by propping up your
>> monitor^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htablet and pulling out a keyboard+mouse.
>>
>> It's just the particular lineage that (might) go away.
>
> Heh, you're really reaching now. :) Most people wouldn't call a
> smartphone or tablet in a dock "reinventing the [desktop] form factor."
>

Of course they won't *call* it that, because they're easily swayed by image and marketing. People refer to iPhone and such as "phones" even though they're obviously much more of a pocket computer (that happens to support cellular communications) than a telephone.


>> Well, somebody was saying that mobile processors have been getting
>> closer and closer in power to laptops. Which I have to strongly agree
>> with. Maybe that wasn't you though.
>
> By that rationale, since desktop chips nowadays are as powerful as
> mainframes from a decade ago, desktops are really just mainframes,
> right? ;) You and Kagamin are really reaching with these assertions.
>

You're twisting my words around here. My point right there was simply "the gap in mobile and PC's processing power is closing". You seem to be taking it as "Merely having the processing power of X is, by itself, enough to makes it actually BE X", which is obviously not my argument at all.


>>
>> Not "converged". "ConvergING" towards some point in between
>> traditional iPhone (and clones) and traditional laptop. And yes,
>> *partly* because connecting keyboard/mouse is not something people
>> have normally done with smartphones (at least not typically). And also
>> because the gap in processing power is shrinking. And because you can
>> now connect them to an external monitor. And because they're gaining
>> desktop UIs. Maybe some other things too I haven't thought of off the
>> top of my head.
>
> Except that looking at that smartphone that has all those features that
> will allow them to kill off the desktop, they'll look exactly the same
> as smartphones do now.  Really, the only difference will be the addition
> of the multi-window UI capability, nothing else will have "converged."
> I wouldn't call that convergence between iPhones and laptops, rather
> smartphones simply picking up yet one more feature that allows them to
> kill off the desktop/laptop PC.
>

Hmmm, you're still outright ignoring most of what I've said about that. I'll repeat myself only one more time:

"PARTLY because connecting keyboard/mouse is not something people have normally done with smartphones (at least not typically). And ALSO because the gap in processing power is shrinking. And ALSO because you can now connect them to an external monitor. And ALSO because they're gaining desktop UIs. And ALSO misc other stuff."

Stop picking ONE aspect of all that and pretending my argument revolves purely around that one aspect alone.


>> >  A car still moves on wheels yet nobody would say
>> > it "converged" with a horse and carriage.  One feature, the
>> wheels,
>> > carried over, but most of it is completely different.
>>
>> There's really no parallel between that and what I'm talking about.
>
> Oh, it's pretty much the same. :) Replace wheels with multi-window UIs
> and that is exactly the point you're making.
>

No, it isn't, but you seem to be misinterpreting nearly everything about my point anyway.


>> > I think that
>> > since the underlying device, a smartphone, is fairly
>> different from a
>> > mainframe or a PC,
>>
>> How so? *You're* the one saying (even more than I am anyway) that they
>> are (or will soon be) suitable  replacements for PCs. How do you
>> reconcile that with now suddenly saying they're different in a big
>> enough way to be meaningful?
>
> Because they're really only taking one feature from desktops/laptops,
> the multi-window UI, in order to replace them. Otherwise, they will be
> the same smartphones that they are now, which you don't call desktops.
>

*One* feature? No. At least one *MORE* feature.

That's on top of everything they've already borrowed. You're acting as if smartphones have ALWAYS had host-USB, HDMI-out, processors that approach PC-level power, storage that approaches low-end laptops, multi-processing, commonly getting used with an external keyboard/mouse, etc. A lot of the convergence has *already* been happening, and you never even noticed ;) In fact that's WHY people are starting to notice their potential for replacing traditional PCs.


>>
>> God I hope not. :) Touchscreen mini-chicklet keyboards (not to mention
>> auto-correction) are already clunky and unreliable enough.
>
> I can't wait.  I've gotten fairly fast on a keyboard over the years, but
> I can't wait to just use voice.
>

I've done so already. It's absolutely terrible. At best, it's an occasional replacement for those already-horrid mini-touchscreen-keyboards (which almost anything is better than).


> You keep asserting that there's some "middle-ground", when the truth is
> that mobile devices will just have to pick up one software feature to
> kill off the PC.  I don't think that's "in-between," as it will really
> be a traditional smartphone.
>
> You and Kagamin seem really bent out of shape by the desktop being
> junked, for some personal reasons of your own, so I'll leave that "Is a
> smartphone really a desktop once it adds a multi-window UI" argument
> here.  I've made my viewpoint clear.

No, we just don't like making points that only get conveniently ignored or twisted around.

On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 15:59:57 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On 06/21/2015 09:45 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling  wrote:
>> Threw what in the trash-bin?
>
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_for_Android
>
> Though I may very well be missing something.

Yea, Ubuntu for Android was a cool idea that sadly, as I understand it, got no uptake from manufacturers.  So Canonical just pushed ahead with their own full-Ubuntu phone and tablet OS and UI, and played everything much quieter until they'd actually landed hardware partners.

It's obviously early days, but I think there's much to be quietly confident about: there's a lot to like in the OS and app design, and it is now by a long stretch the most free (as in freedom) phone OS available.

On 06/22/2015 04:01 PM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling wrote:
> On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 15:59:57 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>> On 06/21/2015 09:45 AM, Joseph Rushton Wakeling  wrote:
>>> Threw what in the trash-bin?
>>
>> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_for_Android
>>
>> Though I may very well be missing something.
>
> Yea, Ubuntu for Android was a cool idea that sadly, as I understand it,
> got no uptake from manufacturers.  So Canonical just pushed ahead with
> their own full-Ubuntu phone and tablet OS and UI, and played everything
> much quieter until they'd actually landed hardware partners.
>
> It's obviously early days, but I think there's much to be quietly
> confident about: there's a lot to like in the OS and app design, and it
> is now by a long stretch the most free (as in freedom) phone OS available.

Interesting. I'll have to look into that more. (Such as, will it run on Android phones or does it need separate hardware?)

On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 14:46:56 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> Sorry, I didn't read the conclusion of that link I gave you: I just linked it for the large graph showing and forecasting the number of global smartphone users.

Well, people upgrade their phones and there were a lot of phone users.

>>> That's like saying current PCs are "mainframes for all practical purposes, just more constrained in resources," you honestly believe that too? ;)
>>
>> And how do they differ?
>
> That doesn't answer my question. :) As for yours, well, for one, a program written for an AIX POWER mainframe isn't going to run unmodified on a PC.

All platforms have incompatibilities, it's not an exclusively mainframe feature.

> It's not going to have a desktop UI either.

PC has applications without a desktop UI, e.g. vibe.d.

>>> The former dominant use case for computers, creating content or getting work done, are a small part of what computers are bought and used for nowadays.
>>
>> Yes, if smartphones do that, they will become desktop.
>
> I see, so if I start transcribing a novel by voice to the on-board computer in my car on the way to work every day, it becomes a desktop, because I'd have previously written it up in desktop Word?  Just because a device takes on some functions that you previously did with a desktop doesn't make it a desktop.

Sounds more like a dictophone than a desktop.

>>> So yes, the desktop UI is a niche, but a moderately large niche that is about to move to mobile devices also.
>>
>> Yes, but your claim is that desktop will die, not move.
>
> I was very specific in my claims, at least to Nick above.  I said the desktop/laptop form factors and OSs will die out

Desktop has seen form factors and OSes die, it moved on.

On Monday, 22 June 2015 at 16:34:58 UTC, Ola Fosheim Grøstad wrote:
> People are already writing less javascript, but without a GC in webasm most languages are better of compiling to javascript or a mix.

The problem is that they may be writing less javascript now, but they're still stuck with the performance of javascript, as they're just compiling to javascript.  Webasm making that faster and allowing more languages should change that equation much more.

As for a GC, why would webasm need to provide one?  I'd think the languages would just be able to compile their own GC to webasm, which seems low-level enough.

>> That's what you do when you mash a bunch of disparate technologies together: make them mixable and flexible and let the devs deal with all the complexity and bugs. :)
>
> In a way, yes, but that how things grow when you have an installed base. Evergreen browsers could in theory change it, but we rely on Apple and Microsoft to update browsers for old OSes to get there.

This is nonsense.  They're just dumping in everything they can think of, that has nothing to do with backwards-compatibility.

>> If speed of parsing and analyzing weren't one of the main issues, why are they even taking this webasm binary approach?  A binary SVG can be made part of the DOM too once it's parsed.
>
> I think the vendors have realized that they need to take babysteps in concert, because there is to much politics involved to accept a "whole-sale solution" like PNACL etc.

PNaCl is bitcode too.

> IMO it basically means that they all want some kind of IR, but don't agree on the specifics.

That doesn't answer the question of why they're using a bitcode and not a textual IR, as you prefer text for SVG.

>>> In the scripting API using text as values might be an issue, but that's a different topic.
>>
>> Nothing that couldn't be made to work with the appropriate binary encoding.
>
> Not sure what that means. You need to have a different type-system for values so that you can differentiate between units (px, em, etc).

I thought you were saying that javascript would have trouble interacting with a binary SVG, which isn't necessarily the case, but maybe you meant something different.

On Monday, 22 June 2015 at 16:34:58 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> On 06/22/2015 05:16 AM, Joakim wrote:
> > I really liked the new Fisher-Price style of desktop Windows
> 8,
>
> Ugh, now *that* one I don't like. Simplicity is nice, but ugly is just ugly. It looks like a re-imagining of Win1 and Win2 drawn up by a hung-over unicorn ;)

Sounds good to me, :) I like the simplicity.

>> On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 18:51:41 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
>>> Not if you're just reinventing the form factor by propping up your
>>> monitor^H^H^H^H^H^H^Htablet and pulling out a keyboard+mouse.
>>>
>>> It's just the particular lineage that (might) go away.
>>
>> Heh, you're really reaching now. :) Most people wouldn't call a
>> smartphone or tablet in a dock "reinventing the [desktop] form factor."
>>
>
> Of course they won't *call* it that, because they're easily swayed by image and marketing. People refer to iPhone and such as "phones" even though they're obviously much more of a pocket computer (that happens to support cellular communications) than a telephone.

No, it's because that's what the form-factor is and they can see it with their plain eyes, without having an axe to grind.

> Hmmm, you're still outright ignoring most of what I've said about that. I'll repeat myself only one more time:
>
> "PARTLY because connecting keyboard/mouse is not something people have normally done with smartphones (at least not typically). And ALSO because the gap in processing power is shrinking. And ALSO because you can now connect them to an external monitor. And ALSO because they're gaining desktop UIs. And ALSO misc other stuff."
>
> Stop picking ONE aspect of all that and pretending my argument revolves purely around that one aspect alone.
---snip---
> *One* feature? No. At least one *MORE* feature.
>
> That's on top of everything they've already borrowed. You're acting as if smartphones have ALWAYS had host-USB, HDMI-out, processors that approach PC-level power, storage that approaches low-end laptops, multi-processing, commonly getting used with an external keyboard/mouse, etc. A lot of the convergence has *already* been happening, and you never even noticed ;) In fact that's WHY people are starting to notice their potential for replacing traditional PCs.

The problem with mentioning aspects like employing a keyboard and monitor, or the speed and size of the chip or storage, multi-processing, various I/O ports, and so on is that most computers, of many different kinds, always had those.  So if you're going to mention those, what you're really saying is that there's no such thing as a desktop or laptop and since the first computers were mainframes, a desktop is really a smaller mainframe, a laptop is a more portable mainframe, and mobile devices are really just very small, very portable mainframes. :D

What _differentiates_ a desktop from other computers is the form factor, the software stack commonly used, certain hardware features that they're known for, like x86, and multi-window UIs.  On all those counts but the last, mobile devices are completely different, so it's silly to say they're desktops or that they "converged" in any meaningful way other than the UI.

But if you have some emotional connection with the term "desktop" and can't take the fact that they're being rendered defunct, I can see why you'd want to ignore all that and just call the new devices "converged" or "desktops." :)

> I've done so already. It's absolutely terrible. At best, it's an occasional replacement for those already-horrid mini-touchscreen-keyboards (which almost anything is better than).

I've been surprised on the few occasions I used google's voice translation about how good it was, but I haven't use it much.

>> You and Kagamin seem really bent out of shape by the desktop being
>> junked, for some personal reasons of your own, so I'll leave that "Is a
>> smartphone really a desktop once it adds a multi-window UI" argument
>> here.  I've made my viewpoint clear.
>
> No, we just don't like making points that only get conveniently ignored or twisted around.

Or your position makes no sense and that's all I'm pointing out.

On Tuesday, 23 June 2015 at 09:44:19 UTC, Kagamin wrote:
> On Sunday, 21 June 2015 at 14:46:56 UTC, Joakim wrote:
>> Sorry, I didn't read the conclusion of that link I gave you: I just linked it for the large graph showing and forecasting the number of global smartphone users.
>
> Well, people upgrade their phones and there were a lot of phone users.

That chart shows current smartphone _users_, not total smartphones bought.

> Desktop has seen form factors and OSes die, it moved on.

I think what you mean is that "mainframes" have "seen form factors and OSes die, it moved on." :)

Am I right understand that web assembly would not completely new technology and would be just evolution of asm.js, so all of webassembly apps would run in old javascript virtual machine?