[OT] mobile rising

Ola Fosheim Grøstad ola.fosheim.grostad+dlang at gmail.com
Wed Nov 8 00:09:51 UTC 2017


On Tuesday, 7 November 2017 at 19:46:04 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> Not at all, it makes things easier certainly, but there's a 
> reason why mobile devs always test on the actual devices, 
> because there are real differences.

Mostly with low level stuff in my experience.

> Now, they're not going to dump 10-15% of sales because the 
> Mac's a fading business, they'll just keep milking it till it 
> doesn't make any sense, as I already said.

Heh, it would be very bad management to take focus off Macs. I 
doubt Jobs would have allowed that to happen, but as I said, I 
don't really trust the current management at Apple. So who knows 
what they will do?

You are thinking too much short term here IMHO. The mobile sector 
is rather volatile.

> Maybe I'm just very adaptable, but I've increasingly come to 
> the conclusion that smaller works fine, especially with the 
> extremely high ppi on mobile displays these days.

Small tablets are ok, for reading, but programming really 
requires more screen space. Although I guess one external + the 
builtin one is ok too.

I guess it would be possible to create a docking station for 
phones that was able to transfer heat away from the device so 
that you could run at higher speed when docked, but then the 
phone calls and you have to unplug it or use a headset…

> multi-window UIs built in, which as I said before is starting 
> to happen with Android 7.0 Nougat.

I should take a closer look on modern Android… Sounds interesting.

> happened.  MS, Nokia, and others linked in this thread clearly 
> thought as you did about mobile, yet they completely missed the 
> boat.  Clearly they misjudged the scale, scope, and timing of 
> that coming mobile tidal wave.

Yes, but as I said, not many players could have countered this. 
Microsoft certainly if they had bought up Nokia right away. Nokia 
alone… probably not. HP or Sony? On a lucky day…

> Yes, Apple made a big push, _at the right time_, while 
> everybody else didn't.  Google and Samsung followed fast, to 
> their credit, while everybody else fell to the wayside.

Well, but Android units did get a bad reputation in beginning.

> A good example for what?  They started a mobile OS from nothing 
> and grew it to two billion-plus users today, which you implied 
> only those with a "starting point" could do.

The Android makers had a real problem with quality and making a 
profit. Samsung managed to make a profit, but many others 
struggled. And it took a long time before Android's reputation 
caught up with iOS. Most businesses would not have been willing 
to make that software investment and sustain it until the OS 
platform would reach a competitive level.

So I don't think many could have followed Apple there. Apple 
recycled a lot of their prior work and experiences. Microsoft 
could have, sure, and I am sure they regret getting in late. But, 
they were late with embracing Internet too, so they have always 
followed their own mindset… and only reluctantly follow new 
trends.

But frankly, I don't think many giants would start with a GPL 
code base like Linux.



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