What is your total cost of ownership of your phone, over five years?

nonsense. people do all sorts of things on their phones and tablets, stuff that once required a desktop computer, including creating and editing photos and videos and quite a bit more.

in other words, someone can shoot a video, edit it and then upload it, entirely on a device that fits in their pocket.

Reply to
nospam
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You somewhat misinterpret me. I'm speaking of those that only use the smartphone. I would have one too if not retired and home most of the day.

Reply to
Frank

you don't understand what phones and tablets can actually do.

Reply to
nospam

Of course I do. They are not capable of the stuff I have to do on a computer.

Reply to
Frank

no, you clearly do not

maybe so, but that doesn't mean they're 'lightweight computers'.

mobile devices can do a lot of things that are difficult to impossible on a desktop/laptop.

Reply to
nospam

OK I give up. No sense fighting with a lightweight.

Reply to
Frank

Yes, it only takes a little prompt to make your thoroughly rotten corrupt soul to reveal itself in all its inglory. You are really quite a piece of work!

Reply to
dorayme

Oh. A kneecapping...

Reply to
rbowman

Can I run Visual Studio on a smartphone?

Reply to
rbowman

can you use augmented reality apps on a desktop computer, where there isn't even a camera?

some tasks can only be done on a desktop, some can only be done on a mobile device and some can be done on either or both. pick the best tool for the job.

some mobile devices benchmark as fast or faster than some laptops, making it a *better* choice.

the number of tasks that require a desktop is shrinking, and shrinking rapidly. mobile is the future.

those who claim mobile devices are 'lightweight' have no clue what they can actually do. it's a *lot* more than just email and web surfing.

Reply to
nospam

Easy answer.

The hardware is (almost) completely divorced from the service costs.

Two completely different things.

One can mix and match hardware with service.

But you can't mix and match hardware with itself.

Reply to
Harold Newton

Apparently for most of the world they are capable, because the sales of PCs peaked seven years ago and have been declining at a significant rate since. Intel just reported Q4 earnings, client platform revenue declined 2% year over year.

Reply to
trader_4

We develop applications for Android phones and tablets and are starting to target Apple devices using Xamarin as a cross platform tool. Trust me, we aren't coding on smart phones.

I did try to use an IDE on a 10" tablet once. A virtual keyboard just doesn't cut it for an input device and by the time you add an external keyboard you've essentially built a notebook computer.

I would not do email on a mobile device. once you get past the tweet level of communication, typing with your thumbs is painful. Mobiles are close to being a read only device with limited input. This is one of the things you need to keep in mind when designing for them. Content has to be pared down to take their limitations in account.

Reply to
rbowman

Have you tried one of the swype/word prediction keyboards on an Android? I agree smartphones are not ideal for emails, certainly not for longer emails, but many emails only require a few words or few sentences and you can be pretty productive with one of those keyboards. And you can use it while riding in a car, bus, train, away from a PC. You see the email on your phone when it arrives, wherever you are. Many times I'll see a notification on my phone and respond to the email there, even though the PC is close by. An exception would be if it's something that;s going to be long.

Reply to
trader_4

nobody said you should write apps on smartphones, although that day is definitely coming, and sooner than you think.

the point is there are tasks where mobile is a much better choice, sometimes the only choice.

also, apps that use xamarin or other cross platform frameworks are not as good as native apps on their respective platforms. at a minimum, you end up with the least common denominator of all platforms, and usually it's quite obvious that it's not native on any of them.

you're trying to use an app designed for a laptop/desktop on mobile device, which is guaranteed to fail.

this is something microsoft learned the hard way.

an ide *designed* for mobile would work well. it would, however, be very different than simply running a legacy ide on a mobile device.

nonsense. complete nonsense.

people are using mobile devices to *create* all sorts of content, from writing email to longer documents to taking and editing photos and video, drawing and painting, composing and playing music and much more.

French director Michel Gondry is well known for his many innovative approaches to shooting film and music videos, but none may be more disruptive than his recent decision to shoot a short film using an iPhone 7.  ... Gondry, whose previous films include Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Green Hornet, and a number of groundbreaking music videos for the likes of Björk, Kanye West, Beck, and the White Stripes, seems at home attaching the iPhone 7 to various rigs to achieve the final result. 

and as for typing speed,

Reply to
nospam

Probably. You'll run into issues like It's Closed Source And There Are No Existing Binaries For Your Phone. But that could be solved by building a phone around a different processor. Or by convincing the nice people who wrote Visual Studio to compile it for for a phone.

I can run *my* IDE on a phone. My IDE consists of vim, makefiles, gcc and shell programs. I've ported trn, the "threaded news reader" to my device using that environment. (Mostly as a proof of concept. I'd rather read news from a regular unix shell, because it has the rest of stuff already -- mail, smtp config, .newsrc file, post archives, etc.)

"Compile and run my own code" carries a lot of weight as a "Is this a general purpose computer or not?" test. And my phone lands squarely on the lightweight (< 6 oz as well as metaphorically) computer side of the fence.

Elijah

------ posted the necessary trn changes to news.software.readers last year

Reply to
Eli the Bearded

Don't type, use Swype.

Reply to
Chris

They have more patience than I.

Reply to
rbowman

Actually that is also my preferred IDE. If I can't do it with gVim is doesn't need doing. There is even a Vim plugin for VisualStudio. While their editor has gotten better over the decades it still sucks compared to a 1985 version of Brief. It even sucks compared to emacs.

I have no doubt you can do a lot on a phone but I see it as limping along with a Leatherman when you have a shop full of real tools.

Reply to
rbowman

Not a bad analogy, but also consider do the people carrying a Leatherman not have better tools, just somewhere else? Most of them will. I know I do, but the Leatherman and the cellphone are with me almost always, and the proper computer and real tools don't get carried with me.

Elijah

------ carried a pocket computer starting in the late 1980s

Reply to
Eli the Bearded

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