My point is: Why should phones be any different to desktops with regards to OS availability/ease of installation? If we accept that a significant number of users do use that ability on desktops, why wouldn't they use it on phones?
> You're still going to have to carry around a keyboard, mouse, cables, and probably a screen. It's going to be far, far easier to do that with a laptop/surface, or even a tablet, than with their setup.
Um, what? Why would you carry around all that stuff? I clearly described scenarios in which places would already have that setup for you. You just dock and go. Just like today you don't carry a router around with you or anything else.
> A desktop is going to have more power, a laptop is going to have a form factor that's much more convenient to carry around, and more battery.
"More power" doesn't mean anything without context. If you're just writing papers, code, even playing some types of games you likely have plenty of power for this already in your phone. If you want to play FarCry then obviously yes you're not going to do that from a phone.
A phone is more convenient to carry around than a laptop. If someone can supply you a laptop that your phone simply docks with you wouldn't need to carry it around which is precisely my point: the phone (or possibly another, smaller device) could be your personal computing platform and everything else around you simply visualizes the data contained within.
Why do we keep pretending PCs are comparable with phones? They compute, that's the end of their similarities. They have completely different use cases and are needed for different reasons. Things that are good on a PC might not be good on a phone.
The point was to give an example that desktop/laptop computers do not always result in better performance than phones.
The GP didn't seem to believe it was possible that a phone could be "less laggy".
In line with your own remarks, there are a number of common use cases that have been optimised on phones in a way that they never were on desktop, resulting in a superior user experience on the phone vs the desktop.
Then why can’t I run whatever I want on my phone? The logic here makes zero sense. A computer is a computer whether it fits in your pocket or sits on a desk.
Sure, phones are computers. Also, most people use phones as their primary way of connecting to the Internet.
But what does that have to do with me (or, it seems, the GP poster)?
I want a great computer on which I can do what I usually do on my computer which is mostly programming, but I guess I could be fancy and say "content creation" instead.
The fact that phones are computers have exactly zero relevance when it comes to me choosing a new laptop.
I used to be a hardcore Mac user, because the computing environment was superior to any other choice, but that's not the case anymore so my next computer will be a Linux laptop.
I don't agree with this at all. The main points seem to boil down to: "I want my smartphone to be a desktop computer." If you try to use your smartphone for the same purposes as a laptop, yeah, then you'll probably hate it, but if you approach it as a different device and explore new and different uses, the phone becomes a lot more powerful.
> It's interesting to see people who think their phone somehow equals the abilities of a console or PC.
I don't know of anyone who thinks that, and I don't read the above post that way. It's almost a pointless discussion, though, because the three year old phone in my pocket is more powerful than most of the desktop computers I've owned in my life. It doesn't seem unreasonable to expect mobile devices a couple of cycles hence to be able to match 90% of what's on people's desks right now.
reply