> Now that I know my iPhone has the capacity to run MacOS, I would very much like to do so. I’d love to consider the possibility of switching to a less intrusive phone and repurposing this iPhone into a web server. Perhaps that seems silly, but it’s really not. I’ve already paid for the device, it's clearly a full blown computer, and why should I not be able to modify it as I see fit?
I kinda do that with Samsung DeX. You plug it into a USB-C dock and it basically turns the phone into a computer. With Android apps running in little windows (not MS windows). It's amazingly useful, it's a bit like Microsoft's old convergence idea but it actually works.
I use it at work when I forgot to put my laptop in my bag (at home it's hidden in a dock behind my screen so it happens from time to time). I can work a whole day with meetings, doing some MS Office work etc. And if I need real Windows I can connect to a VDI. I could technically work like that every time I go to the office, the only reason I don't is some AD admin work that is not allowed in a VDI. It works technically but it's an internal rule thing.
I also use it on the go with an Xreal Air and a foldable keyboard. I have a whole computer with me for the weight and bulk of less than an iPad <3 It's awesome.
Apple could easily do similar, however their do really thrive by selling as many devices as possible so I doubt they would do it.
Xreal One glasses anchor the screen (i.e. it stays in place as you look around), have specific (and adjustable) tech for text clarity, have low chromatic distortion, and do things entirely onboard in the hardware. I've been able to use them for hours comfortably, and have gotten corrective lens inserts to avoid having to use my glasses with them.
They now have a 32:9 mode for ultra wide resolution, which is a real boost to using my work laptop. My aging phone doesn't play as nice as it used to with this mode, but it's a real win having 3 windows arrayed comfortably.
I code and read documents for a living, and I love these things.
thanks - I tried ViturePro when the came out, but felt like I was seeing monitors wearing blinders/through a slit, that wasn't quite big enough to see the whole screen.
Can you fully see the 3 monitors you're using there, And are you on mac or on windows? ie can you see kind of 1.5 monitors at a time, the middle one, and .5 of oneish?
They're not really VR. The Xreals I have are just "a screen stuck to your eyes". No tracking or anything. I don't really mind that. But no the quality is great, I can totally work on it. The resolution isn't perfect as they are OLED and only 2 subpixels per pixel (RGBG) so it looks a bit "brittle" but not "shakey". Shakey sounds like they do have tracking but not working well.
The display isn't huge either, the viture pro looks like it has a much bigger viewing angle so I can imagine the pixels are too spread out to show a decent resolution, like with most VR headsets (except the vision pro).
I use corrective lenses in them. I see the Viture have diopter adjustment but that wouldn't work for me as I have astigmatism.
I also bought a flagship iphone with the idea that maybe someday it could be used for work (S25+), first of all I was disappointed that the Snapdragon chips don't actually support the new Android Terminal feature.
Anyways there is Tmux, but if I wanted to do actual work, like with my stack: nodejs, docker container (with a postgres, a redis)... I am not sure it would work. Haven't done it so far but I'd be curious of other's experiences.
Also an Xreal and a foldable keyboard and you can just work anywhere with a chair and a desk
I also wanna try running some windows game on it, apparently it's working-ish at and Valve might improve that part of the ecosystem too
I hope that in the future, buying 2 devices will not be required and instead just buying one powerful one + optional peripherals will be ok.
Yes Android terminal is a bit of a miss, I agree. You could find an S26+ exynos perhaps.
Personally I prefer tmux anyway. I'm not a dev but if I do develop something we have to use a remote login box anyway, our workstations are completely locked down.
For me a webbrowser, Android apps like office and teams, obsidian and a few others and tmux are enough. It's not a complete workstation replacement but even at home I have way more than one computer. My daily driver for web stuff, a powerful pc for gaming and 3D design, an old LTSC box for microcontrollers and several others.
> With Android apps running in little windows (not MS windows). It's amazingly useful, it's a bit like Microsoft's old convergence idea but it actually works.
Can you run ordinary desktop apps though? What is useful about mobile apps designed for a small screen on a big screen? On my phone actual desktop apps (like LibreOffice or desktop Firefox) can be used.
One reason I got the Samsung S24 Ultra a couple of years ago is to run a full Linux desktop environment (via Termux), something you really can do. I even say it up, but I struggled to really get into it. Mostly because I banked on Nexdock, but it's trackpad is impossible.
That is to say, yes. And with that you can also run windows applications, e.g. through Winlator.
I was able to run Intellij IDEA, but of course ymmv as the application really has to be available for Android arm64.
I'd love to know your experience with the Xreal. I have seen a lot of videos on YouTube, but something throws me off. It just seems like they're all shilling.
A few days ago I cracked the edge of my smartphone's screen at just the right spot to shut its display off entirely, though it still works. Using the USB-C dongle meant for my laptop, the phone pops into a desktop view which basically is the same experience as a Chromebook (for better or worse).
In the meantime before its repair, I shoved my SIM card into an old flipphone I had in the tech graveyard drawer. I've actually really liked the limited flipphone experience. It's a mental breath of fresh air to not have a time/focus black hole in my pocket at all times. It made me realize that I've had a pretty bad relationship with my smartphone in terms of how much time I wasted on it. I'm considering keeping the flipphone as my primary phone. Maybe smartphones do too much.
as someone who did this for a week, it's nice until you need to install an app to check your bank statements or manage your insurance. Maybe that will get better as agents do, however
You don't have a laptop or desktop for those things?
Whilst I may not represent the average person, I have no need to check bank statements or manage insurance immediately, so I can wait until I'm at a 'real' computer to do it more conveniently and easily and with a bigger screen and keyboard and mouse.
GPs point about the 'relationship with the smart phone' seems to be pertinent. "need to install an app" to do these things only makes the point stronger.
My bank only has two options for authentication: Either you use their mobile app or buy an authentication device from them that's the size of a small phone. Either way I need a handheld device.
I can't say I'm happy with the direction of things. They used to offer slips of paper with single-use codes that worked fine, but those are now deprecated in favor of the smartphone app.
You can use a lot of those authentication / bank apps on a tablet without issue. Obviously it’s worth verifying before making the swap to a flip phone, but I like having minimal apps on my smartphone so I still have a backup if needed.
Then your bank is garbage and you should switch to a better one. My main bank (USAA) lets me use a one time code sent to my email as a second factor (or SMS, or a code from their app). If they started requiring me to use the app I would drop them immediately. Why is "but my banking app" treated like a valid objection every time user freedom comes up?
Because it's most banks that are like that. If you don't have this problem, then you're lucky your bank is actually technologically incompetent by industry standards.
The fact that they are easily spoofed is of no consequence for this use-case: entering an invalid 2FA code will simply fail to log you in into your banking. You should obviously not follow a link from an email that is not obviously coming from your request (and you should validate the top-level domain is what it needs to be even in that case), but you should be entering the bank web site directly.
The bigger problem is SIM swapping, which is more of a social engineering attack.
> You don't have a laptop or desktop for those things?
> Whilst I may not represent the average person, I have no need to check bank statements or manage insurance immediately
I think a lot of people check to make sure how much money they have before they make some purchases, especially big ones. Or, they check with this card declined (might need to move some money from one account to another or use a different card).
I teach high school and see students doing this all the time when buying food for lunch. I can't imagine it's any less prevalent amongst adults of a certain generation.
I certainly need to know how much money I have at any given time when I'm shopping. Seems fairly privileged (not in a bad way) to not need to think about that.
I take your point, but I'll also make the point that I'm organised and relatively self disciplined when it comes to spending. If I have to check my back account before any big expenditures, whilst on the go and requiring a smart phone, then that represents some kind of failure of self discipline (outside of emergency health situations).
Having said that, I do have an app that tells me how much is left on my debit card, but I only recharge it from laptop / desktop at home - I tend to not let it get low enough that I can't get through a day.
Can't deny a certain level of privilege, but will say it's been earned through self discipline. Everyone's situations are different, however.
Maybe GP choses to not use it? What about your "relationsip with the PC"?
For me, time I have in front of my PC is quality time I'd rather not waste on bullshit like banking, or worse, rearrange my life to make activities in that quality time that I could've made on the go in the "time holes" during the day.
Fuck apps, alright, but phones are finally getting useful (despite vendors' attempts to undo that). I switched to a foldable phone 6 months ago, and since then I haven't used my personal laptop for anything, not even once. Foldables are what tablets couldn't be, and despite the toy OS, my Fold7 managed to take over ~all tasks I used to do on the laptop or PC, that don't strongly benefit from physical keyboard and sitting stationary (and a good chunk of the latter too, plugged to a screen via USB-C).
This is my external portable monitor that I usually take with me for my computer. It gets power and video from one USB C cable it works with any computer that can do video over USB-C. It also works with my iPhone with a standard USB C cable.
It was since at least the iPhone 4. I still have the old digital AV connector from before they switched to lightning. It came with a hdmi port and a usb port. You could plug an SD card reader into the usb port and use it as an external HDD for transferring files.
I really don't understand the argument here. That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation.
Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect.
The snide around "clicking on links is dangerous" and locking down the bootloader is unwarranted, because for most people a phone is not a toy (or at least, not just a toy) - it has their communications history, their bank information, their passwords, any many more. And it's really easy to steal people's phones on the subway. This isn't about freedom of computing, this is about the fact that an iPhone in BFU is nearly as secure as a GrapheneOS phone.
There are many problems with Apple software. It's buggy, uses proprietary formats that you can't export, and interoperable with open standards. It's bad, and is the primary reason why I won't buy another iPhone, but Macs have that same problem. On the other hand, being cryptographically locked-down is an optional feature. If you don't like it, buy a computer without that feature. It's harmful to us, to tinkerers and people who want to see how things work, but the average person does not care at all and just wants to be able to open LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs without having their 401k get drained.
>On the other hand, being cryptographically locked-down is an optional feature. If you don't like it, buy a computer without that feature.
But that's the thing, where can I buy a phone without a locked-down operating system? GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel is basically the only option right now, and this still has problems thanks to hardware attestation in a lot of apps that the ecosystem forces us to use.
This is largely because Apple has dictated the direction of smartphones for the past two decades. All of our expectations for control over our phones are completely out of whack compared to other computers.
Somehow we managed to survive without the majority of society being scammed out of their life savings before Apple came in with the iPhone and locked down iOS, and yet now people are earnestly defending the notion that 90% of people should not even have access to the filesystem on their own device.
> All of our expectations for control over our phones are completely out of whack compared to other computers.
I would, sadly, challenge this. If anything, our desktops and laptops are the exception now. Phones, TVs, game consoles, set top boxes, cars, Amazon echos, ebook readers, tablets, security cameras, autonomous devices like vacuum cleaners — when I think of the myriad devices we interact with that have a computer in them, they are all as stringently locked down as possible.
> hardware attestation in a lot of apps that the ecosystem forces us to use
Only a tiny amount of apps force you into hardware attestation, and these are mostly around banking, mobile payments and the like. So just use a separate, locked down device for those (where the anti-fraud protection of a locked-down system can be a benefit) and your more open day-to-day device for mostly everything else. A hidden advantage is that the dedicated device for secure uses is not something that you're forced to carry with you; you can leave it in a secure place instead.
>Only a tiny amount of apps force you into hardware attestation
Luckily this is still true, but I'm not confident that it will stay this way. For a few examples, I've been unable to use my phone as a metro card in my city because even though it goes through the metro's app, the app redirects back to google pay. Google's own Waymo app won't work without stock OS even though all it does is call robotaxis.
>these are mostly around banking, mobile payments and the like. So just use a separate, locked down device for those
I don't think this is a very reasonable suggestion, carrying around a second phone that I use at most a couple of times a day is inconvenient and expensive. Half of the point of these is convenience and this would defeat the purpose.
The broader point is that our standards for phones are so different from everything else. I also carry around a credit card which requires no authorization to use, not to mention cash. I can have just as much personal data on my laptop if not more, so why does it have to be this way just for phones?
Be sure to give apps that behave that way one-star reviews.
I just tested Waymo and my usual solution of Magisk Play Integrity Fix was insufficient, suggesting hardware-backed attestation. This is the kind of crap Microsoft was doing that inspired Google to put "don't be evil" in its mission statement. We all know how that went.
If your goal is to boycott Google, you're probably not trying to use Waymo. My suggestion was only about punishing the use of remote attestation in the small way most of us can.
A smart phone's primary function is to initiate and receive phone calls, or arguably 1/3 of it's primary function if the metric is the Jobs iPhone launch presentation, however since "smart phone" and "iPhone" have "phone" in their names I'm going to argue its their primary function.
People have come to expect that phones nearly always work, and rely on them for critical communication with loved ones, services like emergency services. When these aren't dependable you don't have a phone but instead a toy.
The case made two decades ago is that running arbitrary software on a phone incurs a risk that malware can compromise the device and alter its dependability. _General purpose computers don't have this historical burden._ Phone and mobile OS makers sell their products with their purposeful limitations made fairly clear. You want a mobile device with different capabilities then seek out am alternate device, it's kinda obvious.
There's always communities of people who attempt to repurpose the products they own for purposes the weren't originally intended, and I would like to see that laws that make that hobby more legitimate and legal. I would love to see 3rd parties able to support these hobbyists, that would be great. But Apple, Google with their hardware partners have no obligation to do so, and justifiable positions for making repurposing non-trivial to do.
I was able to get Waymo to work on GrapheneOS, but it took some doing, and relies on the GrapheneOS developers hacking around the official Google Play services in some way. Waymo definitely made it more difficult than it needs to be to run this on something other than ordinary Android, and it's unclear if they did so in order to make themselves more money, or simply because doing things the official Google Android way is easier for them and they aren't even thinking about people who are trying to have a less-restricted smartphone OS.
> Only a tiny amount of apps force you into hardware attestation, and these are mostly around banking, mobile payments and the like.
I.e. the only ones that make the phone critical to daily lives of most poeple. Don't forget to add government applications, multimedia applications (DRM) and communications too.
And that's only going get worse, because every app seems to think they're most important. We're in the middle of the phase where every app tries to force strong MFA on users, despite most apps having no fucking business having this level of security. Banks are actually lagging behind toilet paper roll simulator apps nad stores selling hats for pets and such.
Wait when they're done that, leveraging attestation APIs will be next.
>Somehow we managed to survive without the majority of society being scammed out of their life savings before Apple came in with the iPhone and locked down iOS
What on earth are you talking about? People have been getting scammed since the days of AOL! What an insane perspective. It's not about total money lost from scams. It's about the amount of impact it has on the individuals who get scammed. What's the problem with Russian roulette after all? Most people playing Russian Roulette are absolutely fine! The point is that the damage done to the few people who get scammed is so high, we ought to care about their lives too. At the end of the day, it might end up being us... it probably won't, but it might.
Yes, monopolistic network effects are a problem, but that can be handled with regulation.
We don't save few people suffering high damage from losing a round of Russian Roulette by restricting ability to roll D6, because of then harm a bad roll can do when in form of a barrel of a loaded revolver. Also "only criminals need random number generators".
It is a question of who is "We" because all this seems to imply that the market owes "us" this product.
I would lose my mind and switch to Linux for good if Apple every tried to close their laptops. Why? Because unlike my mom, I'm sitting here writing programs for myself.
On my phone however, I don't want to have to do a bunch of research whenever I need to install something like a parking app. I don't want to have to install a random parking app, but when you need an app to park in the MUELLER - MCBEE garage in Austin, and when I'm visiting and am meeting people for tacos, life is going to force me to install that app. When that happens, I'm happy to be in the walled garden. In fact, I want a walled garden.
I'm happy to have two computers, one open and one closed. They're two different products. For folks who want an open phone, yea, it's basically GrapheneOS or nothing, because when the point of the phone is a completely different use case (random app installs) then the point becomes the ecosystem, and you need to always be able to trust the ecosystem.
When you are trying to tinker with your phone, it becomes a completely different product. The market doesn't owe you that product.
> because for most people a phone is not a toy (or at least, not just a toy) - it has their communications history, their bank information, their passwords, any many more. And it's really easy to steal people's phones on the subway. This isn't about freedom of computing, this is about the fact that an iPhone in BFU is nearly as secure as a GrapheneOS phone.
If that were the entire reason, the straight-forward thing would be to give the user tools to secure the phone, such as setting a password and encrypting data based on that password.
It wouldn't make sense to spent enormous amounts of resources to "secure" the phone against its own user, yet that is what they do.
I think a more honest explanation is that they aren't just securing their own corporate power, but also the power and business models of all kinds of app developers - this way, developers can sell trivial UI improvements as "premium features" or even put in deliberate anti-features and the user can't do anything about it.
Games can put in loot boxes and microtransactions, YouTube can declare that keeping a song playing and putting the phone away is a premium feature and movie rightsholders can decide the exact circumstances under which a movie may be watched.
That's all before the ubiquitous tracking and data collection.
Everyone wins, except the user...
> and just wants to be able to open LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs without having their 401k get drained.
So do I, even if I'm a tinkerer. That's what sane permission settings and - if you like - a locked bootloader are for. What you don't need for that is to restrict the owner from unlocking the bootloader.
I understood this stance more 10 years ago, but now we have many layers of fairly well documented exploit tactics and none of them rely on the app store. However forcing users to use an app store was supposed to benefit us has clearly failed.
And, somehow, the indignity of being forced into paying apple a 30% tax for a market they wholly own never comes up alongside other paternalistic arguments....
Can you elaborate on "fairly well documented exploit tactics"? My impression is that most of these are either social engineering, for which we need to hire better designers, or complicated chains of hard-to-find primitives only accessible to state actors.
There's definitely problems but the solution isn't to make the iPhone a general purpose computer. We definitely need to defend the existence of general purpose computing at a time where regulation is likely to begin encroaching on it, but the promise of the App Store is "pay a 30% tax and any app you download here will be safe." In my mind, at least, that's the promise, and perhaps one solution to the situation would be to erect consequences to breaking that promise.
> the promise of the App Store is "pay a 30% tax and any app you download here will be safe."
Apple, who revealed in court that they enjoy a 75% profit margin on that fee, is being sued for that promise being false advertising on account of the crypto scams they keep approving.
Stemming from the case where Apple revealed their 75% profit margin on these fees, Apple was referred for criminal investigation for illegally forcing everyone to pay that fee violating a court order to ensure they get it and then lying to a judge about it.
A 30% tax and no freedom to install what you want better come with protection from state actors lmaooo. Otherwise what could be worth such a heavy-handed (and under a rational state, illegal) method?
Especially when the app store is nos filled with gambling apps and social media built to exploit children....
I still remember the era when jailbreaking Android and iPhones was gaining popularity among less technical people. It was eye opening to watch how many people I knew would search for a random web page and then unquestioningly follow instructions on the screen to install software from the first link they clicked.
All of this to get custom fonts in their messaging app or some other little feature they saw on someone’s phone.
I started getting a lot of requests for help from people who had broken key functions on their phones or even bricked them entirely.
Even today there’s a culture of downloading Android builds from long forum threads on XDA developers and other forums and hoping they’re not compromised.
> All of this to get custom fonts in their messaging app or some other little feature they saw on someone’s phone.
Yes, and this is normal and right. They're expressing curiosity, and in the process also actually exercising ownership of their devices.
It's how most of us here learned computers, too.
The only problem in this picture, really, is that we've allowed - or even helped - software and platform vendors to disempower regular users so much that "to get custom fonts in their messaging app" they need to do something high-risk.
Most of what regular people try to do is like this anyway - something that should be a basic functionality, that used to be basic functionality, but has been taken away from users for their "safety" or because "sekhurity" or such.
The Linux community settled very quickly on the model of a Linux distribution, distributed via FTP, as a safe place to acquire on OS. Some got very popular.
Is there anything like that in the Android world? I'd love an alternative Android distro the supports writing notes with the S-Pen from the lockscreen. Where does one find such a thing?
There are AOSP-based distros like grapheneOS and calyxOS with various "app stores" like fdroid that behave similar to package managers on linux. There are also just run-linux-on-your-smartphone distros like postmarketOS. I doubt stylus integration is good in either.
> Even today there’s a culture of downloading Android builds from long forum threads on XDA developers
I did that this month. I wouldn't do that for a device I use for anything sensitive, but I have a niche use case for my old Nexus 5, and it needed to be running at least Android 8.
> That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation.
And why should the entity locking down the design be the same entity as the one selling it? Is that a feature too?
You can't imagine a world where people can install different services by different providers to protect their devices? And have some actual competition? And therefore choice?
We almost had that with the browser wars, when Microsoft was forced to have customers choose which browser they wanted when they got a computer. Operating system choice was already lost to Windows, but at least browser, they were forced by EU directive to let the customer choose which one they wanted. Then the game changed, and now it's basically Google or Apple for your smartphone, with a tiny bit of competition that doesn't really count. If the EU really had guts, they'd say that computing devices must let the user install a OS of their choice, at their risk, and businesses would be able to just sell phones, with the option of GrapheneOS alongside Android and iOS or Windows Mobile or FirefoxOS or WebOS. We didn't get that future, unfortunately.
We really need to have a "no-tether law" that says that the consumer should be able to break all ties with the vendor and still be able to use the device as advertised.
If you make a bootloader unlock require a full wipe/rekey of the device, and make unlock status visible at boot, most of the "someone might unlock my bootloader maliciously" concerns go away.
Fairphone actually does this. My FP3+ displays a red bar with an open padlock as long as the bootloader is unlocked, and when one changes the bootloader lock one way or the other, the phone wipes itself.
Right, but unless you prevent apps from being able to query for this status, the market will still force people into locked phones, because "sekhurity" isn't about actual security, but checking boxes and control.
If you put the icloud-lockout stuff early enough in the boot chain (which I believe is the case on apple silicon macs already?), that seems like a solvable problem too. I can understand why apple hasn't put the engineering effort into making something like this happen, but I don't think it's because they can't make it happen.
And the consequence for this is that you can't replace your own camera - or home button. Instead of a thief stealing your phone, Apple steals your phone. Not worth it. They could still track it by IMEI when it connects to a network.
This is not an honest portrayal of iOS. iOS is locked down period. "By default" makes it seem like there's a choice involved anywhere, and there isn't.
I like iPhones because they are a little bit restricted.
But let’s be real here. They should have unified everything 5 years ago. Your phone should plugin to a screen and be a “netbook” level device and anything 13 inches and up should be running MacOS. The iPad should have a real affordable keyboard.
These limitations are no longer designed to make the product better.
I moved to a beach town and found out the tides app only exists on my Apple Watch. I went through 10 iOS apps that didn’t work properly or wanted me to pay subscription before giving up. I just don’t understand… do they not use their own products or something?
This is clearly sub-optimal for a tablet. And worse, they are supposed to be a company that has good taste and design.
I bought a knock off cantilever keyboard cover. This is clearly the way to go. Very clever design from Apple. The knockoff works almost as well for 25% of the price.
I understand this for a user’s primary phone, and agree to a large extent.
However, the article touches on ideas like using an old phone as a server. It would be nice if on first boot a user could choose if the device will be a phone or a generic device. This way, when I decide to upgrade my phone, my old would could be reset and then setup with macOS to use for wherever I want. The alternatives are to sell it, recycle it, use it as an overpowered iPod touch, or throw it in a drawer for 10 years.
The iPhone is designed to be a good smartphone, not a good NAS. It is silly to expect anyone to compromise the design of a mass market product to support some esoteric MacGyvering entirely unrelated to the original product.
Should we all expect Toyota to design their ECUs to be used as a NAS?
It's not about "design", because the iPhone is perfectly capable of running arbitrary code, it just refuses to do so if you're not Apple.
The situation is such that the legal owner of the device has less power over it, post-sale, than the company that made it.
That reason alone, the imbalance of power, should be enough to support abolishing those restrictions, preferably by law.
To be clear: this is something that should be beyond market forces, and it should apply to anything that is sold to consumers and can run code. The end goal should be that no user remain less powerful, in terms of code execution and access to content, than the manufacturer.
> It's not about "design", because the iPhone is perfectly capable of running arbitrary code
It is a very intentional UX choice to mitigate malware for users who do not know how to evaluate the legitimacy of software on their own. And studies show that this is a very effective policy, both perceived (e.g. marketing) and real (actual breach statistics).
You can mitigate malware while still allowing for the same level of end-user control as the manufacturer. Look at Windows itself! People getting infected on up-to-date installations is a rarity nowadays, all without draconian lockdown policies.
It took windows many decades to get there and the reputational harm was already done by then. Android is not doing particularly well but it has improved significantly.
Of course Apple doesn’t want people to use their device in a way that’s not how they designed it. They’re very anal about the user experience, they don’t want kids to install ArchLinux on their grandparents iPhones, and have the grandparents complain that their phone is shit. I get that.
Conveniently, the way they designed the phone allows them to charge 30% of every transaction that happens on the device…
But that’s beyond the point. The point is that the iphone is a capable device, that probably can run macos, and it’s a waste that we’re not allowed to.
I'm all for antitrust action against the financial trap that is the app store. But as someone who designs products, I think it's absolutely asinine to require security flaws in a product's primary design to support an untended repurposing.
I guess I don’t see how allowing some phone owners to root their devices introduces security flaws for those who don’t. Maybe there’s something I’m missing here.
A NAS is just an example, here's a better one; I love to use my old phones as wall mounted displays and controls for home assistant, or as remote music players plugged in to some speakers that I can hook into in music assistant. Some of my old phones are more than capable of this hardware wise but are locked to older versions of android and can't run anything built for a newer version, so they end up as ewaste intstead.
I think my next phone is going to be a fairphone or something for this reason.
None of those are even remotely reasonable enough to be a higher priority design criteria than preventing little old ladies from unknowingly installing malware.
You can do this but you have to remove the battery and hook up the circuitry to external power. This practically turns the phone into a glorified SBC. It may still be worth it since there's more of a mass market for phones than SBCs (and phones come with lots of extra hardware components that can be useful) but it's not that huge of a win.
> Apple software. It's buggy, uses proprietary formats that you can't export
Buggy sure, but proprietary formats? Calendar entries can be imported or exported as iCalendar .ics (RFC 5545), contacts as vCard .vcf (RFC 6350), photos as .jpeg or .heif (ISO/IEC 23008-12), books use the open .epub (ISO/IEC TS 30135), iTunes dropped DRM for purchased files in 2016 and uses mp4 (ISO/IEC 14496-14:2020) (though not sure what Apple Music streaming uses). TextEdit uses .rtf (a closed Microsoft format), and Pages, Numbers, Keynote use their own formats (as other office software does), but they import and export to many common formats. Notes imports and exports markdown (and you can always print/export as pdf).
What are the "proprietary formats that you can't export"?
ETA: Oh, Messages, yeah. To export those, you have to copy/paste a conversation, or use a 3rd party app, fair enough.
All good points. But what would be really useful and easy is allowing the iPhone to be used as a full-fledged computer on a file system completely distinct from that used to run the phone. Then my laptop is just peripherals connected to my phone.
Also phones are network devices on a carrier network. A long time ago, people didn’t even own their own phones. Their landlines were property of the phone company.
Apple achieved what was nearly impossible by getting iPhone capabilities on a carrier’s network. (They did another impossible feat with the iTunes Store and selling tracks for 0.99)
iPhone capabilities caught up to most people’s computing needs but at the core these are still devices that need to be approved to run on a carrier’s network with basic service contracts. So they are locked down.
Phone networks have always been crusty legacy things when you look at it from a modern computing lens
You can buy a cellular data plan for your laptop. Just plug in a 5g radio to your usb port or in some laptops you can even install it internally in a dedicated pcie slot.
Carrier approval is not the reason phones are locked down. If it were then rooting android devices wouldn’t be possible.
> The snide around "clicking on links is dangerous" and locking down the bootloader is unwarranted, because for most people a phone is not a toy (or at least, not just a toy) - it has their communications history, their bank information, their passwords, any many more.
And so is their god damn computer!
The ONLY reason why we treat phones differently from computers has no relationship at all with what's at stake, it's purely because Apple felt they could get away with it for phone, while they estimated that people would stop buying macs right away if they did the same thing for computers. It's literally that simple.
Problem is a lot of apps require a locked-down device. You can't use a phone that isn't locked down in most of the world. And it will spread to PCs eventually.
If it was easy I would expect 5-10% if people would probably do it, much like alternate desktop installs
This would mean millions of devices
You mention Graphene is more secure so what exactly am I gaining from not being able to install it other than my phone being trash once it's out of support
And yet, try getting a full backup of your Google phone onto your own computer. (Without rooting/wiping the whole thing.) Heck, try getting just your text messages off (without a separate app)!
You can't. (Last time I checked.) The backup is encrypted in the cloud, and the only way to download it is to restore it to a phone.
Whereas I can just plug in my iPhone and get a full backup, complete with sqlite manifest, completely accessible. Text messages, photo library, everything.
> That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation.
I would say most people in tech who aren't interested in fiddling with their phones have no issue with this either and frankly intentionally prefer more locked down options, all things considered.
It's fine to criticize abusive practices that companies engage in, but I tire of the narrow-mindedness of some people who measure everything according to their personal interests. Like, expand your mind, man.
You don't understand the argument of why people might want to install their own OS on a device they own. And then say you won't buy another iPhone because you don't like their software... It sounds like you _do_ understand the argument.
I greatly dislike Apple software, but I think their hardware is quite nice. I would buy apple hardware if it wasn't handy-caped by their OS.
It used to be said that Apple was a hardware company that happens to make an OS. This argument never made sense to me, because while they make good hardware they very clearly don't want people to use it.
I use the Pixel, but the point is the same. Recently Google added the "Dex" like feature where I can plug in the phone to a monitor and use it as my "entire computer" - at first I was excited, I can go to a coffee shop and leave my laptop behind, but then I looked at getting a bluetooth keyboard, mouse, monitor - with battery, and it's now a worse experience. There are monitor/battery/trackpad combination products for this exact scenario but they are nowhere near the quality of just buying a Macbook - doubly so the Neo.
A laptop is more than the sum of its parts. Your phone overlaps with it on a technical level, but format is important.
Granted, its not as good of a "feel" as a laptop. But for the price and the features its great. You can get a good aftermarket track-pad and use that. I use a wireless mouse, because it lets me also use it as a monitor+mouse+keyboard for my Steam deck so I can play FPS games.
I had a similar experience where I tried out a Z Fold 7 with a kickstand and foldable bluetooth keyboard. I was curious about the feasibility of an all-in-one computing experience; it was clunky but surprisingly somewhat productive.
Then when confronted with scenarios where I had no stable surfaces I realized why the LAPtop form factor reigns supreme.
Peripheral add-ons like the NexDock are very nifty, but at that point you are suffering from the same physical constraints of a phone + laptop lifestyle. All with zero of the benefits of a locally accessible, more mature, and capable OS.
Try Z Fold 7 with a grip case (one with a rubber band on the back to fasten it to your palm). Grip cases make phones in general much more usable on the go, but with a foldable, it's arguably what makes you feel safe using it for laptop-grade work while walking or without a surface to rest against.
Still not a laptop, but for me it's enough that I haven't used my private laptop since getting the Fold 7 half a year ago. Extreme portability can cover for a lot of other UX problems.
My excitement towards Dex is really about it being a stepping stone towards ChromeOS replacement. I only want that because Chromebooks getting the the Google equivelant of the Apple Fast Pair experience will lower the cost of a convenience that my professional life increasingly depends on. Important for people who have too many meetings, I guess.
My use case was when I went to the office and I wanted to get some personal work. I brought a USB-C dock and plugged in my employer's peripherals, hop on my cellular connection and have at it.
I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it. Like what do you mean you put an entire computer inside the monitor just to run the webcam? And at the very least, couldn't you have put in the A18 pro that you put in the neo? Did you really need more RAM and compute than the entire Neo uses to be a whole computer to drive a single webcam? In theory that thing could turn into iMac.
This is sooo true. I have multiple computing ideas that I want to do just for fun but I am not doing because each requires buying a mini-pc, sometimes with a screen too, and put Linux + my app on it.
At the same time I have multiple old phones laying around, Pixels, iPhones, Galaxy that are out of date, have cracked screens or worn out batteries.
Each one of these old phones have same or more computing power than a $300 mini-pc, but I can't use them because I can't just ssh into them and install an app...
Just nitpicking: unlockable bootloaders. The bootloader is locked by default. But you can unlock it without needing Google.
Additionally, Pixels support a Linux VM and has a desktop mode (I'm running GrapheneOS, it may still be that these features have to be enabled through the developer settings).
Well akshually.... the bootloader is initially not unlockable. You must connect the phone to the internet. Within a few minutes a background process will reach out to Google servers to check whether it was purchased outright or with a payment plan. It will only enable the bootloader unlocking toggle after this step. Phones bought with a carrier contract won't be unlockable until paid off.
In those initial few minutes (/ before you connect it to the interwebs), the bootloader unlock option in the developer settings & fastboot will be disabled.
Thanks for the correction! Though I recently set up and unlocked a new Pixel and I don't recall it. Maybe SKUs for European countries are an exception since such payment plans do not really exist? Or I forgot.
I recently turned my unused Google Pixel 8 into a server for my personal site and various side projects. It's super satisfying to spin things up in a couple hours, point a cloudflare tunnel at it, and share it with the world.
I was talking with someone solidly in Gen X that described their desire to write out longer form documents by hand on paper rather than typing them up. The process of typing helped them work through the content better than typing.
In an analogous way, I feel like I'm in that part of the millennial generation that is more comfortable doing things on a PC than on a phone. Sure I can informally browse airline tickets and cars on my phone, or upload some docs for my , but when things get serious, I'm switching to a PC to complete it.
There's something about doing things on a phone that just does not feel... robust? Maybe I am just too accustomed to the phone experience being minimal, or minimized in some way compared to the desktop experience.
It's generational in the sense that younger generations are far more accustomed to using phones than computers. They might not even be exposed to a computer until they need to use one for school. It's objectively less comfortable for them to use a computer when they never (or barely) used a mouse, physical keyboard, or any of that software before.
You can even see the same with games. All these kids growing up playing games on their iPads are really good at using those crappy touchscreen controls to play. Do you think they'd find using a physical controller comfortable? Maybe after a lot of practice, but why switch if you're already good at using the touch controls?
My daughter didn't really grow up using a desktop computer, though she would see my wife and I do that often enough.
She prefers a phone, but has difficulty even doing most of the things you or I would want to accomplish. It is mysterious to her, because the phone makes it difficult and sometimes even nearly impossible, and so she acts like that is impossible. When the google screen only shows you two results, you give up if there's no clear answer in two results. When the phone screen shows 20 words on it, you think reading 1500 words is an ordeal. Cluttered pages not quite fixed with adblock can have the clutter ignored on a large monitor, but when there is no adblock and the screen is 3 inches wide, the clutter drowns out the signal completely.
Phones may be an entire computer, but they are a deliberately crippled computer that makes reading text input difficult, writing text input even more difficult, and makes thinking most difficult of all.
I'm not convinced the author cares very much about this. He bought an iPhone. Based on his other blog posts, he knew what he was buying and what the alternatives are.
An Android phone, even with a stock OS would get him more of the capabilities one would expect from a desktop PC, but he chose an iPhone. Some Android phones let the user unlock the bootloader easily and gain root, but he chose an iPhone. With an unlocked bootloader and a well-supported device, it's possible to install a third-party Android distribution with even more freedom, but he chose an iPhone.
Maybe he likes the iOS UX or app selection better, but if that's the deciding factor then I don't think using the phone as a Real Computer (tm) is really all that important to him.
But you know it's important because of the italics.
As long as it's understood as an opinion piece it's tolerable despite – as you note – the “revealed preference”.
## Appliance Computing:
Take "consoles" for instance. I got tired of building gaming PCs, and after another long day of making computers work, enjoy turning on an Xbox Series X and just doing what the box is there for, much as I appreciate the glass slab in my pocket just doing what it is there for, every single time, without fail, for nearly 2 decades now.
I enjoy a TRMNL (https://trmnl.com/) or Arduino as much as the next person, but don't need my PDA-phone to be a general purpose computing device.
## Mobile Computing:
On the contrary, for both business office work and content creation, and leisure travel logistics and media creation, an iPad Pro with keyboard and trackpad would generally be preferable to a Macbook Pro or Air or Neo if people spent the couple weeks necessary to get used to the different computing paradigm.
Once that sinks in, you may find carrying an iPhone, folding bluetooth keyboard with multi-touch pad, and a Switch 2 USB-C + PowerDelivery + HDMI cable means you can field work on any 4K hotel TV or AirBnB monitor:
But that's better suited for media. iPad Pro + 5G chip + keyboard w/ trackpad is your dual monitor work bet w/ this same cable.
Btw, the point of this particular cable is that power is probably near the TV where the HDMI end goes, with the USB-C where you and your phone or iPad are.
It's very clear that the consumer is getting a worse experience than what is technically possible. There is no good phone-slash-laptop, purely because it's less profitable than locking down the devices and selling them separately.
I used it for years with a Nexdock. I just don't really use a phone anymore (mostly Daylight computer, where attaching a keyboard and most mostly gets me what I want).
There's nothing much special about phone silicon. They generally run a bit slower than their desktop/laptop counterparts because of power and heat limitations.
At the top end on a desktop power usage doubles for lower double-digit percentage gains. You can shave that off and not lose much. Laptops are a lot closer to phones than they are to desktops when it comes to power and thermal limitations*, so re-using a "phone" chip really isn't crazy.
* 100W power usage on a laptop is entering silly territory, but on a desktop that's the bottom of entry-level rigs.
There is and there isn't. Your phone, almost certainly, with a shorter list of exceptions than not, has a locked bootloader and consequently cannot run unsigned software with full permissions without additional work. Sometimes that work is impossible to do. In terms of capabilities, sure, your phone is as capable, if not more capable than a desktop computer from a decade or two ago. The phone in my hand that I'm writing this from is 100 times more powerful than the computer I had as a kid. So that's an important point to make. However the specialness of phone silicon is the locked down bootloader and the downstream effects of that. You can point out exceptions where you can unlock the bootloader, but those are exceptions. The vast majority of phones you aren't going to get root on. So in that dimension, that's what's special about phone silicon. The signed chain-of-trust that is baked in and prevents you from running unsigned binaries with full permissions on phone silicon.
You are conflating many things here. A locked bootloader does not imply you cannot run unsigned software in user space. There are also many phones that do allow you to unlock the bootloader. I have a drawer full of them.
Finally, the ability to allow you to unlock your phone bootloader or to run custom firmware has nothing to do with the silicon. It's a software choice. The trusted software could most certainly decide to disable these safeguards.
It most certainly could, but will it? I have that same drawer. There is absolutely custom silicon dedicated to putting up those safeguards. The problem is the trusted software decides wether or not to disable those safeguards is what makes it special.
>A locked bootloader does not imply you cannot run unsigned software in user space.
In the long term it does because the purpose is to provide the scaffolding for remote attestation. Once remote attestation becomes the norm, it transitions into becoming a de-facto requirement for doing pretty much anything in the real world. Today, banking apps. Tomorrow, getting past the cloudflare turnstyle. The next day, everything.
Many people here says that it's locked up by design, and while I agree, we could have an alternative firmware (not iOS or even GUI) that gives full control and complete access through ssh and repurpose it as we want.
I have a pile of iphones without battery sitting in a drawer and It would be a really cheap way to run fun stuff.
The only thing that could be worrying is device theft, but a simple CLI tool for the initial device registration after firmware flash might do it.
The problem is Mac. They've always locked things down citing safety or user experience, but it is profit and walled garden. Samsung Dex has been doing this for years.
In before someone explains it's not "exactly" the same. Dex has shown this phone/computer ability in practice long before.
It's always funny to watch hackernews slam apple for user experience decisions based off what's best for their average customer as if every person purchasing an apple device is a hackernews.
It seems like the viability of running a computer from an A16 really just came to fruition. There's heat, performance, battery life, etc implications that the average consumer can't quite articulate but it matters to them.
Apple's goal seemed to be to decimate the Cheap Plastic Intel Laptop space, and I think they succeeded at catching the industry with their tails between their legs.
You can connect keyboard, mouse, and video, but you just get screen mirroring on the screen (or it can properly display a full-screen video in some apps, I think... though DRM video may refuse), so, it's pretty limiting.
I’ve been hoping Apple would allow this for years, although it doesn’t seem like something they would do.
The fact that iPadOS now has windowing seems like it would only make it work better. iPads can already do everything necessary, so why not the iPhone?
Unfortunately I suspect that if this was ever going to happen, which I would’ve bet against, it’s now let’s likely. I suspect current Apple would rather sell me a Neo then let me use my phone. In other words I think the existence of the product might rule it out under current leadership.
If the rumored folding phone with a close-to-iPad-mini UI handles USB monitor connections the same as the iPad, that would give the basic version right there, albeit at a huge base price.
I hadn’t thought of that. In my mind I think Apple will say “not an iPad, you don’t get it” but the distinction (hardware UI wise) would be much much fuzzier than today.
Fabrication of microchips is based on massive economies of scale. Thanks to apple, the majority of top-of-the-line microchips are going into locked-down computers. What happens when Apple or similar companies control 90% of the market, and you are paying exorbitant prices for crappy microchips in exchange for the privilege of running user-controlled software?
A decade or two ago, Intel introduced the Intel Management Engine to new computer processors. Their competitors followed suit. The market has stopped making products without these trusted computing "features" a long time ago. Eventually, you stop being able to choose.
These are the consequences of a computer market led by consumers that don't understand computers. The invisible hand is legally blind.
The reason the iPhone is so successful is because Apple don't let us use it as a "entire" computer.
I am just glad, that we can still run a proper OS on a proper computer. If they made a modified iPad OS for their baby laptop it could have been an ominous sign.
I remember the period of 1998-2008 or so when Windows seemed to be in absolute crisis because the average Windows user was not qualified to be using a computer connected to the internet.
I'd go visit my family in New England (more than one group) and they'd have a 640x480 screen and be doing all their web browsing through 70 vertical pixels because they'd installed 30 toolbars -- and they thought there was nothing wrong with this!
The world was reeling from a cyber war between two German teens who were trying to outdo each other with viral "love letter" programs because people would just click on... anything!
Plenty of us were looking for some platform, any platform, that would deliver us from that nightmare. It wasn't going to be the Sun Ray, it wasn't going to be Linux (talk about frying pan to the fire), it was going to be the iPhone.
Microsoft has been SO successful with trying to converge devices </s> I'll agree that Apple has business reasons for keeping device classes separate. But I also think that keeping at least phones and laptops separate makes a lot of sense. I CAN use my phone as a full computer, but having done so traveling, it's not the best experience.
I seem to recall the Carriers having some pretty strict requirements on the devices that can connect to the mobile networks. Anyone know if that's (still) the case?
I'm not trying to defend Apple here, I'm just curious if there would be some kind of carrier validation issues if you slapped a full desktop OS on a phone.
I doubt that's the issue. Phones already have a baseband processor and OS in control of the modem. Also evidence if viability is all the Windows laptops with WWAN.
You can connect to 4G with your root-enabled Linux PC and a USB dongle or minipci module. Carriers don't care about your application processor, they only care about the baseband. In the case of a smartphone, you can have root access and still run the Qualcomm closed blob firmware that will drive the baseband
Is this news to anyone? of course it is! The reason that they don't let you run MacOS is absolutely arbitrary, in support of you buying another device. It also allows them to avoid the cost of supporting MacOS in another form-factor.
This feels more like a facebook post that would shock my mom then a HN article...
Arbitrary is doing a lot of work. With MacOS you can use an iPad as a touchscreen external monitor. Try it and you’ll learn that it’s not a touchscreen OS. It’s not as simple as “not letting you”.
Maybe it doesn't have a touchscreen interface, but i take issue with it being a touchscreen OS. I suspect most people who would want to run MacOS on an ipad would attach the appropriate user interface devices.
or...plug into usb and use the ipad battery. the ipad already has a battery. Just don't limit what software you could load, that's all that's being asked here.
They could have a lean version of the macOS desktop on every iPhone where it would switch to the macOS desktop once you plug it into a display. Include iWork on both sides with shared storage and you could switch between the phone interface and macOS.
I mean Samsung DeX has done something similar, but Apple could make a much more powerful version, since they have a real fully-developed desktop and they have apps for both platforms that use a single code base.
They will, of course, never do this, because it would result in losing Mac sales. Though I think less than one would initially think, because a laptop is much handier on the go than carrying a separate display, keyboard, and mouse and the lapdocks or whatever they are called have much worse displays and keyboards.
Samsung DEX isn't far off from this, it's just that you're limited to Android instead of Linux, MacOS etc.
But Apple will surely never allow such a thing since their main interest is in selling as many pieces of hardware to each of the Apple Faithful as possible. So they with a straight face suggest that a single human needs an iPad Pro (which easily tops $1500 with the eye-wateringly-expensive keyboard and a storage upgrade) and a laptop. Nevermind that they may have the same chip inside.
I own too many Apple devices, so I may unintentionally qualify as one of those Apple Faithful, but even so I can't really find a place for the iPad in my life. I've tried, I do own an old iPad Pro, but it is semi-permanently mounted to my treadmill as the only use case I've ever had that sticks. As a practical matter I either want my phone, or a real desktop computer.
Something like that Samsung DEX with a real Linux OS and maybe I'm getting a new phone.
I use it on a 4-5 year old Galaxy tablet. it's not perfect, but it's miles beyond the "multitasking" iPads have offered. Disclosure: I haven't tried Apple's 97th attempt to invent a new and alien alternative to the concept of windows that they currently ship on iPads.
I understand - I just mentioned because for me I was aiming to replace the concept of an iPad in my life with that tablet. Honestly though, I ended up inheriting an M1 MacBook Air from my wife after upgrading her, and it has mostly displaced the tablet for most of the uses. Mainly because of the keyboard, and it's just nicer to be able to actually access the filesystem, and indeed, just window management is still superior on a "real" OS.
I do that with my Pinephone (a powered USB-C hub with ethernet, HDMI, keyboard and mouse; I also plug a proper set of speakers+subwoofer into headphone jack).
Both Phosh and PlasmaMobile turn into a "proper" desktop when "docked" (Gnome-like and KDE-like, respectively).
> I'm bothered, as I have been since the original iPad introduction 16 years ago, by the unnecessary restrictions placed by corporate powers to run third-party software and operating systems on devices we own.
It's not unnecessary, they do it because they make money as gatekeeper.
It's also because U.S. carriers don't like people hooking up arbitrary devices that can run arbitrary software to their network. In the civilized world, you have a device that talks GSM/LTE, you're golden as long as you don't violate any transmission laws. But in the USA carriers are still doing device allowlisting because I guess they want to bin QoS and don't want pro-grade traffic going over consumer accounts, nor the added expense of support for consumer accounts with exotic hardware that "might" break the network.
Just wanting to be a gatekeeper doesn't cover measures like SIP that don't make them anything and presumably took immense man-hours to implement.
I think the more accurate view would be an intersection of some of the company wanting to make money off gatekeeping and some of the company wanting to make quality devices that stay functional and malware-free even after you give to a deeply gullible grandparent for a while, and the former using the latter as a transparent excuse much of the time.
A big factor in the success of the iPad and maybe just some degree the iPhone, but especially the iPad, is that it’s “unbreakable”. All out restrictions mean it’s computer people don’t worry will suddenly stop working because they clicked to the wrong link. It won’t get a weird virus from their email.
They could allow unlocking the phone by burying that option deep in the settings with scary warnings etc. Most people could use the device with the restrictions. The fact that this is not possible at all is greed.
If they did that, every influencer would make youtube videos and tik toks telling people how they should enable that setting to make their phone better or more powerful "for free", and everyone would just do it, especially the people who really shouldn't because they don't know any better.
No they wouldn't. We don't have to speculate about that; Android already has a toggle to allow direct installation of apps, and most people don't turn it on.
Many Android devices allow unlocking the bootloader and gaining root or installing an alternate OS without exploits, and there are quite a few third-party Android builds for supported devices. The process is not beyond what a person of average intelligence and modest computer skills could pull off with some patience and a video guide. Only a handful of tech nerds actually do it.
Perhaps we're making different assumptions, but a process that "is not beyond what a person of average intelligence and modest computer skills could pull off with some patience and a video guide" sounds quite a bit more complex than a mere Unlock option in iPhone settings. Also, the results are different too. The process you've described results in an Android desktop, whereas the proposed iphone unlock process would result in a full macOS desktop, which sounds (to me at least) much more desirable to have.
I stand by my speculation that if it were possible to do that on an iphone, it'd definitely be something loads of people would do, including a large amount of people who shouldn't open their device that way but do just because they watched someone on social media telling them to.
MacOS does more than just give you a warning when you're opening a program not vetted by them -- it prevents you from opening it, so that's not really a good example of education, and is in fact an example of lockdown.
I'm not arguing that anything get any more locked down than it already is, so your points (while possibly valid in a bigger discussion) don't make a lot of sense here in this discussion about a hypothetical "unlock phone" setting.
I feel like that same reason is why you see a lot of seriously tech-savvy people try to use iPads as laptop substitutes over and over even though they're obviously still not suitable for it for technical tasks. There's a lot of latent appeal in "okay, what if I just didn't have to worry about any of that ambient technical crap?".
Microsoft did this over a decade ago with Windows Phone and no one was interested.
Seems like the way things are going is VMs, your phone running iOS can just be a jump box to a Mac VM, no need to dual boot an operating system, no need to lose the security iOS provides. I would rather Apple make software that just lets me tailscale like RDP to my Mac mini on my desk from anywhere using my phone, keyboard, mouse.
Windows Phone couldn't run the majority of desktop Windows apps (those developed with the "Win32" API). They developed an entirely separate API for Windows Phone apps and it was similarly locked down as iOS/Android.
True although that decision was likely due to windows architecture limitations at the time. Windows was still deeply coupled with x86_64 and is still not great with ARM today.
Okay so the OP is saying that since Macbook Neo has the same hardware as iphone, but not locked down, so why is iphone locked down. They say its because of the app store profits.
Sure App store is not to be understated, but I'd add our phones include way way more personal information than a laptop like NFC for credit cards, personal photos, and all biometric and contact information. Not to mention cellular network connection and generally forms as a soft form of identity. None of these apply to a laptop. So form factor does matter.
BUT even if we unlocked the iPhone, the desire for 'MacOS on iPhone' is actually the wrong thing to ask for. Pete Steinberger had in this interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcwK1Uuwc0U&t=1182) that UI is basically the wrong paradigm in a world where agents should do tasks for us in milliseconds. We should be able run any local services from our phone like grabbing
Good news is we already have this via terminal apps in Android. Now what's left is the ability for agents to run on your device and basically accomplish tasks for you
Perhaps it is the way I framed the article, but the core of my argument is not “MacOS on iPhone”.
Yes, I do personally desire that as a niche thing, but the broader point is the nature of a locked bootloader that prevents any third-party software from being loaded / installed without getting an approval from Apple.
Whether the desire is third party apps on iOS outside of Apple-vetted channels, or entirely new operating systems like Linux or MacOS, I’m mainly arguing I should have the right to modify the software however I’d like as the device owner.
My laptop has all my contacts, calendar, access to all my photos and is regularly used for online banking. It does not have cellular but I could buy one that does. So your list applies to a laptop just the same.
I don't understand why the author bought an iPhone. That's the deal - you do things Apple's way in exchange for not having to figure out how you'll do them. For most people this is a massive convenience, and that's why they pay so much for Apple products (and why I don't).
Only like 6-7 years ago, I spent working (so this is about commercial work, not play/free time) about 90% of the day on my macbook and 10% on my phone. Then I moved to 80% on my phone with xreal glasses, 10% without and 10% on my macbook. Now it's 90% on my phone without xreal and 10% with. For the same work. AI made that possible because my work (development) went from mostly typing and debugging to basically only reading code and mumbling prompts into my ear buds. I prefer this life a lot more. But this future is already there, also for iphone users although I don't really care: my driver is Android. I WOULD prefer Linux or an open android (my next phone will need Lineage or e/os or something as everything is moving the wrong direction).
The argument here is valid, if I read this correctly. Why can’t Apple simply allow your iPhone SIMPLY be just a transportable PC, that you can connect a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and do anything else you can do with Echo or any Apple computer? [EDIT]Provided that some functionalities (the phone) be walled off for security.
I'm glad they've made a more affordable and repairable laptop but I can't help but notice (in addition to what the author's said) they can put a cell phone into a laptop's body, but not a cell modem into a laptop. If the macbook pro max had a cell model that would go like hotcakes
Why not just get a Linux phone running Ubuntu Touch or postmarketOS. You'd have full root access, sideloading etc and none of that corporate control, likely for half the price of an iPHone. Sure you'd lose all the Apple look/feel but at least you can do what you want with the phone.
I have a bit of experience with using a desktop OS on a smartphone. In fact, you can try it very easily yourself! I used TeamViewer.
Of course, it runs on a separate device, but it gives us an idea of what it would be like to have it there natively.
I used this to make some music in FL Studio on my phone. Well, on my laptop, which I had set up in the office. So I controlled it via my phone.
I feel like mobile versions of stuff is just gimped versions of the real thing. I would almost go so far as to say that I am more productive when using a desktop interface on a smartphone (than the smartphone equivalent of the same software), despite the ergonomic awkwardness.
Why would you allow your phone to be a computer if you can sell a computer AND a phone? Allowing "random" OS to be installed on your phone would mean loosing control over your phone (including spying, gathering statistical data to influence major decisions, ability to paralyze communication of your country etc etc)
Android phones are nothing but linux phones and video output (DP over USB-C, earlier MHL) is for many years already included in many phones. I would love to carry one device with everything on it. I would be very happy if that device was like a laptop with detachable core, that acts as phone.
Anyone have a theory why Apple hasn't done this yet? They release an 'iBook' which is basically a wired or even wireless lapdock for your iPhone running OSX in a partition. Seems like that would decimate the entire Windows, laptop, even desktop market in short order.
Everyone with an iPhone, no longer needs their laptop/desktop. Just buy a cheap iBook and there's a good chance it'll already be better than most consumer PCs.
There isn't much demand for using phone as computer. If you are at home or work, you can buy a desktop computers for cheap. If you are traveling, you need to find a monitor and keyboard. You could carry small monitor and wireless keyboard, but then you are carrying as much as laptop. People who need to work on the road get a laptop. People who need to send email get iPad and keyboard.
Good example of the economics is that Macbook Neo or iPad Air are cheaper than new iPhone.
iPhone should export display, but more for showing videos or presentations. My Pixel 10 has USB-C display and I haven't used it, but I have computers for all purposes.
Apple should spend more effort making the iPad usable for work. It would be good candidate for USB-C display, but with iPadOS.
Imagine an executive placing their phone on a magnetic dock as they sit down, which automagically connects to the screen and gives them access to everything they were doing before. Also easy to imagine a university computer lab where everyone brings their own compute and IT doesn't have to manage physical desktops.
I'm skeptical that there's "no demand" for that kind of functionality rather than a lack of good implementations. Look at how popular wireless CarPlay and Android Auto are. They're essentially the same functionality, but tailored to an in-car experience instead of desktop.
Imagine executive tapping their phone down on reader, and it pops up everything they were doing, and they get to keep using their phone.
The first flaw in the idea is that computing is cheap. You can make a computer the size of a phone for people to carry around, that has been tried but failed. The second flaw is that everything is in the cloud, only developers and offline need local access to their files. The cloud also means that can desktop in the cloud.
You can make a computer the size of a phone. That's what the latest macbook neo is. The rest of the space inside is battery and peripherals. I'm not sure what cloud has to do with this discussion.
Re: keep using phone, that's exactly what's already possible with CarPlay and AA.
FWIW, you can plug your iPhone into an external monitor to do a Keynote presentation. You need a USB-C (or Lightning) to HDMI dongle in most cases, but it works fine.
I'm always reluctant to do non-standard stuff for presentations. There's enough that can go wrong even with a direct HDMI out. I've done it in a pinch but pretty much always carry a laptop with me when I'm presenting along with local copies of my presentations. I've actually gotten a text in the middle of the night asking me if I can fill in for another speaker who forgot and are in a different country :-)
On an upcoming trip I'm actually going to give an iPad with magnetic keyboard I bought a couple years back, assuming different travel patterns than I've had, a try. It seems to work fine. An iPad is also great for plane/train entertainment without a keyboard. But, honestly, it's no lighter than a MacBook Air would be and if my ancient MacBook Pro dies--have a newer one up in my office--that's what I'll probably buy.
I have traveled with just my iPhone and can get by but don't really love it.
How can there be demand for something that doesn't exist?
If Apple releases a $300 lapdock tomorrow, basically a screen, keyboard, battery, that allows using your iPhone as a normal general purpose computer with OSX - why would anyone buy a laptop/desktop?
HNers are significantly more technical than the median consumer and are used to text and keyboard interfaces - a large portion of humanity isn't. You see this with Foundation Models as well - most have started to shift away from only concentrating on text to TTS and STT usecases.
Also, DeX style monitor screen share with a Bluetooth keyboard has been supported since iOS 15.
Additionally, a major portion of Apple's desktop revenue is coming from poweruser and specialist demand - IT departments bulk purchasing developer laptops, designers having their entire design workflow within the MacOS environment, and video editors heavily dependent on MacOS.
Furthermore, arguments about how Apple has an incentive not to cannibalize revenue are dumb, given how open Apple is to cannibalizing revenue where PMF exists (eg. the iPad Pro versus lower tier MacBooks or the MacBook Neo versus lower tier iPads).
The entire Mac line is a teeny tiny slice of revenue compared to iPhone. Allowing OSX on iPhone would increase the utility of iPhone, leading to more sales.
> Allowing OSX on iPhone would increase the utility of iPhone, leading to more sales
That assumption is not necessarily true.
What this implies is that there is a market of existing consumers that would not buy an iPhone because it lacks OSX support.
The iPhone portion of Apple's business generates around $144B in YoY revenue in Q1FY27 [0].
Whenever an organization contemplates building a net new capability like the one you mentioned, a quick test is whether it would be able to generate and sustain at minimum the equivalent of 1% of yearly revenue.
If this was a $1B revenue opportunity it would have been implemented, but it's not.
Nor is it a feature that can actively or dramatically increase Apple's market share in most markets.
A good proxy of such demand would have been a sudden increase in iOS users using USB-C screen share and a Bluetooth keyboard to interface with an iPhone in a desktop form factor (something which has been enabled since iOS 15), but such an increase has not happened.
Consumers haven't been told they can do that though. It's not ergonomic to do that. There's not a Belkin plastic dock to support that use case, so I don't find that is a good proxy for it.
Consumers don't need to be "told" what to do. If there truly was demand, Samsung or other third-party vendors would have created an ergonomic dock for DeX enabled Samsung phones and it would have been a killer app.
Other than UI and other surface differences, the fundamental distinction between a Mac and an iDevice is... what it is.
A Mac is a real computer. I can run any code I want on it. I have root.
An iDevice is like a game console. I can only run App Store apps (without jumping through a lot of hoops). I do not have root (without again jumping through many hoops or ugly hacks).
If Apple wanted to unify the platform they have two choices. The first is to abandon the "real computer" market entirely. The second is to make iDevices real computers by unlocking them.
I suspect they'd rather keep two platforms.
Under the hood they both share a lot of code, so it's not two totally distinct platforms. It's more like two sets of defaults and two "skins."
I think the friction of using a keyboard/pointing device with a touchscreen, or fingers with a desktop interface, is too high to unify them. I know it's been done, I'm unconvinced it's been done well.
That’s the difference though. Put macOS on a phone chip and it’s now a “real computer,” just a smaller one.
The M chips are mostly just roided out A chips: higher clocks, better cooling, more P cores, big GPU, and I think deeper pipelines and more cache. The ALU and many other sections are, I think, identical.
Thermal throttling is actually a non trivial limit on phones. Put a heat sink and a fan on an A chip and sustained compute is faster.
The OS and its restrictiveness determines the class of device not the hardware.
That was already the case with the M-series chips, which are shared between Macs and higher-end iPads. The Neo just extends it to the A-series as well.
Yep I know, and now using a last gen A chip, I feel they are really rubbing our faces in it.
Like Apple is saying, "Nice iPhone 17 Pro w/ A19 w/ vapor cooling chip you have there; you know you run a full general purpose OS on it, but we're not gonna let you, nanananana :p"
No exactly, Apple is playing in our faces, all while people continue to defend the “differences” of device categories and the subsequent justification of shipping iPhones and iPads with locked bootloaders.
The belief that people only hold opposing opinions to yours because they have money on the line is such conspiracy theory nonsense. Some random teenage in middle America couldn't just really like Apple products? It's gotta be some grand conspiracy against you?
I think Apple is just really careful about how they segment their product line for each use case, and would never go for a "jack of all trades" solution like this.
Why would it decimate the Windows market? From my experience, there's a strong correlation between iPhone and Mac usage.
Looking at the stats, the Win:Mac ratio is 4:1 but Android:iPhone only 2:1 so it might hurt Windows. But if iPhone users are more likely to use Mac or don't use computers much already, then expanding iPhone capabilities would cannibalize Apple business.
Because then most people with an iPhone wouldn't need to buy a separate laptop/desktop. I'm sure Android as well would follow in short order (not the half hearted attempts they've made so far). Sales would plummet. Windows decimated.
Why would Apple want to sell a lapdock when they could instead sell you the same thing + a redundant SOC (aka, a MacBook) and then high-margin cloud services to sync all of your data between your two differently-shaped computers?
Because most people with iPhones are buying Windows computers, but give them a cheap entry lapdock into the Mac ecosystem and maybe their next more powerful system will be a Mac.
Mac is a niche right now, iPhone with OSX could level the playing field.
If Apple could bring themselves to sell a lapdock, it'd have to cost at least $500. We know this because the Magic Keyboard for iPad, just a keyboard and trackpad, is priced at $349 (and it was introduced at that price way back in 2020, so at the time, Apple believed that keyboard was worth $440 adjusted for inflation). A screen to Apple's quality standards, even a 12-13" one, cannot possibly increase that price point by less than $150. So, the Apple in our universe could not produce a lapdock, because in our universe they have a whole laptop at that price point.
On second thought, the reality distortion field is real, so I suppose if they told people their new $600 lapdock was a good value even though it costs as much as the entry-level Mac, they'd still find willing buyers.
This. The more locked down, the less in control we are, the higher margins they command. This is why app stores exist - it has nothing to do with safety or security, and everything to do with monopolizing the distribution supply chain from soup to nuts. Don’t like it? Too bad, it’s fully locked down and cracking it is a (potentially) criminal offense, so whaddayagonnadoaboutit?!
A little computer board is only a fraction of the BOM of a laptop, so a 'lapdock' of equivalent quality couldn't be very much cheaper than a whole laptop.
If you use cloud storage, your laptop already has all the stuff on your phone anyway.
The general public thinks phones and computers are fundamentally different. Heck, I remember arguing this point even on HN back when smart phones were first coming out and being generally on the losing side as people got very excited about "app stores" and such. I see no practical path to getting to the point that enough of us realize that there is simply no reason for our phones to be locked down the way they are that the companies are forced to undo it, especially with our elites pushing with all they are worth to lock things down harder.
The companies take that confusion to the bank.
There have been numerous attempts at making phone/laptop crossovers, where you can plug your phone into a dock and get a computer, or slide your phone into a laptop case, etc. Some of them are even still around, but they're all definitely second-class citizens. There's a variety of problems that I think they've had in the market, not least of which is the fact that the average person still sees "phones" and "computers" as fundamentally different so the product makes no sense to them, but another issue that I think has held them back is that the product inevitably work by porting the limitations of the phone into the computer, rather than porting the freedom of the computer into the phone.
In the USB-C era, there is no excuse for every phone not having a mode where you can plug it into any ol' USB-C hub/dock and be able to get a desktop environment, even down to the "middle-of-the-line" phones. It would require in most cases no extra hardware. They just don't.
Money? You don't think Apple would make a killing on OSX licenses and lapdock sales if they allowed OSX on iPhone tomorrow?
Mac is a tiny slice of revenue for apple. OSX on iPhone would blow it out of the water. Apple would turn the PC market upside down, taking a sizeable chunk from Windows. As there'd be no point for most people to have a separate laptop/desktop at that point.
People also thought that phones needed keyboards before Apple showed them a better way. This is all on Apple to make a reality, no one else can bring general purpose computing to iPhone except them. It's their choice to make.
It would explode sales of Mac. OSX on iPhone, people wouldn't need the separate Windows laptops they're used to. OSX on iPhone is the gateway for consumers into the OSX ecosystem.
And when those consumers want more powerful hardware, instead of buying a more powerful Windows laptop/desktop - they buy a Mac instead.
I feel like Apple knows this as well, so I can't figure out why they haven't pulled the trigger. Anti-trust risk? lol
I don’t understand the argument for why allowing it would mean more Apple computer hardware sales though. Could you explain why you think that would happen?
I think there are a number of reasons why Apple specifically hasn't done this. In addition to what others have already mentioned (demand, segmentation, profitability, etc), another factor would probably be difficulty with the overall design.
Part of why Apple's products are often praised for their design is that they do a few things really well and focus on those things, instead of trying to do absolutely everything. Consider the iPod, the iPhone, Apple TV, etc -- they're all pretty focused on doing certain things and Apple's really polished the experience. The Mac desktops and laptops kind of stretch this by allowing more things, but they still largely try to focus the user into certain workflows, via the plethora of apps that come standard with macOS and the vendor lock-in that they push.
Making a phone that can also be a full computer goes against these design principles. Apple's closed the gap a bit in recent years by making macOS and iOS a bit more similar than they used to be, but they're still pretty different. If you're on a M1/2/3/4/etc processor laptop and you've tried using an iOS-specific app (not ones that's designed for both phone and desktop) on it, you'll see some of those differences (interfaces tuned for touch are weird with a mouse, things are sized wrong for desktop, file restrictions can be weird, keyboard input can be lacking, etc etc etc), and it's not enjoyable. Going the other direction, the first thing that pops into my head is: how in the world would the mac desktop be represented on iOS? I'm someone who keeps a lot of files on his desktop, grouped in different sections of the screen for different reasons, and I have no idea how that would be represented on a relatively tiny phone screen (at least in a way that didn't destroy my intentional groups). There are other aspects of macOS that would prove tricky to have analogs on a phone screen, too, but this reply is already getting so long that very few will read it...
Now that's not to say that it's impossible. In fact it probably isn't. But there would be compromises (and those compromises would be on top of the compromises already present in iOS/macOS). To do it well, it'd be a much bigger project than most people realize. It's not just changing a few options and letting us use our phone that way. It'd be more akin to designing the first iPhone. Note that it's not just Apple who hasn't done this yet. Literally _no one_ has done it well yet. I truly hope one day Apple (or someone else, even) does it well, since that'll be a glorious day. But it'd be a huge project, so I'm not holding my breath.
If you want to control the software that runs on your phone, you can. You have to choose with your wallet, and buy a phone that gives you that freedom, such as the Pixel. Buying a locked down iPhone and then complaining about it is ineffective. Wallets speak louder than words to a corporation.
One, I avoid Apple products as they are locked down and overpriced
The other, that it's probably worthwhile to push for apple to open these products up more - especially would be nice if more old hardware could be "opened" to reuse and avoid them being e-waste
> On the MacBook Neo, I can even opt to not use MacOS at all and instead install Asahi Linux if I so choose (assuming Apple continues to allow custom kernel booting as it has in M-series Macs).
Is this true? Does Asahi support any A series chip (or the A18 Pro specifically)?
I'm just surprised people hadn't realized earlier that these SOCs were capable of more than Apple had let on. They're incredibly capable, but profits and capitalism are the problem as always.
My contention is that the definition of said product and its inherent capabilities is being gatekept by a corporation that would love you to buy both an iPhone and Mac, and treat them as separate. In fact, I do have both already! But I still want rights to modify my iPhone as the computer it is.
The MacBook Neo is a great example of just how fungible these categories are, at least as far as the SoC that runs them is concerned. I paid for my iPhone in full, there is no reasonable justification for why I can’t repurpose it / modify it as I see fit.
Apple did patent a design for a dock in a monitor for a portable device to slot into. It’s gotta be getting close to expiration now. I think the trick is heat dissipation.
My friend who is a macOS programmer years ago had an idea for a startup mode for iMacs where instead of just being a screen, the storage and video card would also be accessible over the thunderbolt bus, so you could plug a laptop in and have multiple video cards at your disposal.
I built a few native iPhone apps 15 years ago, but these days do my tinkering in web tech and "Save to Homescreen." Probably couldn't do this if I wanted functionality like photo/video editing or heavy 3D, but for my relatively simple use case, Webkit is fine. This has the benefit of completely bypassing the App Store, and lets me share apps by just linking to them.
> As a US citizen, I must go through the Apple-approved App Store to download / install third-party software. Smells like freedom.
If you’re a U.S. citizen, it’s worth studying what this country’s foundational freedom means specifically, why and why not something else, such as consumer rights.
Maybe I'm alone in this camp, but I really value the idea that my phone is an ultra-stable bedrock experience that, sure, I have to sacrifice some freedoms on but ultimately they're not exactly freedoms I care to express on a 5.8" display whose more critical purpose is things like "my car keys", "my door keys", "maintaining contact with family" etc. Versus, my linux desktop feels like its always in a state of nearly falling apart, and that's what makes it fun. I'm constantly pushing it to the edge, installing 550gb LLMs, four different package managers, right now its got a totally dissected USB cable coming out the front that's attached to a small circuit board for some project, all that's ok because that's what I want out of it. I don't want that out of my phone. I want my phone to ALWAYS turn on and ALWAYS be able to get EVERY text or phone call that's sent to me.
I think anyone who has devoted their life to computing, in all its forms, over the past 20 years should agree: There doesn't exist an operating system that I feel adequately does all of that under one roof. The closest is Android. And that's what I don't get out of posts like this: Android does exist. What do you want out of Android that Google/etc are keeping from you? Samsung has Dex. It kinda sucks. Google allows free-range application installations (and fortunately that recent effort to block it is dead); that's great. I guess there's no real/root UNIX terminal? Bro, I struggle to envision a world where any device I have that has a root shell is also one that I don't inevitably fuck up, even if only temporarily, its ability to receive phone calls from my doctor about the results of a colonoscopy.
The bigger problem that I see right now is that, at least from the perspective of the iPhone: Apple is dropping the ball on their stewardship of this bedrock experience.
It depends on how AI-pilled you are. Linux is fucking awesome and really easy to use now because AI has read all of the Internet posts ever about how to use Linux, so you can just fire up Claude code and tell it to fix your python or docker or whatever. 2026 is gonna be the year of Linux on the desku, powered by AI, if people manage to get over themselves.
A business has the right to set the rules by which it is willing to contract with you. You don’t have to buy their product or service. Trade only works well by mutual consent.
Desktop computers being as open as they are is an anomaly. It only came to be because the systems originated from research labs and hacker cultures rather than rent-seeking corporations. And even though corporations (like IBM and Microsoft) did push them, there was a lot more emphasis on business rather than consumer use at the time.
Vendors keep them open today only because there is a historical exception, but make no mistake if the laptop computer was first introduced to the masses in 2008 you would be downloading apps through official stores and paying a 30% fee on all transactions and would only be able to do a tiny fraction of what is possible on them today.
To me the surprise isn't that the phone is locked down, but that Apple allows MacBook Neo to do so much. Just look at its iPad counterpart.
> On my iPhone, there is no such ability. As a US citizen, I must go through the Apple-approved App Store to download / install third-party software. Smells like freedom.
That's the effect of a complete lack of antitrust. In the US corporations can do the fuck they want
> Now that I know my iPhone has the capacity to run MacOS, I would very much like to do so. I’d love to consider the possibility of switching to a less intrusive phone and repurposing this iPhone into a web server. Perhaps that seems silly, but it’s really not. I’ve already paid for the device, it's clearly a full blown computer, and why should I not be able to modify it as I see fit?
I kinda do that with Samsung DeX. You plug it into a USB-C dock and it basically turns the phone into a computer. With Android apps running in little windows (not MS windows). It's amazingly useful, it's a bit like Microsoft's old convergence idea but it actually works.
I use it at work when I forgot to put my laptop in my bag (at home it's hidden in a dock behind my screen so it happens from time to time). I can work a whole day with meetings, doing some MS Office work etc. And if I need real Windows I can connect to a VDI. I could technically work like that every time I go to the office, the only reason I don't is some AD admin work that is not allowed in a VDI. It works technically but it's an internal rule thing.
I also use it on the go with an Xreal Air and a foldable keyboard. I have a whole computer with me for the weight and bulk of less than an iPad <3 It's awesome.
Apple could easily do similar, however their do really thrive by selling as many devices as possible so I doubt they would do it.
Are you able to actually work with the VR glasses?
I bought a pair of viture pro glasses thinking I could use them with my (linux) laptop / (android) phone when travelling as a large external monitor.
But they were usable for coding, too difficult to read the text, too shakey. Would just give you a headache.
It's a cool idea but I decided the technology wasn't there yet and ended up returning them.
You need the right ones.
Xreal One glasses anchor the screen (i.e. it stays in place as you look around), have specific (and adjustable) tech for text clarity, have low chromatic distortion, and do things entirely onboard in the hardware. I've been able to use them for hours comfortably, and have gotten corrective lens inserts to avoid having to use my glasses with them.
They now have a 32:9 mode for ultra wide resolution, which is a real boost to using my work laptop. My aging phone doesn't play as nice as it used to with this mode, but it's a real win having 3 windows arrayed comfortably.
I code and read documents for a living, and I love these things.
thanks - I tried ViturePro when the came out, but felt like I was seeing monitors wearing blinders/through a slit, that wasn't quite big enough to see the whole screen.
Can you fully see the 3 monitors you're using there, And are you on mac or on windows? ie can you see kind of 1.5 monitors at a time, the middle one, and .5 of oneish?
They're not really VR. The Xreals I have are just "a screen stuck to your eyes". No tracking or anything. I don't really mind that. But no the quality is great, I can totally work on it. The resolution isn't perfect as they are OLED and only 2 subpixels per pixel (RGBG) so it looks a bit "brittle" but not "shakey". Shakey sounds like they do have tracking but not working well.
The display isn't huge either, the viture pro looks like it has a much bigger viewing angle so I can imagine the pixels are too spread out to show a decent resolution, like with most VR headsets (except the vision pro).
I use corrective lenses in them. I see the Viture have diopter adjustment but that wouldn't work for me as I have astigmatism.
I also bought a flagship iphone with the idea that maybe someday it could be used for work (S25+), first of all I was disappointed that the Snapdragon chips don't actually support the new Android Terminal feature.
Anyways there is Tmux, but if I wanted to do actual work, like with my stack: nodejs, docker container (with a postgres, a redis)... I am not sure it would work. Haven't done it so far but I'd be curious of other's experiences.
Also an Xreal and a foldable keyboard and you can just work anywhere with a chair and a desk
I also wanna try running some windows game on it, apparently it's working-ish at and Valve might improve that part of the ecosystem too
I hope that in the future, buying 2 devices will not be required and instead just buying one powerful one + optional peripherals will be ok.
Yes Android terminal is a bit of a miss, I agree. You could find an S26+ exynos perhaps.
Personally I prefer tmux anyway. I'm not a dev but if I do develop something we have to use a remote login box anyway, our workstations are completely locked down.
For me a webbrowser, Android apps like office and teams, obsidian and a few others and tmux are enough. It's not a complete workstation replacement but even at home I have way more than one computer. My daily driver for web stuff, a powerful pc for gaming and 3D design, an old LTSC box for microcontrollers and several others.
> I was disappointed that the Snapdragon chips don't actually support the new Android Terminal feature
I’m out of the loop, why couldn’t a particular mobile CPU run a terminal?
The Linux Terminal feature on Android is a VM, and it requires the ability to run "non protected VMs" which it doesn't have: https://www.androidauthority.com/snapdragon-chips-android-li...
> With Android apps running in little windows (not MS windows). It's amazingly useful, it's a bit like Microsoft's old convergence idea but it actually works.
Can you run ordinary desktop apps though? What is useful about mobile apps designed for a small screen on a big screen? On my phone actual desktop apps (like LibreOffice or desktop Firefox) can be used.
One reason I got the Samsung S24 Ultra a couple of years ago is to run a full Linux desktop environment (via Termux), something you really can do. I even say it up, but I struggled to really get into it. Mostly because I banked on Nexdock, but it's trackpad is impossible.
That is to say, yes. And with that you can also run windows applications, e.g. through Winlator.
I was able to run Intellij IDEA, but of course ymmv as the application really has to be available for Android arm64.
I'd love to know your experience with the Xreal. I have seen a lot of videos on YouTube, but something throws me off. It just seems like they're all shilling.
A few days ago I cracked the edge of my smartphone's screen at just the right spot to shut its display off entirely, though it still works. Using the USB-C dongle meant for my laptop, the phone pops into a desktop view which basically is the same experience as a Chromebook (for better or worse).
In the meantime before its repair, I shoved my SIM card into an old flipphone I had in the tech graveyard drawer. I've actually really liked the limited flipphone experience. It's a mental breath of fresh air to not have a time/focus black hole in my pocket at all times. It made me realize that I've had a pretty bad relationship with my smartphone in terms of how much time I wasted on it. I'm considering keeping the flipphone as my primary phone. Maybe smartphones do too much.
as someone who did this for a week, it's nice until you need to install an app to check your bank statements or manage your insurance. Maybe that will get better as agents do, however
You don't have a laptop or desktop for those things?
Whilst I may not represent the average person, I have no need to check bank statements or manage insurance immediately, so I can wait until I'm at a 'real' computer to do it more conveniently and easily and with a bigger screen and keyboard and mouse.
GPs point about the 'relationship with the smart phone' seems to be pertinent. "need to install an app" to do these things only makes the point stronger.
My bank only has two options for authentication: Either you use their mobile app or buy an authentication device from them that's the size of a small phone. Either way I need a handheld device.
I can't say I'm happy with the direction of things. They used to offer slips of paper with single-use codes that worked fine, but those are now deprecated in favor of the smartphone app.
You can use a lot of those authentication / bank apps on a tablet without issue. Obviously it’s worth verifying before making the swap to a flip phone, but I like having minimal apps on my smartphone so I still have a backup if needed.
Then your bank is garbage and you should switch to a better one. My main bank (USAA) lets me use a one time code sent to my email as a second factor (or SMS, or a code from their app). If they started requiring me to use the app I would drop them immediately. Why is "but my banking app" treated like a valid objection every time user freedom comes up?
Because it's most banks that are like that. If you don't have this problem, then you're lucky your bank is actually technologically incompetent by industry standards.
> My main bank lets me use a one time code sent to my email as a second factor or SMS
Congratulations, your bank is still relying on the two most easily spoofed 2fac methods
The fact that they are easily spoofed is of no consequence for this use-case: entering an invalid 2FA code will simply fail to log you in into your banking. You should obviously not follow a link from an email that is not obviously coming from your request (and you should validate the top-level domain is what it needs to be even in that case), but you should be entering the bank web site directly.
The bigger problem is SIM swapping, which is more of a social engineering attack.
> You don't have a laptop or desktop for those things?
> Whilst I may not represent the average person, I have no need to check bank statements or manage insurance immediately
I think a lot of people check to make sure how much money they have before they make some purchases, especially big ones. Or, they check with this card declined (might need to move some money from one account to another or use a different card).
I teach high school and see students doing this all the time when buying food for lunch. I can't imagine it's any less prevalent amongst adults of a certain generation.
I certainly need to know how much money I have at any given time when I'm shopping. Seems fairly privileged (not in a bad way) to not need to think about that.
I take your point, but I'll also make the point that I'm organised and relatively self disciplined when it comes to spending. If I have to check my back account before any big expenditures, whilst on the go and requiring a smart phone, then that represents some kind of failure of self discipline (outside of emergency health situations).
Having said that, I do have an app that tells me how much is left on my debit card, but I only recharge it from laptop / desktop at home - I tend to not let it get low enough that I can't get through a day.
Can't deny a certain level of privilege, but will say it's been earned through self discipline. Everyone's situations are different, however.
Maybe GP choses to not use it? What about your "relationsip with the PC"?
For me, time I have in front of my PC is quality time I'd rather not waste on bullshit like banking, or worse, rearrange my life to make activities in that quality time that I could've made on the go in the "time holes" during the day.
Fuck apps, alright, but phones are finally getting useful (despite vendors' attempts to undo that). I switched to a foldable phone 6 months ago, and since then I haven't used my personal laptop for anything, not even once. Foldables are what tablets couldn't be, and despite the toy OS, my Fold7 managed to take over ~all tasks I used to do on the laptop or PC, that don't strongly benefit from physical keyboard and sitting stationary (and a good chunk of the latter too, plugged to a screen via USB-C).
You know any iPhone with USB C you can just plug into a monitor right?
Is that true?
Yes
https://imgur.com/a/aOhnX79
This is my external portable monitor that I usually take with me for my computer. It gets power and video from one USB C cable it works with any computer that can do video over USB-C. It also works with my iPhone with a standard USB C cable.
I also have a USB C to HDMI cable.
Yeah, I plugged mine into my tv a few weeks ago, using a USB-C dock, so I could play the new Katamari game on the 65" screen.
With a ps5 controller hooked up via bluetooth, it was just like having a console.
It was since at least the iPhone 4. I still have the old digital AV connector from before they switched to lightning. It came with a hdmi port and a usb port. You could plug an SD card reader into the usb port and use it as an external HDD for transferring files.
and?
You can therefore stick a sim in a dumb phone. And still jave a desktop smartphone for any bank or service that demands an app.
By using a monitor you psychologically change the device from a time sink to a tool.
i was more trying to figure put what the mention of a specific smartphone brand brought to the table
it didn't add anything to the (interesting) parent post
I really don't understand the argument here. That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation.
Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form, but given that the vast majority of users wouldn't do anything different with their phones if a shell was present, this is in my opinion not that large of an effect.
The snide around "clicking on links is dangerous" and locking down the bootloader is unwarranted, because for most people a phone is not a toy (or at least, not just a toy) - it has their communications history, their bank information, their passwords, any many more. And it's really easy to steal people's phones on the subway. This isn't about freedom of computing, this is about the fact that an iPhone in BFU is nearly as secure as a GrapheneOS phone.
There are many problems with Apple software. It's buggy, uses proprietary formats that you can't export, and interoperable with open standards. It's bad, and is the primary reason why I won't buy another iPhone, but Macs have that same problem. On the other hand, being cryptographically locked-down is an optional feature. If you don't like it, buy a computer without that feature. It's harmful to us, to tinkerers and people who want to see how things work, but the average person does not care at all and just wants to be able to open LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs without having their 401k get drained.
>On the other hand, being cryptographically locked-down is an optional feature. If you don't like it, buy a computer without that feature.
But that's the thing, where can I buy a phone without a locked-down operating system? GrapheneOS on a Google Pixel is basically the only option right now, and this still has problems thanks to hardware attestation in a lot of apps that the ecosystem forces us to use.
This is largely because Apple has dictated the direction of smartphones for the past two decades. All of our expectations for control over our phones are completely out of whack compared to other computers.
Somehow we managed to survive without the majority of society being scammed out of their life savings before Apple came in with the iPhone and locked down iOS, and yet now people are earnestly defending the notion that 90% of people should not even have access to the filesystem on their own device.
> All of our expectations for control over our phones are completely out of whack compared to other computers.
I would, sadly, challenge this. If anything, our desktops and laptops are the exception now. Phones, TVs, game consoles, set top boxes, cars, Amazon echos, ebook readers, tablets, security cameras, autonomous devices like vacuum cleaners — when I think of the myriad devices we interact with that have a computer in them, they are all as stringently locked down as possible.
> hardware attestation in a lot of apps that the ecosystem forces us to use
Only a tiny amount of apps force you into hardware attestation, and these are mostly around banking, mobile payments and the like. So just use a separate, locked down device for those (where the anti-fraud protection of a locked-down system can be a benefit) and your more open day-to-day device for mostly everything else. A hidden advantage is that the dedicated device for secure uses is not something that you're forced to carry with you; you can leave it in a secure place instead.
>Only a tiny amount of apps force you into hardware attestation
Luckily this is still true, but I'm not confident that it will stay this way. For a few examples, I've been unable to use my phone as a metro card in my city because even though it goes through the metro's app, the app redirects back to google pay. Google's own Waymo app won't work without stock OS even though all it does is call robotaxis.
>these are mostly around banking, mobile payments and the like. So just use a separate, locked down device for those
I don't think this is a very reasonable suggestion, carrying around a second phone that I use at most a couple of times a day is inconvenient and expensive. Half of the point of these is convenience and this would defeat the purpose.
The broader point is that our standards for phones are so different from everything else. I also carry around a credit card which requires no authorization to use, not to mention cash. I can have just as much personal data on my laptop if not more, so why does it have to be this way just for phones?
Be sure to give apps that behave that way one-star reviews.
I just tested Waymo and my usual solution of Magisk Play Integrity Fix was insufficient, suggesting hardware-backed attestation. This is the kind of crap Microsoft was doing that inspired Google to put "don't be evil" in its mission statement. We all know how that went.
> Be sure to give apps that behave that way one-star reviews.
You have to have a google account to give a one-star review on the app store run by Google. You're still buying into their ecosystem.
If your goal is to boycott Google, you're probably not trying to use Waymo. My suggestion was only about punishing the use of remote attestation in the small way most of us can.
A smart phone's primary function is to initiate and receive phone calls, or arguably 1/3 of it's primary function if the metric is the Jobs iPhone launch presentation, however since "smart phone" and "iPhone" have "phone" in their names I'm going to argue its their primary function.
People have come to expect that phones nearly always work, and rely on them for critical communication with loved ones, services like emergency services. When these aren't dependable you don't have a phone but instead a toy.
The case made two decades ago is that running arbitrary software on a phone incurs a risk that malware can compromise the device and alter its dependability. _General purpose computers don't have this historical burden._ Phone and mobile OS makers sell their products with their purposeful limitations made fairly clear. You want a mobile device with different capabilities then seek out am alternate device, it's kinda obvious.
There's always communities of people who attempt to repurpose the products they own for purposes the weren't originally intended, and I would like to see that laws that make that hobby more legitimate and legal. I would love to see 3rd parties able to support these hobbyists, that would be great. But Apple, Google with their hardware partners have no obligation to do so, and justifiable positions for making repurposing non-trivial to do.
I was able to get Waymo to work on GrapheneOS, but it took some doing, and relies on the GrapheneOS developers hacking around the official Google Play services in some way. Waymo definitely made it more difficult than it needs to be to run this on something other than ordinary Android, and it's unclear if they did so in order to make themselves more money, or simply because doing things the official Google Android way is easier for them and they aren't even thinking about people who are trying to have a less-restricted smartphone OS.
> carrying around a second phone that I use at most a couple of times a day is inconvenient
Guess it depends on the person. As somebody who carries around all sorts of shit all the time, a slim, extra phone is peanuts
> Only a tiny amount of apps force you into hardware attestation, and these are mostly around banking, mobile payments and the like.
I.e. the only ones that make the phone critical to daily lives of most poeple. Don't forget to add government applications, multimedia applications (DRM) and communications too.
And that's only going get worse, because every app seems to think they're most important. We're in the middle of the phase where every app tries to force strong MFA on users, despite most apps having no fucking business having this level of security. Banks are actually lagging behind toilet paper roll simulator apps nad stores selling hats for pets and such.
Wait when they're done that, leveraging attestation APIs will be next.
>Only a tiny amount of apps force you into hardware attestation
Or basically anything to do with work, even if it's just clocking in and out or 2-factor verifying for login purposes.
And what gives you the confidence that the amount of apos will stay tiny?
>Somehow we managed to survive without the majority of society being scammed out of their life savings before Apple came in with the iPhone and locked down iOS
What on earth are you talking about? People have been getting scammed since the days of AOL! What an insane perspective. It's not about total money lost from scams. It's about the amount of impact it has on the individuals who get scammed. What's the problem with Russian roulette after all? Most people playing Russian Roulette are absolutely fine! The point is that the damage done to the few people who get scammed is so high, we ought to care about their lives too. At the end of the day, it might end up being us... it probably won't, but it might.
Yes, monopolistic network effects are a problem, but that can be handled with regulation.
We don't save few people suffering high damage from losing a round of Russian Roulette by restricting ability to roll D6, because of then harm a bad roll can do when in form of a barrel of a loaded revolver. Also "only criminals need random number generators".
Yes that's how we're treating end user computing.
It is a question of who is "We" because all this seems to imply that the market owes "us" this product.
I would lose my mind and switch to Linux for good if Apple every tried to close their laptops. Why? Because unlike my mom, I'm sitting here writing programs for myself.
On my phone however, I don't want to have to do a bunch of research whenever I need to install something like a parking app. I don't want to have to install a random parking app, but when you need an app to park in the MUELLER - MCBEE garage in Austin, and when I'm visiting and am meeting people for tacos, life is going to force me to install that app. When that happens, I'm happy to be in the walled garden. In fact, I want a walled garden.
I'm happy to have two computers, one open and one closed. They're two different products. For folks who want an open phone, yea, it's basically GrapheneOS or nothing, because when the point of the phone is a completely different use case (random app installs) then the point becomes the ecosystem, and you need to always be able to trust the ecosystem.
When you are trying to tinker with your phone, it becomes a completely different product. The market doesn't owe you that product.
> because for most people a phone is not a toy (or at least, not just a toy) - it has their communications history, their bank information, their passwords, any many more. And it's really easy to steal people's phones on the subway. This isn't about freedom of computing, this is about the fact that an iPhone in BFU is nearly as secure as a GrapheneOS phone.
If that were the entire reason, the straight-forward thing would be to give the user tools to secure the phone, such as setting a password and encrypting data based on that password.
It wouldn't make sense to spent enormous amounts of resources to "secure" the phone against its own user, yet that is what they do.
I think a more honest explanation is that they aren't just securing their own corporate power, but also the power and business models of all kinds of app developers - this way, developers can sell trivial UI improvements as "premium features" or even put in deliberate anti-features and the user can't do anything about it.
Games can put in loot boxes and microtransactions, YouTube can declare that keeping a song playing and putting the phone away is a premium feature and movie rightsholders can decide the exact circumstances under which a movie may be watched.
That's all before the ubiquitous tracking and data collection.
Everyone wins, except the user...
> and just wants to be able to open LOVE-LETTER-FOR-YOU.TXT.vbs without having their 401k get drained.
So do I, even if I'm a tinkerer. That's what sane permission settings and - if you like - a locked bootloader are for. What you don't need for that is to restrict the owner from unlocking the bootloader.
I understood this stance more 10 years ago, but now we have many layers of fairly well documented exploit tactics and none of them rely on the app store. However forcing users to use an app store was supposed to benefit us has clearly failed.
And, somehow, the indignity of being forced into paying apple a 30% tax for a market they wholly own never comes up alongside other paternalistic arguments....
Can you elaborate on "fairly well documented exploit tactics"? My impression is that most of these are either social engineering, for which we need to hire better designers, or complicated chains of hard-to-find primitives only accessible to state actors.
There's definitely problems but the solution isn't to make the iPhone a general purpose computer. We definitely need to defend the existence of general purpose computing at a time where regulation is likely to begin encroaching on it, but the promise of the App Store is "pay a 30% tax and any app you download here will be safe." In my mind, at least, that's the promise, and perhaps one solution to the situation would be to erect consequences to breaking that promise.
It came out in the Epic trial that 90% of App Stors revenue comes from shitty pay to win games and loot boxes - cry me a river for them.
Most of the other revenue that companies make from mobile are using the app as a front end to services where payments never go through the App Store
> the promise of the App Store is "pay a 30% tax and any app you download here will be safe."
Apple, who revealed in court that they enjoy a 75% profit margin on that fee, is being sued for that promise being false advertising on account of the crypto scams they keep approving.
https://9to5mac.com/2025/06/19/class-action-suit-app-store-c...
Stemming from the case where Apple revealed their 75% profit margin on these fees, Apple was referred for criminal investigation for illegally forcing everyone to pay that fee violating a court order to ensure they get it and then lying to a judge about it.
https://daringfireball.net/2025/04/gonzales_rogers_apple_app...
They are also being questioned in the EU to ascertain whether they are doing enough to stop the proliferation of scams on the App Store.
https://9to5mac.com/2025/09/23/apple-under-legal-scrutiny-in...
They are even facing a RICO case for their role distributing and profiting from illegal gambling apps.
https://readwrite.com/apple-google-rico-lawsuit-sweepstakes-...
A 30% tax and no freedom to install what you want better come with protection from state actors lmaooo. Otherwise what could be worth such a heavy-handed (and under a rational state, illegal) method?
Especially when the app store is nos filled with gambling apps and social media built to exploit children....
I still remember the era when jailbreaking Android and iPhones was gaining popularity among less technical people. It was eye opening to watch how many people I knew would search for a random web page and then unquestioningly follow instructions on the screen to install software from the first link they clicked.
All of this to get custom fonts in their messaging app or some other little feature they saw on someone’s phone.
I started getting a lot of requests for help from people who had broken key functions on their phones or even bricked them entirely.
Even today there’s a culture of downloading Android builds from long forum threads on XDA developers and other forums and hoping they’re not compromised.
> All of this to get custom fonts in their messaging app or some other little feature they saw on someone’s phone.
Yes, and this is normal and right. They're expressing curiosity, and in the process also actually exercising ownership of their devices.
It's how most of us here learned computers, too.
The only problem in this picture, really, is that we've allowed - or even helped - software and platform vendors to disempower regular users so much that "to get custom fonts in their messaging app" they need to do something high-risk.
Most of what regular people try to do is like this anyway - something that should be a basic functionality, that used to be basic functionality, but has been taken away from users for their "safety" or because "sekhurity" or such.
The Linux community settled very quickly on the model of a Linux distribution, distributed via FTP, as a safe place to acquire on OS. Some got very popular.
Is there anything like that in the Android world? I'd love an alternative Android distro the supports writing notes with the S-Pen from the lockscreen. Where does one find such a thing?
There are AOSP-based distros like grapheneOS and calyxOS with various "app stores" like fdroid that behave similar to package managers on linux. There are also just run-linux-on-your-smartphone distros like postmarketOS. I doubt stylus integration is good in either.
> Even today there’s a culture of downloading Android builds from long forum threads on XDA developers
I did that this month. I wouldn't do that for a device I use for anything sensitive, but I have a niche use case for my old Nexus 5, and it needed to be running at least Android 8.
> That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation.
And why should the entity locking down the design be the same entity as the one selling it? Is that a feature too?
You can't imagine a world where people can install different services by different providers to protect their devices? And have some actual competition? And therefore choice?
We almost had that with the browser wars, when Microsoft was forced to have customers choose which browser they wanted when they got a computer. Operating system choice was already lost to Windows, but at least browser, they were forced by EU directive to let the customer choose which one they wanted. Then the game changed, and now it's basically Google or Apple for your smartphone, with a tiny bit of competition that doesn't really count. If the EU really had guts, they'd say that computing devices must let the user install a OS of their choice, at their risk, and businesses would be able to just sell phones, with the option of GrapheneOS alongside Android and iOS or Windows Mobile or FirefoxOS or WebOS. We didn't get that future, unfortunately.
We really need to have a "no-tether law" that says that the consumer should be able to break all ties with the vendor and still be able to use the device as advertised.
Otherwise, you bought a service, not a product.
If you make a bootloader unlock require a full wipe/rekey of the device, and make unlock status visible at boot, most of the "someone might unlock my bootloader maliciously" concerns go away.
Fairphone actually does this. My FP3+ displays a red bar with an open padlock as long as the bootloader is unlocked, and when one changes the bootloader lock one way or the other, the phone wipes itself.
Right, but unless you prevent apps from being able to query for this status, the market will still force people into locked phones, because "sekhurity" isn't about actual security, but checking boxes and control.
Fair point, but that solution doesn't address the market for theft, so there's a tradeoff there.
If you put the icloud-lockout stuff early enough in the boot chain (which I believe is the case on apple silicon macs already?), that seems like a solvable problem too. I can understand why apple hasn't put the engineering effort into making something like this happen, but I don't think it's because they can't make it happen.
And it is not stopping people from steal IPhones as they can resell parts as usual.
The stolen parts have serials on them that get blacklisted. iOS isn't going to run with a camera that's been marked as stolen.
And the consequence for this is that you can't replace your own camera - or home button. Instead of a thief stealing your phone, Apple steals your phone. Not worth it. They could still track it by IMEI when it connects to a network.
"locked down by default"
This is not an honest portrayal of iOS. iOS is locked down period. "By default" makes it seem like there's a choice involved anywhere, and there isn't.
I like iPhones because they are a little bit restricted.
But let’s be real here. They should have unified everything 5 years ago. Your phone should plugin to a screen and be a “netbook” level device and anything 13 inches and up should be running MacOS. The iPad should have a real affordable keyboard.
These limitations are no longer designed to make the product better.
I moved to a beach town and found out the tides app only exists on my Apple Watch. I went through 10 iOS apps that didn’t work properly or wanted me to pay subscription before giving up. I just don’t understand… do they not use their own products or something?
It does have a “real affordable keyboard” - any BT keyboard and mouse. My wife uses both that came from Amazon for $30 bucks each
This is clearly sub-optimal for a tablet. And worse, they are supposed to be a company that has good taste and design.
I bought a knock off cantilever keyboard cover. This is clearly the way to go. Very clever design from Apple. The knockoff works almost as well for 25% of the price.
How is it “suboptimal”?
My wife has this
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0C4KH2GH3?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_shar...
And uses a wireless keyboard and mouse. I use an Apple keyboard and mouse and have this for my MacBook
https://www.therooststand.com/
I understand this for a user’s primary phone, and agree to a large extent.
However, the article touches on ideas like using an old phone as a server. It would be nice if on first boot a user could choose if the device will be a phone or a generic device. This way, when I decide to upgrade my phone, my old would could be reset and then setup with macOS to use for wherever I want. The alternatives are to sell it, recycle it, use it as an overpowered iPod touch, or throw it in a drawer for 10 years.
It’s only about the right to use your device as you see fit.
It is kind of silly that people buy raspberry pis to run their NAS, while they trash ther infinitely more capable iphone every couple of years.
The iPhone is designed to be a good smartphone, not a good NAS. It is silly to expect anyone to compromise the design of a mass market product to support some esoteric MacGyvering entirely unrelated to the original product.
Should we all expect Toyota to design their ECUs to be used as a NAS?
It's not about "design", because the iPhone is perfectly capable of running arbitrary code, it just refuses to do so if you're not Apple.
The situation is such that the legal owner of the device has less power over it, post-sale, than the company that made it.
That reason alone, the imbalance of power, should be enough to support abolishing those restrictions, preferably by law.
To be clear: this is something that should be beyond market forces, and it should apply to anything that is sold to consumers and can run code. The end goal should be that no user remain less powerful, in terms of code execution and access to content, than the manufacturer.
> It's not about "design", because the iPhone is perfectly capable of running arbitrary code
It is a very intentional UX choice to mitigate malware for users who do not know how to evaluate the legitimacy of software on their own. And studies show that this is a very effective policy, both perceived (e.g. marketing) and real (actual breach statistics).
You can mitigate malware while still allowing for the same level of end-user control as the manufacturer. Look at Windows itself! People getting infected on up-to-date installations is a rarity nowadays, all without draconian lockdown policies.
It took windows many decades to get there and the reputational harm was already done by then. Android is not doing particularly well but it has improved significantly.
Of course Apple doesn’t want people to use their device in a way that’s not how they designed it. They’re very anal about the user experience, they don’t want kids to install ArchLinux on their grandparents iPhones, and have the grandparents complain that their phone is shit. I get that.
Conveniently, the way they designed the phone allows them to charge 30% of every transaction that happens on the device…
But that’s beyond the point. The point is that the iphone is a capable device, that probably can run macos, and it’s a waste that we’re not allowed to.
I'm all for antitrust action against the financial trap that is the app store. But as someone who designs products, I think it's absolutely asinine to require security flaws in a product's primary design to support an untended repurposing.
I guess I don’t see how allowing some phone owners to root their devices introduces security flaws for those who don’t. Maybe there’s something I’m missing here.
It is common to social engineer android users into installing malware unknowingly. Android devices have significantly higher rates of compromise
A NAS is just an example, here's a better one; I love to use my old phones as wall mounted displays and controls for home assistant, or as remote music players plugged in to some speakers that I can hook into in music assistant. Some of my old phones are more than capable of this hardware wise but are locked to older versions of android and can't run anything built for a newer version, so they end up as ewaste intstead.
I think my next phone is going to be a fairphone or something for this reason.
None of those are even remotely reasonable enough to be a higher priority design criteria than preventing little old ladies from unknowingly installing malware.
You can do this but you have to remove the battery and hook up the circuitry to external power. This practically turns the phone into a glorified SBC. It may still be worth it since there's more of a mass market for phones than SBCs (and phones come with lots of extra hardware components that can be useful) but it's not that huge of a win.
> Apple software. It's buggy, uses proprietary formats that you can't export
Buggy sure, but proprietary formats? Calendar entries can be imported or exported as iCalendar .ics (RFC 5545), contacts as vCard .vcf (RFC 6350), photos as .jpeg or .heif (ISO/IEC 23008-12), books use the open .epub (ISO/IEC TS 30135), iTunes dropped DRM for purchased files in 2016 and uses mp4 (ISO/IEC 14496-14:2020) (though not sure what Apple Music streaming uses). TextEdit uses .rtf (a closed Microsoft format), and Pages, Numbers, Keynote use their own formats (as other office software does), but they import and export to many common formats. Notes imports and exports markdown (and you can always print/export as pdf).
What are the "proprietary formats that you can't export"?
ETA: Oh, Messages, yeah. To export those, you have to copy/paste a conversation, or use a 3rd party app, fair enough.
iMessage lives as a sqlite db at ~/Library/Messages/chat.db , I wouldn't call a sqlite db proprietary per say.
sqlite is a database. You can store things in more or less proprietary formats in it, just like any other database.
All good points. But what would be really useful and easy is allowing the iPhone to be used as a full-fledged computer on a file system completely distinct from that used to run the phone. Then my laptop is just peripherals connected to my phone.
Also phones are network devices on a carrier network. A long time ago, people didn’t even own their own phones. Their landlines were property of the phone company.
Apple achieved what was nearly impossible by getting iPhone capabilities on a carrier’s network. (They did another impossible feat with the iTunes Store and selling tracks for 0.99)
iPhone capabilities caught up to most people’s computing needs but at the core these are still devices that need to be approved to run on a carrier’s network with basic service contracts. So they are locked down.
Phone networks have always been crusty legacy things when you look at it from a modern computing lens
You can buy a cellular data plan for your laptop. Just plug in a 5g radio to your usb port or in some laptops you can even install it internally in a dedicated pcie slot.
Carrier approval is not the reason phones are locked down. If it were then rooting android devices wouldn’t be possible.
> The snide around "clicking on links is dangerous" and locking down the bootloader is unwarranted, because for most people a phone is not a toy (or at least, not just a toy) - it has their communications history, their bank information, their passwords, any many more.
And so is their god damn computer!
The ONLY reason why we treat phones differently from computers has no relationship at all with what's at stake, it's purely because Apple felt they could get away with it for phone, while they estimated that people would stop buying macs right away if they did the same thing for computers. It's literally that simple.
Problem is a lot of apps require a locked-down device. You can't use a phone that isn't locked down in most of the world. And it will spread to PCs eventually.
If it was easy I would expect 5-10% if people would probably do it, much like alternate desktop installs
This would mean millions of devices
You mention Graphene is more secure so what exactly am I gaining from not being able to install it other than my phone being trash once it's out of support
And yet, try getting a full backup of your Google phone onto your own computer. (Without rooting/wiping the whole thing.) Heck, try getting just your text messages off (without a separate app)!
You can't. (Last time I checked.) The backup is encrypted in the cloud, and the only way to download it is to restore it to a phone.
Whereas I can just plug in my iPhone and get a full backup, complete with sqlite manifest, completely accessible. Text messages, photo library, everything.
Google takeout. Done, nice try though to make some totally irrelevant comparison to excuse apple behavior.
Does that include all the local storage from my apps now?
Can you restore it to your phone?
> That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation.
> Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form
Come on now. This is so naive. Why not lock your computer down too? If its so proconsumerist
Oh please:
> Yes, this has the side effect of making them more money and allowing a walled garden to form [...]
I think you've mixed up 'side effect' with 'primary motivation'.
So exactly what “proprietary standard” does Apple use as far as media, files, connectors etc?
> That the product is locked down by design is a feature, not a limitation.
I would say most people in tech who aren't interested in fiddling with their phones have no issue with this either and frankly intentionally prefer more locked down options, all things considered.
It's fine to criticize abusive practices that companies engage in, but I tire of the narrow-mindedness of some people who measure everything according to their personal interests. Like, expand your mind, man.
If you steal someones phone on the subway its not going to be BFU.
Reading your comment made me segfault a little.
You don't understand the argument of why people might want to install their own OS on a device they own. And then say you won't buy another iPhone because you don't like their software... It sounds like you _do_ understand the argument.
I greatly dislike Apple software, but I think their hardware is quite nice. I would buy apple hardware if it wasn't handy-caped by their OS.
It used to be said that Apple was a hardware company that happens to make an OS. This argument never made sense to me, because while they make good hardware they very clearly don't want people to use it.
[dead]
[flagged]
I use the Pixel, but the point is the same. Recently Google added the "Dex" like feature where I can plug in the phone to a monitor and use it as my "entire computer" - at first I was excited, I can go to a coffee shop and leave my laptop behind, but then I looked at getting a bluetooth keyboard, mouse, monitor - with battery, and it's now a worse experience. There are monitor/battery/trackpad combination products for this exact scenario but they are nowhere near the quality of just buying a Macbook - doubly so the Neo.
A laptop is more than the sum of its parts. Your phone overlaps with it on a technical level, but format is important.
Nexdock 360.
Granted, its not as good of a "feel" as a laptop. But for the price and the features its great. You can get a good aftermarket track-pad and use that. I use a wireless mouse, because it lets me also use it as a monitor+mouse+keyboard for my Steam deck so I can play FPS games.
I had a similar experience where I tried out a Z Fold 7 with a kickstand and foldable bluetooth keyboard. I was curious about the feasibility of an all-in-one computing experience; it was clunky but surprisingly somewhat productive.
Then when confronted with scenarios where I had no stable surfaces I realized why the LAPtop form factor reigns supreme.
Peripheral add-ons like the NexDock are very nifty, but at that point you are suffering from the same physical constraints of a phone + laptop lifestyle. All with zero of the benefits of a locally accessible, more mature, and capable OS.
Try Z Fold 7 with a grip case (one with a rubber band on the back to fasten it to your palm). Grip cases make phones in general much more usable on the go, but with a foldable, it's arguably what makes you feel safe using it for laptop-grade work while walking or without a surface to rest against.
Still not a laptop, but for me it's enough that I haven't used my private laptop since getting the Fold 7 half a year ago. Extreme portability can cover for a lot of other UX problems.
My excitement towards Dex is really about it being a stepping stone towards ChromeOS replacement. I only want that because Chromebooks getting the the Google equivelant of the Apple Fast Pair experience will lower the cost of a convenience that my professional life increasingly depends on. Important for people who have too many meetings, I guess.
My use case was when I went to the office and I wanted to get some personal work. I brought a USB-C dock and plugged in my employer's peripherals, hop on my cellular connection and have at it.
Apple's latest monitor is more powerful than the NEO, it has:
* A19 Pro CPU (the NEO only has the A18 Pro)
* 12GB of RAM (the NEO only has 8GB of RAM)
* 128GB of NAND storage for iOS (ok this is less than the NEO)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Studio_Display#Technical...
You didn't mention the part that it costs five times as much.
But it's not even supposed to be a "computer".
I'm surprised more people aren't talking about it. Like what do you mean you put an entire computer inside the monitor just to run the webcam? And at the very least, couldn't you have put in the A18 pro that you put in the neo? Did you really need more RAM and compute than the entire Neo uses to be a whole computer to drive a single webcam? In theory that thing could turn into iMac.
This is sooo true. I have multiple computing ideas that I want to do just for fun but I am not doing because each requires buying a mini-pc, sometimes with a screen too, and put Linux + my app on it.
At the same time I have multiple old phones laying around, Pixels, iPhones, Galaxy that are out of date, have cracked screens or worn out batteries.
Each one of these old phones have same or more computing power than a $300 mini-pc, but I can't use them because I can't just ssh into them and install an app...
Sad, really.
The pixels all ship with unlocked bootloaders.
Just nitpicking: unlockable bootloaders. The bootloader is locked by default. But you can unlock it without needing Google.
Additionally, Pixels support a Linux VM and has a desktop mode (I'm running GrapheneOS, it may still be that these features have to be enabled through the developer settings).
> But you can unlock it without needing Google.
Well akshually.... the bootloader is initially not unlockable. You must connect the phone to the internet. Within a few minutes a background process will reach out to Google servers to check whether it was purchased outright or with a payment plan. It will only enable the bootloader unlocking toggle after this step. Phones bought with a carrier contract won't be unlockable until paid off.
In those initial few minutes (/ before you connect it to the interwebs), the bootloader unlock option in the developer settings & fastboot will be disabled.
Thanks for the correction! Though I recently set up and unlocked a new Pixel and I don't recall it. Maybe SKUs for European countries are an exception since such payment plans do not really exist? Or I forgot.
And even with this there are still apps which require hardware attestation and won't work on alternative operating systems.
I recently turned my unused Google Pixel 8 into a server for my personal site and various side projects. It's super satisfying to spin things up in a couple hours, point a cloudflare tunnel at it, and share it with the world.
Do you have a write up of the software you used to do this?
Was it just using Android apps or did you flash GrapheneOS or PostmarketOS onto it first?
Is it permanently plugged into power (risking spicy pillow scenarios)?
In Android you can use termux and run them as a servers I have done it that way
I'm using a Nexus 5 with postmarketOS as an SMS gateway connected to the internet! So glad old phones were a bit more open
> but I can't use them because I can't just ssh into them and install an app...
of course you can. just ask your agent. it took me 1 hour to vibe-code and install an Android app on my locked down Android.
Same, the computing capacity and redundancy you could achieve with your spare devices...
I was talking with someone solidly in Gen X that described their desire to write out longer form documents by hand on paper rather than typing them up. The process of typing helped them work through the content better than typing.
In an analogous way, I feel like I'm in that part of the millennial generation that is more comfortable doing things on a PC than on a phone. Sure I can informally browse airline tickets and cars on my phone, or upload some docs for my , but when things get serious, I'm switching to a PC to complete it.
There's something about doing things on a phone that just does not feel... robust? Maybe I am just too accustomed to the phone experience being minimal, or minimized in some way compared to the desktop experience.
I don't think it's generational at all, doing things on a phone is pretty objectively less comfortable.
It's generational in the sense that younger generations are far more accustomed to using phones than computers. They might not even be exposed to a computer until they need to use one for school. It's objectively less comfortable for them to use a computer when they never (or barely) used a mouse, physical keyboard, or any of that software before.
You can even see the same with games. All these kids growing up playing games on their iPads are really good at using those crappy touchscreen controls to play. Do you think they'd find using a physical controller comfortable? Maybe after a lot of practice, but why switch if you're already good at using the touch controls?
My daughter didn't really grow up using a desktop computer, though she would see my wife and I do that often enough.
She prefers a phone, but has difficulty even doing most of the things you or I would want to accomplish. It is mysterious to her, because the phone makes it difficult and sometimes even nearly impossible, and so she acts like that is impossible. When the google screen only shows you two results, you give up if there's no clear answer in two results. When the phone screen shows 20 words on it, you think reading 1500 words is an ordeal. Cluttered pages not quite fixed with adblock can have the clutter ignored on a large monitor, but when there is no adblock and the screen is 3 inches wide, the clutter drowns out the signal completely.
Phones may be an entire computer, but they are a deliberately crippled computer that makes reading text input difficult, writing text input even more difficult, and makes thinking most difficult of all.
Phones are to computers what Twitter was to blogs.
My friend wrote her bachelor’s thesis on her iPhone. There’s an entire generation of ‘digital natives’ that are computer illiterate.
I'm not convinced the author cares very much about this. He bought an iPhone. Based on his other blog posts, he knew what he was buying and what the alternatives are.
An Android phone, even with a stock OS would get him more of the capabilities one would expect from a desktop PC, but he chose an iPhone. Some Android phones let the user unlock the bootloader easily and gain root, but he chose an iPhone. With an unlocked bootloader and a well-supported device, it's possible to install a third-party Android distribution with even more freedom, but he chose an iPhone.
Maybe he likes the iOS UX or app selection better, but if that's the deciding factor then I don't think using the phone as a Real Computer (tm) is really all that important to him.
But you know it's important because of the italics.
As long as it's understood as an opinion piece it's tolerable despite – as you note – the “revealed preference”.
## Appliance Computing:
Take "consoles" for instance. I got tired of building gaming PCs, and after another long day of making computers work, enjoy turning on an Xbox Series X and just doing what the box is there for, much as I appreciate the glass slab in my pocket just doing what it is there for, every single time, without fail, for nearly 2 decades now.
I enjoy a TRMNL (https://trmnl.com/) or Arduino as much as the next person, but don't need my PDA-phone to be a general purpose computing device.
## Mobile Computing:
On the contrary, for both business office work and content creation, and leisure travel logistics and media creation, an iPad Pro with keyboard and trackpad would generally be preferable to a Macbook Pro or Air or Neo if people spent the couple weeks necessary to get used to the different computing paradigm.
Once that sinks in, you may find carrying an iPhone, folding bluetooth keyboard with multi-touch pad, and a Switch 2 USB-C + PowerDelivery + HDMI cable means you can field work on any 4K hotel TV or AirBnB monitor:
Like this: https://cabletimetech.com/products/4k60hz-usb-c-to-hdmi-cabl...
With this: https://www.amazon.com/KUNSI-Foldable-Bluetooth-Rechargeable...
But that's better suited for media. iPad Pro + 5G chip + keyboard w/ trackpad is your dual monitor work bet w/ this same cable.
Btw, the point of this particular cable is that power is probably near the TV where the HDMI end goes, with the USB-C where you and your phone or iPad are.
It's very clear that the consumer is getting a worse experience than what is technically possible. There is no good phone-slash-laptop, purely because it's less profitable than locking down the devices and selling them separately.
> There is no good phone-slash-laptop
There is: https://puri.sm/posts/my-first-year-of-librem-5-convergence/
Looking at the price vs what's inside - sorry but I'll pass.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47367379
Allow me to tell you about Samsung DeX.
The real problem is that there is no market for it.
I used it for years with a Nexdock. I just don't really use a phone anymore (mostly Daylight computer, where attaching a keyboard and most mostly gets me what I want).
There's nothing much special about phone silicon. They generally run a bit slower than their desktop/laptop counterparts because of power and heat limitations.
At the top end on a desktop power usage doubles for lower double-digit percentage gains. You can shave that off and not lose much. Laptops are a lot closer to phones than they are to desktops when it comes to power and thermal limitations*, so re-using a "phone" chip really isn't crazy.
* 100W power usage on a laptop is entering silly territory, but on a desktop that's the bottom of entry-level rigs.
There is and there isn't. Your phone, almost certainly, with a shorter list of exceptions than not, has a locked bootloader and consequently cannot run unsigned software with full permissions without additional work. Sometimes that work is impossible to do. In terms of capabilities, sure, your phone is as capable, if not more capable than a desktop computer from a decade or two ago. The phone in my hand that I'm writing this from is 100 times more powerful than the computer I had as a kid. So that's an important point to make. However the specialness of phone silicon is the locked down bootloader and the downstream effects of that. You can point out exceptions where you can unlock the bootloader, but those are exceptions. The vast majority of phones you aren't going to get root on. So in that dimension, that's what's special about phone silicon. The signed chain-of-trust that is baked in and prevents you from running unsigned binaries with full permissions on phone silicon.
You are conflating many things here. A locked bootloader does not imply you cannot run unsigned software in user space. There are also many phones that do allow you to unlock the bootloader. I have a drawer full of them.
Finally, the ability to allow you to unlock your phone bootloader or to run custom firmware has nothing to do with the silicon. It's a software choice. The trusted software could most certainly decide to disable these safeguards.
It most certainly could, but will it? I have that same drawer. There is absolutely custom silicon dedicated to putting up those safeguards. The problem is the trusted software decides wether or not to disable those safeguards is what makes it special.
>A locked bootloader does not imply you cannot run unsigned software in user space.
In the long term it does because the purpose is to provide the scaffolding for remote attestation. Once remote attestation becomes the norm, it transitions into becoming a de-facto requirement for doing pretty much anything in the real world. Today, banking apps. Tomorrow, getting past the cloudflare turnstyle. The next day, everything.
> Laptops are a lot closer to phones than they are to desktops
Introducing the MacBook Neo.
And here I am with a laptop with a 450W brick next to it to make it function…
Gaming laptops are barely laptops. They're bulky, have extremely short battery life, and aren't comfortable to actually use on your lap.
Many people here says that it's locked up by design, and while I agree, we could have an alternative firmware (not iOS or even GUI) that gives full control and complete access through ssh and repurpose it as we want.
I have a pile of iphones without battery sitting in a drawer and It would be a really cheap way to run fun stuff.
The only thing that could be worrying is device theft, but a simple CLI tool for the initial device registration after firmware flash might do it.
The problem is Mac. They've always locked things down citing safety or user experience, but it is profit and walled garden. Samsung Dex has been doing this for years.
In before someone explains it's not "exactly" the same. Dex has shown this phone/computer ability in practice long before.
It's always funny to watch hackernews slam apple for user experience decisions based off what's best for their average customer as if every person purchasing an apple device is a hackernews.
It seems like the viability of running a computer from an A16 really just came to fruition. There's heat, performance, battery life, etc implications that the average consumer can't quite articulate but it matters to them.
Apple's goal seemed to be to decimate the Cheap Plastic Intel Laptop space, and I think they succeeded at catching the industry with their tails between their legs.
Isn’t Dex similar to connecting a monitor to an M-powered iPad? Perhaps that will one day come to iPhone.
I thought i saw there was similar functionality as dex available on usb c ported iphones (and ipads)?
You can hook up a mouse and keyboard, maybe even a monitor? I thought I saw it in passing… I still have a lightning iPhone
You can connect keyboard, mouse, and video, but you just get screen mirroring on the screen (or it can properly display a full-screen video in some apps, I think... though DRM video may refuse), so, it's pretty limiting.
I’ve been hoping Apple would allow this for years, although it doesn’t seem like something they would do.
The fact that iPadOS now has windowing seems like it would only make it work better. iPads can already do everything necessary, so why not the iPhone?
Unfortunately I suspect that if this was ever going to happen, which I would’ve bet against, it’s now let’s likely. I suspect current Apple would rather sell me a Neo then let me use my phone. In other words I think the existence of the product might rule it out under current leadership.
Who knows. I could be wrong. Only time will tell.
If the rumored folding phone with a close-to-iPad-mini UI handles USB monitor connections the same as the iPad, that would give the basic version right there, albeit at a huge base price.
I hadn’t thought of that. In my mind I think Apple will say “not an iPad, you don’t get it” but the distinction (hardware UI wise) would be much much fuzzier than today.
This reads like Stockholm syndrome, like there's no other option but being held prisoner by apple.
Fabrication of microchips is based on massive economies of scale. Thanks to apple, the majority of top-of-the-line microchips are going into locked-down computers. What happens when Apple or similar companies control 90% of the market, and you are paying exorbitant prices for crappy microchips in exchange for the privilege of running user-controlled software?
A decade or two ago, Intel introduced the Intel Management Engine to new computer processors. Their competitors followed suit. The market has stopped making products without these trusted computing "features" a long time ago. Eventually, you stop being able to choose.
These are the consequences of a computer market led by consumers that don't understand computers. The invisible hand is legally blind.
The reason the iPhone is so successful is because Apple don't let us use it as a "entire" computer.
I am just glad, that we can still run a proper OS on a proper computer. If they made a modified iPad OS for their baby laptop it could have been an ominous sign.
I remember the period of 1998-2008 or so when Windows seemed to be in absolute crisis because the average Windows user was not qualified to be using a computer connected to the internet.
I'd go visit my family in New England (more than one group) and they'd have a 640x480 screen and be doing all their web browsing through 70 vertical pixels because they'd installed 30 toolbars -- and they thought there was nothing wrong with this!
The world was reeling from a cyber war between two German teens who were trying to outdo each other with viral "love letter" programs because people would just click on... anything!
Plenty of us were looking for some platform, any platform, that would deliver us from that nightmare. It wasn't going to be the Sun Ray, it wasn't going to be Linux (talk about frying pan to the fire), it was going to be the iPhone.
That's nonsense. Just have a way to unlock the OS like how getting developer tools work on android.
I'm still waiting for a display that I can simply dock my iPhone into, and use it exactly like an iMac.
Ideally it would be a 40-50 inch 4/5K screen that doubles as a desk of some sorts, but I'll take the monitor/iMac form factor.
[dead]
Microsoft has been SO successful with trying to converge devices </s> I'll agree that Apple has business reasons for keeping device classes separate. But I also think that keeping at least phones and laptops separate makes a lot of sense. I CAN use my phone as a full computer, but having done so traveling, it's not the best experience.
I seem to recall the Carriers having some pretty strict requirements on the devices that can connect to the mobile networks. Anyone know if that's (still) the case?
I'm not trying to defend Apple here, I'm just curious if there would be some kind of carrier validation issues if you slapped a full desktop OS on a phone.
I doubt that's the issue. Phones already have a baseband processor and OS in control of the modem. Also evidence if viability is all the Windows laptops with WWAN.
You can connect to 4G with your root-enabled Linux PC and a USB dongle or minipci module. Carriers don't care about your application processor, they only care about the baseband. In the case of a smartphone, you can have root access and still run the Qualcomm closed blob firmware that will drive the baseband
Carriers definitely care about the OS if it's a major OS, because bugs can take them down.
Is this news to anyone? of course it is! The reason that they don't let you run MacOS is absolutely arbitrary, in support of you buying another device. It also allows them to avoid the cost of supporting MacOS in another form-factor.
This feels more like a facebook post that would shock my mom then a HN article...
Arbitrary is doing a lot of work. With MacOS you can use an iPad as a touchscreen external monitor. Try it and you’ll learn that it’s not a touchscreen OS. It’s not as simple as “not letting you”.
Maybe it doesn't have a touchscreen interface, but i take issue with it being a touchscreen OS. I suspect most people who would want to run MacOS on an ipad would attach the appropriate user interface devices.
Like a keyboard and trackpad, yes, and the battery would be in the base, and…
or...plug into usb and use the ipad battery. the ipad already has a battery. Just don't limit what software you could load, that's all that's being asked here.
uhuh except ipad keyboards with trackpads are an existing accessory
They could have a lean version of the macOS desktop on every iPhone where it would switch to the macOS desktop once you plug it into a display. Include iWork on both sides with shared storage and you could switch between the phone interface and macOS.
I mean Samsung DeX has done something similar, but Apple could make a much more powerful version, since they have a real fully-developed desktop and they have apps for both platforms that use a single code base.
They will, of course, never do this, because it would result in losing Mac sales. Though I think less than one would initially think, because a laptop is much handier on the go than carrying a separate display, keyboard, and mouse and the lapdocks or whatever they are called have much worse displays and keyboards.
I have long wished for a future when I could just plug my phone into a KVM and have a full desktop experience.
Samsung DEX isn't far off from this, it's just that you're limited to Android instead of Linux, MacOS etc.
But Apple will surely never allow such a thing since their main interest is in selling as many pieces of hardware to each of the Apple Faithful as possible. So they with a straight face suggest that a single human needs an iPad Pro (which easily tops $1500 with the eye-wateringly-expensive keyboard and a storage upgrade) and a laptop. Nevermind that they may have the same chip inside.
I own too many Apple devices, so I may unintentionally qualify as one of those Apple Faithful, but even so I can't really find a place for the iPad in my life. I've tried, I do own an old iPad Pro, but it is semi-permanently mounted to my treadmill as the only use case I've ever had that sticks. As a practical matter I either want my phone, or a real desktop computer.
Something like that Samsung DEX with a real Linux OS and maybe I'm getting a new phone.
>"Samsung DEX isn't far off from this"
I have the latest and greatest and can attest that the experience is atrocious
I use it on a 4-5 year old Galaxy tablet. it's not perfect, but it's miles beyond the "multitasking" iPads have offered. Disclosure: I haven't tried Apple's 97th attempt to invent a new and alien alternative to the concept of windows that they currently ship on iPads.
>"but it's miles beyond the "multitasking" iPads have offered"
I do not use Apple products so I was comparing it to a regular PC/Laptop
I understand - I just mentioned because for me I was aiming to replace the concept of an iPad in my life with that tablet. Honestly though, I ended up inheriting an M1 MacBook Air from my wife after upgrading her, and it has mostly displaced the tablet for most of the uses. Mainly because of the keyboard, and it's just nicer to be able to actually access the filesystem, and indeed, just window management is still superior on a "real" OS.
Microsoft tried to sell it as a promise of Windows Phone 10. It mostly worked just around the time that Microsoft killed Windows Phone.
I do that with my Pinephone (a powered USB-C hub with ethernet, HDMI, keyboard and mouse; I also plug a proper set of speakers+subwoofer into headphone jack).
Both Phosh and PlasmaMobile turn into a "proper" desktop when "docked" (Gnome-like and KDE-like, respectively).
I don't want the phone os on a screen but the phone is powerful enough to run a full linux VM and work well-enough as a good desktop.
> I'm bothered, as I have been since the original iPad introduction 16 years ago, by the unnecessary restrictions placed by corporate powers to run third-party software and operating systems on devices we own.
It's not unnecessary, they do it because they make money as gatekeeper.
It's also because U.S. carriers don't like people hooking up arbitrary devices that can run arbitrary software to their network. In the civilized world, you have a device that talks GSM/LTE, you're golden as long as you don't violate any transmission laws. But in the USA carriers are still doing device allowlisting because I guess they want to bin QoS and don't want pro-grade traffic going over consumer accounts, nor the added expense of support for consumer accounts with exotic hardware that "might" break the network.
Just wanting to be a gatekeeper doesn't cover measures like SIP that don't make them anything and presumably took immense man-hours to implement.
I think the more accurate view would be an intersection of some of the company wanting to make money off gatekeeping and some of the company wanting to make quality devices that stay functional and malware-free even after you give to a deeply gullible grandparent for a while, and the former using the latter as a transparent excuse much of the time.
There are other reasons.
A big factor in the success of the iPad and maybe just some degree the iPhone, but especially the iPad, is that it’s “unbreakable”. All out restrictions mean it’s computer people don’t worry will suddenly stop working because they clicked to the wrong link. It won’t get a weird virus from their email.
That is a serious upside for a lot of consumers.
They could allow unlocking the phone by burying that option deep in the settings with scary warnings etc. Most people could use the device with the restrictions. The fact that this is not possible at all is greed.
One of the first things help desk scammers do is convince people to turn off antivirus and/or Windows Defender on their computers.
If they did that, every influencer would make youtube videos and tik toks telling people how they should enable that setting to make their phone better or more powerful "for free", and everyone would just do it, especially the people who really shouldn't because they don't know any better.
No they wouldn't. We don't have to speculate about that; Android already has a toggle to allow direct installation of apps, and most people don't turn it on.
Many Android devices allow unlocking the bootloader and gaining root or installing an alternate OS without exploits, and there are quite a few third-party Android builds for supported devices. The process is not beyond what a person of average intelligence and modest computer skills could pull off with some patience and a video guide. Only a handful of tech nerds actually do it.
Perhaps we're making different assumptions, but a process that "is not beyond what a person of average intelligence and modest computer skills could pull off with some patience and a video guide" sounds quite a bit more complex than a mere Unlock option in iPhone settings. Also, the results are different too. The process you've described results in an Android desktop, whereas the proposed iphone unlock process would result in a full macOS desktop, which sounds (to me at least) much more desirable to have.
I stand by my speculation that if it were possible to do that on an iphone, it'd definitely be something loads of people would do, including a large amount of people who shouldn't open their device that way but do just because they watched someone on social media telling them to.
> everyone would just do it
Wouldn't it be better to solve that with education? Also MacOS gives you a warning when you're opening something not vetted by them.
The idea that it's some higher authorities responsibility to keep us safe quickly slides into losing freedoms we care about.
Would you also like all websites to be ISP-approved?
We could also have all social media filtered through LLM guards to keep us safe?
Maybe link our IDs to our online identity to protect our kids.
MacOS does more than just give you a warning when you're opening a program not vetted by them -- it prevents you from opening it, so that's not really a good example of education, and is in fact an example of lockdown.
I'm not arguing that anything get any more locked down than it already is, so your points (while possibly valid in a bigger discussion) don't make a lot of sense here in this discussion about a hypothetical "unlock phone" setting.
Yep. Scammers have managed to get people to install profiles on their devices so they can run non-appstore approved scam apps.
I feel like that same reason is why you see a lot of seriously tech-savvy people try to use iPads as laptop substitutes over and over even though they're obviously still not suitable for it for technical tasks. There's a lot of latent appeal in "okay, what if I just didn't have to worry about any of that ambient technical crap?".
You can still have that. Make unbreakable the default, and add an "admin mode" toggle.
As I noted here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47369155 that wouldn't stop the people that need the protection.
The last 25 years of Apple has made it pretty clear that’s not “the Apple way”.
Yeah they could. They could do a lot of things people constantly ask about, like upgradable RAM. But there is no reason to think they will.
This feels a bit like when my friend Colin put out a challenge for people to get Windows XP running on the then-new Intel Macs.
I love this idea. I'd love a tiny full computer that I could dock onto other hardware and just carry around.
https://www.crn.com/news/channel-programs/183700272/intel-ma...
[dead]
Microsoft did this over a decade ago with Windows Phone and no one was interested.
Seems like the way things are going is VMs, your phone running iOS can just be a jump box to a Mac VM, no need to dual boot an operating system, no need to lose the security iOS provides. I would rather Apple make software that just lets me tailscale like RDP to my Mac mini on my desk from anywhere using my phone, keyboard, mouse.
Windows Phone couldn't run the majority of desktop Windows apps (those developed with the "Win32" API). They developed an entirely separate API for Windows Phone apps and it was similarly locked down as iOS/Android.
True although that decision was likely due to windows architecture limitations at the time. Windows was still deeply coupled with x86_64 and is still not great with ARM today.
Okay so the OP is saying that since Macbook Neo has the same hardware as iphone, but not locked down, so why is iphone locked down. They say its because of the app store profits.
Sure App store is not to be understated, but I'd add our phones include way way more personal information than a laptop like NFC for credit cards, personal photos, and all biometric and contact information. Not to mention cellular network connection and generally forms as a soft form of identity. None of these apply to a laptop. So form factor does matter.
BUT even if we unlocked the iPhone, the desire for 'MacOS on iPhone' is actually the wrong thing to ask for. Pete Steinberger had in this interview (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AcwK1Uuwc0U&t=1182) that UI is basically the wrong paradigm in a world where agents should do tasks for us in milliseconds. We should be able run any local services from our phone like grabbing
Good news is we already have this via terminal apps in Android. Now what's left is the ability for agents to run on your device and basically accomplish tasks for you
Perhaps it is the way I framed the article, but the core of my argument is not “MacOS on iPhone”.
Yes, I do personally desire that as a niche thing, but the broader point is the nature of a locked bootloader that prevents any third-party software from being loaded / installed without getting an approval from Apple.
Whether the desire is third party apps on iOS outside of Apple-vetted channels, or entirely new operating systems like Linux or MacOS, I’m mainly arguing I should have the right to modify the software however I’d like as the device owner.
My laptop has all my contacts, calendar, access to all my photos and is regularly used for online banking. It does not have cellular but I could buy one that does. So your list applies to a laptop just the same.
I don't understand why the author bought an iPhone. That's the deal - you do things Apple's way in exchange for not having to figure out how you'll do them. For most people this is a massive convenience, and that's why they pay so much for Apple products (and why I don't).
Only like 6-7 years ago, I spent working (so this is about commercial work, not play/free time) about 90% of the day on my macbook and 10% on my phone. Then I moved to 80% on my phone with xreal glasses, 10% without and 10% on my macbook. Now it's 90% on my phone without xreal and 10% with. For the same work. AI made that possible because my work (development) went from mostly typing and debugging to basically only reading code and mumbling prompts into my ear buds. I prefer this life a lot more. But this future is already there, also for iphone users although I don't really care: my driver is Android. I WOULD prefer Linux or an open android (my next phone will need Lineage or e/os or something as everything is moving the wrong direction).
The argument here is valid, if I read this correctly. Why can’t Apple simply allow your iPhone SIMPLY be just a transportable PC, that you can connect a keyboard, mouse, and monitor and do anything else you can do with Echo or any Apple computer? [EDIT]Provided that some functionalities (the phone) be walled off for security.
Because they want to segment the market and sell you both?
I'm glad they've made a more affordable and repairable laptop but I can't help but notice (in addition to what the author's said) they can put a cell phone into a laptop's body, but not a cell modem into a laptop. If the macbook pro max had a cell model that would go like hotcakes
Why not just get a Linux phone running Ubuntu Touch or postmarketOS. You'd have full root access, sideloading etc and none of that corporate control, likely for half the price of an iPHone. Sure you'd lose all the Apple look/feel but at least you can do what you want with the phone.
I think the author goes more towards repurposing the device after its EoL.
I have a bit of experience with using a desktop OS on a smartphone. In fact, you can try it very easily yourself! I used TeamViewer.
Of course, it runs on a separate device, but it gives us an idea of what it would be like to have it there natively.
I used this to make some music in FL Studio on my phone. Well, on my laptop, which I had set up in the office. So I controlled it via my phone.
I feel like mobile versions of stuff is just gimped versions of the real thing. I would almost go so far as to say that I am more productive when using a desktop interface on a smartphone (than the smartphone equivalent of the same software), despite the ergonomic awkwardness.
When you've had enough, vote with your wallet and come join us in the free world.
Why would you allow your phone to be a computer if you can sell a computer AND a phone? Allowing "random" OS to be installed on your phone would mean loosing control over your phone (including spying, gathering statistical data to influence major decisions, ability to paralyze communication of your country etc etc)
Android phones are nothing but linux phones and video output (DP over USB-C, earlier MHL) is for many years already included in many phones. I would love to carry one device with everything on it. I would be very happy if that device was like a laptop with detachable core, that acts as phone.
Anyone have a theory why Apple hasn't done this yet? They release an 'iBook' which is basically a wired or even wireless lapdock for your iPhone running OSX in a partition. Seems like that would decimate the entire Windows, laptop, even desktop market in short order.
Everyone with an iPhone, no longer needs their laptop/desktop. Just buy a cheap iBook and there's a good chance it'll already be better than most consumer PCs.
There isn't much demand for using phone as computer. If you are at home or work, you can buy a desktop computers for cheap. If you are traveling, you need to find a monitor and keyboard. You could carry small monitor and wireless keyboard, but then you are carrying as much as laptop. People who need to work on the road get a laptop. People who need to send email get iPad and keyboard.
Good example of the economics is that Macbook Neo or iPad Air are cheaper than new iPhone.
iPhone should export display, but more for showing videos or presentations. My Pixel 10 has USB-C display and I haven't used it, but I have computers for all purposes.
Apple should spend more effort making the iPad usable for work. It would be good candidate for USB-C display, but with iPadOS.
Imagine an executive placing their phone on a magnetic dock as they sit down, which automagically connects to the screen and gives them access to everything they were doing before. Also easy to imagine a university computer lab where everyone brings their own compute and IT doesn't have to manage physical desktops.
I'm skeptical that there's "no demand" for that kind of functionality rather than a lack of good implementations. Look at how popular wireless CarPlay and Android Auto are. They're essentially the same functionality, but tailored to an in-car experience instead of desktop.
Imagine executive tapping their phone down on reader, and it pops up everything they were doing, and they get to keep using their phone.
The first flaw in the idea is that computing is cheap. You can make a computer the size of a phone for people to carry around, that has been tried but failed. The second flaw is that everything is in the cloud, only developers and offline need local access to their files. The cloud also means that can desktop in the cloud.
You can make a computer the size of a phone. That's what the latest macbook neo is. The rest of the space inside is battery and peripherals. I'm not sure what cloud has to do with this discussion.
Re: keep using phone, that's exactly what's already possible with CarPlay and AA.
FWIW, you can plug your iPhone into an external monitor to do a Keynote presentation. You need a USB-C (or Lightning) to HDMI dongle in most cases, but it works fine.
- https://support.apple.com/guide/keynote-iphone/present-on-a-...
I'm always reluctant to do non-standard stuff for presentations. There's enough that can go wrong even with a direct HDMI out. I've done it in a pinch but pretty much always carry a laptop with me when I'm presenting along with local copies of my presentations. I've actually gotten a text in the middle of the night asking me if I can fill in for another speaker who forgot and are in a different country :-)
On an upcoming trip I'm actually going to give an iPad with magnetic keyboard I bought a couple years back, assuming different travel patterns than I've had, a try. It seems to work fine. An iPad is also great for plane/train entertainment without a keyboard. But, honestly, it's no lighter than a MacBook Air would be and if my ancient MacBook Pro dies--have a newer one up in my office--that's what I'll probably buy.
I have traveled with just my iPhone and can get by but don't really love it.
How can there be demand for something that doesn't exist?
If Apple releases a $300 lapdock tomorrow, basically a screen, keyboard, battery, that allows using your iPhone as a normal general purpose computer with OSX - why would anyone buy a laptop/desktop?
Why would anyone buy that instead of Macbook Neo for $600? Macbook doesn't need a iPhone to use.
If you are doing serious work, which are the people who want a dock, then you need the power of Macbook Air or Macbook Pro.
For most people, iPad or iPad Air with keyboard is a better option since you get tablet for fun and can do some light work.
The form factor is a major difference.
HNers are significantly more technical than the median consumer and are used to text and keyboard interfaces - a large portion of humanity isn't. You see this with Foundation Models as well - most have started to shift away from only concentrating on text to TTS and STT usecases.
Also, DeX style monitor screen share with a Bluetooth keyboard has been supported since iOS 15.
Additionally, a major portion of Apple's desktop revenue is coming from poweruser and specialist demand - IT departments bulk purchasing developer laptops, designers having their entire design workflow within the MacOS environment, and video editors heavily dependent on MacOS.
Furthermore, arguments about how Apple has an incentive not to cannibalize revenue are dumb, given how open Apple is to cannibalizing revenue where PMF exists (eg. the iPad Pro versus lower tier MacBooks or the MacBook Neo versus lower tier iPads).
The entire Mac line is a teeny tiny slice of revenue compared to iPhone. Allowing OSX on iPhone would increase the utility of iPhone, leading to more sales.
> Allowing OSX on iPhone would increase the utility of iPhone, leading to more sales
That assumption is not necessarily true.
What this implies is that there is a market of existing consumers that would not buy an iPhone because it lacks OSX support.
The iPhone portion of Apple's business generates around $144B in YoY revenue in Q1FY27 [0].
Whenever an organization contemplates building a net new capability like the one you mentioned, a quick test is whether it would be able to generate and sustain at minimum the equivalent of 1% of yearly revenue.
If this was a $1B revenue opportunity it would have been implemented, but it's not.
Nor is it a feature that can actively or dramatically increase Apple's market share in most markets.
A good proxy of such demand would have been a sudden increase in iOS users using USB-C screen share and a Bluetooth keyboard to interface with an iPhone in a desktop form factor (something which has been enabled since iOS 15), but such an increase has not happened.
[0] - https://counterpointresearch.com/en/insights/apple-reaches-a...
Consumers haven't been told they can do that though. It's not ergonomic to do that. There's not a Belkin plastic dock to support that use case, so I don't find that is a good proxy for it.
Consumers don't need to be "told" what to do. If there truly was demand, Samsung or other third-party vendors would have created an ergonomic dock for DeX enabled Samsung phones and it would have been a killer app.
Other than UI and other surface differences, the fundamental distinction between a Mac and an iDevice is... what it is.
A Mac is a real computer. I can run any code I want on it. I have root.
An iDevice is like a game console. I can only run App Store apps (without jumping through a lot of hoops). I do not have root (without again jumping through many hoops or ugly hacks).
If Apple wanted to unify the platform they have two choices. The first is to abandon the "real computer" market entirely. The second is to make iDevices real computers by unlocking them.
I suspect they'd rather keep two platforms.
Under the hood they both share a lot of code, so it's not two totally distinct platforms. It's more like two sets of defaults and two "skins."
I think the friction of using a keyboard/pointing device with a touchscreen, or fingers with a desktop interface, is too high to unify them. I know it's been done, I'm unconvinced it's been done well.
MacBook Neo has in a way unified the platforms. The only difference is essentially what OS is booted up with the chip.
That’s the difference though. Put macOS on a phone chip and it’s now a “real computer,” just a smaller one.
The M chips are mostly just roided out A chips: higher clocks, better cooling, more P cores, big GPU, and I think deeper pipelines and more cache. The ALU and many other sections are, I think, identical.
Thermal throttling is actually a non trivial limit on phones. Put a heat sink and a fan on an A chip and sustained compute is faster.
The OS and its restrictiveness determines the class of device not the hardware.
That was already the case with the M-series chips, which are shared between Macs and higher-end iPads. The Neo just extends it to the A-series as well.
Yep I know, and now using a last gen A chip, I feel they are really rubbing our faces in it.
Like Apple is saying, "Nice iPhone 17 Pro w/ A19 w/ vapor cooling chip you have there; you know you run a full general purpose OS on it, but we're not gonna let you, nanananana :p"
No exactly, Apple is playing in our faces, all while people continue to defend the “differences” of device categories and the subsequent justification of shipping iPhones and iPads with locked bootloaders.
Unless you work for Apple or hold significant stock then I don’t see the logic in defending this choice to hamstring the iPhone.
But even as an investor, I think Apple could bring a lot of people/money to the Mac ecosystem by getting them in with an iPhone lapdock.
The belief that people only hold opposing opinions to yours because they have money on the line is such conspiracy theory nonsense. Some random teenage in middle America couldn't just really like Apple products? It's gotta be some grand conspiracy against you?
I think Apple is just really careful about how they segment their product line for each use case, and would never go for a "jack of all trades" solution like this.
Why would it decimate the Windows market? From my experience, there's a strong correlation between iPhone and Mac usage.
Looking at the stats, the Win:Mac ratio is 4:1 but Android:iPhone only 2:1 so it might hurt Windows. But if iPhone users are more likely to use Mac or don't use computers much already, then expanding iPhone capabilities would cannibalize Apple business.
Because then most people with an iPhone wouldn't need to buy a separate laptop/desktop. I'm sure Android as well would follow in short order (not the half hearted attempts they've made so far). Sales would plummet. Windows decimated.
No, the iPhone has over 50% market share in the US, macOS is nowhere near that.
Why would Apple want to sell a lapdock when they could instead sell you the same thing + a redundant SOC (aka, a MacBook) and then high-margin cloud services to sync all of your data between your two differently-shaped computers?
Because most people with iPhones are buying Windows computers, but give them a cheap entry lapdock into the Mac ecosystem and maybe their next more powerful system will be a Mac.
Mac is a niche right now, iPhone with OSX could level the playing field.
If Apple could bring themselves to sell a lapdock, it'd have to cost at least $500. We know this because the Magic Keyboard for iPad, just a keyboard and trackpad, is priced at $349 (and it was introduced at that price way back in 2020, so at the time, Apple believed that keyboard was worth $440 adjusted for inflation). A screen to Apple's quality standards, even a 12-13" one, cannot possibly increase that price point by less than $150. So, the Apple in our universe could not produce a lapdock, because in our universe they have a whole laptop at that price point.
On second thought, the reality distortion field is real, so I suppose if they told people their new $600 lapdock was a good value even though it costs as much as the entry-level Mac, they'd still find willing buyers.
It would decimate their own business.
This. The more locked down, the less in control we are, the higher margins they command. This is why app stores exist - it has nothing to do with safety or security, and everything to do with monopolizing the distribution supply chain from soup to nuts. Don’t like it? Too bad, it’s fully locked down and cracking it is a (potentially) criminal offense, so whaddayagonnadoaboutit?!
Because people like TFA pay them not to. It doesn't matter how much you hope Apple changes course - you vote with your wallet.
A little computer board is only a fraction of the BOM of a laptop, so a 'lapdock' of equivalent quality couldn't be very much cheaper than a whole laptop.
If you use cloud storage, your laptop already has all the stuff on your phone anyway.
Money.
The general public thinks phones and computers are fundamentally different. Heck, I remember arguing this point even on HN back when smart phones were first coming out and being generally on the losing side as people got very excited about "app stores" and such. I see no practical path to getting to the point that enough of us realize that there is simply no reason for our phones to be locked down the way they are that the companies are forced to undo it, especially with our elites pushing with all they are worth to lock things down harder.
The companies take that confusion to the bank.
There have been numerous attempts at making phone/laptop crossovers, where you can plug your phone into a dock and get a computer, or slide your phone into a laptop case, etc. Some of them are even still around, but they're all definitely second-class citizens. There's a variety of problems that I think they've had in the market, not least of which is the fact that the average person still sees "phones" and "computers" as fundamentally different so the product makes no sense to them, but another issue that I think has held them back is that the product inevitably work by porting the limitations of the phone into the computer, rather than porting the freedom of the computer into the phone.
In the USB-C era, there is no excuse for every phone not having a mode where you can plug it into any ol' USB-C hub/dock and be able to get a desktop environment, even down to the "middle-of-the-line" phones. It would require in most cases no extra hardware. They just don't.
Money? You don't think Apple would make a killing on OSX licenses and lapdock sales if they allowed OSX on iPhone tomorrow?
Mac is a tiny slice of revenue for apple. OSX on iPhone would blow it out of the water. Apple would turn the PC market upside down, taking a sizeable chunk from Windows. As there'd be no point for most people to have a separate laptop/desktop at that point.
People also thought that phones needed keyboards before Apple showed them a better way. This is all on Apple to make a reality, no one else can bring general purpose computing to iPhone except them. It's their choice to make.
That would also seriously hurt the sales of Macs. Even more so now that the Neo exists.
It would explode sales of Mac. OSX on iPhone, people wouldn't need the separate Windows laptops they're used to. OSX on iPhone is the gateway for consumers into the OSX ecosystem.
And when those consumers want more powerful hardware, instead of buying a more powerful Windows laptop/desktop - they buy a Mac instead.
I feel like Apple knows this as well, so I can't figure out why they haven't pulled the trigger. Anti-trust risk? lol
I don’t think it would be an antitrust risk.
I don’t understand the argument for why allowing it would mean more Apple computer hardware sales though. Could you explain why you think that would happen?
I think there are a number of reasons why Apple specifically hasn't done this. In addition to what others have already mentioned (demand, segmentation, profitability, etc), another factor would probably be difficulty with the overall design.
Part of why Apple's products are often praised for their design is that they do a few things really well and focus on those things, instead of trying to do absolutely everything. Consider the iPod, the iPhone, Apple TV, etc -- they're all pretty focused on doing certain things and Apple's really polished the experience. The Mac desktops and laptops kind of stretch this by allowing more things, but they still largely try to focus the user into certain workflows, via the plethora of apps that come standard with macOS and the vendor lock-in that they push.
Making a phone that can also be a full computer goes against these design principles. Apple's closed the gap a bit in recent years by making macOS and iOS a bit more similar than they used to be, but they're still pretty different. If you're on a M1/2/3/4/etc processor laptop and you've tried using an iOS-specific app (not ones that's designed for both phone and desktop) on it, you'll see some of those differences (interfaces tuned for touch are weird with a mouse, things are sized wrong for desktop, file restrictions can be weird, keyboard input can be lacking, etc etc etc), and it's not enjoyable. Going the other direction, the first thing that pops into my head is: how in the world would the mac desktop be represented on iOS? I'm someone who keeps a lot of files on his desktop, grouped in different sections of the screen for different reasons, and I have no idea how that would be represented on a relatively tiny phone screen (at least in a way that didn't destroy my intentional groups). There are other aspects of macOS that would prove tricky to have analogs on a phone screen, too, but this reply is already getting so long that very few will read it...
Now that's not to say that it's impossible. In fact it probably isn't. But there would be compromises (and those compromises would be on top of the compromises already present in iOS/macOS). To do it well, it'd be a much bigger project than most people realize. It's not just changing a few options and letting us use our phone that way. It'd be more akin to designing the first iPhone. Note that it's not just Apple who hasn't done this yet. Literally _no one_ has done it well yet. I truly hope one day Apple (or someone else, even) does it well, since that'll be a glorious day. But it'd be a huge project, so I'm not holding my breath.
iPhone users just now discovering Samsung Dex... cute
If you want to control the software that runs on your phone, you can. You have to choose with your wallet, and buy a phone that gives you that freedom, such as the Pixel. Buying a locked down iPhone and then complaining about it is ineffective. Wallets speak louder than words to a corporation.
I think the reason is pretty obvious; what really goes on inside of our mobile phones, is not for the faint of heart.
For me this has two takeaways:
One, I avoid Apple products as they are locked down and overpriced
The other, that it's probably worthwhile to push for apple to open these products up more - especially would be nice if more old hardware could be "opened" to reuse and avoid them being e-waste
> On the MacBook Neo, I can even opt to not use MacOS at all and instead install Asahi Linux if I so choose (assuming Apple continues to allow custom kernel booting as it has in M-series Macs).
Is this true? Does Asahi support any A series chip (or the A18 Pro specifically)?
I'm just surprised people hadn't realized earlier that these SOCs were capable of more than Apple had let on. They're incredibly capable, but profits and capitalism are the problem as always.
The fun thing for me is that we are now having the same argument about iPhones that we've always had about iPads.
For me, the iPad would have died if the Neo had a 12" screen. Only the iPad mini remains a useful form factor.
They're all supercomputers that would have ranked on the TOP500 in the 90s.
> On the MacBook Neo, I can even opt to not use MacOS at all and instead install Asahi Linux if I so choose
Wait, does Asahi even run in this thing, or is that unfounded speculation?
It’s definitely speculation. Not sure it’s unfounded, the project has built some level of support for all other Apple Silicon Macs: https://asahilinux.org/docs/platform/feature-support/overvie...
The original iPhone ran OS X: https://youtu.be/x7qPAY9JqE4?t=522
It still does, they just call it iOS.
Some people insist there is no difference between a product and a capability and I honestly don't know to communicate to those people.
My contention is that the definition of said product and its inherent capabilities is being gatekept by a corporation that would love you to buy both an iPhone and Mac, and treat them as separate. In fact, I do have both already! But I still want rights to modify my iPhone as the computer it is.
The MacBook Neo is a great example of just how fungible these categories are, at least as far as the SoC that runs them is concerned. I paid for my iPhone in full, there is no reasonable justification for why I can’t repurpose it / modify it as I see fit.
Because those people reject the principles that uphold that distinction, and so do I.
Just out here buying furnaces and using them as grills.
This reminds me of the days when I used to install Arch on a rooted Motorola.
It would be cool if iPhone could double as a laptop by just adding a monitor and keyboard/mouse and switch over to macOS.
Tim Apple wants you to pay thrice, once for a phone, once again for a tablet and finally one last time for a laptop.
That’s basically the Neo.
Apple did patent a design for a dock in a monitor for a portable device to slot into. It’s gotta be getting close to expiration now. I think the trick is heat dissipation.
My friend who is a macOS programmer years ago had an idea for a startup mode for iMacs where instead of just being a screen, the storage and video card would also be accessible over the thunderbolt bus, so you could plug a laptop in and have multiple video cards at your disposal.
Thermals and the interconnection speed would be a drag, but it would be nice to have a target display mode on a mac for iPhone
Progressive Web Apps Exist. You can download any app. And build them too. I build my own apps that send me notifications from my AI Buddy :)
Try saving my side project to your home screen : Habit.am - works really nicely once you're logged in.
I built a few native iPhone apps 15 years ago, but these days do my tinkering in web tech and "Save to Homescreen." Probably couldn't do this if I wanted functionality like photo/video editing or heavy 3D, but for my relatively simple use case, Webkit is fine. This has the benefit of completely bypassing the App Store, and lets me share apps by just linking to them.
> As a US citizen, I must go through the Apple-approved App Store to download / install third-party software. Smells like freedom.
If you’re a U.S. citizen, it’s worth studying what this country’s foundational freedom means specifically, why and why not something else, such as consumer rights.
Indeed it's a marvel, it's not very capable though
Maybe I'm alone in this camp, but I really value the idea that my phone is an ultra-stable bedrock experience that, sure, I have to sacrifice some freedoms on but ultimately they're not exactly freedoms I care to express on a 5.8" display whose more critical purpose is things like "my car keys", "my door keys", "maintaining contact with family" etc. Versus, my linux desktop feels like its always in a state of nearly falling apart, and that's what makes it fun. I'm constantly pushing it to the edge, installing 550gb LLMs, four different package managers, right now its got a totally dissected USB cable coming out the front that's attached to a small circuit board for some project, all that's ok because that's what I want out of it. I don't want that out of my phone. I want my phone to ALWAYS turn on and ALWAYS be able to get EVERY text or phone call that's sent to me.
I think anyone who has devoted their life to computing, in all its forms, over the past 20 years should agree: There doesn't exist an operating system that I feel adequately does all of that under one roof. The closest is Android. And that's what I don't get out of posts like this: Android does exist. What do you want out of Android that Google/etc are keeping from you? Samsung has Dex. It kinda sucks. Google allows free-range application installations (and fortunately that recent effort to block it is dead); that's great. I guess there's no real/root UNIX terminal? Bro, I struggle to envision a world where any device I have that has a root shell is also one that I don't inevitably fuck up, even if only temporarily, its ability to receive phone calls from my doctor about the results of a colonoscopy.
The bigger problem that I see right now is that, at least from the perspective of the iPhone: Apple is dropping the ball on their stewardship of this bedrock experience.
It depends on how AI-pilled you are. Linux is fucking awesome and really easy to use now because AI has read all of the Internet posts ever about how to use Linux, so you can just fire up Claude code and tell it to fix your python or docker or whatever. 2026 is gonna be the year of Linux on the desku, powered by AI, if people manage to get over themselves.
why not just use https://getutm.app/ ?
A business has the right to set the rules by which it is willing to contract with you. You don’t have to buy their product or service. Trade only works well by mutual consent.
Desktop computers being as open as they are is an anomaly. It only came to be because the systems originated from research labs and hacker cultures rather than rent-seeking corporations. And even though corporations (like IBM and Microsoft) did push them, there was a lot more emphasis on business rather than consumer use at the time.
Vendors keep them open today only because there is a historical exception, but make no mistake if the laptop computer was first introduced to the masses in 2008 you would be downloading apps through official stores and paying a 30% fee on all transactions and would only be able to do a tiny fraction of what is possible on them today.
To me the surprise isn't that the phone is locked down, but that Apple allows MacBook Neo to do so much. Just look at its iPad counterpart.
Isn’t my Apple Watch faster than a Cray 1?
Your sim card is an entire computer.
It runs Java!
> On my iPhone, there is no such ability. As a US citizen, I must go through the Apple-approved App Store to download / install third-party software. Smells like freedom.
That's the effect of a complete lack of antitrust. In the US corporations can do the fuck they want
Wow everything computer
Android now has a desktop mode (as Samsung has supported for years with Dex), and it also works on degoogled variants like GrapheneOS.
Can it run OpenClaw?
I wish I could use my iPhone with a broken display as a MAC. I was going to fix it, but it cost me $400 to replace it, so it's lying useless.
This looked interesting but the workaround might have been patched by Apple in newer iOS versions: https://www.reddit.com/r/iphone/comments/1p3e2bf/my_hacked_i...
I would love to have more control over my watch. I can't sort by recent apps or have a custom watch face? Really?
[dead]
[dead]
[flagged]
[dead]