Hacker News Reader

Comment by notonmywatch | Hacker News Reader

>> "but I feel incredibly limited in what I can actually do with my iPhone"

> That's because they're intended to work as media consumption devices rather than productivity ones. If someone feels productive on a phone, he or she has very likely adapted herself to the device than the other way around.

What are you talking about? Literally millions of people use their phones to create every day. They take pictures and post on Instagram, create videos with apps like Clips, iMovie, SnapChat, make music with GarageBand, and yes, also consume video. But iPhones are every bit intended to be creation devices as much as desktops. The form factor lends itself to a different type of content creation, but it's stellar at letting users create in addition to consume.

View on HN

There's no doubt you can create lots of stuff, and I would not say otherwise; the iPhone has a nice camera and the tools for media production on the iPhone are actually pretty ok.

All that being said, I don't do any of that stuff; I write software and write the occasional blog post. For me, I need a compiler, text editor, git, a good terminal etc. In this regard, my old Packard Bell is honestly more powerful, and despite my iPhone having objectively awesome hardware in comparison, I accomplish much less.

Hear hear!

I think Steve Jobs old Car vs Truck analogy is still very relevant. There are some things you really need a keyboard, and possible a mouse for. That's not the fault of the phone though, or a failing of it, or the people making it. Sometimes trying to make something do what it's not naturally adapted for can make the overall experience worse rather than better.

Funny. I do all of those things on my iPhone XS these days. Not that I do any heavy work on but it works on the go if I have to.

Blink Shell and mosh = terminal, vim, git, etc.

Well, that's kind of cheating; that's not using the "phone" to do any of the real work, you're offsetting the work to a server. I've used my iPhone for that stuff too, but that really doesn't require all the horsepower that modern iPhones give you.

They may be creating stuff but it's constrained by input and UI built to be unintimidating versus efficient for experts. Aside from the lowest common denominator UI designs, touch screens and OSKs are terrible compared to mice and keyboards for human-to-computer bandwidth and precision. Those who disagree usually (in my experience) have no basis for comparison, never having reached proficiency with any keyboard+mouse centric creation tools.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com