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Comment by drpixie | Hacker News Reader

I normally prefer browser to app. Why would I want to install yet more junk software, which might be doing who-knows-what, if I can get the same result without adding extra weird, untrustworthy stuff to my systems? This applies to PCs and much more so to phones - on phones standard of "trusted" is rather lower, and increasing the number apps has real downsides (battery, performance, etc)

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> This applies to PCs and much more so to phones - on phones standard of "trusted" is rather lower, and increasing the number apps has real downsides (battery, performance, etc)

I'd argue this applies more to PCs and less to phones, since the security model for most desktop OSs gives all applications access to all user data, so you need to completely trust everything you install. On Android (and I believe ios) all applications are sandboxed. You can also prevent them from running in the background to limit impact on battery/performance.

Although I still agree that I still don't like installing junk on either, and phones still aren't completely immune.

I just realized this has been mysterious to me forever. Why is software on phones so bad?

Touch screens were a mistake

I'm not sure if it was the keyboard, or the OS, or both, but I found the software on my Palm Pre so much better for doing what I actually want, and in less time, instead of the mindless scrolling it feels like phones now are optimized for.

Agreed. I actually bring a full-size mechanical keyboard with me everywhere I go so I can fire up vim and respond to SMS messages in the most ergonomic way possible, as God intended.

You are laughing and I'm crying. I don't know what is the vim thing but if I needed a phone for a lot of typing 10 years ago, I used to have a rich choice of Qwerty communicators. If I need a phone for a lot of typing today, I use to have a choice of:

a 10+ y.o. Qwerty communicator whose software is able at least to reach my email,

a laptop,

and a touchscreen as an only way to have all the bleeding edge technologies but with stupid restrictions on an OS level.

I'm betting it's somewhat dumber target audience which is then taken as a permission for abuse.

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