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Comment by abruzzi | Hacker News Reader

This doesn't surprise me at all. For most people (myself included) an iPhone or Android is not a general purpose computer, but a communicator. The vast majority of my communicating happens in email, with the web browser a distant second. Apple's email program in iOS accounts for 70% of my usage, web browser 20% and everything else falls in that last 10%. Other people I know have very different breakdowns, but wether it is Messages or Facebook, or something else, that is their primary communication tool. I've got hundreds of other apps that I use occasionally, but so many phone apps for me are simple single purpose apps, that makes them of limited narrow use.

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Given that, how many programs do you install even on your computer each month? I bet there are a lot of months where there are zero no new programs.

Install--not that many, but usage on my desktop is far more varied.

I definitely use fewer distinct apps on my desktop than on my mobile. My browser, spotify, MS Office, and Messages, pretty much.

Interesting. My phone is email, browser, phone, music, with very rare branches to other apps. My desktop is email, browser, iTunes, terminal/vim, bbedit, eclipse (yuk), Final Cut, Logic X, Final Draft, office, a bunch of other smaller music specific apps (NMEdit, sysex librarian, etc.) omnigraffle, omnioutliner, and a bunch of others. I know I'm an outlier because of a bunch of uses that web apps will likely never supplant, I'm just always surprised.

The article does surprise me. I assumed people were regularly (at least one a month) downloading new apps and trying them out... I guess I'm definitely in the minority. I like to explore the app store and see what's new. In any given day, I'll be using apps for facebook, instagram, twitter, snapchat, product hunt, mail, safari, nest, hangouts, alien blue, and soundcloud. And when I find a new website that interests me, I usually check if there is a corresponding app.

for me, my smartphone is a general purpose device : -Access to Pocket articles while commuting -Music, Podcast -Social networks -a little bit of instant messaging / voice -mails -maps

It is also a communicator device, but only in the sense that for some silly reason I can't place calls with the 2000$ box on my desk, but only with the 800$ one in my pocket.

None of the apps I have are perfect, especially now that we are in an awkward phase where we have an excellent Material spec and are very far from it in practice. However, they all do their job well enough. So well that I don't remember the last time I added an app to my routines.

> It is also a communicator device, but only in the sense that for some silly reason I can't place calls with the 2000$ box on my desk, but only with the 800$ one in my pocket.

FXO card? :/

I can't place calls with the 2000$ box on my desk

Of course you can. Get a Softphone[1], a SIP account[2], and you're good to go.

[1] e.g. https://itunes.apple.com/en/app/telephone/id406825478?mt=12

[2] Here's a good list (calls to USA landline & mobile are free on most of them): http://www.mobilevoip.com/supported_brands

Or just use the google talk feature that's part of gmail, and phone out to anywhere in the US and Canada for free.

I'm sure that there are example of either side, but my anecdotal comment was to correlate the general finding of the article, though my reasoning may not be why others are finding themselves in a single app most of the time.

Not to derail too much, 80-90% of my computer usage isn't even really possible with an iPhone or android, at least not productively. Small devices make it very hard for me to do anything other than small bite-sized interactions. When I'm writing music, prose, editing video, writing code, all of these things are borderline impossible on a phone, and barely possible on a tablet, and those things are the bulk of my computer usage.

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