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  • #21
    Originally posted by emblemparade View Post
    This is a new wheel that can roll on desktops, tablets and phones, with the appropriate UX in each environment. There is nothing like this is in the free software world yet, so indeed Ubuntu has to invent it.
    Question is - is that useful? Canonical have certainly bought into their idea, with their plans for devices that can be a phone on the go, or a full desktop when plugged into a screen and keyboard/mouse.

    But is it actually desirable to have the same UI running in both configurations - optimised for one at the expense of the other, or a compromise that doesn't really work for either? I don't see it, myself... the device itself might be useful, but I think I'd rather have two independent UIs specialised for the current form-factor, instead of one that tries to please both.

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    • #22
      Originally posted by Delgarde View Post
      Question is - is that useful? Canonical have certainly bought into their idea, with their plans for devices that can be a phone on the go, or a full desktop when plugged into a screen and keyboard/mouse.

      But is it actually desirable to have the same UI running in both configurations - optimised for one at the expense of the other, or a compromise that doesn't really work for either? I don't see it, myself... the device itself might be useful, but I think I'd rather have two independent UIs specialised for the current form-factor, instead of one that tries to please both.
      That's their plan. Different UIs depending on whether you are running it on a phone, tablet, desktop, or tv.

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      • #23
        Originally posted by cynical View Post
        That's their plan. Different UIs depending on whether you are running it on a phone, tablet, desktop, or tv.
        And it still doesn't make sense. I've talked about why before, ad nauseam, but I'm going to recap this once more...

        Say you have one of these fabulous new convergence-phones. Say, you want to start fresh - with this convergence-phone as your only computing device, no desktop/laptop, just a phone to power all your computing needs.

        Let's put aside the CPU considerations, let's assume that you only need to run very lightweight software - browse some webpages, do some text editing, that sort of thing. Well then - you have your phone, but in order to use it as a desktop, you're going to need a minimum of:
        1) A monitor.
        2) A keyboard.
        3) A mouse.

        Ok, (3) could possibly be replaced by using the phone touchscreen as a trackpad, but that's only if that kind of functionality is enabled. So to be safe, we'll assume a mouse as well.

        So the big problem comes here: if you already need to have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, what's the advantage in having them lying around unused until they get mated with a phone? If you already have those peripherals, why not have also a desktop cpu to run them, and some kind of docking scheme between your phone and your desktop cpu?

        Let's look at the two scenarios:

        1. Convergence-phone: you can either use your phone as a phone, or you can use it as a desktop computer (by overloading it with peripherals). You can use any of the two "devices" at any one time, but not both at the same time.

        2. Phone that docks with desktop computer: you can use your phone, you can use your desktop, or you can use both of them at the same time. You can get all the synchronization, all of the advantages of convergence, by a properly implemented synchronization scheme (IIRC the KDE devs were working on something like this).

        Now, what exactly is this convergence phone good for, if it provides no extra advantage? And this is just desktops - with laptops it's even a worse idea: you'd have to lug around a pseudo-laptop that is the same size as a laptop but doesn't work as a laptop until you shove your phone in it... think about it: it's the same thing as carrying around a phone and a laptop, except you only get to use one of them at a time.

        So maybe you'll say, "but you can use the convergence-phone anywhere - if your friend has an extra monitor, keyboard and mouse, you can use your phone there as a desktop!" Right... and how many people are going to start having unused extra monitors, keyboards and mouses lying around in their homes - just to be hospitable? Just in case their guests happen to have convergence phones they want to use as desktops? Dream on...

        So for all of these reasons, this whole "convergence-phone" is never going to be a big thing, because it offers exactly nothing that you couldn't get, in a much better and usable form, from a desktop/laptop computer with a well-implemented synchronization scheme with a phone. Convergence has no advantages, only disadvantages.

        We're all supposed to go "ooh, aah, wow, it's convergence" and no one is telling us why we're supposed to want this again... apparently, people don't just stop and think, they just want the new, shiny thing... which in 6 months time turns out to be crap and impractical, and we'll all move on and never speak of it again.

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        • #24
          Originally posted by dee. View Post
          ...
          You're missing the whole point of convergence. I'll try to explain:

          1. The most powerful concept about convergence is related to development and applications. Software will be aware of the device it is running on so it can adapt to each form factor. A single code base and a number of device-dependent optimizations will replace several code bases for several devices. That's an advantage for developers but it's also an advantage for apps consistency. Your learning curve will be smaller when consistency extends beyond a single device form factor.

          2. The use of a phone as a main computer makes little sense TODAY, but it will be a very powerful concept in the future. If you've been in business for long enough, you'll remember that every professional laptop came (and probably still comes) with a docking port at the bottom. Why, you would ask, if a laptop can be simply synced with a desktop computer at the office? Well, the answer is why would you rely on unreliable syncing infrastructures when you simply can plug your laptop when you get to the office and have exactly the same environment ready all the time? Now think of a powerful enough phone. (And think along the lines of the Asus Padfone with a keyboard for mobile productivity.)

          Convergence is a futuristic vision and Canonical is probably in the best position to make it happen. MS is struggling to make something like that backwards compatible (and they're making huge mistakes along the way...). Canonical has no such backwards compatibility problem. IF (and that's a big "if") the community stops whining about Canonical, maybe we can have a pretty interesting ecosystem around their convergent project. I won't hold my breath, though, but I expect outsiders to understand the power of convergence well before "the community". They will probably want money, which is fine by me. I'm willing to pay for high quality convergent apps.
          Last edited by Aleve Sicofante; 16 April 2014, 12:08 PM.

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          • #25
            Originally posted by dee. View Post
            And it still doesn't make sense. I've talked about why before, ad nauseam, but I'm going to recap this once more...

            Say you have one of these fabulous new convergence-phones. Say, you want to start fresh - with this convergence-phone as your only computing device, no desktop/laptop, just a phone to power all your computing needs.
            If you think the only benefit of convergence is using a phone as a desktop, then you aren't getting it.

            Originally posted by dee. View Post
            So the big problem comes here: if you already need to have a monitor, keyboard and mouse, what's the advantage in having them lying around unused until they get mated with a phone? If you already have those peripherals, why not have also a desktop cpu to run them, and some kind of docking scheme between your phone and your desktop cpu?
            The advantage is not having to buy, upgrade, and maintain a desktop machine... If you don't see how that would be useful for the average person then I don't know what to say. There are people today that buy and use 13" ultrabooks in order to have high mobility and then plug them into external peripherals at home for the screen real estate. That's not a theoretical use case. The only reason this is possible is due to the performance improvements intel has made. I don't know if you've noticed, but people are not upgrading their desktops as much anymore outside of niche uses like gaming because performance has exceeded what most people need for simple tasks like web browsing or editing a few photos.

            Now people are focused more on mobile form factors like tablets and phones after discovering that recent devices are very suitable for their needs. If they could take these devices and simply add peripherals (even a wireless display) and get a desktop experience, then maybe a desktop machine wouldn't be necessary outside of professional environments. (developers, digital artists, etc) Ordinary users wouldn't worry about configuration as much, or have to spend the money on desktop components. If Project Ara becomes popular it would be even cheaper as you could just upgrade mobile components as you need them. (or even have it done at a store if they don't care to know much about it) You could even throw your phone down on top of a charging pad and have it automatically sync with your nearby peripherals, then say type up a report for a class you have, and rather than worry about uploading it somewhere you just take it with you. (in the mean time, your phone is charged up and ready to go for the day)

            Originally posted by dee. View Post
            Right... and how many people are going to start having unused extra monitors, keyboards and mouses lying around in their homes - just to be hospitable? Just in case their guests happen to have convergence phones they want to use as desktops? Dream on...
            Wow man, it doesn't take that much thought to figure this out. If a user buys a phone and figures out he could save money by just buying peripherals rather than an entire desktop then now that setup is available for anybody. So a friend could come over and rather than asking if he could use his friend's computer on a guest account, he could literally sync up his phone to the peripherals and do whatever he needs.

            There's no worry about complicated setups or accounts since that stuff is already handled on the phones.


            I know this post is wasted on you. Your limited imagination prevents you from seeing any advantage at all here. I think even some of the most cynical Canonical-haters like the idea of running the same OS/apps on all their devices, and even you would admit that pretty much everyone in the software world is headed in this direction. Gnome, KDE, Tizen, Android, ChromeOS, iOS, Ubuntu, and Windows are all taking steps towards this, even if some of them aren't going as far as others. Once I understood what Canonical was trying to do it just seemed so obvious that I'm surprised it hasn't been done already...

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            • #26
              There's going to be a whole cottage industry of peripherals for these new convergence phones:

              * A dock that looks like an all-in-one PC into which you plug in your phone. Word processing, photo editing, mouse-and-keyboard gaming will all be possible.

              * Peripherals for TVs: plug in your phone, get all the benefits of Roku. Of course you can access all the photos and videos you took with your phone. Add a gamepad and you can play like an Ouya.

              * Something I'm hoping for is tablets-without-a-brain: just a 10" touch screen with room to plug in your phone (it might have an extra battery inside, too). So, your phone can morph into a tablet for nice browsing around the house, while riding the train, etc. This might actually stop the crazy "phablet" craze, with phones so big people can barely put them against their head. We'll go back to coveting smaller phones, with the knowledge that we can easily plug them into a tablet for big browsing experience when we want that.

              And that's just at home. In the office, the PC dock will be revolutionary: your IT department will only have to manage a single device per employee.

              And all of these peripherals will be immediately usable when you upgrade your phone to next year's more powerful one. (Unless Ubuntu "pulls an Apple" and changes its docking interface...)

              Indeed, if you can't see how game-changing this can be, you are sorely lacking in imagination!

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              • #27
                Originally posted by Aleve Sicofante View Post
                You're missing the whole point of convergence. I'll try to explain:

                1. The most powerful concept about convergence is related to development and applications. Software will be aware of the device it is running on so it can adapt to each form factor. A single code base and a number of device-dependent optimizations will replace several code bases for several devices. That's an advantage for developers but it's also an advantage for apps consistency. Your learning curve will be smaller when consistency extends beyond a single device form factor.
                How much consistency do you think you can have between a UI designed for 4,5" screens and a UI designed for 22" screens?

                That's a whole lot of fluff and nothing there. "Device-dependent optimizations"? Hah! Just look at the ARM architecture. Want to do "device-dependent optimizations" there? Well, be prepared to "device-dependently" "optimize" your software for every different ARM platform out there... yes, MAYBE that will change with v8 (one can hope), but even then you're never going to get all of the devices uniform enough... there's going to still be different GPU's, firmware, etc.

                Applications should not need to care about the underlying architecture or the low-level bits of stack. In fact with web apps, LLVM and such, we're moving into the entirely opposite direction... we're moving towards portability and applications that run on any platform. Furthermore, if you start designing your apps for a single platform, be it Ubuntu's futuristic convergence-platform or Windows, what it amounts to in the end is basically just vendor-lock-in. Applications have to be developed for the Ubuntu-specific platform to take advantage of Ubuntu-specific features...

                And in any case, application developers aren't going to stop developing applications for other platforms, so the whole "advantage to developers" is entirely imaginary. Conversely, any developer can already develop just for a single platform, and get that benefit of "device-dependent optimization"...

                2. The use of a phone as a main computer makes little sense TODAY, but it will be a very powerful concept in the future. If you've been in business for long enough, you'll remember that every professional laptop came (and probably still comes) with a docking port at the bottom. Why, you would ask, if a laptop can be simply synced with a desktop computer at the office? Well, the answer is why would you rely on unreliable syncing infrastructures
                Syncing doesn't need to be and isn't necessarily "unreliable". That's a huge fallacy there. You're purposefully describing syncing as unreliable and Canonical's "brilliant genius convergence-innovation that changes all our lives" gets a very different slant... you might be a bit biased in this issue.

                when you simply can plug your laptop when you get to the office and have exactly the same environment ready all the time? Now think of a powerful enough phone. (And think along the lines of the Asus Padfone with a keyboard for mobile productivity.)
                I think you're missing the point.

                Nothing you're saying here still refutes the main problem: you get nothing from convergence that you wouldn't also get from a well-implemented sync between mobile/desktop (or mobile/laptop as the case may be).

                We're getting CPU's that can be made very small and very powerful. So if you have the monitor (which you need to "converge" your phone into a desktop), why not get a monitor that already has a CPU inside it and can function as a desktop independently of your phone? If your vision of powerful, small, cheap CPUs comes true, then it's just as possible to have two of them rather than one.

                Say you have a small desktop CPU - maybe the CPU unit is inside the keyboard, maybe it's inside the monitor/TV, or heck, it could even be inside the mouse. The CPU detects via bluetooth when your mobile device is near it, and syncs the two operating systems. File systems can be synced, so that both devices can access files in both device's storage space. Applications can be synced - syncing between mobile/desktop browsers already works just fine, even accross different operating systems. Let's go a bit further and say both the mobile device and the "desktop" device run Linux-based OS's, with standard Linux software stack - systemd, Wayland, etc. The syncing can be made totally transparent to the user, so the user doesn't even see it, the experience can be just as "convergent" as in a "convergencephone".



                Originally posted by cynical View Post
                If you think the only benefit of convergence is using a phone as a desktop, then you aren't getting it.
                The advantage is not having to buy, upgrade, and maintain a desktop machine... If you don't see how that would be useful for the average person then I don't know what to say.
                No... you just have to buy a monitor, keyboard and mouse in order to connect them to your phone and use it as a desktop.

                You can get a CPU-board that can function as a desktop computer for less amount of money than most smartphones cost. RPi costs about 20?, and you can easily connect the keyboard, mouse and monitor to it and use it as a desktop. A bit more money and you can get a board that is comparable in performance to smartphones.

                Here's the question: If you already have to invest in the keyboard, monitor and mouse that you're going to need to converge your phone, why not invest the extra 20-50? for an extra CPU board so that you can use your phone and desktop computer separately? You can then dock/sync your phone with that CPU board, and get all the benefits you'd get from "convergence", plus the extra benefit of being able to use both devices independently, and not having the monitor, keyboard and mouse lying around useless when your phone is elsewhere.

                Now people are focused more on mobile form factors like tablets and phones after discovering that recent devices are very suitable for their needs. If they could take these devices and simply add peripherals (even a wireless display) and get a desktop experience, then maybe a desktop machine wouldn't be necessary outside of professional environments.
                You're missing the point here. If you add peripherals to a mobile CPU until it has a desktop interface (or "desktop experience"), then you effectively have a desktop computer.

                If those phone CPUs are going to get powerful enough and cheap enough for this kind of use to make sense, then it's also better to just have a second CPU/SOC on the monitor itself.

                You could even throw your phone down on top of a charging pad and have it automatically sync with your nearby peripherals, then say type up a report for a class you have, and rather than worry about uploading it somewhere you just take it with you. (in the mean time, your phone is charged up and ready to go for the day)
                Yeah, that'd be very useful, having your phone sync with your peripherals. You know what'd be even more useful? If you could still use those peripherals after the phone is removed.

                Also consider: What happens when you lose your phone, it breaks or gets stolen (as phones often do)? In that situation, would you rather be left with a) a collection of dumb peripherals that you can't use, or b) an actual computer that you can use to conduct whatever business you need to conduct?

                Wow man, it doesn't take that much thought to figure this out. If a user buys a phone and figures out he could save money by just buying peripherals rather than an entire desktop then now that setup is available for anybody. So a friend could come over and rather than asking if he could use his friend's computer on a guest account, he could literally sync up his phone to the peripherals and do whatever he needs.
                Appparently it takes a bit more thought than you think. Those peripherals would still be dependent on the phone, and only serve one phone at a time.

                There's no worry about complicated setups or accounts since that stuff is already handled on the phones.
                What complicated setups? Also.. You don't want to use user accounts on your computer? You want all of your data to be accessible to anyone who opens it? User accounts are a good thing...

                I know this post is wasted on you. Your limited imagination prevents you from seeing any advantage at all here.
                Ah, I knew the ad hominems were coming.

                I think even some of the most cynical Canonical-haters like the idea of running the same OS/apps on all their devices, and even you would admit that pretty much everyone in the software world is headed in this direction.
                Um... no. You're mixing concepts. Canonical is going for convergence. Others are working on unified experience, operating systems that work on multiple platforms, etc. That's not the same thing. Convergence in this context refers to a single (mobile) device that functions as both a mobile computer (phone/phablet) and can be extended into a desktop.

                Also, lose the passive-agressive persecution complex - it's not going to win you any sympathy points.



                Originally posted by emblemparade View Post
                There's going to be a whole cottage industry of peripherals for these new convergence phones:

                ...

                Indeed, if you can't see how game-changing this can be, you are sorely lacking in imagination!
                Nothing in your list (which I snipped to save space) still answers the problem: you get the same benefits from a well implemented sync, plus you'll be able to use both different form-factor devices independently.

                Sadly, it takes a bit more than "imagination" to succeed. It's also not very nice to insult people just for disagreeing with you...

                Comment


                • #28
                  Originally posted by emblemparade View Post
                  And that's just at home. In the office, the PC dock will be revolutionary: your IT department will only have to manage a single device per employee.

                  I don't think many IT departments would be happy with anything like that. As dee noted above, what happens if you loose your work phone or drop it? Will the phone (and peripherals) be easy to service, repair and upgrade like a Desktop PC? By the time companies have purchased said phones, docking stations and peripherals, would it not be cheaper (and/or cost effective) to simply buy their employees standard smart phones and desktop/laptop PCs?

                  These days hardware is relatively cheap and IMHO the real area of merit is providing ?converged? services like Dropbox etc. rather than hardware convergencey.

                  With the Motorola Atrix and Apple's Duo Dock in mind, I feel this Shirley Bassey number sums Canonical's ambition quite nicely:

                  Comment


                  • #29
                    There is no conflict between device convergence and the cloud. On the contrary, they make a lot of sense together. If you (or an employee) loses their phone, it's easy to replace without losing any data. Just buy a new phone, insert the right credentials, and you're back where you were.

                    Syncing several devices may solve many problems, but buying/maintaining/upgrading a single device would always be cheaper and easier.

                    I apologize for saying that people who disagree with me have no imagination. But, chill. It's not an "ad hominem attack": when people disagree, the implication always is that the other person is seeing things incorrectly. And that's OK, at least in this rather unimportant case. This is the Internet, you need a slightly thicker skin than in real life... In any case, thank you for posting your detailed view. I guess we'll just have to wait and see how well Ubuntu's convergence dream works out (or, if Apple/Microsoft succeed in convergence before Ubuntu).

                    Comment


                    • #30
                      Originally posted by emblemparade View Post
                      I apologize for saying that people who disagree with me have no imagination. But, chill. It's not an "ad hominem attack": when people disagree, the implication always is that the other person is seeing things incorrectly. And that's OK, at least in this rather unimportant case.
                      Why are you apologizing? He is claiming that there is zero benefit to convergence when he doesn't even know what convergence means (same code base across multiple form factors). Android is already doing this, just not to the same extent as Canonical. Saying that his imagination is limited is an understatement in this case. Anyway dee trolls any thread that has to do with Canonical or Ubuntu; You can look at prior posts to see that pretty clearly. I'm only responding here in case other people haven't thought about what the idea could mean for future devices.

                      He's just trying to guilt trip you.

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