It's interesting that in the early 2010s, both halves of the ecosystem were talking about "convergence:" Ubuntu wanted to make its Linux render a single column on a handset and with floating windows on a larger screen. Motorola had a similar project based on Android.
A dozen years later, nobody has done that well. Ubuntu gave up. Mobile-targeted Linux distributions aren't good (missing functionality, mobile UX, or both). The linked distribution is running Debian in a container for desktop on top of Android. The rumors about the future of ChromeOS are imagining something similar.
Recent iterations of iOS are getting closer to being able to replace a Mac for a class of tablet-owning users who don't need desktop software, but the ecosystems are pretty well separated for most.
Adapting desktop Linux to mobile seems to be impossibly hard with the amount of resources those distributions have.
Because I think ultimately it is only good on paper. In practice you want your computer to be able to act on itself as well. So it is hard to get the balance right.
I do think for enterprise and business it should work though. Especially we are all on mobile already and most of the time we need to work on something that is on our phone. I wonder if there could be another blackberry moment on this? Or Something Microsoft Windows could work on, as a way to get back into Mobile. I have long argued they should have spend small R&D on possible Mobile OS just in case opportunities pops up.
Bring back Pocket PC. Tie it up with Azure and CoPilot.
There's ideas like this every couple of years, and I love the idea, but they never seem to go anywhere. I think Nokia's Maemo/Meego was the first, and it keeps popping up, but it never seems to go anywhere. I understand this one has been dead for a couple of years now too.
I think at this point the niche would be well-served if one could have a competent clamp-on landscape keyboard (so close, clicks keyboard) for their phone they could use to RDP into a better machine that could run while the phone is off. Additionally nice would be if the phone had a fully functional usb-c port that could do DP and usb for docking. At that point I'd have serious thoughts about retiring my backpack or nanote next. It frustrates me how close we are, if such a keyboard existed for $80 or so
Bill Gates spoke of this context-aware OS at a lecture in the mid-00s. He specifically called out future phones (this was pre-iPhone era) that would have location context (work/home/mobile) and load secure, sandboxed datastores and profiles depending on that context. He also spoke at length about how desktop computers would transform into accelerators, like your gaming GPU at home or your additional processors and memory at your workstation. It was a grand vision of ultimate portability, with clear lines between work and personal lives enabled through technology.
Then he showed off the Fossil MSN watch, and suggested future iterations may do away with phones entirely and act as methods of identification for digital systems.
And then, like all things Microsoft, they abandoned the concepts entirely. Apple and Google cribbed most of the ideas for themselves in some form or another and saw wild success with them, though to date nobody major has really attempted to create that mobile vision Gates spoke of - other than Maru, and for a time, Google on Android.
It’s a shame, really. I like the idea of validating my public key via NFC from my Apple Watch to login to work machines or my home boxes (a la SSH). Seems like it’d be easier to wrangle in the long run, especially with job hopping being the norm.
I think Apple would actually be in a position capable of doing this. Slap an M1-4 into an iPhone Case with MacOS. Normally you have an interface like iOS, which shouldn't be hard because iOS is based on MacOS, and when you connect it to a monitor you have normal MacOS. Normal iOS applications need to run on MacOS which I think they already could.
You would just have to allow apps to transform the interface between desktop and mobile or allow both interfaces to access the same data. And for apps that aren't working just show a small windows on the desktop and either disallow opening only-desktop apps on iOS or make everything small and allow zooming.
You could also make something MacBook-like where you connect your phone or slide it into the side.
I think one of the problems here is that Apple then could only sell 1 device to everyone and not potentially three (iPhone, iPad, Mac).
I don't think this would accidentally eat at Apple's laptop market because the laptop-in-a-stick option would still need an external screen. If you're travelling for work or something, might as well just have your phone AND your laptop, instead of phone + external screen full of messy cables. but YMMV
This seems like an abandoned project with no updates since 2019 (!!)
Those looking for a more active and stable project: ubports is carrying the torch forward on the convergence front. I have personally used it on my old OnePlus device and it was quite usable.
This project could achieve this via the following. Project up an alternate screen. Put an “app” on the screen called maruOS projected at external screen resolution. Then get access to your phone storage and maybe to your phone hardware like mic.
Then pretend there is a huge possibility of apps that can run on Maru OS.
But it is Too little too late. Samsung DEX did this. Google is supposed to invent this (again). Everyone has failed. All apps need separate desktop versions to do this work. Essentially they need a second desktop app. This means more ram and more storage and more power.
One advantage of having 'everything on the phone' is that you wouldn't need a cloud provider to sync between your laptop and your phone - it's a 'stand alone' experience.
I remember doing this with my Windows 10 phone back in 2015 (with a dock). Kinda slow and clunky, but mostly worked for a lot of the basic stuff I was doing with it. I think Motorolla had a similar thing?
For me these efforts feel like a solution to a problem very few people have. People who want a portable computer have settled on laptops. The people who want a portable computer, which needs access to a screen, keyboard, mouse and desk, just seems like a very small niche. Even when you get that computer set up, you end up with something quite slow with limited RAM and storage, unless you've bought a real flagship phone which is more expensive than a good laptop anyway.
I tried this with DeX, it's cool, but it's just really hard to see where I'd use it. Some sort of trip where for some reason I can't bring my laptop, but I do have access to the various peripherals required to make a desktop setup.
Have they invented anything at all? You've already been able to do this with basically any mobile linux distro, as far as I can tell. At least, on the best-supported devices. You don't need a custom OS for it.
Funny, Google just announced the Linux Terminal now supports graphical Linux apps. It's closer to WSL2 than a regular app, implementing a fully vrtualized environment.
Unfortunately, even the text-mode-only Android Terminal is incredibly buggy and crashes on GrapheneOS if you have the audacity of typing Ctrl-D to close your session, requiring a full reset (and losing your data in the process). I am not brave enough to try a non-degoogled Android.
As a consumer I'm excited by the vision these convergent solutions sell, in a futuristic "I just carry one device" way, but I think the reason they haven't kicked off is that in reality you don't just have monitors and keyboards and mice lying around wherever you go.
A significant part of the value prop of the "mobile" desktop is that you can "just plug in", but if you have to carry a keyboard and mouse well you might as well also carry the incredibly thin screen it's attached to on a laptop.
Reminds me of Windows Continuum [0] (2015) which either via an adapter (Microsoft Display Dock) or wirelessly cast your phone to a display, giving you a more desktop-like experience.
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[ 533 ms ] story [ 131 ms ] threadNo, I can't take it anywhere, because few places I go to have a HDMI screen and keyboard ready for me. And to the ones they do, I carry my laptop.
https://maruos.com/downloads/ shows releases dated 2019.
What's the equivalent of that for a phone? Is it press-and-hold?
A dozen years later, nobody has done that well. Ubuntu gave up. Mobile-targeted Linux distributions aren't good (missing functionality, mobile UX, or both). The linked distribution is running Debian in a container for desktop on top of Android. The rumors about the future of ChromeOS are imagining something similar.
Recent iterations of iOS are getting closer to being able to replace a Mac for a class of tablet-owning users who don't need desktop software, but the ecosystems are pretty well separated for most.
Adapting desktop Linux to mobile seems to be impossibly hard with the amount of resources those distributions have.
I do think for enterprise and business it should work though. Especially we are all on mobile already and most of the time we need to work on something that is on our phone. I wonder if there could be another blackberry moment on this? Or Something Microsoft Windows could work on, as a way to get back into Mobile. I have long argued they should have spend small R&D on possible Mobile OS just in case opportunities pops up.
Bring back Pocket PC. Tie it up with Azure and CoPilot.
(Running through an emulator is ok.)
Then he showed off the Fossil MSN watch, and suggested future iterations may do away with phones entirely and act as methods of identification for digital systems.
And then, like all things Microsoft, they abandoned the concepts entirely. Apple and Google cribbed most of the ideas for themselves in some form or another and saw wild success with them, though to date nobody major has really attempted to create that mobile vision Gates spoke of - other than Maru, and for a time, Google on Android.
It’s a shame, really. I like the idea of validating my public key via NFC from my Apple Watch to login to work machines or my home boxes (a la SSH). Seems like it’d be easier to wrangle in the long run, especially with job hopping being the norm.
You would just have to allow apps to transform the interface between desktop and mobile or allow both interfaces to access the same data. And for apps that aren't working just show a small windows on the desktop and either disallow opening only-desktop apps on iOS or make everything small and allow zooming.
You could also make something MacBook-like where you connect your phone or slide it into the side.
I think one of the problems here is that Apple then could only sell 1 device to everyone and not potentially three (iPhone, iPad, Mac).
Those looking for a more active and stable project: ubports is carrying the torch forward on the convergence front. I have personally used it on my old OnePlus device and it was quite usable.
1: https://ubports.com/
2: https://lomiri.com/
Then pretend there is a huge possibility of apps that can run on Maru OS.
But it is Too little too late. Samsung DEX did this. Google is supposed to invent this (again). Everyone has failed. All apps need separate desktop versions to do this work. Essentially they need a second desktop app. This means more ram and more storage and more power.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Display_Dock
I tried this with DeX, it's cool, but it's just really hard to see where I'd use it. Some sort of trip where for some reason I can't bring my laptop, but I do have access to the various peripherals required to make a desktop setup.
https://www.androidauthority.com/android-linux-terminal-futu...
Unfortunately, even the text-mode-only Android Terminal is incredibly buggy and crashes on GrapheneOS if you have the audacity of typing Ctrl-D to close your session, requiring a full reset (and losing your data in the process). I am not brave enough to try a non-degoogled Android.
A significant part of the value prop of the "mobile" desktop is that you can "just plug in", but if you have to carry a keyboard and mouse well you might as well also carry the incredibly thin screen it's attached to on a laptop.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Continuum