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Ask HN: Am I the only person who hates mobile apps but adores computer software?

29 points by adinhitlore ↗ HN
Be it as a user or a programmer I can't stand android/ios or anything that runs on a phone. The lack of keyboard, small screen, retarded cpu, horrible ecosystem android/ios is just too much. In a way i'm happy the "mobile craze of 2010-2020" is long gone (followed by the blockchain era and these days the ai era...thank god) but even so people continue to use java and make angry birds, i guess? I so miss the linux vs windows years when you only had nokia 3310 and people used to play "snake", literally no one thought of get-rich-quick schemes with lame apps on an "appstore". I also hate when Altman said on Theo Vohn "if you have an idea for an app"..no hell no - i hope no one will be having an "idea for an app" ever again. I mean "ai" today mostly falls in the SaaS category which could even cover google and youtube (it's a software after all but you use it as service through website frontend) and i don't mind it at all. It's very powerful and very lightweight this way, much better than the absurd constraint of dumb apps on ARM processor or whatever. In ideal world everyone would be using debian-based linux on "mobile pc stick" which projects 5000 lumens projector on extandable projector plane with laser projection keyboard...but laptops are cool too (i know...projectors are noisy, cpus on pc sticks suck - i have one haven't used it in years but in theory "it works/should work" + lamp fails etc, which is why i said 'ideal world').

15 comments

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turtleyacht
If mobile came with its own compiler from the beginning, like a general-purpose computer, it might be a different decade.
bediger4000
You are not alone! Tiny keyboards could not possibly be worse. "The App" is nothing more than a broken version of the webpage, except it collects more info on you, and ads cannot be blocked as easily.j
jcelerier
Yes it's terrible. Phones are shit devices, even top-of-the-line ones. And it makes me crazy when people take some of the brain-dead ideas there and want to apply them to desktop computing.
JKCalhoun
Yeah, too many things I have to give up with a phone. Perhaps it's because I grew up with a keyboard, mouse — my daughters have both a laptop and a phone and (well, one of them anyway) seems more comfortable on the phone.

Perhaps it depends on what you use them for. I'm in Affinity Designer, Affinity Publisher, ChatGPT and Safari most of the day (recently anyway). In short, I tend to create on my computing device. I need the screen real estate for graphics work, the keyboard for writing work.

iPads don't interest me either. I could add a keyboard … but then why not stick with my laptop.

zb3
Touchscreens in general are not my thing and I hate having to use them.. I'm only using two fingers at most because I need to hold the phone.. I think we can do better.

I really hope smart glasses will put an end to the smartphone era and we'll realize how much smartphones sucked.. I want to be able to type in the air just like I'm typing on a keyboard right now, similar thing with with a mouse - like a laptop but you can use it everywhere.

Google Glass didn't make it, but maybe Meta can make it this time.

scorpioxy
You're not the only person, but it depends on what it is I'm trying to do. Reading on a phone for example is possible but it's a struggle due to smaller screens. Trying to write anything besides a few words for a short email is an exercise in frustration. Games are not enjoyable due to the exclusive touch interface and small screen and so on. Calendar, task list and communication are what phones do best though. There are some specific mobile applications that are also very useful for me.

I think when phones started morphing into computing devices(aka "smartphones"), functionality was being shoved into them that didn't quite fit. Things started to change when the UI/UX process for mobile software was re-considered and the builders walked away from the desktop UI/UX but on phones to what we have today.

"Hate" is a strong word though. I tend to use separate devices for separate functions and stopped trying to find an all-in-one device. That made it OK but I tend to use only a few apps on my phone or tablet compared to others.

BirAdam
I’ve hated “smart phones” since the dawn of the iPhone. I rather enjoyed the Palm Pilot and thus the Treo which married a Pilot with a cellular phone, but for me, that was the limit. I would sync it with my Performa, just as I had done with my Pilot, and it was great.

I think the general idea of a smart phone isn’t too bad, but I hate what they’ve become. The idea of a general purpose, hand-held, computer packed with sensors is great. That these amazing tools are hampered by restrictive software, have no general purpose OS, and are generally used to generate addictive behavior and drain people of time and money… not so great.

nipperkinfeet
I am not a fan of smartphones or tablets, and I only ever use my phone when necessary. I stopped using tablets when I realized that I was always trying to use them like a laptop, which made me see that they are not as useful as I thought. I only use my phone for calls and texting. My laptop is perfect for travelling or bedtime, while I use my desktop for getting things done.
srhtftw
All I want from a phone is to make and receive phone calls from people I know. I don't want texting. I don't want photos. I don't want apps. I have a dumb Consumer Cellular Link II burner phone if I need to receive an SMS.

I had high hopes for the PinePhone but the one I got can't even reliably make or receive calls so it sits in my desk drawer.

Will someone please sell me a simple phone that works without any smart crap?

joe_the_user
Absolutely. I think phone apps as generic things about absolutely part of the entire "enshitification" of the Internet/tech/products/etc. The wikipedia description is actually pretty good: "Initially, vendors create high-quality offerings to attract users, then they degrade those offerings to better serve business customers (such as advertisers), and finally degrade their services to users and business customers to maximize profits for shareholders."[1]

The prevalence of enshitification is very much a product of a broad historical arc that began with the deregulation of various US regulated monopolies (phone, airlines, health care) and which ended with the rise of even more powerful unregulated monopolies (Google, Amazon, etc).

Not sure what the solution is here, though.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enshittification

KevinMS
I like apps that make sense on a mobile device, like a shopping list, or the uber app, but otherwise I'll do anything I can to use my laptop instead.
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seec
Mobile apps are indeed terrible most of the time. If you want to do anything else than consume content with them, you are very likely to waste time, since any random laptop would do much better.

But that's pretty much expected, those apps are simplified counterparts of the "traditional" software because they have to work with big fingers and low precision / fast speed requirement.

I think the vast majority of software actually doesn't have much point in its "mobile" form, it's even discutable why most of it was ever proposed as a valid endeavor.

But it's mostly a market driven thing because of the app stores. Devs wanted to make money from the mobile craze and thus spent a lot of time inventing/reproducing software for mobile. In practice when you look at app stores statistics, there is little use of "real" software. Most of the successful apps are about consuming content or focus on supporting real world utility.

I have tried hundreds of mobile apps and as far as I'm concerned, most of them are a major waste of time. I think the uses cases for the smartphone haven't changed much since the start: quick messaging (sms, emails, etc), navigation (GPS), quick fact gathering (web browsing) and good enough photography. But since it has become a marker of social status, and has captured a ton of money, many have tried to bolt on more stuff to it.

If think that if your task requires more than 10 min on the phone, it's probably not something that you should be doing on the phone.

Lumoscore
I think a lot of us who started out with PCs in the '90s or early 2000s have this lingering frustration with the mobile world. I remember when I first got a smartphone, it felt amazing—all this power in my pocket! But the novelty wore off fast. I was trying to do something simple, like manage my cloud files or edit a multi-line script, and the experience was just agonizing. The screen was cramped, the on-screen keyboard was a frustrating joke, and the app I needed either didn't exist or was a stripped-down, freemium mess that was more interested in showing me an ad or pushing a subscription than actually letting me work. That's why I'm so happy the pendulum is swinging back to web-based SaaS and AI. It's like the desktop finally won! The real work happens on my keyboard and big screen where the true, powerful tools live. Mobile was a distracting detour where we traded function for size. I'll take a proper OS and a mechanical keyboard over ten thousand 'lite' apps any day.