With the advent of M1 macs, how long until we see a fully featured desktop OS-level experience on a docked phone? I believe this will be the next big product by Apple. How about Windows? Microsoft imagined Windows 10 as a hybrid platform, but the phones never took off. Will we see a new android based desktop experience from Google? How far from this is the libre community with their solutions (like Pine and Purism)?
Sorry for replying so late, I don’t scan Hacker News all the time.<p>I have been following this phantasy for a long time (starting with the Atrix lapdock, continuing with the Nexus 4 running Ubuntu Touch and a SlimPort dongle, Nexus 5 and MaruOS and ...<p>Now I have a PinePhone and even made a few videos for YouTube (PeerTube, LBRY) demoing Phosh (the Phone Shell developed by Purism), Plasma Mobile and also Plasma Desktop and Gnome (the Mobile Shells have improved since, as they are still in early development). Honestly, Gnome and Plasma Desktop felt way better than their mobile counterparts. I think that this is not just familiarity, but also that they are made for the use case primarily.
Microsoft Continuum, some years ago. Or even the Motorola Lapdock.<p>It turns out that the UX affordances are sufficiently different between a small touchscreen and keyboard/mouse/monitor that the software has to look completely different. Attempting to get it to automatically adapt (Metro) is an even bigger stretch than responsive web design.<p>While it's quite possible that Apple will eventually release an iOS desktop, I don't think using the same device for both will ever work properly.
Why would Apple provide that, and sell you one device where, now, they sell you two? I don’t see them increasing phone prices to make up for that.<p>Also, quite a few people say they need 32/64 Gb of RAM, multiple high resolution monitors, large disks, huge graphics cards, etc. I don’t see a phone-sized device ever driving that, as needs will grow with hardware speed ups.
<a href="https://www.samsung.com/us/explore/dex/" rel="nofollow">https://www.samsung.com/us/explore/dex/</a><p>I haven't used this, but it seems similar to what you're asking about