Comment by raw_anon_1111
5 hours ago
I have my phone with me all of the time and it has an always on connection. My laptop has neither trait
5 hours ago
I have my phone with me all of the time and it has an always on connection. My laptop has neither trait
> I have my phone with me all of the time and it has an always on connection
That's a bug, not a feature. You don't need to be able to do every task all the time. In fact, it's nice to be able to separate that aspect.
Yes I can just print out directions on Mapquest before I leave home, tell people to page me and I will call them back from the nearest pay phone, carry around my Walkman and my Polaroid camera with me.
Have you ever thought that with 80% of web traffic coming from mobile, you might be the outlier?
What next? The old Slashdot meme “I haven’t watched TV in 20 years. Do people still watch TV?”
I believe the GP was talking about trying to do “real work” on a phone, which is something many people try to do — but which many others find a repugnant idea, as they currently use the excuse of the impracticality of doing work on a phone as a lever to push back on letting work intrude on their personal life.
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Is this really a driving factor for people? If I anticipate tasks that I can't wait to get back to a good work environment to do, I'll bring my laptop and tether on my phone. It's a fantastically more productive setup than trying to ssh in via a phone keyboard or even write a long email. 1 inch extra on the phone screen diagonal won't move the needle there for me.
Yes and even though you haven’t watched TV in 20 years ((c) Slashdot) people still watch TV.
The feigned ignorance on HN that most normal people don’t pull their laptops out to do everything in 2026 is amazing
It's not feigned. I'm astonished to learn how hard people will work for the (seemingly to me) false convenience of doing things on their phone which would be (to me) much more straightforward to do on a more suitable device.
So I tend to assume that these stories are often the outliers, and that my personal experience is more common. I recognize the fallacy, and I suspect we're both wrong and we're both right. I just honestly don't know which one of us is more of which.
It probably devolves to a question of what kind of work we're talking about. The work that I do (or the way I do it), I do not believe could be done effectively on a phone or tablet, most of the time. I work with people whose work can be done there. And there are probably more of them that there are of me. But that does not mean I could become one of them.
(addressing your comment on another subthread): if music, camera, and web are a person's "work", then sure. But that does not resemble "work" for me in any way.
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It's not feigned ignorance, it's disbelief that people are comfortable working in such an inefficient and frankly unpleasant way.
Can I file my taxes on my phone? Probably. But I could also set myself on fire, and I think that might be more fun. Why would I not want to use a tool that is 100x faster and 1000x easier to use for any task more complex than writing a sentence?
I'm a developer. I've heard of developers SSH'ing from their phone and developing that way. It's impressive, in the same way removing all your fingernails is impressive.
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The things that require more than a few taps to do aren't things that need to be done at a moment's notice. Those things can wait until I'm at my laptop.
Just Thursday, I left home at 6AM got in an uber, waited at the airport got on a plane for an hour and half , waited at another airport, got on another plane for four hours, uber to the Airbnb and while I was out to dinner that night, my wife and I were planning a trip we were taking during the summer.
Are you suggesting that o just queue everything up until I set my laptop up?
Again you realize you’re the odd one right with most activity these days taking place on mobile?
Is there anything you need to do during that time? Or are you looking to fill that time with whatever to keep you occupied and enjoy whatever?
If it's the former, you lead a very different life from me. There are very few things in my life that show up and require immediate action (or action within 24-ish hours for that matter. Most things can wait). If it's the latter, I try to fill that time with reading.
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You're being pretty defensive / aggressive about what some might call a phone addiction.
Most on HN know the data: healthier people tend to enforce boundaries with their devices. The average person is addicted, yes, but I'm not sure being "the odd one" in an era of actually decreasing literacy and numeracy and attention span is the insult that you seem to think.
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> while I was out to dinner that night, my wife and I were planning a trip
Were you out to dinner with your wife?
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Surely your laptop has a mic on it and probably a camera. It also has blueteeth, wifi and stuff. Your phone has much the same and can act as a proxy to whatever is missing on your laptop and vice versa. Obviously, getting your laptop to fit under or within your "lap" is a bit of an ask!
Things like KDE Connect provide a direct bridge and a bit of imagination does the rest.
If your laptop isn't cutting the mustard then ditch it ...
... Oh your phone has a tiny screen and a shit mic and speakers, unless you stick it in your ear?
Horses for courses.
Oddly enough, I don’t carry around my laptop in my pocket all of the time. You do realize that in 2026 most people do most of their day to day non work tasks on phones don’t you?
Yes most people use KDE Connect..
I don't understand why are you downvoted. Are people in this thread really pulling out a laptop and trying to get it connected (or pay for one with a cellular modem) every time they need to respond two words to an email, call a uber or look up where is the nearest coffee shop that is open at an odd hour?
HN seems to have some really weirdly prescriptive view of how people ought to use their devices in a way that is almost like Steve jobs.
> every time they need to respond two words to an email
I don't have my work email on my phone, and personal emails basically never need any actual response.
> call a uber
This is a few clicks and not a big ask regardless of the exact device. You can order an Uber regardless of screen size.
> look up where is the nearest coffee shop that is open at an odd hour?
Google Maps works fine on smaller screens. Ask me how I know.
And they probably are also surprised that I’m using an iPhone where I can’t use Docker and have JavaScript enabled on my browser.