[FredPret]

It’s not just apps, drivers and OS basics are key too. I tried half a dozen times to switch to Linux as a daily driver.

I gave up the last attempt because two things happened: someone out there pushed a bad update that crashed my GUI for no readily apparent rhyme or reason, and I could not for the life of me get my scanner to work.

Now if I wanted to have 17 CPUs or hook a HAM radio into it or do something truly weird, Linux was the way to go.

But I just wanted my computer to (a) not break and (b) do the basics smoothly.

[maxwell]

Well yeah, "software", including drivers and OS integration, not just "apps".

Linux phones no longer seem limited by hardware or cost (at least judging by my PinePhone), more stability and support. Once stability is there in terms of reliability of the core "Minimum Viable Phone" apps, which seems relatively close, there will be a great opportunity for design-oriented founders/brands to craft highly polished experiences without needing to pay off the Duopoly or, worse, trying to compete with them for talent.

Yeah, there will be new innovative startup phones, but what'll happen when every brand can offer their own phone just by hiring a few designers and engineers?

NikePhones, GucciPhones, DunkinPhones, TeslaPhones, McPhones...

[pwinnski]

Branded phones have been a thing for a very long time, and not enough people are interested in them to make any of them successful.

I'm glad that you're happy with your PinePhone, and I hope that one day in the future it achieves perhaps 1% of the global market for smartphones. I doubt it, but that would be nice.

[maxwell]

Where's a good branded phone?

Linux is already running on the majority of smartphones, individual manufacturers and distros seem less important. Any Android user would switch to another Linux phone with the right features, price, etc.

iOS seems poised for a slow ride into irrelevance as developers start suing them and begin leaving (Basecamp, Spotify, Epic...), before long they'll be the dusty old devices in schools like 25 years ago. Apple (legacy Mac OS) and Microsoft (Windows Mobile) have both lost before because they lost the developers.

Microsoft has been very smart in their recent plays in this regard, regaining a huge amount of developer trust over the past 5 years or so.

[pwinnski]

BMW, Facebook, KFC, and Yahoo! are branded phones I remember off the top of my head, but even Microsoft gave up on the phone business because they couldn't gain traction.

"iOS seems poised for a slow ride into irrelevance" is quite a thing to say the same week Apple announced all-time record Q2 revenue on the back of their iPhone business. It's up there with "this is the year of Linux on the desktop" as a perennial statement that will eventually have to be right*, sometime between now and the heat death of the universe.

You're focused on where the developers are, as if that were the leading indicator, but I think history tells us that developers go where the users are more often than the other way around. Neither users nor developers seem to be much discouraged by Android or iOS, and neither are stampeding toward PinePhone, either.

In any case, you're making a lot of future claims that I find ludicrous, but I'm not a betting man, or I'd take your money.

* Not really

[maxwell]

Developers are also users, usually some of the more advanced users, important early adopters and power users. Remember non-developers saying they would never get Facebook, or an iPhone, or bitcoin, or Snapchat, or TikTok... and then Road to Damascusing into evangelists? Developers tried all of those out first, with many seeing the problematic social mechanics and rejecting them early, instead of running the hamster wheel to enrich others and centralize power in furtherance of one's own greed.

If enough developers give up on the proprietary OSs and just run Linux, which is basically actually doable now, the tides will turn. Certainly unclear if developers will unify and go all in on Linux, of course, but given historical trends it looks quite likely.

Anecdotally, I've always been fine enough with Win and Mac since the '90s, fine with iOS and Android since the '00s/'10s. But something shifted last year, and while I will remain a user, I've mostly given up on actively developing/maintaining native or web apps targeting those platforms.

[FredPret]

That’s certainly possible, and you’re right about the leading edge early adopters dictating the success or failure of a system.

I’d be delighted if I could get Windows 10/iOS/MacOS-level reliability and functionality out of Linux and would switch to it as a daily driver. But the delta in user experience right now is massive, so I just use Linux for the things that only work on Linux