[AndrewSwift]

It's wild to see the HN crowd, bleeding-edge technologists, regularly bring up "lying flat on a table" as a critical feature for a supercomputer inside a camera that fits in your pocket.

Somebody (many somebodies?) is rolling over in his grave.

[paintbox]

"a supercomputer inside a camera that fits in your pocket" stopped being a novelty 15 years ago. We call it just "phone" now!

"lying flat on a table" is a critical feature for a device that on a daily basis lays on the table.

If it clanks and thuds every time you press it (and pressing it is the only way to use it) while lying on the table, then it is bad design that should be addressed.

[ulfw]

I legit don't think I have even once used my phone lying on a table. Ergonomically that makes no sense. But then again I neither use my iPad nor Macbook lying flat on a table either, so what do I know...

[losvedir]

Huh, that shocks me. I'd say half my day my phone is on my desk here. I'll occasionally swipe/tap it to deal with notifications and various other things.

But I came up using Nexus/Pixels, which had an "always on" display very early, a great UI around "glanceability" putting all kinds of useful and interesting things front and center, a much better Swipe keyboard, and a much more functional notifications experience, so maybe that trained this behavior.

Do you not? Do you just... leave your phone in your pocket all day?

[jimbokun]

Because we already all own a supercomputer inside a camera that fits in our pocket so the technology specs don't really move the needle.

[guardian5x]

Maybe a supercomputer from a 1980s perspective.

[liamwire]

What an absurd take. If we use FLOPS as a crude measure, the Air would be comparable to the leading supercomputers of ~1999/2000. There's many reasons why that's a very poor comparison but ignoring the absolute insanity of the raw compute available in a pocketable, thin, battery-powered handheld that you can buy literally this week, is ridiculous. Modern smartphones are nothing short of sci-fi when compared to even recent living memory. We're simply used to them due to their sheer ubiquity.

[lern_too_spel]

The A19 GPU doesn't even have hardware support for FP64, which is the precision used for TOP500. No, it is not comparable to leading supercomputers of 1999/2000.