[ufmace]

I don't think they are anymore. The vast majority of ordinary person computer/internet use has already moved to smartphones, tablets, smart TVs and other such devices. It seems nowadays many people don't even know the basics about how to use a desktop operating system.

[Aerroon]

I find this hard to believe considering how bad the UIs are on phones and TVs. Even google.com does not offer feature parity between their desktop and mobile websites.

My phone still didn't come with a functional paint or notepad apps. Google docs is a horrible experience on phones (but at least it works now - a few years ago it was straight up unusable).

And you're telling me that this is the only computing platform for a lot of people? How is everything still so unusable about it then?

My experience tells me that everything mobile is basically an afterthought outside of a few dozen websites and I guess phone games.

[embedding-shape]

> My phone still didn't come with a functional paint or notepad apps [...] And you're telling me that this is the only computing platform for a lot of people? How is everything still so unusable about it then?

Not to sound harsh, but you come at this with an somewhat old perspective, the same one I grew up with too and probably also retain too much of.

People don't open their phones looking for something like paint or notepad apps, they want a messenger/social network to connect with their family/friends which is most likely why they got the phone in the first place, and if they're "advanced", they'll even edit their own photos and images but via a whole host of various phone image editors. Sometimes the social network offers those things too, sometimes as separate apps, people use that sort of stuff instead of looking for "paint.exe" or tools to crop/edit images in a more, I guess "crude" way that you and I might be used to and favor still today.

[Aerroon]

I don't open my phone for notes or paint either, but sometimes I really need it. And then I am endlessly frustrated that the stuff we do get by default has half-baked functionality.

For example, the gallery app's image editor on my phone doesn't let me cut out a piece from the middle and then let me pull the sides together. Eg if I have a picture of a table and I want to cut out a certain column. This is super easy to do in paint, but on my phone I need to look for extra (ad-riddled) apps for that.

Also, there's no way that phones are mainly for social networks. It's estimated that there are 5.5-6 billion smartphone users.

[ufmace]

All that stuff actually works decently well on mobile... as long as one is willing to accept certain compromises.

Note-taking works fine, in Google Keep, Apple Notes, or some other cloud equivalent. Yup, your data is in the cloud and owned by one of those tech megacorps, but most people just don't care.

Basic photo editing works okay too, in Google Photos, Apple Photos, etc. Ditto the cloud stuff.

What really makes most desktop users outliers is caring about, or even being aware at all of the concept of, actually owning your own data versus trusting cloud providers for everything.

[Aerroon]

Does it work fine though? Because I haven't even heard of Google Keep, let alone have it installed.

If I need to take some notes I can't even imagine going to search through a store to find a note taking application since that should be a built in feature of every consumer OS.

The same goes for Google Photos. And I imagine that Google photos also doesn't let you edit it a column in the middle of a table. It's trivial to do in real life or in MSpaint or any real image editor but somehow exceeds the limits of mobile apps.

[mrob]

That fact that you're posting on a web forum makes you an outlier. Most people only passively consume, and mobile devices are good enough for that.

[brewdad]

My kid was in a ECE program at a top 25 university. About a third of their first year classmates did not know how to navigate a desktop file system. And these are the kids interested in tech. It’s far, far worse for the ones with no interest in tech. Tablets in school have left a generation of kids behind where the previous generation was.

[Aerroon]

I wonder if this is an American thing, because my nephews regularly use desktops and laptops. Tablets never caught on here though.

I was worried about this when they were younger though. The youngest played a lot of games only on a phone, but even he seems to have moved on from that.

[picofarad]

My phone still doesn't have a calculator app. The thought of trying to add one that isnt wolfram alpha is anxiety-producing.

[Obscurity4340]

Calculator Note apps are much better anyway

[smelendez]

Right. Laptops are basically work (or school) tools now for a lot of people. They might have one tucked away that they pull out now and then when they need it, similar to a power drill or a sewing machine. It’s not a daily use device.

I think it helped Microsoft historically that people used their operating systems at home, although even then a lot of people would have learned Windows at work or school first.