Part of the reason for the push for mobile is that a big chunk of the tech industry nowadays competes with power users - if you're a power user you may not need their "solution" as you will defeat their attempt at rent-seeking by using your existing, powerful tool (the general-purpose computer) that is built to serve you rather than them. Worse, a power-user sharing their solution with others would also obviate the need for the rent-seeker's solution. A power user is absolutely not something a typical "growth & engagement" startup wants because they'll be a troublemaker, constantly poking holes into their bullshit business model.
Essentially, we had a gap where computing devices (whether mobile or desktop) became mainstream and it was just a matter of time before laymen would eventually learn how to use them to their advantage, except the VCs beat them to it and started weaponizing the devices to not just exploit laymen's inability to use them but eventually reshape the devices in a way that prevents them to be used for the user's benefit even if they somehow gained the knowledge to try.
In the old times you could pay someone a one-off fee for them to teach you fishing and then fish on your own. Nowadays, standard fishing rods are being pushed out of the market (along with the knowledge of using them), being replaced by fishing-rods-as-a-service that rely on your perpetual lack of fishing knowledge to seek rent since they now have a monopoly on fishing (and everyone's lack of fishing knowledge means a competitor making non-DRM'd fishing rods would have a very hard time starting up).
It's so true, most apps on mobile are just crappy partial tools that you already have on a PC, but worse to use and with a subscription. It always feels like technology sucks nowadays and it's just getting worse. It is no longer meant to serve us, but someone else who will abuse us for money.
I can't rely on tech or apps to do what I want, how I want it and with any privacy or reliability. It's just no longer the future that's in the cards we all dreamed about. More traps than tools. Selling a fantasy that you can talk to the air and turn a light on or ask a simple question I could type in 2s and get faster info that is more reliable, whoopdee-doo, I only had to pay for a device that spies on me 24/7 to exploit me.
They market a fake dream that makes our life look easier, cooler and more convenient, but it's definitely quite the facade once you take a step back to look at it.
> It is no longer meant to serve us, but someone else who will abuse us for money.
As predicted by Richard Stallman. People hate him because of the conclusions he draws from his principles, even though they turn out to be right every single time.
Nah. It's because people look at the conclusions he draws, that foss will benefit users, devs and the world with no downsides, and then look at the reality of the shit show of a world built on foss that we actually live in, and conclude that the organisations who benefit the most are Microsoft, google, Amazon etc. and the people who benefit the most are billionaire rent seekers and the people who work, or who want to work for them. Based on this they conclude that he's deluded. The answer to this is not more foss, license tweaks or moving off GitHub but less giving away your time and money.
You are taking so much for granted in this comment. World built on FOSS? You should be thanking Stallman on bended knee for making that possible at all. The rent-seeking situation before FOSS was infinitely worse. Today, you can spin up a cluster of servers with state of the art load balancing, databases, checkpointed filesystems, and a standardized OS without paying a cent to anyone in software licensing fees. Do you even realize the magnitude of this achievement?
Sure, billionaires benefit - so do the rest of us. A rising tide lifts all boats. Don't blame FOSS for the evils of capitalist rent-seeking; the rent-seekers of old have been toppled.
haven't read his stuff in depth but isn't stallman for copyleft not all FOSS ? and him mellowing out the copyleft stance, because not enough people are behind it therefore a need to compromise ?
because in a world you're required by law to open source and have the same copyleft license or stronger if you're using copyleft based projects that rent seeking would not be possible, but so is making money out software and the majority of the folks here and in the tech industry really don't want that.
I really wish be had that world, software would be a single community project, but less then a tenth of the people in the industry today would exist (and there will be no 'industry').
> Part of the reason for the push for mobile is that a big chunk of the tech industry nowadays competes with power users
It really doesn't. It's playing in a different league - tailoring their solutions to the mass market of those who have zero time for that power-user level of technical sophistication. It could market power-user friendly versions of its products and services, but it's way too busy pushing them for uber-inflated prices in the "enterprise" market - where power-user friendliness is just one more box to tick, hoping to make a sale.
> What about knowledge work? Employees in the tech, finance and any desk job industry aren't performing their job using an ipad or phone.
You might be surprised. I have several coworkers who are doing Olympic gymnastics to get away with using iPads as primary devices. There's only a few of them right now but they are multiplying rapidly.
> Wouldn't the tech industry have an incentive to also encourage a continuous supply of skilled labour that can use a pc effectively?
Yes, but that sounds like a problem for the Zoomers and Alpha. That sounds dismissive but I'm not sure we could solve it if we wanted to. It's too far away. By the time it becomes a problem maybe everyone can work on tablets, or phones.
I maintain that the current model of "software development" is more like "software manufacturing" and will be automated away in the future to the point we wouldn't recognize it today. In 50 years software professionals will look back on how we work today and wonder how we got anything done. Not too different from the way we look back on the 1970s today. How the heck does a slide rule work anyway? Can you imagine working with punch cards?
Essentially, we had a gap where computing devices (whether mobile or desktop) became mainstream and it was just a matter of time before laymen would eventually learn how to use them to their advantage, except the VCs beat them to it and started weaponizing the devices to not just exploit laymen's inability to use them but eventually reshape the devices in a way that prevents them to be used for the user's benefit even if they somehow gained the knowledge to try.
In the old times you could pay someone a one-off fee for them to teach you fishing and then fish on your own. Nowadays, standard fishing rods are being pushed out of the market (along with the knowledge of using them), being replaced by fishing-rods-as-a-service that rely on your perpetual lack of fishing knowledge to seek rent since they now have a monopoly on fishing (and everyone's lack of fishing knowledge means a competitor making non-DRM'd fishing rods would have a very hard time starting up).