[Toybox] Phone docking stations for general purpose computing.

[Rob Landley]

On 5/21/20 9:49 PM, David Seikel wrote:
> So yep, we can prototype the idea now, but I have my doubts that the
> world is ready for it yet.  After all, why sell a cheap phone with a
> single USB-C port that can do everything via a cheap docking station that
> can be bought at your local supermarket next to their cheap USB
> keyboards, when you can make more money selling more expensive phones
> and lots of adaptors?

By that logic why would anyone sell a PC when they could have sold a
minicomputer? Because vendors who sell what customers want to buy take market
share from vendors who don't, and "this is more profitable for me to sell
therefore I'll ignore everything else" has driven plenty of vendors out of
business over the years.

Right now "lack of cheap usb-c hubs" and "android phones aren't autodetecting
usb video adapters out of the box" seem limiting.

The hub problem is because conventional USB is still dominant for peripherals
(no reason for mice and keybaords to have a different plug when adapters exist,
most network dongles and usb sticks still use the old interface), and there are
usb C cables to plug into a conventional hub so phones _can_ play in that
ecosystem. I guess as long as the hub is usb3 it's all the same speed...

As for video, it looks like Google's provided solution is chromecast and that's
where they stopped trying. But at least it seems like that can cast the android
desktop to a TV:

  https://support.google.com/chromecast/answer/6059461

My wife's experience with that was it's an overengineered solution that requires
a gratuitous wireless router between the phone and the chromecast, and won't get
the volume to become cheap becuase of it. But it's available today. Somebody
should try to prototype a usb solution with a pi zero and VNC or mp4 streaming...

> Long ago as a teenager I used to enjoy reading hard science fiction where
> the protagonists could do wonders with modular technology that you could
> just plug it all into each other, and it would just work.  I dreamed of
> growing up into that world.  This isn't that world.  This is Profit, Plug
> & Pray, toss it all into landfil, PROFIT! world.

No, you're describing immature technologies. Mature technologies are thoroughly
commoditized, immature technologies are vendor-specific.

Once upon a time the Ford Model T wasn't like other cars, you could only get
what it offered from the one manufacturer and were then locked into a
proprietary vendor ecosystem. These days neither the gas station nor jiffy lube
cares that much who made your car.

And cars aren't NEARLY as mature a technology as socks or silverware or a bag of
rice. "Great spoons, who did the metalurgy" is not a question that comes up much
these days. Even with LED light bulbs, I have no idea who manufactured the ones
in my kitchen because it doesn't matter. I have no idea who made my dishwasher
or microwave. They're amazingly high-tech by the standards of 100 years ago, but
are mature technologies today, and they just work.

Rob