[Toybox] Phone docking stations for general purpose computing.

[David Seikel]

On 2020-05-22 00:20:06, Rob Landley wrote:
> 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...

And I found out the hard way that the security settings on the WiFI in
the local city councillors office prevented Chromecast from working.  I
didn't have a proper phone docking station working at the time either. 
So when they let me sit in their office all day during a 40 degree C hot
day, I ended up having to borrow a spare office laptop, instead of the
impressive "look, I can computer on my phone" demonstration I had
planned.

When it works Chromecast is great for the portable VR demos, I can watch
it on their big screen and tell the novice with my phone strapped to
their face, "no it's on your right, and look down a little, yes the blue
thing", coz I can see what they are seeing instead of guessing.

> > 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 now with Android for cars, you still can't plug a KVM into your
dashboard and sit in the back seat developing on the thing during a long
drive.

> 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.

"That spoon isn't compatible with this soup, so you can't eat it." I
suspect is something no one ever said, but I'm not as great a scholar of
history as you.  "There is no spoon." is something someone did say, but
that was part of a movie.

> 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.

I haven't managed to find an LED light bulb that was compatible with my
last two 'fridges.  It really doesn't matter, I don't leave that bulb
turned on for hours, but I have switched everything else to LED.

Light bulbs, microwave ovens, dishwashers, are becoming IoT things these
days, that want to talk to some specific companies web server.  When that
company decides they no longer can profit from supporting that model of
light bulb, they switch off that web site, and the light bulb stops
working.  The mature technologies are becoming immature once more, coz
PROFIT!

I do hope that smart phones do reach the level of maturity we are talking
about here, and stay that way, coz I've been failing to replace my
desktop with a phone for many years.  I can do it now, but it's still
very clunky.  A smart phone where I can replace the operating system with
something I compiled myself, and everything still works?  I really want
that.

-- 
A big old stinking pile of genius that no one wants
coz there are too many silver coated monkeys in the world.