Yes, we do. I want my phone and my laptop to be in total sync, I want to be able to write code on my mobile which I can just continue on my laptop without any hindrance, currently I have a mac and an android phone, I do have Go and Python installed on my mobile, but it isn't that great to code on my mobile, I have to host the repo on an internal version of gogs to get the code synced up and I still have to manually push the code around.
This is what Smalltalk was intended to be, back in the day. The answer is yes, but you may not be able to get more than a few people to adopt it anyways. (There were no smartphones back then, but it did get to the point where grade school children, professional developers, and researchers were using basically the same programming environment, just with customized interfaces for their particular group.)
Yes, for a beginner who does not need the advanced stuff, they can just ignore it right?
As of now, I never use Google drive sync, I use syncthing to sync folders between mobile and my Mac.
Universal OS rocks! (I hope it is in line with my vision of how the concept of universality is) I want to just visually ssh the phone and the machine, or rather the OS is in the phone and I just connect it to the machine, there was some project recently I don't know if it is available now.
I don't know why the downvotes, but your "beginners can just ignore advanced stuff" comment strikes me as naive.
Beginners are typically terrified of anything they don't understand. I used to teach computers 101 to university students, and they'd pretty much freeze up every time they saw something they weren't expecting.
Why naive? I was a beginner 3yrs ago in web development and Go. I wanted to learn how to build a webapp (I didn't and still don't know enough JS), I didn't get lost in the big maze of angular, react. I ignored the complicated stuff, I learned how to write a webapp[1], that was using pure HTML, then I learned Go, then I wrote a webapp. I wrote a todo list manager [2]
Then, after I was comfortable with everything did I start learning AJAX, I chose Vue.JS and I migrated the app I wrote in pure HTML to use Go [3] and wrote a guide about it [4].
I pissed a lot of people of VueJS project when I raised this [5] issue, yes, in hindsight I do realize that I was rude to them, but their documentation had a problem (and I had already said sorry if I was rude)
I still don't know how to use websockets and what not, or how to write load balancers or distributed database, or web proxy or cache or other things to be done at scale, I choose to ignore them as of now, as I build my capability to understand or until I need of them.
This is what I meant by that statement.
>they'd pretty much freeze up
You know, in 2010, I still remember the first C programming class (I had not understood a single word) I had in my college, I froze and for a minute questioned if I had made the right decision to enter computer science. The point is that newcomers need to know what they can ignore while they learn the basics, it is not possible to learn everything in one go.
Nobody teaches you real life, it just happens, and as a newbie it is my responsibility to learn in the best way I can without getting overwhelmed, and no, it is not a disparaging statement!
Also, this is why I started Multiversity[6], this is a YouTube channel which teaches by example.
You could always develop remotely, use your phone to ssh into a more powerful machine. Use tmux or screen and pick up right where you were on a laptop or desktop. This is far more compelling IMHO.
To be usable, SSH to a more powerful machine requires a good and stable connection. That's almost never available, in my experience. If I'm on my phone, I'm likely to be on trains/planes/in tunnels/in the countryside/etc.
I remember the glee of the first time I got an X-Window application to run over the network. I was so confused though because the "x-server" is the software you run on your client machine.
There is a small terminology issue here: a "server" is a program that offers services to remote "client" programs. The clients make requests and the server responds to them. A client program will make a request like "allocate me a chunk of the screen and put these here bits in it", or "let me know about any of these events that happen". The server manages the screen and notifies the clients about things they're interested in.
I agree, it actually does make total sense - but that doesn't mean I won't get confused :).
My only prior exposure to "GUIs over the network" were web applications, where the roles are essentially reversed. That is, the part responsible for accepting user input and rendering the UI is the client (the browser), and the part that performs the application logic is the server.
I naively assumed that X would work the same way, but it wasn't too hard to unlearn that misconception.
Why stop there? I want to dock my phone to the TV and work with a remote control, I want to dock it to the car and control it with steering wheel buttons.
But I don't have an iPhone, I have an android phone, I use syncthing, but this isn't the kind of sync I hope, I want both the OSes to be quite same with inbuilt sync not through the internet but through my LAN
Apple will never outright tell you this but the answer to that is "you're using OSX wrong". I really think for best results you have to be vertically integrated and have Apple gear for all things you want to work together and to do it well. If not I guess rely on someone making a third party app that does what Apple does for its devices.
I have syncthing for syncing files, that isn't an issue. I want a universal OS which allows me to just plug my phone into my machine at home and it'll do magic and I can then continue my work. I have no other alternative than reading when I am on the bus. I want the mobile to be a native extension to the laptop
All hail Universal OS!!