The race to convergence
Excuse my tired, uncollected thoughts.
This week we had Apple's WWDC 2020 conference, which saw a few interesting
announcements that are relevant to not just users of the Apple ecosystem.
Their switch from Intel to their own ARM variants has been rumored for a long
time and they have announced that officially at this event.
Craig Federighi already has come out and said the new hardware will not allow
direct-booting of alternative operating systems and virtualization should be
used instead. [1]
I am sure people will crack the HW bootloader eventually, but it's not a good
move. Anyway, with that out of the way I want to address the design aspect in
the room and that is how MacOS Big Sur is starting to look and feel a lot more
like iOS. Right down to copying Notification Center and slapping it into the
menu bar at the top. What we'll see increasingly with Apple and their new
frameworks like Catalyst I believe is an application overhaul effort that'll try
to make one app work two different types of displays and input devices.
This is something everyone else in the FOSS desktop environment community has
been working on too.
Ubuntu was, if I remember correctly, the first that tried to create an setup
that'd allow an entire operating system to target both phone and desktop, so
that you could even dock the phone and use it as a full-fledged Linux desktop.
Canonical killed their own efforts and their community has stepped up to
continue Ubuntu Touch as UBPorts.
Meanwhile, Plasma Mobile became a thing. A very much WIP effort, but it has
already started to make a real dent in a few ways. Some applications seem to be
getting replaced (more or less) by ones that are essentially modernized and can
very easily be used on a desktop and on a mobile device.
For example, Amarok is seemingly going to be superseded by an application called
Elisa. It's a lot more streamlined and gets to the point, which is what you want
on a phone. I can not possibly imagine someone trying to make Amarok work on
Mobile with the design language that it has.
My point is, that we see a lot of what Apple did in other projects. They might
not say it out loud but it feels like they're working towards convergence.
I could be totally wrong on this, but this will also give the FOSS community
a head start over whatever Redmond is doing (as if they're still relevant).
Personally, I am most excited for any sort of progress we make on finally
moving away from x86. I want to cut down on devices.
I dislike slab phones, I dislike bulky laptops. In the future folding devices
like the Cosmo Communicator I can see replace both for me personally.
Efforts like PostMarketOS, PlasmaMobile and PinePhone are already working
working towards a future like that, I feel. I can't wait.
[1] https://youtu.be/Hg9F1Qjv3iU?t=3765
-- Marco