Maybe I'm alone in this camp, but I really value the idea that my phone is an ultra-stable bedrock experience that, sure, I have to sacrifice some freedoms on but ultimately they're not exactly freedoms I care to express on a 5.8" display whose more critical purpose is things like "my car keys", "my door keys", "maintaining contact with family" etc. Versus, my linux desktop feels like its always in a state of nearly falling apart, and that's what makes it fun. I'm constantly pushing it to the edge, installing 550gb LLMs, four different package managers, right now its got a totally dissected USB cable coming out the front that's attached to a small circuit board for some project, all that's ok because that's what I want out of it. I don't want that out of my phone. I want my phone to ALWAYS turn on and ALWAYS be able to get EVERY text or phone call that's sent to me.
I think anyone who has devoted their life to computing, in all its forms, over the past 20 years should agree: There doesn't exist an operating system that I feel adequately does all of that under one roof. The closest is Android. And that's what I don't get out of posts like this: Android does exist. What do you want out of Android that Google/etc are keeping from you? Samsung has Dex. It kinda sucks. Google allows free-range application installations (and fortunately that recent effort to block it is dead); that's great. I guess there's no real/root UNIX terminal? Bro, I struggle to envision a world where any device I have that has a root shell is also one that I don't inevitably fuck up, even if only temporarily, its ability to receive phone calls from my doctor about the results of a colonoscopy.
The bigger problem that I see right now is that, at least from the perspective of the iPhone: Apple is dropping the ball on their stewardship of this bedrock experience.
It depends on how AI-pilled you are. Linux is fucking awesome and really easy to use now because AI has read all of the Internet posts ever about how to use Linux, so you can just fire up Claude code and tell it to fix your python or docker or whatever. 2026 is gonna be the year of Linux on the desku, powered by AI, if people manage to get over themselves.
I think anyone who has devoted their life to computing, in all its forms, over the past 20 years should agree: There doesn't exist an operating system that I feel adequately does all of that under one roof. The closest is Android. And that's what I don't get out of posts like this: Android does exist. What do you want out of Android that Google/etc are keeping from you? Samsung has Dex. It kinda sucks. Google allows free-range application installations (and fortunately that recent effort to block it is dead); that's great. I guess there's no real/root UNIX terminal? Bro, I struggle to envision a world where any device I have that has a root shell is also one that I don't inevitably fuck up, even if only temporarily, its ability to receive phone calls from my doctor about the results of a colonoscopy.
The bigger problem that I see right now is that, at least from the perspective of the iPhone: Apple is dropping the ball on their stewardship of this bedrock experience.