Ars Technica article about the birth of the ARM CPU's.

[Paul Hutch]

Part 2 from November
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11 ... -together/

And today we get the third and final part which includes the Raspberry Pi
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01 ... ll-circle/

Was fun reading all three parts this morning and remembering my own history with using ARM processors starting with a Jornada 720 handheld PC in 2000.

[ejolson]

Part 2 from November
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11 ... -together/

And today we get the third and final part which includes the Raspberry Pi
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/01 ... ll-circle/

Was fun reading all three parts this morning and remembering my own history with using ARM processors starting with a Jornada 720 handheld PC in 2000.

I liked the part which said

Curiously, Jobs spent a lot of time emphasizing how the iPhone was actually three devices: a phone, an iPod, and an Internet communicator. Nobody would describe an iPhone like that now. It’s a computer that fits in your pocket.

Since the iPhone is still the same, this indicates for me how the view of what a computer is has changed. I wonder if the iPad could be emphasized as a phone, a television and Internet communicator that doesn't fit in your pocket.

[RedMarsBlueMoon]

Since the iPhone is still the same, this indicates for me how the view of what a computer is has changed. I wonder if the iPad could be emphasized as a phone, a television and Internet communicator that doesn't fit in your pocket.

From the film 'The Insider':

Mike Wallace: And that's what cigarettes are for.
Jeffrey Wigand: A delivery device for nicotine.
Mike Wallace: A delivery device for nicotine. Put it in your mouth, light it up, and you're gonna get your fix.

The iPad is a delivery device for 'Apps' off which Apple takes a 30% cut.

[cspan]

The iPad is a delivery device for 'Apps' off which Apple takes a 30% cut.

I wouldn't mind apps so much if they worked offline and without phoning home.

Can't speak for the iPad but when I contemplate whether an Android phone could serve me as a travel computer, I find the answer is "only if I'm willing to have Google looking over my shoulder the entire time." My Android phone didn't even come with an offline text editor or note-taking app, let alone a word processor, spreadsheet, etc. Nearly everything "computer-wise" on these phones has to be in the cloud now, and/or reports to the mothership as to what you're up to. [A 2nd gen Kindle was passed down to me, and it wasn't hard to find the extensive log files that - if I registered the device and enabled wi-fi - gets reported back.]

So I view these devices not as computers, but media consumption appliances with some communication functionality (calls and texts) thrown in. And a camera with impressive resolutions but really noisy pictures.

That said, I read that there's this platform called F-droid that distributes FOSS apps for Android. Perhaps I might find some decent non-tracking functionality there.

[ejolson]

The iPad is a delivery device for 'Apps' off which Apple takes a 30% cut.

I wouldn't mind apps so much if they worked offline and without phoning home.

Can't speak for the iPad but when I contemplate whether an Android phone could serve me as a travel computer, I find the answer is "only if I'm willing to have Google looking over my shoulder the entire time." My Android phone didn't even come with an offline text editor or note-taking app, let alone a word processor, spreadsheet, etc. Nearly everything "computer-wise" on these phones has to be in the cloud now, and/or reports to the mothership as to what you're up to. [A 2nd gen Kindle was passed down to me, and it wasn't hard to find the extensive log files that - if I registered the device and enabled wi-fi - gets reported back.]

So I view these devices not as computers, but media consumption appliances with some communication functionality (calls and texts) thrown in. And a camera with impressive resolutions but really noisy pictures.

That said, I read that there's this platform called F-droid that distributes FOSS apps for Android. Perhaps I might find some decent non-tracking functionality there.

For a while tried F-droid on a Nexus 4 running the latest Cyanogenmod (now called Lineage) open source version of Android. It worked well until I dropped the phone and the screen cracked.

Three phones later (no I didn't drop all of them) I have a Motorola with screen that seems slightly too big. For an offline editor I'm happy with something called Turbo Editor from the developer listed as vmihalachi in Estonia that I downloaded from the Play Store.

As nice as that phone is, it's impossible to use it productively like a computer.

[scruss]

I've seen a few old SPARC's going cheap in recent times, I've always been tempted but would they perform as well as I remembered?

I wouldn't. I recently picked up a ~20 year old UltraSPARC blade for very cheap (less than a Raspberry Pi). While Solaris brings back fond memories, and it was a decently fast 64-bit machine in its day, it doesn't compare even to a Raspberry Pi in performance. Also, since it's a rackmount, it is deafeningly loud