I use a desktop or laptop computer almost daily in my personal life. Mobile devices are terrible for actual productivity. And security. And usability.
And security
Disagree.
Sure, privacy wise, you can say that they are terrible (freedom wise, they are not great either). But Security? Phones are probably the most secure devices (as long as you keep them updated). Verified Boot, Sanboxing for every app, Strict Permission Control, Default Encryptions, Limiting Password attempts per X amount of time, to make brute force difficult, and can even attempt to wipe itself if too many incorrect password entry. Even if an app is malicious, all you need to do is uninstall it and most of the time they do not persist.
Most desktop installations require admin or sudo permissions, one malicious program/package and you gotta wipe clean and reinstall.
Cameras and microphones that have no physical disconnect. Virtual keyboards. NSA subsidies for cheap phones sold in poor areas. Zero visibility or access to OS components without special steps.
Windows let users install and run any junk binary to their appdata folder by default. That’s why cryptolocker got real popular around 2010. Granted this isn’t supporting my point, but admin is not required in a lot of instances.
I guess I’m saying I disagree with your disagreement. Non-mobile is far more secure. My desktop and laptops do all of the stuff you listed as mobile capabilities.
Again, the government surveillance aspect is more of a privacy issue. Yea, I hate how intrusive the government is, but, from a purely security perspective, if your threat model isn’t targeted surveillance by the government (which for most people, that’s not their threat model), if you think about how much technical knowlege the average person has, a smart phone does a better job protecting them from the every day security threats than a computer.
NSA subsidies for cheap phones sold in poor areas.
Cheap smartphones are subsidized by the “recommended apps” screen that phone manufacturers add, that app developers/publishers paid for so that their app is listed during the phone’s set up process, that’s why they are so cheap.
The blue collar people I know only use a phone for personal computing, I have a spare laptop I lend to co workers so they can complete CBT and badging if a phone won’t cut it.
More than once I’ve had both my personal laptop and the loaner at a jobsite so the crew can get badged quicker.
In the BDSM community CBT stands for cock & ball torture.
Some of the training matches
Damn, I haven’t heard about using a laptop for CBT but that shit probably hurts - that’s gonna be a wide surface area for impact.
deleted by creator
I volunteer at the public library. Almost all the people who come in are phones only, and totally lost on a PC. They come in to fill out gov’t PDFs that won’t open on their phones and to print stuff out. My classmates, in the IT program (!) have a lot of trouble navigating on their laptops, and only a couple of us have desktops at all.
Who goes into IT without knowing how to use a computer?
I ask myself that on a regular basis.
I work with a number of developers who don’t know how to find and edit a file on their computer.
Literally.
Desktop computer mainly, sometimes a laptop. Tablets are painful to use IMO
I don’t think Lemmy is the right sample to ask this question. Definitely a lot of gamers and tech enthusiasts here.
Personally I avoid doing computer tasks on my phone if I can at all help it. Trying to accomplish tasks on a tiny mobile screen is just frustrating and limited. Have both desktop and laptop that I prefer to use.
I imagine Lemmy skews WAY to the side of PCs/computers. But the average consumer is almost exclusively using their phone for everything except work and taxes. I’m a digital native and I even find browsing Lemmy to be easier via app than browser.
Question: am I on the toilet?
Big purchases require big screen.
Idk man, pretty sure musk bought a major world power with the tiny screen
PC is for gaming and doing things I do on my phone but easier and faster
My experience has been that most people only use a computer at work and use their phone or a smart TV for everything else. Although, they usually also own a laptop for when a computer is required
Millennial in the US. These are my main devices: iPhone, gaming pc, steam deck, and an old MacBook Pro.
- iPhone - general phone use, killing time browsing Lemmy when I should be working, playing roms, and Pokémon GO.
- Gaming pc - primary. I prefer doing everything here including shopping because fuck shopping on a phone, I’m a millennial and for big purchases I have to use a big screen and a computer.
- Steam Deck - mobile PC gaming for couch and occasions I’m away from home for a long time.
- MacBook - secondary PC, only when I need a PC and don’t want or can’t be at my desk.
Honestly with how far right big tech has moved, along with the predatory tracking and telemetry, I’m considering giving up smart phones for good. Not sure I even want to bother switching to a Pixel with Graphene OS after my iPhone is done.
I miss simplicity, so I’m actively evaluating if a dumb phone (or even an e-ink dumb phone) is right for me. I’m also evaluating lugging my laptop around when I’m out and about because I can simply buy mobile service and plug in a USB cell modem if I need internet. My old 2012 MacBook Pro running Linux doesn’t track me and treat me like data cattle, so it may be worth carrying that around since I don’t get the same feeling of disgust compared to when I look at my smartphone.
Big tech ruined everything.
Edit: on mobile, fixed some typos
People are responding personally in this thread, which does not answer the actual question being asked. Lemmizens are very far from most people.
I’d be shocked if most people had PCs any more - at best, an old laptop to lug out for “paperwork.”
I may be an outlier (well, maybe not on lemmy…), but I have 4 PCs that I use regularly:
- Daily driver laptop
- Work-ish laptop
- Storage server
- Utility server
These are the ones I am left with after getting rid of some hardware I didn’t need.
i see more and more mobile-only households all the time. and people with landline internet at home that has never seen a pc. only televisions, phones and tablets. an increasing number of people don’t even have that, they live off their cell phone’s internet.
personally, i’m ‘desktop only’. my phone i use only as a phone. i have no tablet, no watch, no gaming console. my laptops never leave home, they’re just ‘small desktops’. when i need one, i grab some spare junk from the office to take to a site.
Back during early COVID there were a bunch of people caught out not having anywhere to work from in their home.
That to me suggested a lot about where phone and tablet usage have gone, and where desktop and laptop usage has now gone. It seems a lot people see laptops and computers as specialist devices.
There are at least four computers and three laptops in my house, but not chance my friends have that.
