The future is mobile. This is no joke: if you're building things with desktop assumptions, you're building for a shrinking market.

Absolutely! Recent spec assumed mobile unimportant, but I coded for it anyway. Majority of sales are on mobile

(I still think people are missing out by looking at the world through a tiny screen). Go big or go REAL LIFE

It's probably important not to forget about the computer people use 8 hours a day every day though...

time spent on desktop is falling & most of next billion often don't own them:

mobile is important, but "time spent falling" doesn't mean "rapidly becoming irrelevant"

also, many of us don't have customers in 'next billion' yet

...and they don't have or use phones? I mean, I get that there's desktop software for desktops.

tools that are designed only to work on desktop should be signposted as much. Saves devs/businesses pain.

let's say you start project now. What are the odds tools haven't been fixed in 6 months when you ship?

you also have to compare the added cost of maintaining your own tools, which is continuous b

judging from projects started 6 months ago, tragically high

that was before you started fat-shaming the frameworks. I expect the pressure to be much higher now :)

they have. But next billion is besides the point here

you can build the same thing for mobile and desktop using cross platform libraries and tools

This is for kids and teenagers, adults use PC all day

*for children*. If you use that to ignore desktop, it's an infantilized UI instead.

in most of EM, for adults too. But yes, UIs that scale matter. My point is that low-end is reality.

industry consensus in 1984 was very clear that a mouse and GUI was 'infantilised'. That's not a useful mental model

It's also not a reasonable model to assume that children will use the same software when they're adults

Although I'm not going to deny that mobile is an ever greater share of computing

of course. However, as a matter of fact adult use shows the same pattern

I think this is the most interesting set of statistics:

To me it’s an argument about the internet extending to new contexts of computing.

yup. Mobile is augmenting, not replacing.

Desktop computing hasn’t really declined over the last ten years. Computing just fills up unused areas.

This is why I think people are going all in on voice in homes and cars. More time of day to own.

I’m less convinced we’re seeing a huge culture shift away from the use of Desktop devices.

going on the record: I think within the next 5 years, there'll be a backlash on "time used"

Me, I think the amount of the day that people use for computing / the internet will grow regardless

the anoint of compute resources, yes. Amount of time is naturally bound :)

joking aside, pace is unsustainable w/out cultural cost. And I believe that is starting to sink in.

or I'm getting all old and off-my-lawn-y. You pick :)

the mainframe install base kept rising through 2010

So presumably those people who were arguing it was going to go away in the eighties were wrong!

Honestly, desktop usage probably *will* start to decline, but still seems more stable than people argue.

eh, I'm only arguing that web trying to span both without adopting to tighter constraints == failure

apparently my 4" iPhone SE and 13" iPad pro are both mobile. Not sure dichotomy still useful

we adults will always use desktops more than kids because we have jobs that require them.

"We adults will always need mainframes because we have jobs that require them'. Nope.

how about if I called them "high end, big screened computery things" instead?

absolutely. computing has expanded, many things desktop only don’t have to be anymore.

please note the *if* you use it to *ignore* desktop. Mobile matters. It's not, however, the only gig.