Discussion on Hacker News: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29306975.
Is it really anymore “true” than the convergence Microsoft had with windows mobile? Sure all applications from the PureOS repository could be compiled for ARM and x86_64 however not all applications are adaptable much like the way not all applications in the Microsoft store worked well on the phone. I’m all for touting the accomplishments thus far, and the progress that has been made thanks to libhandy is awesome; however, this is still very much a work in progress from what I’ve seen.
As that’s a dead product, I don’t know whether it makes sense to compare with it.
I think Purism would be well aware that:
People don’t even necessarily mean the same thing when they say “convergence”, never mind about potentially hyperbolic use of the word “true”.
“Convergence”: maybe https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technological_convergence
“True”: See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No_true_Scotsman
I’m unclear on what aspect might be being referred to by “convergence”.
- a single operating system, with a similar look and feel / interface, offered on a quite disparate set of hardware devices (this by itself is good)
- as above but with a single codebase (and this better still)
- a single device able to offer the functionality of multiple former hardware devices (but this is a different angle)
I tend to think of “convergence” as the third of those items e.g. converge a phone and a laptop. That might in theory be achieved via a phone with a foldable screen (probably not in 2021 but soon) or by docking the phone (much more realistic for 2021) or simply by encompassing the functionality of the laptop in a phone form factor (with varying degrees of success).
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I would too, and Purism is the one making the claim that Purism is the first; which is why comparing it to a “dead” product is valid.