jSnively

Hello all how about a quick update?

Changes to the Like/Dislike System

We've split the reaction buttons out into Like / Funny / Informative, and made them much more prominent. Hopefully that will encourage more users to engage with the system. Currently an informative post is worth more points than a funny or liked post, though that may change if suddenly everything becomes informative.

We've also removed the 'dislike' button.

There are a number of reasons for this, but it boils down to the fact it wasn't accomplishing what we hoped it would when we implemented it. Users would often just dislike the posts of any user(s) they were engaged in a debate with, or simply disliked. It was also too frequently used to dogpile reasonable posts when they didn't line up with a segment of the forum's point of view, whether that be a reasonable criticism of Apple, or something political in nature. So it has been removed.

Moderation Policy

I also want to take a minute to remind people of the moderation rules here. We try not to moderate too heavily, but personal attacks, racism, homophobic comments, and general bigotry will get moderated out. In addition we're going to start moderating comments that are essentially off-topic, especially when they're early on in the threads. That doesn't mean we will pull the comment outright if it can be salvaged (we just delete them now), but please keep that in mind before posting. One off-topic post early on can really derail the entire thread, and we have different standards for what we want to show on the main site (first 10 or so) than what we would allow deeper on into a thread.

Slight reorganization

We merged the Genius Bar down to a single category. The sub-categories were unnecessary given the amount of use that part of the forums gets. We really like the Genius Bar as a forum though, and we encourage all of you to visit it and help each other out when you can. We may have some cool plans for it in the future...

We also merged mobile Feedback forum back into the general Feedback forum, it had 15 threads, it was unnecessary. 

Misc. Changes

Editors are all now clearly marked as such, so keep an eye out for them on the forums and say hi every now and again and give feedback. Neil, Mikey, Mike, Dan, Roger, Victor, Christine, Ashley, Max, and Kasper all read the comments, even if they don't post too frequently. We wouldn't be where we are without them, and I just want to say thank you to all of them. Hopefully you guys are enjoying the content they are producing.

Also a quick shout out to our head moderator, Marvin for helping to keep things sane around here.

Your ignore list now has a capacity of 50 users.

In Closing...

We want to ensure the forums stay healthy and vibrant for a long time, and 2016 was a good step in that direction (so say the almighty metrics.) AI has been around for 18 years, which is crazy for a website, and we hope to be around for many more.

We will be back sometime next year to talk about more stuff. As always please feel free to leave feedback here and let us know what we can do to make things better. We are not some empty news regurgitating factory, we are here and we are listening.

Happy Holidays!

Games are a hits-driven business and when 95% of hit titles don't even run on your platform then you're not a "great" gaming machine. Once in a blue moon you'll get a AAA title years late, but even in the most recent case, the Mac version of RE:VIII is one of the worst looking versions of that game you can play. 

Also, Bloober team is... rough. Layers of Fear was a great horror game (some may say the best), but the 5 or so titles they've done since have been pretty mediocre-to-bad. Observer probably gets a nod, but that's about it. I don't think anybody has faith they will do a good job with the SH2 remake.

The MetalFX stuff is good (and needed for the resolution Apple pushes in their monitors), but it's generations behind what DLSS offers at this point. If Apple were serious they would bootstrap a solution based off the work being done on the Linux side of things (Wine/DXVK/VKD3D etc.) instead of trying to get developers to port to their proprietary APIs which will never happen en masse. 

Apple has *never* actually been serious about gaming, but it would be cool to see that change.

mknelson said:

Japhey said:

You go into great detail describing the new note overlay windows, but only a brief mention of the acceleration Mac users can expect. Why even mention it in the title if you weren’t going to explain it with more detail? You do know that’s the reason most people on an Apple News site are going to click on the article, right?

"The technical work in this update makes it possible to enable hardware acceleration for the Mac & Linux versions of Steam, bringing them up to par with Windows. You should see snappier animations, scrolling and more responsive UI." This is for the Steam application, not games installed by Steam.

Exactly. The most popular way of getting games on a computer got a full UI refresh that brought the mac to parity with Windows in terms of the Application itself. This doesn't change the way any games run. It's just about the Application, which had languished on Apple platforms in a poor state for a very long time. These updates are extremely welcome. 

Here are the full release notes if anybody is actually interested
https://store.steampowered.com/oldnews/195171

seanismorris said:

I see a cracked screen...

How is it possible all the parts listed are actually damaged?

Did it get hit by lightning?  It sounds like Apple didn’t have the parts or experience to make the repairs.

Is the damage Apple’s fault?  Obviously not.  But the Apple Store should be able to send it somewhere to get fixed, and not for $5000+.

This story is embarrassing for Apple...

They present it as a simple cracked screen in the video, which is very misleading. If you watch the whole thing they very clearly state they need a new screen, motherboard, and PSU.

strells said:

No link to the video in question?

We needed to acknowledge due to how popular the video has become, we do not, however, need to drive traffic.

If you think Jay-Z wasn't, and isn't, important to rap, hip-hop, and popular music and culture then you really have a lot of research to do. You may not like his music, or his personality, or whatever, but his impact is pretty undeniable.

Other services are worse for not having his oeuvre, but it makes sense he's working to double-down on Tidal given his personal stake in it.  At the end of the day, however,  there's still plenty of other ways to get the music, and it probably only hurts him to not have it as readily available as it could be.

Due to the political nature of this topic, we have removed some comments that violated our commenting guidelines and have closed this thread. If you wish to discuss politics in a less-moderated fashion, then we provide a dedicated political outsider forum.

bloggerblog said:

Once you tap to comment, the app switches to browser mode.

Hi Blogger!

We didn't have time to get native forums or price guides in for the app launch (we wanted to hit WWDC as a deadline), but it's something we are actively working on for a future release! Stay tuned!

rcfa said:

When I read “loud” and “booming” I’m disheartened, might as well describe it as Ghettoblaster.

What I was hoping to read is detailed imaging, powerful, effortless, clean, well controlled sound with depth and proper imaging.

There is notably nothing written about combining two or more into a stereo or surround setup, neither anything about using the built-in Bluetooth to hook up computers, phones, video projectors, etc. which are capable of using BT speakers or hands free devices.

Disappointing, not just that these capabilities are lacking, but also that similarly lacking is a roadmap of features to be added by future software updates.

So here's my takeaway so far. Please be advised I've had mine for about an hour.

It sounds alright for its size. VERY heavy on the highs, and the crossover frequency for woofer seems problematic as well. Bass is good for a 4" woofer, but will sound shallow to people who are used to more robust offerings. This feels like it was EQ'd by Beats. Mids get completely drowned when there's a lot going on. Listening to one of the fuller parts of Zero 7 - Home i literally winced because it sounded so bad. I'm not doing the review for this, but i figure i'd let you guys know what i think so far.

I think it's the sound king of the smart speakers, but that's not exactly a prestigious title.

patchythepirate said:

[...]
Jsnively: Do you consider this calling him out personally? Honestly asking to gauge what the boundaries are. Also, just a casual observation, it seems like the forums are being slightly over-moderated. However, they are SO MUCH BETTER than before. I MUCH prefer over to under-moderated (especially when it comes to politically charged topics). So thank you.

No, not at all. Your post is perfectly fine. It's more when people start calling each other names (or that's the slope we're careening towards) that kind of thing we tend to step in. In this case one of the posts in question was actually flagged by a user, and I happened to agree. Live and learn I guess. I did restore everything. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

We've let up on the moderation a lot. There were a few months where i was reading literally every single post that went up here, but that just lead to me spending way too much time on the forums and not getting other stuff done. Plus that way leads madness -- it was not good for my mental health. These days we (mostly) only act on reports, with a few exceptions. I always check-in a few times a day just to make sure nothing has gotten too out of control.

A user was banned, and some comments were removed from this thread. Apologies for being slow on the uptake. I didn't see it until now. If your comment was removed it is not necessarily because we had a problem with it, but when we remove the 'root' post, we also get anything that quotes or references it as per our S.O.P. 

If you have any questions my DMs are open, but I encourage y'all to look over our commenting guidelines for posting.