mdriftmeyer

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mdriftmeyer
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  • Apple's iPhone X passes twin test in early hands-on with Face ID

    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer
    Anyone who thought this would have failed have no idea how deep and wide Apple goes in their testing harness scenarios.
    randominternetpersonGG1anton zuykovjbdragoncaliboxcatcherradarthekatlkruppargonautandrewj5790

  • Apple 'won't make an exception' for Epic to skirt App Store rules

    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer
    I'll just say having worked for Steve twice, if he were presently alive and most likely the Chairman of Apple he would demand EPIC be banned for life after the parody video of 1984 that he and his team worked their asses off to introduce the Macintosh to the globe. Obviously, he would have officially gone through legal channels but I wouldn't have put it past Steve to really hang out the CEO of EPIC by going on say CNBC or some other Wall Street show to explain how such a destructive stunt it is for professionals to pull when trying to build long term relationships.

    Tim is far more judicious. Steve would have belittled the hell out of him as only Steve could do.
    Beatstmayspock1234macplusplusaderutterradarthekatmacxpresspulseimagesSpamSandwichcat52

  • Apple researching return to distributed computing in iPhone and Mac

    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer
    NeXT had distributed computing Frameworks since it’s NeXTStation debuted with NeXTStep 2.0. This isn’t new just updated, and no this doesn’t get easier with an ARM only ecosystem. We were fully Distributed from an agnostic set of frameworks with NS3.1. Nothing has stopped Apple being a ubiquitous distributed ecosystem since the merger of NeXT Inc with Apple Inc. We changed direction to consumer to save Apple. 

    At Apple I watched resources intended to build upon our enterprise NeXT lineage be diverted. XServe never had the resources or focus to develop an enterprise server/client version of OS X, though that’s always been one of the goals. 

    Nothing Ai will produce will be on an EPYC scale focus, but I sure would hope their built out back end data centers interface seamlessly with them to enhance their cloud focused services, including AR. 
    cornchipFileMakerFellerwatto_cobramuthuk_vanalingam

  • Epic isn't planning on making changes to return 'Fortnite' to the App Store

    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer
    xyzzy-xxx said:
    dblanch369 said:
    Bye Bye Epic!  Seriously hope they lose.  I've said it many times, I know Apple isn't perfect, but their walled garden helps keep by stuff secure. Epic (and others) just wants to burn that down.  I'd be welcome to Apple dropping their cut, but I still think they deserve their fair share.
    Apple's walled garden should continue to exist for the people who want it - all other should have the choice to buy from another app store !

    That's a moronic declaration. Apple isn't catering to your `perceived rights' it is designing and developing solutions for their platforms to best serve and protect the data its customers expect to be protected. You have no `perceived rights' to how Apple should meet your wishes. If you have expectations in a platform then go use the one that meets your expectations. This Libertarian philosophy of I'll manage my system doesn't fly--it's not your system. You don't own the OS. Go install Linux. Apple has large contracts with corporations who pay for features that include security across the entire platform(s). Those contractual agreements benefit consumers by having those same features FOR FREE. You don't pay for OS X. Suck it up.
    magman1979tmayflyingdpGG1ronnBeatsRayz2016thtmike1mac_dog

  • Epic sues Apple after Fortnite removed from App Store

    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer
    Perspective summed up well on Arstechnica

    An Apple App Dev posted views on 30%


    DOOManiac Ars Tribunus Militum

    REPLYAUG 13, 2020 11:09 AM

    • POPULAR
    I don't know about Android, but this is absolutely 1000% against Apple's rules for doing in-app purchases on their platform. I'm curious to see how fast the ban hammer comes, and how this plays out.

    [edit]
    Well that didn't take long. Seems this whole thing was scripted from the start...
    [/edit]

    Given the work-to-cut ratio, 30% may have been fair a decade ago when there wasn't a new app every 10 seconds and you actually got something out of being on their store, but these days, with the economies of scale being what they are, its just way too much. Especially on in-app purchases.

    But I do want to dispel the myth that Apple/Google/Steam are doing "nothing". Here's what me and my fellow developers are getting for our 30%:

    - Credit Card transaction processing
    - No liability from credit card processing. This is a big deal so I list it twice.
    - Handles all refunds, stolen credit card chargebacks, fraud
    - Placement (even if buried) on an easy to use store used by millions of customers
    - Fast, reliable hosting & distribution on global CDNs
    - Scheduled release times, possibly staggered by region
    - Regional pricing (sometimes automatic)
    - Platform services (user logins, leaderboards, in app purchases, authentication, anti-piracy measures)
    - Maybe 5 minutes of marketing as your app/game shows up in the "new" section for the blink of an eye on launch day. Maybe.

    Every time I get upset about the 30% cut I remember all this - especially credit card legal liabilities - and I am fine with it again. Would prefer if it was only 15% or 20%, but I would much rather have the status quo as it is now than have to deal with that mess myself.

    Last edited by DOOManiac on Thu Aug 13, 2020 4:23 pm

    Up +104 (+116 / -12) Down


    Second Observer shows the conservative cost of popular “free w/ in-app purchases” for ‘hosting popular apps with constant updates:


    JacobProbasco Smack-Fu Master, in training
    So, I actually am going to take issue with Epic here. There are definitely costs incurred that directly relate to downloads of their game. Download metrics are hard to come by, but when fortnite came to the App Store it took about 5 months before 100,000,000 downloads of the game (which is free to play!). Assuming it was about 1.5GB (it’s 1.8GB today), that’s 150 PETABYTES in 5 months time and it’s been on top of the free charts since then.

    Let’s assume that user saturation around 200milliom downloads, but on top of that there have been at least 100 patches (source: https://www.ign.com/wikis/fortnite/Upda ... nd_Updates ) over the years downloaded from Apple’s servers! With nearly no downtime? With free advertising on the most valuable App Store on the planet?

    In those first five months, if you took those 150PB of downloads, enter that into an AWS S3 cost estimator, you’d likely find what I did: nearly $90,000 a month for those five months that Apple made immaculate uptime with no promise of return profit on the free downloads.

    Now, of course Apple doesn’t pay AWS, so let’s say they have been providing this service gratis since July 2017 at a cost to them of $50,000 a month for this one app. 37 months at $50,000 = $1,850,000 in services since joining the App Store. This is likely a low-ball estimate if my suspicions about the sizes of the above updates are true.

    Apple is providing all of this and more (app certificate signing, CloudKit free storage, secure and safe platforms free of hackers and aimbots, etc etc etc) for what? Epic’s $99 developer fee they pay to Apple each year?🤣

    There needs to be a middle ground. Apple needs to allow corporations to opt out of the current flat rate 30% cut (of PURCHASES, nothing when free!), and get the itemized cost valuation of their services invoiced to their organization. most likely NO CORPORATION will go itemized after that first estimate because they will realize that, holy crap, duplicating Apple’s role in this would likely not be cost efficient. 

    That way, if Epic directly pays for what they clearly take advantage of with the App store then they can bypass the 30%, use their own payment system, and be free of Apple’s tyrannical 30%.... who knows, maybe that would be more profitable for them; it wouldn’t be for most.
    Up -2 (+18 / -20) Down
    12 posts | registered 10/23/2019
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  • Apple earns record $64B in fourth quarter as services soar to $12.5B

    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer
    anantksundaram said:
    It's quite stunning how well Cook & Co. have executed. Absolutely stunning. I was among those who were worried some months ago, when it became clear that Apple had no clear strategy for 5G in 2019, but I was 100% wrong about the remarkable success of the iPhone 11/Pro/Pro Max.

    Happy to to eat some very fine crow!
    What you're wrong about is the fabricated importance of 5G drumbeat by the likes of ATT, Verizon, T-Mible, Cisco, etc. They need a next generation to avoid being a dividend only investment.
    AppleExposedmatrix077lkrupppujones1StrangeDaysbaconstangcy_starkmantmayjahbladetht

  • Intel details Thunderbolt 4 spec, but 'Apple silicon' support is unclear [u]

    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer
    tht said:
    This news is a nothingburger for Apple? No new functionality in TB4 for Apple devices as far as I can tell:


    So, it essentially brings TB capability for PC to Apple Mac levels, almost? 5K monitor support is spotty in the PC world. 
    It’s right there in the spec

    Required Intel VT-d based DMA protection. 

    In the Audio world Thunderbolt is in all professional Audio Interface hardware, as well as Ethernet via Dante spec in the likes of Apogee Digital, Universal Audio, Focusrite Red, etc. TB 2 & 3 are big for low latency DMA over PCIe and critical as USB doesn’t have that, period.

    The PCIe 32GB/s means PCIe 4.0 as a minimum. No problem as by the time Apple Silicon on Mac Pro arrives they’ll be PCIe 5.0 based motherboards.

    https://newsroom.intel.com/news/introducing-thunderbolt-4-universal-cable-connectivity-everyone/#gs.aasuc3

    When It Is Available: Later this year, Intel expects to deliver the new Thunderbolt 4 controller 8000 series, including:

    • JHL8540 and JHL8340 host controllers for computer makers.
    • JHL8440 device controller for accessory makers.

    The first computers and accessories with Thunderbolt 4 ports are also expected to be available this year, including laptops based on Intel’s innovation program code-named “Project Athena.”


    Apple will include one of those host controllers on their Apple Silicon based Mac motherboards just like AMD OEMs will do to offer TB4 on their motherboards.

    MacProviclauyycspock1234watto_cobra

  • Apple Silicon M1 Macs do not support eGPUs

    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer
    22july2013 said:
    I will admit to not knowing too much about this, but my impression was that eGPUs were connected to Intel’s PCI standard, and therefore would only function with Intel chipsets.  So of course Apple Silicon would not support EGPUs.

    If I understood the keynote correctly, it seemed like the Apple CPUs and graphics chips were designed to work directly together, cutting the overhead of external chipsets and therefore much faster and more efficient.  This means you are counting on Apple’s graphics engineers as your sole source for graphics developments.  

    I was expecting to see a 16” MacBook Pro after the 13” MacBook Pro.  So I was disappointed that didn’t happen. But the logical conclusion is that the larger MacBook Pro systems are going to be considerably faster than the lesser models and therefore very much worth looking at.  I think we should pass judgement on Apple’s solutions here when the larger machine is introduced and benchmarked.

    However, I’m tempted to buy a 13” MacBook Pro just so I can say I have it and am on the cutting edge ... just the typical programmer’s ego I’m afraid.

    I concur with most of your post, although using the logic in your first paragraph we should not have been expecting Thunderbolt support, since Thunderbolt up until now "would only function with Intel chipsets." Somehow Apple managed to make Thunderbolt (v3) work, and (perhaps) they could have managed the same with PCI. Especially since the PCI standard is no longer managed by Intel but by PCI-SIG which has 800 members, but the primary members seem to be: Agilent, AMD, Dell, HP, Intel, Synopsys, NVIDIA, and Qualcomm. I don't see Apple in there.
    Every computer vendor in the world supports PCI. the M1 for sure has PCI or it would be Dead on Arrival. PCIe is the defacto standard that DDR memory runs over. The ignorance of some who called this Intel's PCI standard is sad in the year 2020.
    williamlondonelijahgjdb8167

  • Apple Silicon switch could lead to lower-cost Mac lineups, analyst says

    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer

    salmonstk said:
    gareth2210 said:
    The cost of the chip might reduce but the cost of developing the next one and keeping ahead of Intel will not. It's not just a matter of reusing iPhone chips - Mac chips will need their own special sauce. Apple should use any spare to invest in research to increase the distance between Macintosh and the rest.
    Ah but Apple has already laid out those costs.  Their R&D going up is in no small part to these chip developments.  But that money they have already spent.  The marginal cost of these chips is going to be much less that what they pay intel.  And they will not be splitting those "fixed" costs over millions of phones iPads and macs.
    CPU designs are never ``money already spent.'' It's a continuous ever increasing investment.
    williamlondoncat52

  • New Intel 10th-gen H-series chips launched, suitable for 2020 MacBook Pro refresh

    mdriftmeyermdriftmeyer
    These are not suitable for Mac. They are slower, hotter and far more power hungry than AMD. Results already show they are 14nm retreads.


    The base frequency of this chip is 2.4 GHz, and it has a regular 45 W TDP (sustained power), which can be run in cTDP up mode for 65 W. Two other plus points on this chip is that it is unlocked, for when an OEM provides more thermal headroom, and it supports DDR4-2933, which is an upgrade over the previous generation. Intel's recommended PL2 (turbo power) for the Core i9 is 135 W, and Intel says the recommended 'Tau' is set to 56 seconds for the i9, and 28 seconds for all the other CPUs. OEMs don't often adhere to these values for notebooks, but they are provided as a guide. It does mean that in order to hit 5.3 GHz, the Core i9 is by default allowed to take 135 W across two cores, or 67.5 W per core. Even at 60W per core, you're looking at 50A of current per core... in a laptop.


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