linuxplatform

Xed said:

mpantone said:

My guess is that Microsoft hit the pause button after having second thoughts about bolting on a half-baked 64-bit Windows fork onto what appears to be a touchscreen netbook to compete against the next generation Apple desktop operating system and the mature iPadOS.

Microsoft does not have the luxury of screwing this one up otherwise they'll end up with another Windows Mobile debacle. They already conceded the paradigm shifting smartphone market.

It would be great for someone to come up with a competitive alternative to Apple's offerings but Microsoft can't put out something that is appears to be three years behind to the marketplace. In fact, the points that it is running 64-bit and on ARM instruction CPUs isn't all that important to Joe Consumer. It just needs to perform well.

Windows 10X competes more with Chromebook than it does Macs. Unfortunately for MS they’re having to fight on multiple fronts for both the massive low-end market and the profitable high-end market. Neither of these will be their undoing but it surely doesn’t help their bottom line.

Both the low end market and the high end market are profitable. Selling 10 items at a $1 margin is the same as selling 1 item at a $10 margin. Especially since you can also sell services to those 10. Also for Microsoft the "high end market" is servers and cloud where Apple doesn't compete at all. And please realize that Microsoft sells PLENTY of Office 365 licenses to Chromebook and MacBook owners. So either way they are fine. The Windows desktop market could completely dry up for them and they would still be a Fortune 25 company. In other words, this isn't the Gates/Ballmer Microsoft. 

ericthehalfbee said:

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

About time. They are our devices, we should be able to run whatever we want on them including a competing app store. If Apple thinks 30% is fair then it can try competing with app stores where the cut is 10% and see how well it does. What if a $10 app cost only $8 on another app store? How many customers would stick with Apple then?

I bet all of them will stick with Apple.

Privacy, security, vetted Apps, single entity to trust your credit card to...these are all easily worth a couple dollars.

Apps are dirt cheap. The average iOS user spends less than $10 a month on Apps. Saving $2 for increased risk of malware or other issues is not enough to make people switch.

And that’s assuming prices are actually cheaper. More likely they charge the same price and pocket the extra money for themselves.

You do realize that "sticking with Apple" and "playing your favourite video game" are two different things right? You can "stick with Apple" while playing Fortnite on a Nintendo Switch. Or by buying a $100 Android phone or tablet and playing Fortnite - and Stadia, xCloud and GeForce Now - on it. That is in fact what nearly all the Fortnite fans on iOS are going to do ... play Fortnite on another platform while communicating with their friends via iMessage.

mdriftmeyer said:

9secondkox2 said:

As much as Apple has their reasons, this is not a good look. 

A consumer buys a device, has an internet connection, so they should be able to do what they want. 

This is kind of shocking. 

If those services were full of horrible code, that’s one thing. 

But blocking them based on business model? 

It’s really kind of difficult to take Apples side here. 

I owe MS an apology for a post I made a few days ago. Really surprised here. 

Let me know when Microsoft xCloud publishes their APIs for review and their architecture and its necessary communication and security privileges open to share across its Azure Cloud back end with iOS security protocols and privileges. Same goes for Google. If folks insist this is a sandboxed dumb terminal ala VT3270 emulation just leveraging iOS drawing services aka a video stream then you’ll believe in anything.

Sure. I can tell you already ... they use the same APIs and architectures that their other streaming apps that are already on iOS use. That is because the apps that Stadia and xCloud use are no different from other apps. The only difference is the content being streamed. We know this because Apple said precisely this in their statement explaining why they rejected the app.

Hey, you are perfectly free to accept, defend and promote Apple's position. (I myself have no problem with it because my position is that if you want Stadia and xCloud, just buy a device that supports them. It is easy and cheap to do so ... much less than buying a gaming rig, a gaming console ... or an iPad or iPhone for that matter. If Apple doesn't want to support a particular product or service, fine. It is their choice in the democratic free market capitalist system that we have and forcing Apple to support a product or service that they don't want me smacks of socialism - democratic socialism or some other form - and as a right winger I adamantly oppose such measures. ) But please, just stick to the factual stuff when you do.

Kicking Fortnite out of the App Store is what Epic wants. That Apple allows direct payments for other apps but not them would play a huge role in any lawsuit that they file. Though the columnist is making a distinction between physical and digital goods, a case can be made that such a distinction is arbitrary and self-serving.

That said,  I wish that Epic Games would not do this. There is no evidence that either Epic or their consumers are hurt by the 30% fee. A small, struggling indie company would have a better standing to make this case, not the #1 gaming title in the world for the last 3 years. Besides Epic can be accused of wielding its own market position in a dubious manner, and should were this unnecessary dispute get that far.

mdriftmeyer said:

Game streaming performance is piss poor, unless you have Fiber 1Gb Up/1Gb Down, and on top of that an extra layer of latency due to decompression on the fly frame by frame, with them pushing up  to 30 seconds of pre-streamed, decompressed framing at you to attempt a smooth experience. All of this taxes the system resources. Sorry, but it's a shit show and Google knows it.

Microsoft failed at its own Mobile OS. It now wants to circumvent iOS and would Android but for the fact Android is a shit show and it already allows circumvention as a substitute for exploiting to hundreds of billions in information adverts and third party targeted ad selling which compromises all personal privacy--ala Facebook and Google. Microsoft is happy to capitalize on that and ignore the privacy concerns. Its sole focus is to exploit anywhere it can because it is seeing its peak in potential new revenues streams severely limited by its own decisions over the past decade.

Apple with it's well thought out ecosystem adds new markets when it feels the cross pollination is well tested, extends the vertical services and keeps expanding and offering quality products/services without selling out their user base personal information to the Government or third parties. The vast majority of profits in the entire computing industry for mobile goes through Apple.

Microsoft and Google want that to end. They cry foul and play bedfellows while they continue to syphon information from their customers in exchange for a perceived short-term `freedom' that for the life of me is nothing more than a slow dependency on all information going through them both.

Apple has no interest in monetizing on your personal shopping needs, your addictions, your habits, your rituals, etc. They provide you with an ecosystem of platforms that let you decide how you want to work, be entertained and invest your life's energy. If their approach is not your cup of tea there is always Microsoft through Google, Samsung through Google, Google, or other Android vendors through Google. Their platform is familiar to Microsoft as it is as filled with the similar types of Malware that Microsoft made billions off of providing `security services' while keeping the fundamental designs of its OS broken and available for exploit. Android does the same under Google. 

Apple pays bounties for improved security testing [exploits] and people fall silent. Before, they were inundated with whining that not all security is flawless and all their services are bug free. By comparison it's just assumed Android is a maze of hacks and broken services, but open for you to tinker on--thus perceived freedom.

You want your games streamed then use the Web interface, Microsoft/Google and stop whining that you aren't the creator of Apple's Ecosystem you so enviously wish you owned.

Steve Jobs won. Check mate.

1. Game streaming is bad unless you have good Internet? Well genius ... CONSOLE AND RIG GAMERS HAVE GIGABIT INTERNET. And they plan to heavily take advantage of 5G on mobile. So you flat out don't know what you are talking about.

2. Microsoft doesn't want to "circumvent iOS." They want to be on iOS but Apple won't let them. What is wrong with you people? Seriously, what gives? Are you blaming Microsoft for creating a product that Apple won't approve? What other companies need Apple's permission first? Again, what is wrong with you folks?

3. Microsoft may have failed with their own mobile OS but they succeeded massively with their own gaming platform while lots of other more established gaming companies have fallen by the wayside. They are levering the 100+ million people that have bought XBoxes and the 65 million people who currently subscribe to XBox Live by giving them a cloud gaming service. Which A) they have been planning and testing for at least 5 years - seriously I first heard about this service 5 years ago - and Sony was considering a similar service but abandoned it and C) Google, Amazon, Steam and Nvidia have entered this space or will so soon within the next 2 years which forces them to even if they didn't really want to. 

4. Since 2013, Apple's "well thought out ecosystem" has been primarily lifting innovations first implemented on Android, Windows 10 and Linux. It is real easy to hang back, see what works, adopt it yourself and then act like you invented it.

5. Microsoft and Google want that to end ... when they both applied to be on iOS and were rejected? And when Stadia will still work on macOS? Again, what reality are you living in? And as I asked earlier ... should Microsoft and Google not offer products unless they are going to be supported on iOS? That is an absolutely insane notion to take when you consider that Apple makes virtually none of their products and services available apart from Apple hardware. Talk about thinking the world revolves around you ...

6. Steve Jobs won? Great. But Google won too. They went from being the #5 search company to at Fortune 25 company in fifteen years. They have launched two successful operating systems since 2008, one of them the most widely used and successful ones in history as well as two widely used programming languages (Dart and Golang) and a ton of frameworks like node.js. And Microsoft? They won PC computing. Apple has 7% market share and at times it was as low as 3%. 

7. Another person who trashes Android without ever having used it. It is funny ... the Android and Microsoft users that you hate use Apple products all the time. We don't hate MacBooks (in fact I use them heavily), iPads (which I have used in the past) or iPhones. We just like other platforms as good or better. Somehow your brain can't comprehend that. Because something is wrong with it. 

8. Microsoft and Google aren't whining. Google hasn't said squat about xCloud not being on iOS. Ever. Meanwhile, Microsoft only responded to Apple's distorted claims! Apple customers were angry at Microsoft for canceling the beta testing and pulling the product. Apple responds by claiming that xCloud "didn't meet their standards." Microsoft - in order to keep their XBox fans who own iPhones from targeting them - pointed out A) that Apple rejects all video game streaming platforms on a blanket level so it was not their fault that Apple rejected their app as there was nothing that they could have done to get it approved and that Apple is the only general purpose platform that rejects such apps. Both are 100% true. And Microsoft was 100% correct in telling it. So what, you wanted Microsoft to take the hit on this from their paying customers just to save Apple a little heat? Why?

Personally, I could care less who supports what. When I want a product that isn't available on one platform, I buy something that it is available on. When a family member wanted to stream iTunes content to a TV, I bought an Apple TV. That I already had an Android TV didn't matter ... my TV has multiple HDMI ports so I just used another one. So it is folks like you who claim that Microsoft shouldn't create a service that Apple wouldn't approve of in the first place that are the ones with the real problems in their thinking. It isn't Microsoft's job to tend to Apple's business philosophy or market position or reputation. Microsoft has business needs of their own, and using xCloud to promote A) their XBox division and their Azure division absolutely meets them. And look, there are 3 billion Android users and like 2.5 billion Windows users. Microsoft doesn't need iOS for xCloud to succeed. Most XBox Live subscribers have an Android device already - XBox apps have lots of installs on Android - and those who don't will simply buy one.

ericthehalfbee said:

linuxplatform said:

ericthehalfbee said:

Honest question because I haven’t been keeping up.

Is Stadia available on Xbox or PlayStation? Is PlayStation Now or xCloud available on each other’s platforms?

Ugh. Not this again.

1. Microsoft stated that iOS was the only general purpose operating system where video game streaming apps like this are not supported. XBox is not a general purpose operating system or platform. It is an appliance that runs video games. It is more similar to the original iPod or the first generation Apple TV appliances - designed for playing music in the former and streaming from a few preloaded apps in the latter - than iOS, iPadOS, Android, ChromeOS, Windows Desktop, Windows Server or desktop/server Linux. (Facepalm)

2. That being said, Microsoft does allow EA Access, a competing video game subscription streaming app on XBox.

3. That also being said, Microsoft would absolutely 100 love a subscription service for Playstation games on XBox. They would approve it in a heartbeat. The only issue is that Sony doesn't want to do it for their own competitive purposes.

Your trolling is truly pathetic.

All right. My trolling is pathetic. That is given. With that said ... can you actually rebut anything that I said with facts? No. You can't.

1. Is actually true. 
2. Is actually true.
3. Is actually true.

And you know it. That is why rather than opposing my facts with facts of your own, you resort to personal attacks. My goodness, you are as bad as the fellow who claimed "No one would buy Office 365 if it were a cloud/web only app!" when I reminded him of the likes of Salesforce (the original SaaS which was in business 8 years before the iPhone was ever invented) and Google Suite (another massive SaaS success that predated the iPhone). 

I might be a troll but at least I am a troll with facts. So what does that make you? Seriously, Apple fans need to learn a lot more about the wider technology world that exists beyond their own platform. Linux, Windows and Android device buyers have to be by definition because our devices come from any number of manufacturers - Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Dell, HP, Amazon, Lenovo, LG, Acer, Asus to name a very few - so that forces us to take a wider view of what is out there in order to find the products that are best for us. Apple fans should do the same. Even if you still buy Apple products at the end of the day - which you will - it would prevent the sort of ridiculous, flat out "I have no idea what is going on out there" comments that dominate Apple sites like this one.

Before sdw2001 said:

LOL. Written by someone who has absolutely no clue how broken the patent system is. I have a family member who worked in it for years.  The Eastern District of Texas is the most active patent court in the country. These non-practicing entities are not the same as Apple at all.  Yes, both own patents. But Apple uses them to protect the technology that goes into the actual devices and software they sell. These “companies” produce nothing.  Not only do they not produce products, but they don’t even really contribute to the economy. They are leeches.  

This is simply wrong. Patents are intellectual property, an asset just like stocks, bonds and real estate. You sound like Oliver Stone's anti-capitalist rant in Wall Street where he made the utterly ridiculous claim that being a stockbroker is an inherently evil profession, similar to the folks who rant against private equity, finance, fossil fuel companies (and increasingly tech companies) because they believe that the socialism fairy is going to come along and put a happiness amulet under their pillow at night or something.

Here is the reality: if a company creates intellectual property via a patent but lacks the ability, scale or know-how to create, market and sell a product based on that patent then they should absolutely sell that patent for cash. Also, if a company that created a patent, sold a product at one time but decided that they wanted to exit the business then again sell that patent for cash. Further, were such a company to go bankrupt - as most do eventually - then yes absolutely the bankruptcy courts should sell their patents to cover their obligations to creditors. 

Also, by your ridiculous definition, ARM HOLDINGS IS A LEECH. Further, by your logic, since Samsung most definitely isn't a leech - they do massive amounts of their own R&D and indeed Apple themselves uses and benefits from their innovations - then Apple should have no case against them right? Samsung should be able to just walk in and copy and take whatever they want. Why not? Seriously, under your theory - that patents should only be held by companies currently manufacturing and selling products directly relevant to the patents - then we would soon, immediately and quickly have no effective patent system. Is that really what you want to see? And for what? Just so Apple can pad still more to their already highest in the industry profit margins? And I bet that you are one of those fellows who felt that Samsung should have been driven out of the industry over "home buttons and rounded corners" but that Apple should be allowed to pay pennies on the dollar to Qualcomm and everyone else because "they're Apple and it is their designs and integration of parts that give patents their economic value in the first place" right? 

Look, PanOptis has gone after others over these LTE patents too: BlackBerry, Huawei, Kyocera, and ZTE including winning an $11 million judgment against Huawei. The original patents in this area were owned by Ericsson, LG, Samsung and Panasonic. Ericsson is longer with us, so their IP was sold by the bankruptcy courts. Panasonic, they got out of this line of business years ago. Samsung is still very much involved in this - they recently released a white paper proposing 6G standards to be approved and adopted by 2030 - but neither they or LG seems to be in the licensing business. So Samsung, LG and Panasonic likely sold their IP in this area for cash. All these patents were bundled into a common portfolio to maximize their value, and the portfolio has been bouncing around a bit. 

I see that a lot of Apple-centric sites have been claiming that these NPEs are patent trolls. What they fail to disclose is that Apple never at any point claimed that they weren't using someone else's IP. Instead, Apple made the absurd claim that the patents were invalid despite fully knowing that a recent previous lawsuit - against Huawei - said that they were! So there was no way for Apple to win this case and no basis for it. And there is no way for Apple to win this case on appeal because that would be impossible without overturning the judgment against Huawei also. Apple's only hope is for this judgment to be reduced on appeal, but there is a limit to how much. The judgment against Huawei was a lot smaller, but Huawei doesn't sell anywhere near as many phones and tablets as Apple does and doesn't generate anywhere near their profits. So a per device charge based on the Huawei rate would obviously mean less than half a billion but also far more than $11 million. Also, the NPE in question requested that Apple licensing terms on valid patents that they legitimately owned. From what I read, Apple didn't even respond to their requests to license the tech. Apple instead made the bizarre claim that the patents were invalid. Now we have two court cases which clearly establish otherwise. 

But hey, you go ahead and continue to claim that a patent is only valid when Apple holds it. Or that patents can only be enforced against Apple's competitors ... for example I am certain that you 100% favor Oracle in their lawsuit against Google. Never mind that Oracle only got the Java patents by buying a bankrupt Oracle that actually did the IP work, meaning the same way that PanOptis got their IP. Fortunately no federal, international or foreign judge, jury or trade body is going to agree with you.

Except that his experiences are corroborated by tons of other developers as well as by independent studies frequently reported in the media. Meanwhile all the other side has Apple public relations missives happily disseminated by all the journalism and creative writing grads in the media who love Apple products and know nothing about the business world and know nothing about anything in tech that doesn't appear on their iPhone, iPad or iMac as an app or service.

.ericthehalfbee said:

cropr said:

mjtomlin said:

"Thousands of apps on the App Store approved by Apple accept direct payments, including commonly used apps like Amazon, Grubhub, Nike SNKRS, Best Buy, DoorDash, Fandango, McDonald's, Uber, Lyft, and StubHub. We think all developers should be free to support direct payments in all apps."

Is that what you think? Haha. These types of developers are nothing more than parasites.

Look, I get it and think Apple needs to do something about how the App Store is run, but these developers who want what amounts to a free ride are just being greedy and stupid. It is App Store revenue that allows Apple to give away free OS upgrades, which in turn allows Apple to push the platform (and developers) forward.

Maybe Apple should create tiered fees for their Developer Program?
$99/year to develop apps sold through the App Store - Apple gets their 30% cut. Basically the same as it is now.
$999,999/year to develop apps sold via outside payment system - Apple gets nothing extra.

Some of these larger developers could easily cover a million a year. And smaller developers can still start with a hundred dollar fee and if/when their app takes off, switch to the higher tier.

I am an app developer, and you have absolutely no clue whatsoever about the business of apps.  You are blinded completely by the few big ones like Supercell (Clash of Clans, ...).  If Apple would $1M for to develop, there would no App store, Only major companies like Google, Facebook, ... would be willing to invest.   Statistics show that 99% of the apps are loss making.  The big profits are made by a few very profitable app companies.

Just 3 examples of the real app business world:

1. Of the 11 apps that I put on the App Store, 7 are loss making, 2 are about break even and 1 is making a nice profit.  This last app is profitable because it is multi-platform and because I can avoid the 30% Apple tax by charging the customer directly. 
   
2. If I would only make a iOS version of my apps, all my apps would be loss making.   Developing an app simultaneously for iOS, Android and Web costs roughly 40% more than making it for iOS only, but the revenues are more than double. So the "fact" that Apple is offering me the market I was dreaming of, is a fake fact
   
3. One of my colleague app business owners had spent 40.000 Euro in developing a new app, when Apple announced a change in its app developing guidelines.  His app could no longer pass the approval and he went broke 3 months later.   This is the business reality that you fail to understand.

Like in any other business, an app business owner want to cut costs wherever possible.   This has nothing to do with greediness or stupidity but with normal business practice.

I don't mind to pay a  commission to any business partner as long as that partner provides the right value for the commission.  Like all developers have discovered, the 30% cut Apple is imposing, does not provide the value it promises.    A survey among my paying customers revealed that none of them discovered the apps via the App Store, they did it via the direct marketing campaign I launch and paid.     Which basically means that Apple has just become a secure payment processor.  The market price of a secure payment processor is 2.7% and not 30%.   No wonder app developers try to avoid the Apple tax,

.

Nobody gives a damn about your repeated claims of being a developer while spewing all sorts of bullshit other developers know is false.