macplusplus

InspiredCode said:

macplusplus said:

InspiredCode said:

macplusplus said:

danvm said:

macplusplus said:

danvm said:

macplusplus said:

danvm said:

macplusplus said:

Why would Apple leave that game streaming thing to Google or Microsoft while they can do it better than both? 

Because, as today, Google and MS are doing better than Apple in gaming.

Thanks to Apple Silicon Apple is already years ahead on that. Besides, they can offer that streaming to all game developers who sell in the AppStore without alienating them and maintaining the rich content already on sale.

I don't think that Apple Silicon is the magic cure to the issue Apple has with the gaming business.  

How so? MS couldn’t even maintain three Halo games on iOS !.. As they failed on mobile computing, they spectacularly failed on mobile gaming too. 

When I said MS and Google doing better,  was about their gaming cloud services.  The only thing that Apple have is Apple Arcade, and it looks like is not doing good.  
https://www.macrumors.com/2020/06/30/apple-arcade-game-strategy-shift/

The point is not the issue Apple you claim has with the gaming business, the point is Apple Silicon IS the cure to the game streaming issue on mobile by bringing in low bandwidth low latency high quality Metal rendering and high FPS.

Interesting how Nintendo had the worst performing console compare to the Xbox and PS4 (I think even even slower than Apple devices), and developed some of the best games in this generation.  This is an example on how hardware is not an excuse to perform well in the gaming market.

Apple Arcade is not a cloud service, it is a distribution model. Nothing runs on “Apple Arcade” everything runs on user’s device.

I know what Apple Arcade, and the issue is that is the only option Apple offers a part of the long list of IAP games in the App Store.  IMO, Apple don't have something better than xCloud or Stadia.  

No, they don't have as streaming but they DO have as native apps. Because they DO have better devices, much better than Celeron Chromebooks. What benefit would xCloud and Stadia bring to  iOS users other than making available all those old titles which already exhausted their commercial lifecycle as standalone products? How would a rendering made for Celeron Chromebook appeal to the owners of modern iPhones which shine with all their HDR, Dolby Vision, Metal 2 and alike? There are a lot of pirate streaming services on the web with their low quality crappy content, do you watch any of those or do you subscribe to a quality streaming service? If you want to play a game streamed for Chromebooks you don't need an iPhone, buy a cheap Android phone or tablet or a Chromebook, that's it...

danvm said:

Again, Nintendo didn't need Apple Silicon to bring some of the best games in the market.  Second, Apple perform well as a a platform in the mobile gaming market.  But they have not develop any games (a part from Chess in macOS).  And trying to push Apple TV haven't succeed.  These are some of the reason I think Apple is not doing good in gaming.  

That's another issue and a more broad one. Today Apple provides the best productivity computers and mobile devices that can make their owners decent game players too and also provides the best core support for gaming down to the Metal (of the GPU). Game studios develop, Apple publishes. Apple has performed that job fairly well.

Apple chips are great, but it isn’t trivial to port from an immediate mode renderer designed for GDDR6 memory to a bandwidth constrained—but fast—tile deferred renderer.  No doubt Apple GPUs are great, but the port is non-trivial.  Porting an older game like tomb raider (released 2013) would be easier.  The Xbox series x games that are streamed will be a decade before they could run on mobile.  By then the developer would have moved on. There are platform exclusives that can only be streamed. The file size is also a dealbreaker.  Even 7 year old tomb raider is large.  Streaming is the only way to go for this class of game.

Streaming is also a great way to access older games that will never be ported to modern hardware. 

AAA class games could be built from scratch for Metal, but there isn’t a large enough market for that right now.  Most development pipelines take years even if Apple were to subsidize starting a console class game store.  You would at least need something like streaming to bridge the gap.

Yes yes and yes... in theory... In practice, those things are handled by the game engine, and all mainstream game engines have been ported to Metal.

And they brought a lot of superior games to the AppStore...

All mainstream engines have not been ported. Most engines used by indies have. It takes more then just a Metal port to get a game to run on another platform.  All of the games art assets and shaders need to be optimized for the GPU.  This is compounded by the fact Apple GPUs work much different then Xbox/PC GPUs.  I think Apple is using a better design that all GPUs should switch to, but it is not currently the dominant design for non-mobile gaming.  Consoles and PC GPU vendors don’t want to make the switch yet since it is taking a step back before you can take two steps forward and you end up with a lot of incompatible software.

We are probably talking a year of effort per game to do the port with some games being impossible to reduce memory bandwidth enough.  TBDR GPUs like Apples have tricks you can do in the shaders to keep data on the chip. With the right optimizations you generally only need about 25% of the bandwidth of an Xbox GPU. However these devices use GDDR6. That is still a huge gap to bridge.

Additionally, I don’t think publishers are going to release 100GB plus games on platforms that often only have 64-256GB of storage.  For some games streaming is likely to be a better solution due to their sheer size.  Don’t expect it to stop here.  In a few years we may see terabyte sized games. Unreal Engine 5 has what they call nanite technology that encourages use of massive assets since the engine can efficiently deconstruct them to manageable amounts of data on the fly.  This will be popular since these assets are easier to create then traditional assets.  You still need to store these massive assets in the game.  

Streaming is the future for many games since they are just too big to store local.  Technology like nanite will continue to make games bigger.  As gamers get used to instant play and streaming gets better, nobody will want to go back. In 5 years, I expect we will see consoles start to disappear and go full streaming.  I think AR and casual games are the biggest niches that may stay local due to the technical constraints to streaming AR content and ability to play anywhere.  Apple should focus on the class of games that will stay local for their store and not create AppStore rules that work against how the game industry is changing.  The future of AAA games is streaming only.  Nothing Apple does will stop that. 

I am really excited about the prospect of AR games.  Apple is well suited to rule that market, but they gave up on the AAA market a long time ago.

I hope Apple does something to allow this business model in the walled garden.  At the moment this leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

macmarcus said:

macplusplus said:

macmarcus said:

A lot of comments but not a lot of experience - which is understandable because small population has problems. They make wearable ECG's "patches" such as the iRhythm Zio that can be worn for continuous monitoring for up to 14 days usually. Every heart beat is recorded (not just sampled like with Apple Watch or ECG done manually like an Apple Watch ECG) and there is a button to press if you experience any symptom so those can have a more thorough review. They just stick in on the left upper chest area. Fairly unobtrusive. Again, this continuously monitors - while resting, exercising, sleeping, etc. Apple Watch has a role to play for sure, but it isn't continuous and seems to cause more concern than actually catching anything. AFib is something that increases certain health risks but mostly isn't the boggy man waiting to kill you. Glad this doctor had the knowledge to figure it out "early" ... surprised he hadn't had a stress test at his age already?

You describe a rythm Holter, a multi channel portable ECG device. The point is, when you feel odd, the Holter is not available (unless you make one ready at home and pay a fortune for its analysis software). You go to the hospital and the symptom may have gone away already when they attach one to your chest. Apple Watch is always present and you have always chance to record the symptom as soon as it happens. The concern issue is just a stress management thing. If you have to be concerned you don't need Apple Watch, you can use any thing or event for that.

No, I am NOT describing a Holter - those things are HUGE with wires. The iRhythm Zio is tiny (a "patch" that is 100% self contained with sensors, battery etc.) and inexpensive and monitors EVERY heartbeat....ECG....for days. Very effective. You clearly do not know what you are talking about so why even comment? Apple Watch does not continuously monitor heartbeats (it samples) and the ECG function you have to manually do. The Apple Watch AFIb detection is from sampling and comparing samples to known AFib patient patterns. I was a full participant in the Sanford AFib heart study ... which by the way had nothing to do with Apple Watch ECG feature. Back to the article and the doctor, I am surprised he was clueless about having ADVANCED coronary artery disease AND a serious heart valve problem. A simple 2 minute heart CT with calcification score (test under $100) would have reveled the issue. At 66 years old and being male, he should have had that test especially if he had higher cholesterol levels, smoked, overweight, or any symptoms. Basically his exercise was a mini stress test which revealed the issue to follow up with regardless of his analysis of his ECG. If you experience shortness of breath, dizziness, or irregular beats while excising, at full lead ECG and stress test would be in order for your next physical with you PCP. https://www.irhythmtech.com/professionals/why-zio

cropr said:

sflocal said:

Peza said:

sflocal said:

dysamoria said:

I’m absolutely with the developer here, on this issue.

And I’m firmly in the Apple camp.  Apple is the one doing all the work obtaining and keeping its large base of customers willing to pay for apps.  If 30% is too high given what Apple does they’re more than happy to go to the Android camp, where they probably make zero money.

70% of something is better than 100% of nothing.

whiners.

I bet you own Apple shares. Never on the side of the customer, and this developer never stated they don’t want to give Apple its cut, their complaint is clearly over Apple forcing them to take money from the apps customers, basically here’s a free trial, enter all your payment details and we will charge you if you don’t cancel, it’s a dirty trick purely designed to milk money from the customer, putting the giant corporation Frits and foremost and the customer a very far behind lonely second. 

It’s not only an anti competitive move but very clearly anti consumer and I’d argue in come countries potentially illegal. I’m glad the developer stood up to Apple on this one.

As a developer myself, I remember easily the years of boxed software and the difficulty of actually making money in that market.  Factor in overhead, marketing, distribution, and everything else associated with selling independently, a 30% cut to access that market is chump change.

Apple created this market that developers have access to.  Not the other way around.

keep whining.

I am also a developer. My most profitable app manages elections for general assemblies of companies and non profit organizations.   It is available on iOS , on Android and as a web application.  I am offering a free trial version of my app: maximum 10 voters and 5 voting topics.   Organizations must register and pay for more voters or more topics. There is no auto-billing.   The app was approved without issues, but reading this article I am not so sure anymore if the next version will pass.  

If I would only make the app for iOS, I would have no sales.  My customers (the organizations) want a solution where all  shareholders/members can vote, irrespective of the device the voters are using. A survey (110 organizations replied) revealed that exactly 0 discovered my app via the App Store.   Which basically means that the marketing story you are telling does not apply for my app: Apple does not bring me any customers.  But of course for your apps this could be different   

After the survey I made the decision to limit the registration and the payment functionality to the web app only, so I don't have to pay 30% for something that does not bring real value.   Voters can still use the iOS and Android app for all elections: paid and unpaid 

foregoneconclusion said:

Apple Arcade is going to evolve over time, just as their other services have. Looking at what games have been the most popular or engaging is what you're supposed to do. Why wouldn't you want a greater percentage of those types of games? For me personally, the $60 for a year of Apple Arcade has already been worth it. Oceanhorn 2 provided over 20 hours of play. Pinball Wizard provided 10-12 hours. Shinseki: Into the Depths was around 15-20 hours. I've played Towers of Everland for 15 hours. And I'm currently about 5 hours into Beyond A Steel Sky. That's a good chunk of time for the price...probably more than I expected. 

danvm said:

dewme said:

danvm said:

melgross said:

as for the glass feel. Well, I’ve been over that for years now. You just have to stop thinking about it.

I do a lot of writing in my Surface Pro and it's very nice the you can change the friction level by replacing the tip in the Pen. The writing experience improves a lot.  I think Apple should do the same, instead of just stop thinking about it.  

Another thing that IMO will improve the writing experience with the Pencil is a eraser. It's very quick and easy turn the Pen to erase something in the Surface instead of the double tap you have to do with the Pencil.  

Actually, Apple nailed the erase thing with Scribble. All you have to do is “scratch out” the text you want to erase, as if you’re trying to black it out. It works great and is much better than flipping the pen on a Surface. A lot of things work great with Scribble once you conform to the tool’s expectations, and I guess as others have said, get over the unnatural “writing on glass” ergonomic. I’m not there yet, so either I need more training, the tool needs more training, or some combination of the two.

Like I said, this is a tough problem that many technically and human factors experts have been attacking for decades. Some of them put more emphasis on the pen side of the equation and others put more emphasis on the writing surface part of the equation. As users, we are the in the middle and our experience between pen/pencil and paper/tablet really determines how well the system delivers on the promise. Apple’s approach seems to be very successful for artists and sketchers but handwriting is a tougher problem to solve.

For me, part of the problem is that I haven’t actually been writing a whole lot for a very long time. Handwriting is no longer my primary means of getting thoughts committed to a permanent or semi-permanent form. My muscle memory associated with handwriting is way out of shape. I suspect I’m not alone, especially when I see how adept younger people who grew up with smart devices in their hands from a very early age are at text entry on phones. I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of younger people struggle to write using a pen/pencil on paper. Perhaps they would prefer writing on glass, but I suspect they’d rather just type. 

I didn't knew about the "scratch out" for erasing.  For some reason, I miss that in the WWDC keynote.  That's a big improvement over double tap.  Being better than the eraser, maybe.  I can see cases where the eraser is easier vs scratching out. For example, erasing long part of a note or erasing multiples notes in a PDF document requires less effort with the eraser vs scratching out each note. At the same time, I suppose there are cases where scratching out would be better. 

Regarding the writing experience, I think Apple should improve it.  Apple drawing experience is better than the Surface, but writing experience IMO is better with the Surface. And friction is one of the reasons.  I see no reason that I have to adapt to a worst experience when you can improve with something as simple as replacing the tip, as MS did with the Pen.  

Regarding taking notes vs typing, I agree with you that many people prefer typing for most things.  But there are cases where note taking is better, for example when annotating a PDF or Word document, or when working with equations.  In addition, it's completely silent compared to keyboards, and that's a big plus in conference rooms

It's nice to see Apple and MS improving in this area, specially for me, since I have to take notes in a weekly basis.