InspiredCode

tyler82 said:

mknelson said:

crowley said:

radarthekat said:

crowley said:

Trust Apple to make it way more complicated than it needs to be.

When is the last time you performed ignition timing on your vehicle.  Or swapped out a bad wrist pin on a piston?  Some folks have the tools to do these jobs at home, but they aren’t free or cheap.  Nor are the instructions simple. 

Do those folks rent them a week at a time, with the replacement cost up front, and “a fee and a tax” if they need them any longer than a week?

As I said, more complicated than it needs to be, to fuel Apple’s control freakery and Nicole and diming.

Nicole? Yes, that's pretty much how it goes if you rent automotive repair tools… Checks a few sites… deposit = purchase price.

A 1 ton piece of complicated equipment with an internal combustion engine vs. a 10 oz. handheld device.
Yep, totally apples and apples comparison.

They both require expensive tools owned or rented for many repairs. You are going to find the on the big and small side of devices. Nobody is going to buy a device that gets half the battery life for the size because it’s made super modular and accessible. Companies have tried that in the Android space and there was no consumer interest.

I don't think Apple is charting the right path, but something needs to be done about all the broken games on iOS and macOS.

For games, I think there should be a subset of Apple APIs that are guaranteed not to change (including a stable architecture using Rosetta or LLVM bitcode). People like their games to be able to run forever. If a game can never break API compatibility, we wouldn't have the problem of so many games that stop working. This would also help promote games to a form of media. Media should never stop working just because it is older.

There is a *BIG* reason why game publishers think the 30% cut they pay to Xbox and PlayStation is fair, but they feel the 30% cut to Apple isn't. Those platforms guarantee a game will run for the life of the platform without changes. If the game publisher doesn't have to retain developers to support the game throughout its lifespan they are getting their money's worth. They would make more money over the long term and they wouldn't have to face angry gamers when the game stops working. If Apple can provide the same guarantees, I think they can argue that they are pricing fairly.

Rogue01 said:

StrangeDays said:

humbug1873 said:

Time to fire the quality manager of that device. This is embarrassing, two major flaws, that look like the result of very poor quality control.

Here IRL, we manage with empathy and don’t end the careers of our teams for making technical mistakes in a very complex field (pro tip: “nothing is as simple as you think it is”).

Even Jobs didn’t fire that engineer who left his iPhone 4 prototype in a bar. We’re all human, dude. Glad you don’t manage at my org.

Jobs fired the MobileMe team.  Forstall was fired for the Apple Maps disaster.  A $1,599 display with lousy camera quality and a bricked software update is a big deal when it is a brand-new product that hasn't even been out for a month.  Sad that you don't see that as a big deal. I guess you don't believe in doing quality work.

In real life those were much more complicated situations often with clashing egos or major changes in direction. It is good that Apple doesn’t have arm chair managers. Issues like this happen routinely at all major tech companies. Sometimes requiring more extensive mitigation. In this case you just had to wait a day for Apple to update their signing. The camera still works and will be fixed. Most reviewers didn’t even notice the issue.

I’ve been waiting for a magsafe controller. Hope this happens! I’m pretty sure it would attach to the back and not the sides though.

I’m still curious about the supply chain rumor that Apple had a discrete GPU in the works code named Lifuka in addition to what we now know as the M1 (Tonga), M1 Pro (Jade C-Chop), and M1 Max/Ultra (Jade C-Die) cores. The other chips were real products, so this must be one last surprise. Could it be a GPU for a Pro Display XDR 2 that uses on display processing to get around Thunderbolt 4 bandwidth limits? Could it be a Mac Pro add on card for ray tracing acceleration? A companion chip for an XR headset or handheld game console? Multiple of these things?

It is also strange that the Max has an extra disabled 16-core neural engine and the Ultra has extra 32-core neural engine. The extra neural engines are only disabled in software. They don’t seem to be used for binning. Maybe a secret feature Apple will turn on later? In theory it could be used for real-time raytracing. The matrix math is similar to ML. Maybe will be introduced in an upcoming release of Metal for immediate use?