mattspace

Federation Square's importance, whether anyone likes the style of the architecture or not, is that it's a single, intact project, created for public benefit, in a single architectural style from a specific period in history. I'm not personally a fan of the style of Fed Square, and while I like most of Apple's architecture, to be fair, Apple's work is now an architectural "international generic" style, which is considered disposable by themselves as soon as technology (eg glass sheet sizes) changes. When it comes to their proposals for Fed Square, their first "Retro Pizza Hut" version was a more interesting building than the current design, but neither of them are worth breaking the existing Fed Square scheme.

The fact that a company as psychotically devoted to aesthetic purity as Apple, could even contemplate imposing its own taste and style on an existing, complete architectural scheme is, frankly, disappointing. It displays a fundamental disrespect for the location, and the existing architecture. There's no reason for Apple to have any visible branding presence if they want to be in that location, other than a simple sign with their logo. They managed to handle that quite well in historic buildings in Brisbane, London & Paris.

It's hard enough to protect significant "modern" architecture from the greed of developers, without companies like Apple trying to build temples to their own aggrandisement at the expense of culture in general.

Most importantly, the rejection of Apple's plan is a clear message that society is sick of back room deals between companies and governments, presented as fait accompli, to make sweeping changes to public spaces, and public infrastructure, without the public's consultation, or consent.

lkrupp said:

gmgravytrain said:

Apple probably doesn't care about gaming on Macs. It's just another win for Windows PCs, as usual.

Then why are sales of Windows PCs falling while sales of Macs are growing?

That doesn't tell the full story.

Low end PCs have tanked as tablets and phones eat a lot of tasks you used to need a pc to do, however the Mac has not been immune to this, look at year over year, the Mac is fairly static, if anything, it's going very slowly backwards, which isn't helped by Apple trying to take the Mac in the same thin, lightweight direction as the iPad, so it's competitive with, not complimentary to.

Now, look at gaming PCs specifically - so high performance machines, with high end GPUs (what Apple would sell as a "Pro VR Workstation" if they could bring themselves to offer an upgradable slotbox again - shoutout to the old Powermac 6500, compact dual-pci slot machine), that market has been growing at around 24% year over year for a number of years.

Contrary to some opinions, the average "serious" or hardcore gamer is actually closer to 35 years old, than 14.

Look outside games for a moment, there are a lot of Pro media creation apps that rely on OpenGL. Usually they're made by small teams, for specific tasks, and the only reason we get Mac versions, is because they can develop the interface using Qt, and the engine with OpenGL, and amortise the high cost, relative to number of seats, of maintaining a Mac version, across Windows and Linux.

The Mac is riding on Windows' coattails for a lot of these sorts of niche, heavy-lifting apps. We get a version, because we're low marginal cost. Once that changes these developers aren't going to re-tool for Metal, they're just going to dump macOS.

Would these products be better with Metal? No doubt, but that assumes that a Metal version is an option on the table.

AppleInsider said:

AppleInsider provides an overview of the current state of the two technologies, and what Apple needs to consider for creating its own headset design. 

As someone who is now doing a lot of actual content creation work inside VR - as in VR is now the work environment where I get a significant proportion of what I do, done, here's some observations:

• AR is an open plan communal workspace, with all of the associated distractions, and the need to build a visually clean work environment so you can concentrate on what you're doing. VR is having your own office, which is always clean and tidy and specific to your current needs.
• Anyone complaining that headsets are "too" bulky, needs to get out of the office and look at the basic safety gear any other industry requires. A VR headset is nothing compared to the gauntlets, welding helmet, leather protective jacket, angle-grinding shield etc I wear whenever I step into my analog studio. Not all computing technology revolves around people in Jony Ive's antiseptic white world.
• Apple does not have a single computer that is "good" for VR, because...
• AMD does not have a single GPU that meets the minimum spec for a machine you'd want to work in all day.
• Nvidia's 1080ti is the entrypoint for a serious VR station, and the top range AMD Vega 64 comes in around 30% below it in terms of powering 3D gaming engines at high resolution (which is what a VR environment is).
• Metal and Metal-optimisation will not make weaker hardware on the Mac outperform stronger hardware on Windows PCs. The Windows 3d ecosystem is not bogged down by inefficiency that Metal can "cure".
• Go look up how many non-game VR utility apps there are for macOS on Steam - most of the ones that were a part of the iMac Pro launch, still haven't been released. A year after Apple announced VR at WWDC 2017, there's a grand total of 4 non-game apps, as opposed to 192 for Windows.
• VR app makers are not going to flock to macOS in the absence of affordable, high performance GPU hardware that can be kept updated with annual upgrades. There's no ecosystem for high-performance 3D on the Mac.
• People looking for a VR machine, are not going to buy an eGPU solution that costs more, while only having 1/4 the PCI bandwidth of a machine with a motherboard PCI slot.
• The state of the art in VR, is not going to stop progressing for at least a decade, and until then, when goggle resolution exceeds visual acuity, and 3D hardware is capable of maintaining enormous models without slowing down, quality will never be "enough".
• In VR there's nothing of the OS for the user to interact with, every VR app is its own universe, providing all the UI elements, file navigation etc. Headset makers, and Steam, provide the launcher apps, so you don't even need the operating system to manage starting and stopping the apps. VR makes the operating system on the computer as irrelevant to the user, as the firmware in the bios. Gravity Sketch on Windows is the same as Gravity Sketch on macOS, it just performs better on Windows.
• Tracking without lighthouses, no matter how good it is, is unlikely to be as good as lighthouse tracking, and VR's succeed / fail margin is in the final percentages of how good it is. Non lighthouse tracking is probably ok for AR, because AR is always about what you're looking at in your current field of vision. Lighthouses let you track objects that aren't in your field of view, and free you from spending any processing budget on recognising the ambient environment in order to track the wearer's position.

Most importantly:

• The experience of creating in VR is more compelling than any user experience of any device Apple makes. Next to Tiltbrush in a Vive, painting apps on the iPad Pro are banal and dull. VR apps are a new artistic & creative medium, capturing the ability to draw in space, which sculptors have been chasing since the dawn of time. The iPad Pro is, to be uncharitable, the ruination of the no-safety-net thrill of paper.

I've been mac-based since 1994. I'd give up the Mac in a second if I had to choose between it, and a user-upgradable Nvidia-powered VR station. macOS being "better" or "nicer" simply isn't a part of the equation.