neoncat

lowededwookie said:

I’m with Raymondai, once AppleTV is given console power and people make proper games for it then we’ll finally see a change in attitude towards gaming on Apple gear.

The problem in the past with AAA games on Mac is they didn’t actually port the games. They lazily wrapped the Windows version in Cider and expected Mac users to be happy with the performance hit running an emulator gives.

Ive said it once and I’ll say it a million times, developers and publishers are their own worst enemies. No one is going to pay top dollar for a AAA game being wrapped in Cider that doesn’t have the same performance or features as the PC or console games. I mean how many games ported to Macs can play multiplayer against PC?

But Apple is changing that with GameKit and Metal the latter of which has been prove. In many cases to be more powerful than DirectX. In fact in the past, when a game has been written for Mac hardware alongside PC hardware the Macs have outperformed the PCs. World of Warcraft was one of them.

This leads to the point made in the article, most people just don’t understand how powerful Macs are compared to their PC counterparts mostly because PC users are pathetically moulded to believe higher numbers equals better performance.

Most of this is complete nonsense and an insult to companies like Aspyr and Feral Interactive that worked tirelessly porting games using native toolkits for years. 

beowulfschmidt said:

Besides, people would add so many to the lock screen that it would destroy the aesthetic Apple has carefully engineered into the phone.

/s

I see your /s, but in reality, the self-anointed guardians and champions of Apple's imaginary aesthetic superiority are birthing kittens left and right all over the internet about the further lock-screen customizations, ability to arbitrarily place icons on the home screen, and (especially) the ability to tint or change icon colors. It's supposedly "ruining" the "preciousness" (not my words) of Apple aligning users to a default. 

Not since I last wandered into an audiophile forum have I seen such hilarity. 

Kierkegaarden said:

Who is the “we” that wants this?  The reason they put this out is because hand recognition sucks on other headsets.  Vision Pro nails hand/finger input, just like the iPhone did in 2007.  This is a key differentiator.

Because we are creatures of habit. For example, the on-screen keyboard of an iPad is quite good, yet Apple considers its various keyboard cases to be must-have accessories, and most people buy them. Not only that, but the entirety of the iPad interface is designed around even the fattest of fingers being able to navigate it, yet Apple's premiere keyboard accessory includes a touchpad, and the OS fully supports a paired mouse (stupid circle-blob cursor notwithstanding).

Yes, the AVP is built around a hands-and-fingers-only interface paradigm and it does so very well. Clever and functional. Potential accessories, like this Logitech stylus, don't replace the baselines, they augment it so people can lean on muscle and conceptual memory to accomplish even more.

Pema said:

Yes, they have Google Maps - which I use all the time, I don't trust Apple Maps - but that's not a money maker. They also have Google Docs - a mere blimp on their financial statement. And oh yes, YouTube. Does that make money?  

Google Maps location information (when you tap a business result, for example) has layers from free through sponsored. Which locations appear "automatically" in relation to y our location and zoom level are also sponsored. Apple is moving in the same direction with Apple Maps data.

YouTube reported over $30B in revenue in 2023 (through a combination of advertising and the YouTube Premium subscription program) and is generally considered to be second only to Google's search advertising business in terms of profitability. 

Like all other cloud compute providers (Microsoft Azure, Amazon AWS), GoogleCloud has seen an immense surge in business as a result of companies spinning up cloud-based AI compute. While this may (or may not) be sustainable in the long-term, the immediate gains in terms of revenue and profit for all three companies are real. 

Yes, Google is over-reliant on its search-based advertising business, much in the same way that Apple is over-reliant on the iPhone. Either company could face an existential threat if development of new technologies, or changes in consumer preference, cause irreversible swings away from these products. The chance of that happening in either case is slim, however, due largely to inertia and because both companies continue to build moats. Paying Apple to keep Google Search front-and-center is a form of moat. Apple fighting tooth and nail to avoid the opening of their App Store ecosystem is a form of moat. Neither company is going to go quietly as challengers to their cash cows gather in the distance. 

Xed said:

2) If you really want to have a conversation about music distribution and your insights into that industry then you could focus on that. Most of your comment was an irrelevant mention about a musician that doesn’t appeal to you to multiple odd mentions of an age group and attire for reasons that escape me. If there was a salient point to your comment it needs to be more clearly stated.

OK, yes, I'm prone to rhetoric. My bad, and I'll own that. I used the promotional activity supporting Taylor Swift, and Billie Eilish, as examples. We're responding to an article specifically about Taylor Swift, I'm not sure it's so out of bounds to focus on that. That I made it a point to react to an imagined Swiftie backlash was probably unnecessary, you're right.

As for Apple Music: Did you know that Apple has no affordances for self-represented artists or non-major labels to create marketing partnerships? Let's say you're a self-represented artist who does not release albums but individual tracks (you may scoff, but this is the fastest growing segment of the music industry). Apple Music is the only major streaming service that provides no promotional hooks to non-album, non-represented releases. Not even pay-to-promote. Until recently, it was impossible to even establish a relationship with Apple Music if you were non-represented/ASCAP (again, Apple was unique in this regard). My comparisons to Top 40 radio was to imply that Apple is fostering the same sort of closed-loop, self-referential music pool that forcibly restricts discovery to specific artists only. It promotes major label/brand-centric music, as does so primarily to associate its own brand with that of certain hot artists. 

Taylor Swift doesn't need Apple's help to have a wildly successful album. Her tangible benefits from the partnership are minimal, any more so than Labron James needs Nike to be a successful, HoF athlete. Apple, however, believes its association with Taylor Swift improves the appearance of Apple Music. That brand synergy, I believe, is more important than how Apple creates a platform for musicians and music discovery (much as how Nike has dropped any pretense of quality in its products—look at the disaster unfolding with the MLB uniforms). Ultimately, it's us Apple Music users who suffer as a result of Apple's singular focus on brand rather than the function and quality of their service. The time spent by Apple constantly promoting these partnerships and explaining how hard they work to promote artists who don't need their help, to me, rings of a desperate need to be seen as "cool" rather than "good." (hence my sniping about "boomers" ... rhetoric!)

Again, to be clear: My opinion based on my work for artists and record companies that operate contrary to the baseline norms of music promotion. Obviously I'm going to react negatively to entities who operate using traditional methods. You should therefore take my opinions in that context. If major label and album-centric is what you want your streaming service to be, and you put no or low value on music discovery, then Apple Music as-is serves your needs and what I represent does not. And that's fine, genuinely. It should, after all, always come down to experiencing the music we love (including Taylor Swift!) Apple's constant need to insert its brand into that relationship is what I am reacting to and as a music lover resent.