cloudguy

longfang said:

He doesn’t want to develop for Apple Silicon, fine. But why make such a big deal about not doing something. Very quixotic behavior. 

Because he has:

A. an existing user base of people that have bought his games on macOS
B. some/most/all of those people are going to be migrating from Intel Macs to M1 Macs
C. he has to let those people know that when they migrate those games likely won't be available on their new hardware and new games certainly won't be
D. this prevents these people from complaining when they buy their new M1 Macs and they experience C.
E. It lets them know that if they want to keep playing these games they will need to invest in different hardware

So while it is not a big deal for him at all - quite the contrary it will result in a lot less work and hassle - it is a big deal for his customers that have paid money for his games, whom he addressed repeatedly in his post.

lkrupp said:

Since when have ‘ports’ to the Mac been worth a damn? Sounds to me like a lazy developer unwilling to stay up-to-date. I wonder what he plans to do when other platforms start migrating to in-house SoC’s? With the advent of Apple Silicon it seems inevitable this is the direction things are going.

But hey, it’s his company and he can do what he wants. I remember WAY BACK when Electronic Arts (AE) solemnly announced it was ceasing development of games for the Apple ][ platform. To this day they don’t produce games for macOS. And we all know how badly that has affected Apple. 

Not a lazy developer. Instead a one person shop who doesn't have the time to learn a new platform in return for minimal financial return. You create a Patreon and contribute a significant chunk of your own money before calling him lazy. And please note his explanation that plenty of indie developers are experiencing the same.

tmay said:

mr lizard said:

Interesting to see the outcome of the Qualcomm / Apple skirmish described as a “truce”. Qualcomm dragged Apple through the mud and handed them their backsides on a platter. A miscalculation on Apple’s part that cost them dearly. 

"cost them dearly"?

Uhm, no.

Seems like whatever the cost of the "truce", that cost has been easily recouped, and then some, with Apple's own Modem expected in the near future.

https://appleinsider.com/articles/21/01/05/apple-outpacing-smartphone-industry-growth-will-dominate-5g-market-in-2021

Nah, there is absolutely no way to spin the idea that Apple won Apple vs Qualcomm. 
Apple had an existing agreement with Qualcomm at an industry standard per device rate.
Apple stopped paying licensing fees under that existing agreement and tried to get Qualcomm to agree to a much lower per device rate.
Qualcomm sued Apple over the unpaid fees.
Apple countersued claiming that Qualcomm's licensing terms were an abuse of FRAND and unfair.
When it was OBVIOUS that Qualcomm was going to win their suit and Apple was going to lose their countersuit they announced a "settlement" where:
Apple paid Qualcomm the previous unpaid licensing fees
Apple agreed to make Qualcomm the exclusive supplier of modems through 2024 at the same rate that Apple objected to in the first place.

Only the most "fanboy" Apple-centric sites even attempted to spin it as a win for Apple. The rest of the Apple-centric sites spun it as a "win-win." But the reality is that Apple heard feedback from the legal and regulatory bodies in multiple jurisdictions that nearly all of them were going to rule against Apple on the licensing terms issue - because Qualcomm was charging Apple the same per device fee that they were charging Samsung and everyone else - and some were even going to grant Qualcomm's request to ban the import and sale of iPhones.

Yes, Apple will create their own 5G modem tech. Good for them. But this suit wasn't about what was going to happen in the future anyway. Also, had Qualcomm allowed Apple to get away with it, Apple could have arbitrarily decided to try to lower their licensing payments to a point below where Qualcomm was making profits again (or possibly not pay at all). Yes, it would have been better to lose Apple as a customer entirely than to allow Apple to get away with paying a fraction of what all their other customers were paying, especially since Samsung and the other customers would have demanded the same rate as Apple, and Qualcomm would have had no ability to tell them no. Samsung to Qualcomm: "give us the same rate that Apple has. Qualcomm to Samsung: "honor your contract with us." Samsung to Qualcomm: "Apple had a contract with you too. See you in court." Court to Qualcomm: "You have no legal basis for charging Samsung or any of your other customers more than you charge Apple." So yes, if Apple is at any time willing to withhold billions of dollars from you and tie you up in court for years with absolutely nonsense legal arguments while using a PR campaign to drag you through the mud and assail your reputation as a pressure tactic - knowing that the media is going to write a bunch of columns and articles on their MacBook Airs and iPad Pros that regurgitate your propaganda while totally ignoring that Apple expects everyone else to honor contracts and FRAND terms with them - then yes Qualcomm is better off without them. Qualcomm doesn't need Apple's money to operate, turn a profit, grow or thrive. So just take their money today and let Apple take their strongarm tactics to other suppliers.

And guess what? Even when Apple makes their own modems they will still owe Qualcomm licensing fees for them anyway because Qualcomm owns the patents. And Qualcomm isn't even a patent troll NPE that only exists on paper. They are a practicing entity with a (currently) industry-leading product portfolio with those same patents! Apple is going to pay Qualcomm those same per-device patents whether they buy the 5G modems from Qualcomm or make their own, just as AMD still pays x86 licensing fees to Intel to this day. 

The only reason why we didn't get a bunch of "Apple forced to settle with Qualcomm to avoid losing legal case and iPhone ban" articles from the press is what I stated earlier: nearly everyone in the western press types those articles on iPads and MacBooks. But you had better believe that is what happened, because there is no way that Apple would have agreed to cough up billions and make Qualcomm their exclusive supplier for 5 years if they thought that there was even a 25% chance of winning.

"The average selling price of the PC market came in at $764"

Considering that Apple had 8% market share in 3Q 2020 - if Gartner, IDC and Canalys are to be believed - will people now please stop claiming that Apple has 80% of the $1000 computer market? That stat is like 20 years old and was dubious even then. 

speakingmywords said:

Most corporate linux instances are on Intel gear. So really, unless you're using this for your personal website, internal network, etc... this is a toy release. My company is a software developer and our product are on Intel Linux systems. M1 is great, but if I can't get our software images to run on M1 virtualization software, nothing will convince them to buy M1 laptops for us.

Oh for crying out loud. Look, ARM versions of CentOS/RHEL have been out since 2010. Ubuntu released theirs in 2011. Major companies like Ampere, HP, Xilinx and Texas Instruments make ARM servers, with Nvidia soon to join them. Also lots of other companies - like Google and Amazon - are now building their own. 

Amazon in particular has a heavy investment in ARM servers. (Google isn't doing much in this space, but Microsoft has Windows Server for ARM in Azure.) Cloud companies are moving to ARM in a big way in order to get similar performance to x86 while saving power. So if your company doesn't have software engineers or architects who have an AWS or other cloud background ... let's just say I doubt it and move on. 

These are "toys" only because they are entry level machines that max out at 16 GB of RAM. But you even have companies buying Raspberry Pi ARM CPUs and programming them for IoT applications. Raspberry Pi can now run all the major Linux distros commonly used in IoT: Android Things, Debian, Ubuntu Core, Raspbian etc. Gee, it would be great to have an ARM-based laptop to use to run my Linux IoT OS in VMWare. Oh gee, where can I get a good ARM-based laptop that can actually run VMWare. (Which excludes Chromebooks - while the latest x86 based ones now can ARM ones can't yet - and Windows ARM.)

Sorry, I am not even as gung ho about M1 Macs as everyone else is and I can tell you that you are off base. If I:

A) didn't have specific needs that ARM-based Macs can't meet right now
hadn't JUST BOUGHT a fresh round of Windows (although several just to put Linux on) and ChromeOS computers to meet those needs I would absolutely have an M1 Mac Mini right now.