Marvin

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Marvin
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  • Mac Studio M4 Max review one month later: Costly computing power, worth every cent

    Why the Mac Mini has the headphone jack in the front but the Mac Studio has it on the back is baffling to me. The only reason I have to move my Mac Studio is precisely to connect my headphones, and even though I don't do that often, it is always an irritant to me.
    If the internal speakers aren't needed, an extension cable left plugged in would save having to reach around the back every time:

    https://www.amazon.com/Headphone-Extension-Nanxudyj-Smartphones-Tablets/dp/B08MDQ4QL1/?th=1
    williamlondondewmebaconstangmeterestnzwatto_cobra
  • Apple offers visionOS support to the Godot game engine

    Offering to incorporate Vision Pro support into Godot offers Apple a few good benefits. For a start, the initiative could encourage developers to use Godot, an established engine, to create more content for the Apple Vision Pro itself. 

    The decision for Apple to bring Vision Pro support to Godot may seem a bit unusual, but it's one that does make sense. At least, if you consider the current game development landscape.

    The two main game engines used for development are Unreal Engine and Unity, but Godot is growing in popularity. As a free game engine, it does away with any need for developers to pay licenses to Epic or Unity to use the engines commercially.

    The open-source nature also makes it easier for people to contribute to the project as a whole, or to add their own code to customize it for their own creations.

    Apple may also find Godot as needing assistance in developing the visionOS support, since it isn't being worked on by a commercial entity. Epic and Unity both have teams of developers working on mixed reality tech for their engines in a paid capacity, while Godot relies on volunteer efforts.

    While Godot is getting popular with developers, especially cash-strapped indies and hobbyists, it has yet to really be used for a major release. So far, it has enjoyed successes with games like Buckshot Roulette and Cassette Beasts, but even these are moderate and far from the revenues of mainstream titles. 

    The main issue with Godot for immersive content is it doesn't have a fast, high quality rendering engine, which is especially needed for AR/VR as it has to draw at 90FPS+.

    They asked the community for help with this as they don't have many rendering system engineers. Most of them work for the big companies like Epic, Unity and the big game studios on their internal engines:

    https://wccftech.com/godot-engine-creator-will-go-with-full-path-tracing-instead-of-a-lumen-like-hybrid-nanite-like-system-not-planned/

    Someone made a test renderer for Godot, this has no denoiser, caching or complex shading support:



    The focus on integration with the big game engines seems less important. AR/VR experiences are more cinematic than interactive so Apple could build a basic engine with the main focus being a fast, high quality renderer.

    The hard parts for community developers to make are the rendering system, compilers and the platform support.

    The other parts of the engine are much easier to take care of, even physics, particles and volumetric shading can be done by community developers.

    If Apple had a rendering and deployment system, people could build the scene in any game engine and code it there. Then they just need to convert the scene to a compatible format for their rendering API. This would save having to modify 3rd party engines directly and in a lot of cases, people would be able to use Apple's core engine directly. This would have a faster turnaround to being production-ready.

    Apple's immersive dinosaur demo doesn't need a huge game engine. It just needs an animated model in a standard scene format and some interaction.

    People don't want to get locked into the Swift language as it's not well-supported across platforms like C#, C++, Python etc so having multiple language runtime support would be needed but the API can be small. Mainly it's moving objects in a scene and playing animations, then the renderer draws it.

    Apple doesn't have to build this alone, they can collaborate with Microsoft, Nvidia, Valve, Pixar and others. This can become an industry standard rendering library and would give a lot more competition to Unity and Epic because it can spawn dozens of larger engines that rival them on visual quality.
    ForumPostwatto_cobra
  • Apple's airlifting imports to beat tariff deadline included Macs

    ITGUYINSD said:
    "Apple is estimated to sell around 320,000 iPhones in the US every day"?  That seems high.  Every 10 days, they sell 3.2M iPhones?  Every 100 days they sell 32M phones?  That's 10% of the entire US population every 100 days, and we all know most people have cheaper Androids.  
    Maybe they based it on Apple selling around 250m iPhones worldwide and the Americas region is 40% of the revenue = 100m iPhones / 365 = 273k and the US skews higher for iPhone sales. However, this region includes South America and Canada.

    US smartphone sales are around 125m units:

    https://www.statista.com/statistics/619811/smartphone-unit-shipments-in-the-us/

    Apple has a 50% marketshare so it will be closer to 62m iPhones in the US per year or 171k per day. 1.5m iPhones would only be enough for 8 days.

    In Apple's early days, Tim Cook said they didn't like to hold inventory because it was like storing milk and loses value every week. But they are a different company now, much bigger and more resilient to value loss on inventory. Storing 1-2 months of inventory of Macs and iPhones would be good to cover uncertain circumstances.
    danoxwatto_cobra
  • Trump blinks: Floats suggestion that Apple might get a tariff exemption

    In a press gaggle, President Donald Trump said that some companies that have been hit the hardest by the blockbuster tariffs applied by the administration may get some relief -- and nobody has been or will be hit harder than Apple.

    A reporter asks him about potential exemptions while he's out doing a meet-and-greet with race car drivers. Trump states that exemptions are being considered for companies "hit harder" by tariffs, but decisions will be made based on "instinct."

    Exemptions could be based on where the company pays taxes. There's nothing to gain by harming US businesses but tariffs can be applied to companies like Temu, Tencent, Samsung, Huawei that profit from US consumers but use their revenue to invest in their own country. Apple invests their revenue in the US already. Then tariffs would work to the benefit of US companies rather than against them.
    Wesley_Hilliardwatto_cobra
  • Apple shares clawing back, after $638 billion in value is destroyed

    mpantone said:
    linkman said:
    I'm convinced this morning is the lowest AAPL we'll see. So convinced that I spent all of my remaining brokerage cash account on it. Cook knows how to master Apple's supply chain and it is extremely likely he was prepared for these tariffs several months ago.
    Nah, yesterday and today's activity was a false bounce. The stock market has more room for downward movement. The BlackRock CEO thinks we're already in a recession.

    The market will remain extremely turbulent until there is some sort of equilibrium reached but no one has blinked yet in this staring contest.
    It's all just bluster for the time being. The gambling/speculation industry doesn't reflect the real world until the numbers start being reported, at least 3 months after price changes take effect. Most of the big companies trade internationally in a broad way so the impact of price increases between individual countries will be minimal and there will always be workarounds. The big companies that trade mostly domestically will be largely unaffected.

    Apple has healthy income to buy stock back, which can keep the price higher.

    A recession requires real world impact to GDP and employment levels and nothing indicates this at this stage. CEOs are obviously concerned because their remuneration is in large stock awards that will be taking a hit but that's not the case for the people who keep the economy running.

    It's speculators' overreaction that is tanking stocks just now. If they cut down on the caffeine, cocaine and gambling behavior, they would be a bit more patient and wait to see what the real world impact is. It could all get resolved next week for all anyone knows.
    mdjamilhosainbaconstangWesley_Hilliard