rmoo

stompy said:

The whole report is blissfully ignorant of how the software development community actually works.

Remember that Apple at one point also was a huge advocate of cross-platform web apps (when there was still a huge threat of Microsoft shifting their PC dominance to mobile leading to developers following along ... this would have been a way to get developers to make apps that would run on both Windows CE/Mobile and iOS). It wasn't until iOS and its app store became so dominant so fast - which absolutely no one at the time expected - that Apple shifted positions. 

hriw-annon@xs4all.nl said:

Not so long ago Microsoft had a go trying to be a third mobile platform. They even bought Nokia to make it happen.
They know tech and had a more than decent OS, and they failed.
If Microsoft and Nokia together can not manage to be a competitor who can?

Forcing Apple and Google to make their products worse is going to make competition happen?

As someone who owned a Windows Phone, claiming that it "had a more than decent OS" is false. Microsoft's failure here is bigger than you are stating. Microsoft actually preceded Google and Apple. Their first attempt was Windows CE back in 1996 (they began supporting ARM in 1997) and their second was Windows Mobile in 2000. While Windows CE found success as appliance firmware - though that is now losing ground to Android and other Linux distros - Windows Mobile failed at phones and tablets. Except at one thing: spurring Google into action. Their fear that either Windows CE or Windows Mobile might catch on one day and that Microsoft would use it to lock them out and grow Bing's market share is what caused them to decide to enter the mobile market and ultimately buy Android in 2005. Lest we forget, the tech world was very different back then. Google was tiny, with Microsoft and Yahoo being much bigger. As the antitrust judgment against Microsoft only covered PCs, they were free to lock competitors out of other devices. So had Microsoft's mobile devices gained traction, that would have actually resulted in Bing having a bigger search market share than Google, who lest we forget had only recently surpassed Yahoo in market share, and even that was due to Yahoo's decision to de-emphasize being a search and tech company and pivot to being an entertainment company instead. 

Back then, EVERYONE thought that either CE or Mobile would ultimately succeed. Because of this, when Andy Rubin tried to attract investors for Android, he had no takers for a platform that everyone thought that Microsoft was going to crush anyway. So then Rubin tried to sell Android to mobile device manufacturers that didn't have their own OS, including HTC and Samsung. HTC was making Windows Mobile smartphones and Samsung was making Windows CE ones, so both turned Rubin down. This allowed Google to buy Android - which was near financial collapse - for a pittance: unable to attract investors and no one else wanted them. Google had spent some time studying Microsoft's business model with CE and Mobile, and created one for Android designed to exploit its weaknesses: providing it to OEMs for free instead of licensing it, and allowing OEMs to modify it in order to differentiate it and promote their own software and services. Both HTC and Samsung switched from Microsoft to Android immediately and others followed suit shortly after.

This sort of thing is what people who call Android and iOS a duopoly are overlooking. Neither Apple or Google used unfair tactics to get where they were. They couldn't. At the time, Apple had 4% PC market share and their most popular product was the iPod. They weren't even able to initially launch the iPhone on more than one US carrier. Google meanwhile didn't even have the capability to manufacture and market a product. They had to rely on third parties, who screwed Google over every chance they got. Android and iOS succeeded against - at the time - much bigger and more entrenched competition by offering a clearly better product (Apple) and having a much better business plan  - for example the open source based on Java and Linux helped Google attract the indie developers that Microsoft, Nokia and the rest on proprietary platforms couldn't - and were also able to ultimately develop a better product (Google).

Even for the folks who point out that Google bundled Gmail and YouTube: have we forgotten that Microsoft released Hotmail years before Google released Gmail? Again, Google made a better product. Also, everyone - Google, Microsoft, Yahoo - initially tried to compete with YouTube with their own service. Google was merely the first to admit that it wasn't working and throw in the towel and buy YouTube, which Microsoft (and Yahoo) could have done first but were too arrogant to admit that they were beaten by an upstart. I really don't see why governments should step in and punish Apple and Google for their success or reward Microsoft and Amazon - whom lets face it any action against Google and Apple will inevitably benefit because no one else has the resources to compete at this point - for their failures (remember Amazon's ridiculous phone)?

tht said:

9secondkox2 said:

tht said:

9secondkox2 said:

Coulda had an iPhone native halo? Dang. 

That's not my read. It's still a cloud streamed game, it would just have an individual listing in Apple's App Store instead of an XBox cloud store app.

So, Halo would be running on a PC or Xbox in a data center, and streaming the display to client iOS devices. That's not native whatsoever. Native is a compiled app using Apple's ObjC/Swift/Metal frameworks.

It seems I forgot to post an “/s” following my post. 

Can you imagine what everyone would be doing if Apple allowed cloud? Epic snd all the rest of the sleaze would be trying to use that to redefine what an App Store is and try to assault iPhone users with untold number of crap schemes. 

At first, I’ll be honest, I thought Apple was wrong about xcloud initially. 

But after the epic slime fest, it seems Apple had great foresight. 

My apologies for not getting the sarcasm. Yes, cloud streaming is basically a Trojan horse. Microsoft retains all the value, all the leverage, and Apple would basically be at their mercy if cloud gaming takes off.

This is silly. It isn't that cloud streaming is a "Trojan horse." It is that if you are a software and internet services company - which Microsoft and Google currently are and Nvidia aspires to be - then you have every interest in video gaming migrating from hardware platforms to software and cloud ones. Microsoft and Google make almost nothing on hardware. Nvidia does, but by selling a $200 part to go in a machine that costs $2000. A hardware independent streaming model where revenue can be generated by maximizing ad and subscription revenue to the widest number of users - the same that YouTube, Netflix, Disney+, Spotify, Apple Music etc. rely on - is absolutely preferable to what exists now. For all that console gaming - for example - is discussed, it really is a tiny niche subculture. The combined sales of an XBox, Nintendo and PlayStation console during a typical 7 year generation is about 250 million. You break it down and it is even worse: many people buy all 3 (or at least 2 of the 3) and some people buy multiple (an XBox for each room in their house, or their PS breaks, or they buy one early in the cycle and then buy another when the refresh with better specs hits) so you really are talking about 50-100 million people. These people are ardent mind you - they buy the consoles and accessories, watch Twitch and YouTube for hours daily, pay $70 for the games plus who knows how much more for the DLC etc. - but it isn't that many of them. Cloud gaming is a way of expanding from that 50-100 million (again, console only, I guess if you include PC gaming you could double that) into the 1.5 billion people who buy smartphones and tablets each year. If they are able to get a mere fraction of that market, they could double or triple the size of the current console and AAA gaming industry. And if the new customers they pull in take the $500 that they would spend on a PlayStation or $3000 that they would spend on a gaming rig and use that to buy games instead? Even better. 

So, it isn't a "Trojan horse conspiracy" to harm Apple. It is more akin to how the rise of Netflix and similar streaming services WERE NOT in the interests of DVD and Blu-ray manufacturers. By the way, Apple totally helped this trend along. They removed CD/DVD/Blu-ray discs from Macs to "encourage" downloading media from iTunes instead. They also created servers and storage media to handle the massive media libraries that they wanted people to download, and the original purpose of the Apple TV was to facilitate people streaming their iTunes content (instead of playing music CDs and movie DVDs). Was it a conspiracy to harm Sony, Samsung and other electronics manufacturers? Nope. It was merely Apple - who didn't manufacture DVD and Blu-ray players or have retail operations to sell DVDs - pursuing their own commercial interests. Which is exactly what Nvidia, Microsoft and Google are doing here.   

Wesley Hilliard said:

OutdoorAppDeveloper said:

"How badly do you have to fail at games"

I do wonder if Apple will ever push for more Apple Arcade games specific to Mac, or if that will stay focused on mobile experiences.

Market share will dictate the latter. 2 billion iPhones versus 20-25 million macOS devices sold a year. Honestly there isn't anything that Apple could do to make a bigger dent in gaming. An 11th gen Intel Core i7 gaming PC with 16 GB of RAM and an Nvidia RTX 3060 costs $1400. A comparable macOS device is going to be at least $2000. In about 6 months a laptop with a 12th gen Intel/Nvidia RTX 4060 will still cost about $1500, but it will be roughly equivalent to a MacBook Pro that costs $2500. And in 9 months when the next-gen AMD Zen 4 CPUs and GPUs come out? You get the picture. And that is talking about a midrange gaming PC. A Zen 4 low end gaming laptop will be capable of 1080p gaming without even needing a discrete GPU, and will under $500. Note that the Steam Deck's Aerith SOC has an integrated GPU and is capable of 720p gaming, and it is only a Zen 2+ on a 7nm process (Zen 4 will be on a 5nm process). Apple Silicon can only fight back against Intel and AMD-powered devices that are going to be cheaper, more powerful or both by achieving superior power per watt, but unfortunately the gaming crowd is the one that cares about such things the least. Also, AMD Zen 4 is going to make heavy strides in power power per watt when they reach 5nm in 2022 and when their Zen4+ gets released on Samsung's 3nm in 2023.

So a combination of market share, price and steadily improving CPUs and GPUs from Intel, AMD and Nvidia is going to prevent Apple from being able to gain traction in any area other than mobile gaming.

Beats said:

Don’t underestimate corporate greed.
Here’s 2 companies that did something similar and stepped on Apple’s toes:
Google
Samsung

Luckily, TSMC hasn’t put knockoff Apple products on the market but nothing is protected or off limits anymore.

Yeah, and Google and Samsung were so much better off before Android, right? I mean you can't seriously believe that? Before Android, Samsung was known as a second (or third) rate maker of washing machines, refrigerators and air conditioners. Sure they made TVs, audio equipment, DVD and Blu-Ray players etc. but were considered generally inferior to the Japanese, American and European brands. Now Samsung is considered one of the top high tech companies on the planet: the #1 seller of smartphones, the #1 seller of smart TVs, the #2 seller of tablets, their reputation in audio products has vastly improved, and they are even gaining traction as a PC (well, laptop) maker. That is in addition to their non-consumer stuff in IoT, AI, smart cars etc. Without entering and winning the Android race - beating Sony, Philips, Acer, Asus, Dell, HTC, LG, Motorola and several other companies with much better reputations as tech companies in the process - we wouldn't even be talking about Samsung right now. 

As for Google, they are making 10 times the revenue now that they did in 2011 before Android took off. Not only did Android prevent Microsoft from getting even bigger - without Android, Microsoft's mobile efforts would have inevitably succeeded and been used to drive a ton more traffic to Bing - but prior to Android more people were actually taking about Yahoo as a future tech and entertainment conglomerate (remember all the hype about their hiring Marissa Mayer?) than Google. 

Meanwhile, far from stepping on Apple's toes, they are doing fine. Biggest, most profitable company in history and all that? Where it can be argued that Microsoft creating Windows might have hurt Apple - though in fairness it was primarily due to Apple's abject refusal to take software seriously back then, resulting in great hardware that couldn't do what 70% of the market wanted or needed it to do - Google's creating Android didn't hurt Apple at all. Apple had absolutely no interest in the low end of the market and that is what Android primarily services. And again, if it hadn't been Android taking care of that need, Microsoft would have.