lowededwookie

Seeing as Apple doesn’t currently have a free tier is there an alternative service to Spotify?

I can’t quite afford a music service each month and so a free ad supported one to fill those months would be nice.

But I refuse to support Spotify when they’re acting like dicks.

StrangeDays said:

ah yeah, Look Around, I remember that…had so much promise. But never materialized as I’d expected. I’m in a city with multiple pro sports teams and regularly hosts the Super Bowl, and Apple vans drove thru years ago…yet, no Look Around. 

Really? Am I missing something because we have it here in New Zealand. Works even smoother than Google Maps.

Next question. How do we get access to the web beta? I'd love to give it a crack.

My only missing feature I'd love to see in any version of Apple Maps is house numbering like in Google. As a postal worker, being able to see the addresses on the map when zoomed in helps a lot when making up delivery lists. It's the ONLY thing I use Google Maps for which is woefully out of date here in NZ.

neoncat said:

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. 

Aspyr and Feral Interactive aren't most AAA game developers and they're not developing ALL the AAA games out there so I stand by what I said.

Take games developers like CCP Games who make Eve Online. This game is (or at least WAS because I believe it's changed now) clearly wrapped in Cider. The performance hit was attrocious. But on the iPhone I can play Eve Echoes, which is more or less the same engine, buttery smooth. It's not Cider wrapped on iOS.

Other AAA games have been wrapped in Cider or other similar tools rather than ported to Metal or even OpenGL and that's a fact.

It's changing now that Apple has been developing tools that make it easier to port to Metal for macOS and iOS but it still needs developers to use those tool.

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.

Hahahahaha I called it. I called it.

Apple is using the stupid EU laws against it to prove a point. Now Apple fans in the EU are going to turn on the EU because their rules are hobbling great products.

Ironically for the EU that’s exactly what they wanted, consumers having a choice. Their choice will be they want Apple products to be unhindered by stupid laws.

Great move Apple.

Also don’t forget that Apple is hindering their products in America. Apple Watch 9 has a product removal thanks to a law that sided with a non-playing entity.