[HN Gopher] Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max
___________________________________________________________________
Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max
Author : jnieminen
Score : 188 points
Date : 2023-09-12 18:21 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.apple.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.apple.com)
| bradgessler wrote:
| Anybody know what Titanium color of the Pro devices match the
| Ultra watch?
| layer8 wrote:
| Apple has a history of inconsistent colors between models for
| the same color names, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's no
| exact match.
| roland35 wrote:
| 1 gram lighter!
| ricardobeat wrote:
| 206g -> 187g for the Pro
|
| 240g -> 221g for the Pro Max
| pretext-1 wrote:
| 9% lighter Pro
|
| 8% lighter Pro Max
| cromka wrote:
| 1 mm smaller, rather
| falcolas wrote:
| Ironically, this annoys me because I can't use any of my
| Apple 14 pro cases.
| andy_ppp wrote:
| There's nothing noteworthy here to upgrade to is there?
| Maybe save some carbon (god that woke video was
| cringeworthy) and wait for the iPhone 16?
| falcolas wrote:
| That's my thought at this point. I really want the usb c,
| but I can wait a year.
|
| It just bugs me how they change sizes like this and cause
| even more unnecessary waste.
| layer8 wrote:
| The thickness also increased by 0.4 mm.
| jonplackett wrote:
| I wish they would go back to having S years and just keep the
| outside the same.
|
| There is barely anything different this time and an S year
| would have made sense.
| sgt wrote:
| Haven't watched it yet, but I bought a 14 Pro just two weeks ago
| (well aware of the imminent 15 on its way). I guess secretly I
| was hoping that the difference is not huge. ;)
| checkyoursudo wrote:
| I bought a 13 mini just a few weeks ago. Pretty sure the
| salespeople were rolling their eyes. Might have been the last
| one left at the store.
| skykooler wrote:
| I'm disappointed there's no 15 mini announced. Rather
| disappointing that the only phones that fit in a pocket these
| days are all Android - no choice left.
| highwaylights wrote:
| I'm assuming you got a really heavy discount anyway so don't
| feel bad.
|
| The big standouts are camera enhancements and (significant) GPU
| enhancements for gaming.
| sgt wrote:
| Not a heavy one but a decent discount. So not too upset. I am
| sure some people somewhere bought without discount.
| paxys wrote:
| USB-C support was the worst kept secret in the world, so I hope
| you were anticipating it when you made your purchase.
| sgjohnson wrote:
| > Beginning September 18, iCloud+ will offer two new plans: 6TB
| for $29.99 (U.S.) per month and 12TB for $59.99 (U.S.) per month.
|
| Finally. I mean, 2TB is enough for me for now, but I know people
| with 5 people in their Apple Family with the 2TB tier absolutely
| maxed out.
| simbas wrote:
| Any details about USB-C? I bet this USB-C implementation is not
| standard compliant in a typical Apple way.
| Y-bar wrote:
| EU would have field day with that (if you were correct, which I
| bet you are not) considering they require standards-compliant
| USB-C by law.
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| It charges via USB-C, it does USB 3 data if you have the Pro.
|
| > Now you can connect USB-C gear like thumb drives, fast
| external storage, 4K displays, and microphones. And you can
| charge Apple Watch or AirPods from your iPhone.9
|
| > Charge up to 50% in around 30 minutes10 with the 20W USB-C
| Power Adapter (sold separately).
|
| Seems like totally bog standard USB-C, just like the rest of
| their devices.
| falcolas wrote:
| You're at least partially correct since they require a MFI
| approved cable to reach USB 3 speeds. Otherwise you're limited
| to USB 2 speeds.
| chx wrote:
| Any source to this?
|
| Because I think Alex Agius Saliba will have an unkind word to
| Apple if they try to pull that shit.
| falcolas wrote:
| https://www.forbes.com/sites/gordonkelly/2023/05/06/apple-
| ip... (there were a number of articles around this time
| which are now buried by Google et.al.)
|
| However, it does look like Apple may have walked this back
| post-rumor. I genuinely hope they did. We'll find out soon
| enough.
| DRW_ wrote:
| I can't find any reference to this on Apple's website. They
| simply they a USB3 cable is required to get USB3 speeds,
| which I assume they don't ship in the box.
| piperswe wrote:
| Source? I've heard rumors but I don't think they mentioned
| MFi at all in this event.
| falcolas wrote:
| See sibling comment.
| stouset wrote:
| Which Apple device has shipped with a non-standard USB
| implementation?
| drdaeman wrote:
| Quite a stretch and not exactly a standardization issue (more
| like if something useful is implemented/supported or not),
| but lack of DisplayPort MST in MacBooks had upset some folks.
|
| More on point - the speculation about real fast charging
| requiring Apple-blessed circuitry is - AFAIK - still neither
| proven nor refuted.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| > lack of DisplayPort MST in MacBooks had upset some folks
|
| MST has serious drawbacks. Not supporting it _could be_ for
| reasons of not wanting to deliver a subpar experience.
| lowbloodsugar wrote:
| I've got a number of USB storage devices that work on my
| intel macs but none of my silicon macs. One was a brand
| associated with mac.
|
| That could be because the devices themselves are not spec and
| the intel macs are more tolerant, but as a customer the
| result is the same: shit don't work on m1.
| dang wrote:
| Related ongoing thread:
|
| _iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus_ -
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37485290
| lwhalen wrote:
| Still can't install uBlock Origin or any other firefox add-on?
| Deal-breaker. Sorry Apple, that's one more $1200 phone you're not
| selling me.
| mandelken wrote:
| You can install uBlock Origin and other firefox/chrome add-ons
| on the Orion iOS browser[1].
|
| [1] https://browser.kagi.com/faq.html#ublock
| lwhalen wrote:
| That is good to know, thank you, but why must I use _an
| entirely different browser_ for this? (Rhetorical question, I
| know - 'because it's Apple and they hate anything not of
| their beautiful walled garden')
| xp84 wrote:
| I'm excited for the most silly pedestrian reason: Because I
| detest the Apple 'DRM' chip that is implicit in Lightning even
| when used just for charging. I call it "DRM'd Electricity."
|
| Choices of cables we've had for the whole existence of the
| iPhone:
|
| * Apple cables, $20-30, not even nice, cheap plastic with poor
| strain relief, work reliably until they succumb easily to damage
|
| * Licensed (like Belkin), $20-30, nicer, work reliably
|
| * 1,000 brands on Amazon, etc. Not licensed, 10% DOA rate,
| sometimes just stop working. Physically nearly always nicer than
| Apple. $3-12.
|
| I'm really excited to be able to just have many of the same
| charging cables everywhere, and to buy them for $5 or less. Even
| buying cheap cables, I've never once had a USB-C (or even the
| terrible micro-B) cable fail to work.
|
| Note: I actually feel just as strongly even though I only even
| use a cable in the car, and charge with "Magsafe" everywhere
| else. I just hate Lightning that much. Also, I could easily
| afford the Apple cables, but it would physically pain me to waste
| that much money knowing it's purely additional margin for Apple.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| But now you'll get into the fun USB-C -land, where two USB-C
| cables can have wildly different capabilities with no external
| way to check it :)
|
| One cable might only support power, one might only be for data
| and one supports USB-PD up to 120W. How can you know? By trying
| them all!
| wmf wrote:
| Buy good cables and throw the others away. (You can't really
| trust any cable you didn't buy anyway because of O.MG.)
| willseth wrote:
| I wouldn't get excited yet. TMK they are only required to
| implement the connector and certain charging requirements, not
| any particular complete USB protocol spec, so it seems likely
| they'll continue the same MFi program over USB-C cables.
| duskwuff wrote:
| I would be _extremely_ surprised if Apple introduced a
| requirement for specially marked USB-C cables for the iPhone.
| The iPad already uses USB-C, and works with any USB-C cable.
| overcast wrote:
| Oh good, 128GB base storage, for 48MP camera + 4k@60 Pro Res
| video.
| [deleted]
| ShakataGaNai wrote:
| Yea, but you have USB3 high speed, record pro-res directly
| onto, external storage.
|
| So you can spend $100 on a 1TB external drive (rather than $100
| on another 128gb of internal storage) and you're _way_ better
| off. If you 're use case is 4k60 ProRes, this makes WAY more
| sense than recording locally.
| liminalsunset wrote:
| Hopefully they don't block full resolution ProRes recording
| like they did on the 13 series. The 128GB version of the 13 and
| iirc the 14 was only able to record 1080p60 ProRes, regardless
| of available space
| askonomm wrote:
| I'd imagine most people offload them to iCloud, and don't keep
| copies on the iPhone. At least that's what I do.
| minimaxir wrote:
| Apple's continued focus on gaming image quality is weird (ray
| tracing?), since despite Apple Arcade the mobile market still is
| still dominated by freemium games with simple graphics / lower
| graphical requirements.
|
| There are precisely two freemium games that take advantage of the
| power of the Apple Silicon chips: Genshin Impact and Honkai: Star
| Rail, which were coincidently the two released games highlighted.
| (it may be interesting to see what Ubisoft and Capcom put out but
| the I suspect they'll price their games too high)
|
| It bodes well for a M3 Pro chip for the next MacBook Pros,
| though.
| [deleted]
| jasoneckert wrote:
| Sometimes directions that don't make sense from a technical or
| market point of view are made with something much further in
| the future in mind. This could be the case here.
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| Hint: the raytracing GPU engines rely on general purpose GPU
| compute.
|
| It does raytracing because it has raw power. What you use this
| power for is another story. It can easily augment the neural
| engine for example.
| Lorin wrote:
| Perhaps the improvements also benefit their AR/VR products?
| Could be a longer term play at hand.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| This was my first thought too, Apple always plays the long
| game and that's why people keep saying "no innovation" after
| every single keynote :D
|
| Stuff that was added today will pay of in 3-4 years after it
| has trickled down to enough users. Like the spatial camera,
| now it's a curiosity on the top-end model, but in 5 years it
| might be a standard feature in phones with great synergy with
| the Apple Vision non-pro model they just happen to release
| when there are enough devices to produce content for it.
| Havoc wrote:
| > Apple's continued focus on gaming image quality is weird (ray
| tracing?)
|
| Guessing it's important for an eventual vision pro integration
| mezeek wrote:
| This is like Spatial Audio. So many things have been built and
| rolled out in support of Vision Pro. Obviously it'll be the A17
| there too.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Apple's continued focus on gaming image quality is weird (ray
| tracing?), since despite Apple Arcade the mobile market still
| is still dominated by freemium games with simple graphics /
| lower graphical requirements.
|
| They use the same GPU core design from handheld to desktop, so
| the improvement will apply everywhere as chips are updated.
|
| I think their strategy is that iOS makes too much money for
| gaming companies to ignore, which means those companies are
| going to have an easy time reworking iOS games to target a
| mouse/keyboard/gamepad UI on Macs, since the two existing
| platforms (and even their upcoming AR/VR platform) have common
| APIs and CPU/GPU cores.
| minimaxir wrote:
| The M3 chip is rumored to also use the 3nm process, so that's
| expected.
| TomatoTomato wrote:
| It also can improve DX and make for easier ports downstream.
| If the new Assassin's Creed uses some ray tracing on their
| console version, they use the same technique on the iPhone.
| Someone wrote:
| I guess they need such hardware for the Apple Vision Pro, and
| are working with several heavily NDA-ed companies to get
| software out that uses it when that launches.
| kmlx wrote:
| candy crush with ray tracing :)
| photoGrant wrote:
| It's a way to increase profits in an area of R&D that's
| required for the AR side of things.
|
| Gaming is an easily marketable profit funnel that directly
| relates with all the necessary advancements needed to pursue
| the Vision Pro/Visual Compute/LLM side of things. In my
| opinion, anyway.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| Sticking the 23-year-old USB 2.0 port on a device that is made in
| 2023 and costs $1k is inexcusable. [non-pro]
|
| There is absolutely no excuse when we're talking about a device
| at this price point and this age.
|
| It doesn't matter that it wouldn't be fully exercised by most
| users. These are premium products at a premium price point. It's
| insulting that they would cheap out like that.
| acchow wrote:
| Where are you seeing this? Their product page for the 15 non-
| pro says it uses the same cable you use to charge your mac.
|
| It also says "The included USB-C Charge Cable is compatible
| with AirPods Pro (2nd generation) with MagSafe Charging Case
| (USB-C)."
| madeofpalk wrote:
| USB-C is the physical connector, and on the iPhone 15 it
| carries USB 2.0 for data.
| inickt wrote:
| The Pros do use USB3? Or are you talking about the regular 15?
| I still agree with you, but unfortunately the vast majority of
| regular iPhone users aren't transferring large files over a
| cable and won't care.
| Night_Thastus wrote:
| The regular 15. And 3.0 also supports much faster charging.
|
| Maybe most won't care, but I still think it's disgusting and
| pathetic for a company this size with products this expensive
| to cheap out by using USB 2.0.
| stouset wrote:
| USB 2.0 vs 3.0 has nothing to do with power delivery.
|
| The only meaningful difference between 2.0 and 3.0 for the
| iPhone use-case is transfer speeds, and the simple reality
| is that the _overwhelming_ majority of iPhone owners only
| use a cable to charge their phone, not to transfer data on
| /off it.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _cheap out by using USB 2.0_
|
| Could there have been other tradeoffs? Power consumption,
| silicon footprint, _et cetera_. Most people never use USB
| to transfer data to and from their phones. It would be
| slightly ridiculous to support 3.0 if it meant tradeoffs in
| anything practical just so they can say they support a new
| protocol.
| ochoseis wrote:
| It's obviously market segmentation.
| PennRobotics wrote:
| or USB-C (and its order of magnitude complexity) isn't a
| SoC peripheral on the already-taped-out A16 but it is on
| the A17?
| masklinn wrote:
| On the other hand, the 6th gen Mini uses an A15, and has
| USB 3 speeds support (only 5Gb but still).
|
| So apple might have had USB3 speeds support in the A15
| specifically for the mini, or they might have included
| USB3 support for a while in all SoC and enable it
| selectively for segmentation purposes.
|
| That would gel with the comparison between the iPad Air
| 5th gen and the iPad Pro 5th gen: they both use the
| desktop-class M1, but the Pro supports full TB3 and USB4,
| while the Air only supports 10GB.
| PennRobotics wrote:
| Dunno, I don't own Apple products and was quite
| disillusioned with my one workplace MBP. I'm unfamiliar
| with their newest chips and feature support. Do they
| maybe have an off-chip USB controller on the tablet?
|
| Honestly, I'd expect any Armv8.3+ or Armv9 to have USB
| PD/USB-C, Thunderbolt, etc. on the chip itself. USB PD is
| even halfway-or-more supported on some budget Cortex-M
| targets. Apple, though, is a special case; the chipmaker
| and developer are the same, so they have the freedom to
| say "no USB-C on mobile chips" and include only the
| features they want.
|
| My post was pure speculation and a little giving them the
| benefit of the doubt.
| dataworm wrote:
| The 4th gen iPad Air uses an A14 and also has USB 3
| support.
|
| So Apple is using a PCIe USB 3.0 controller for USB 3.0
| iPads.
|
| They could've easily done that on the iPhone 15, so it's
| market segmentation.
| ArchOversight wrote:
| > They could've easily done that on the iPhone 15, so
| it's market segmentation.
|
| Adding additional chips/additional controllers is not
| "easily" done. The iPads have more space to spare on
| their boards, and have larger batteries that can absorb
| the additional power requirements for running those
| additional chips much easier.
| masklinn wrote:
| Well for now it's likely just the IP blocks (the non-pros
| uses the A16 which was certainly designed without since
| none of the 14s was shipped with support).
|
| When the non-pros get the A17 we'll see if they disable
| the USB3 controller and it's market seg. I'd assume so
| but...
| Kirby64 wrote:
| USB 2.0 data rates have absolutely nothing to do with
| charging speed. You don't even need to support data (at
| least, USB data) at all to support fast charging speeds.
| You just need to support PD, which is on separate, required
| pins that both phones support.
| sbradford26 wrote:
| USB 3.0 isn't really necessary to support higher charging
| speeds that is mostly through Power Delivery which I
| believe both the regular 15 and pro support since they both
| advertise 20W fast charging.
| willseth wrote:
| They indicated in the pitch for the Pro that they added
| logic to the new CPU to drive USB 3 at 10gbps. The non-Pro
| is using last year's CPU, so while yes I guess that means
| they did "cheap out", I imagine the cost to include 3.0 on
| the non-Pro is pretty high and most people don't care.
| s3p wrote:
| Except iPads using older SoCs handle faster USB C speeds
| just fine.
| lloyddobbler wrote:
| This. Consider the market. Samsung also doesn't add its
| newly-engineered, top-of-the-line solutions to its lower-
| end new models.
|
| Almost all the people on this forum are in the target
| market for the Pro. The standard iPhone is not built for
| us, nor will most of its users have a problem with
| 480Mbps-over-wire transfer speeds.
| mplewis wrote:
| The vast majority of people aren't transferring data to and
| from their phone via USB cable.
| Gigachad wrote:
| Unless you are doing some kind of video production with your
| phone, there is no real reason to plug it in. And anyone
| doing that would have the pro.
| brokencode wrote:
| It makes sense though. The non-pro models are using last year's
| A16 SOC without any updates. I assume they'll get USB 3 next
| year when the SOC is updated. I'd be much more disappointed if
| that's not the case though.
| masklinn wrote:
| I'd assume the non-pros will remain on USB2, and that serves
| as a segmentation feature. Especially since only the pros can
| shoot in ProRAW and ProRES.
|
| On iPads, the "base" iPad is on USB2 speeds, the mini
| supports 5Gbps, the air 10, and only the pro supports 40Gb
| USB4. And while SoC differences could explain differences
| between the iPad (A14) and Mini (A15), the 5th gen Air uses
| the same SoC as the 5th gen Pro which already did support
| 40Gb USB4. So it's not an SoC limitation.
|
| Although they ended up putting the 48MP main camera on the
| non-pro and I thought that'd remain pro-exclusive as well
| so...
| brokencode wrote:
| It would definitely be a disappointment if they have the
| hardware on the device for 3, but arbitrarily limit to 2
| for pure market segmentation. The iPad situation as you
| described it is discouraging.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| It's a bit more complicated than that with the iPads. The
| Mini supports 5Gbps but only as USB Host mode. If you hook
| it up to a computer as a USB client, it'll still be USB 2.0
| [0]
|
| If you're familiar with the Raspberry Pi 4, those do the
| same thing. That SoC supports USB 2.0 client. The USB 3.0
| host is done through an external (to the SoC) USB
| controller, a VIA Labs VL805. That's what the Mini and iPad
| Pros have done. The first iPad Pro didn't even have a USB
| 3.0 to USB-A cable for USB client because it didn't support
| it, just their host mode accessory. The newer Pros probably
| do the 40Gb USB4 through a similar USB controller and only
| in host most. Not client, where it's limited to 10Gb [1].
|
| [0] https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/ipad-mini-6-is-
| still-us...
|
| [1]
| https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/thunderbolt-3-cable-
| to-...
| ArchOversight wrote:
| I have an iPad Pro 11-inch 4th gen and that supports
| Thunderbolt/USB 4 but when connected as to my MacBook Pro
| it shows up as USB 3.1 at 10 Gbps. So that is correct.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| The whole thing felt they were milking it to last 90min.
|
| But the part where they compared their new GPU accelerated ray-
| tracing to be 4x faster than software ray-tracing was the most
| hilarious part. I thought software rendering was a thing that
| mostly stayed in the 90s, but apparently I was wrong enough that
| even deserved to be mentioned in a multi-million dollar Apple
| presentation.
|
| New iPhone, better than the old one. OK cool.
| GpuIsLife wrote:
| You may be interested to know that Unreal Engine's Nanite
| technology uses (mostly) software rasterisation.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Nanite isn't raytracing though, or even rendering. I think
| it's more like a pre-render thing to reduce polygon count.
| superb_dev wrote:
| Nanite has a large pre-render step, but it also changes the
| rendering quite significantly. (Which in some cases
| includes a software rasterizer running on the GPU)
|
| This is a really good deep dive if you're interested:
| https://youtu.be/eviSykqSUUw?si=Vaj8pngU2Bug5LJX
| ykl wrote:
| Ray tracing has been 100% software (as in, either entirely on
| the CPU or implemented in shader code or CUDA/OpenCL on the
| GPU) up until 2018, which is when the first hardware-
| accelerated ray tracing GPUs became widely available.
| PedroBatista wrote:
| That's why ray-tracing in games was not a thing up until
| 2018.
|
| The context is games, which is what they've shown on the
| presentation to sell us the new iPhone.
| xp84 wrote:
| I also thought that was odd, with the 8fps on the left. Like,
| what iOS game are people playing with software raytracing at
| 8fps?
| alanwreath wrote:
| I'm interested to see what depth of field can be replicated with
| lenses so close together. 3d (spatial) videos is the one feature
| I would have bought a new phone for, but given it is not
| available day one I'm a bit skeptical that an unproven lense set
| up will replicate well to an unproven vr set up.
| Syzygies wrote:
| I want to see a scanner app that nails flattening out book
| pages. The spatial data is needed to triangulate depth
| accurately.
| heisenzombie wrote:
| I'm mostly interested in the manufacturing technology -- seems
| like they're doing some kind of friction/ultrasonic/diffusion
| welding between the titanium frame and the aluminium insides.
|
| That's a notoriously difficult weld to make:
| https://doi.org/10.1177/14644207211010839
|
| I would love to know what process they're using and how they've
| got it reliable!
| cs702 wrote:
| TL;DR:
|
| 1. USB-C. Yay!
|
| 2. New colors. Apple repeatedly refers to the colors as
| "stunning," but they look like regular colors to me.
|
| 3. Incremental hardware and software improvements. Pretty much
| what you expect every year. (Yes, we're all spoiled.)
| gruturo wrote:
| It looks like the one feature I was more eagerly awaiting is
| there: It can drive a display through the USB-C cable
| (https://www.apple.com/iphone-15-pro, scroll down to "Gigablast
| your gigabits" and then click on "Explore Connectivity".
|
| Looking forward (assuming it will work like the iPad Pro) to not
| carrying a laptop with me when I know there is a USB-C or HDMI
| (with an adapter) screen available at my destination. Bluetooth
| keyboard and mouse, and I'm set. No more syncing with the phone -
| I am using the phone itself.
| gessha wrote:
| I really wish Apple let's you develop apps on
| Linux/iPad/iPhone.
| larme wrote:
| I use blink[0] with a 40% keyboard to develop linux program
| on a vps.
|
| If you want to do programming without wireless interenet,
| another option is to connect a raspberry pi zero 2w (with usb
| gadget mode enabled) to the usb c port using a single usb
| cable. Then the rpi zero will share a ethernet network with
| iOS device. Then you can use blink (again) to mosh to
| raspberrypi.local to do the development on the pi.
|
| The reason that I don't do it on android with termux is that
| there's no high quality terminal emulator like blink on
| android.
|
| [0]: https://blink.sh
| Jtsummers wrote:
| One third of your wish is already answered. You can develop
| apps on the iPad.
| hack4supper wrote:
| How pray tell ... I was looking into doing that.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| Swift Playgrounds
|
| https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/
| internetter wrote:
| This is pitched as an education tool...
| Jtsummers wrote:
| > This is pitched as an education tool...
|
| And? From the page:
|
| > When you're ready to share your completed app, you can
| submit it to App Store Connect right from your iPad or
| Mac with Swift Playgrounds.
|
| Someone asked about developing apps on the iPad, this is
| a way to develop (and submit to the App Store) apps on
| the iPad.
| hbn wrote:
| Show me one serious iOS developer who's using an iPad as
| their primary dev machine.
| konradb wrote:
| Would be interesting to see how it can use a larger screen.
| Definitely the phone is powerful enough for most tasks.
| NavinF wrote:
| I don't see anything about displays on that page. All I see is
| "iPhone 15 Pro lets you shoot ProRes video directly to external
| storage, so you can quickly switch drives and keep your iPhone
| camera rolling on set. Want to capture slow motion Hollywood
| style? Now you can record ProRes 4K at 60 fps to an external
| SSD."
|
| I highly doubt the 15 Pro can drive a display. In the unlikely
| case that it can, you'll be limited to very low res. Why would
| they limit USB to 10gbps if the PHY can push the ~32gbps eDP
| bandwidth required for a modern display?
| MarkMarine wrote:
| " Now you can connect USB-C gear like thumb drives, fast
| external storage, 4K displays, and microphones."
|
| Right in the linked site
| gruturo wrote:
| The "Explore Connectivity" modal window you can open in the
| "Gigablast your gigabits" (meh) section, as I quoted in my
| original post, has this block of text:
|
| USB-Convenient.
|
| Now you can connect USB-C gear like thumb drives, fast
| external storage, _4K displays_ , and microphones. And you
| can charge Apple Watch or AirPods from your iPhone.9
| rcarmo wrote:
| I don't think Apple will ever do that, to be honest. It took
| nearly a decade for them to get keyboard support working
| properly on the iPad, and they have zero incentive to copy
| Samsung DeX given they prefer to sell 3 different devices to
| people.
|
| What they will do is allow you to record video directly to
| storage devices and preview photos on large displays as they
| are taken.
| Xylakant wrote:
| > I don't think Apple will ever do that, to be honest.
|
| Apple sells lightning->HDMI adapters that could drive a
| display at 1080p and it's been possible to pair a keyboard
| with your iPhone. I know folks that used that setup for
| writing longer texts while traveling.
|
| Given that a lot of the infrastructure was already there, I
| wouldn't be surprised if it trickles in over time.
|
| You can see the same trajectory with iPads: At first they
| could mirror screens only, but with the recent changes to
| stage manager, they're a pretty full-featured laptop if you
| use a keyboard and trackpad. My 11" pro is capable of driving
| a huge widescreen.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Yeah, I know -
| https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2022/12/14/1230
|
| I've been doing that for years now on the iPad, and knowing
| Apple (my site's 20+ years old, BTW), I would be extremely
| surprised if they ever put Stage Manager or anything
| similar on an iPhone. You can hack your way around things
| (Blink and Remote Desktop support external displays, etc.,
| and there has been an external display API for a while that
| third-party apps have used creatively), but it is just not
| the way Apple thinks about the iPhone.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| This is already possible.
| ako wrote:
| I regularly use my bluetooth mechanical keyboard (nuphy air
| 75) with both ipad and iphone. Works fine. Much better than
| the keyboards sold by apple. What are you missing?
| rcarmo wrote:
| My point was that there will never be a full "desktop mode"
| or even a good generic (supporting all apps) way of running
| apps on an external display. Right now you can develop apps
| that draw on an external display, but that has to be done
| on a per-app basis (there was a notable one a few years
| back that used "web apps" to build a "desktop" on the
| external display, but it's not full, generic, zero code
| changes native app support).
| Havoc wrote:
| > No more syncing with the phone - I am using the phone itself.
|
| That sounds about as productive as the never ending stream of
| "I tried switching to an iPad for dev" blogs
| chx wrote:
| edit: nevermind
| zamadatix wrote:
| You might want to check your math :). It's ~10 gbps by both
| measures.
| paxys wrote:
| I bought an Android phone that transforms into a desktop
| computer when you plug in a USB-C monitor, and the entire
| experience is mind blowing. You can even connect a bluetooth
| keyboard and use the phone screen as a touchpad. Unfortunately
| I don't think Apple is going to go in that direction anytime
| soon.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| Can you do a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse?
| lostapathy wrote:
| iphone has supported that forever.
| bsimpson wrote:
| This sounds like Motorola in about 2012.
| automatoney wrote:
| Ooooh more info please! Which phone? And what's the
| experience like? Are you using it for development at all or
| is it more things like word? I wanna know all about this
| setup, since I'm definitely going to need to upgrade my phone
| soon.
| lostmsu wrote:
| Sounds like Samsung Dex + something like VS Code on
| Android.
| paxys wrote:
| Any Samsung flagship will work (make sure it supports DeX).
| All the first party apps and plenty of store ones have a
| desktop UI. I haven't tried any native IDEs yet, but a
| cloud editor in the browser works perfect.
| rcarr wrote:
| Rumour has it Google are going to introduce a desktop mode
| with the Pixel 8. In the mean time there's Samsung DeX,
| Motorola Ready For, and Huawei Easy Projection. If it has
| desktop mode I'll be getting the Pixel 8, if not the
| Samsung Galaxy S22. Pair it with a Quadlock Mag Case and
| the battery pack attachment and you just have one cable
| going from your phone to your AR glasses and you can
| quickly and easily swap battery packs when needed.
| liminalsunset wrote:
| I have had a number of Samsung devices that I bought
| specifically to test out the DeX capabilities, and it's
| really hard to say whether I recommend it. I ended up going
| back to a real PC, and it was such a breath of fresh air.
|
| My setup was: Anker A8383 USB-C hub, 1440p 120hz monitor,
| USB keyboard/mouse
|
| -Apps close themselves even when the RAM isn't full, and
| the "RAM Plus" feature which gives you 8 GB of swap on a
| 12GB RAM phone doesn't necessarily fix it.
|
| -Multiple apps can play audio at the same time if you
| install Sound Assistant and enable the requisite feature
| (multi-app sound). Similarly, you should get the Good
| Guardians and Good Lock apps from the Galaxy store (or
| apkmirror if in Canada) and tinker with the settings to
| taste. This is necessary to get 4K60 support or anything
| more than 1080p.
|
| -I use Kiwi Browser, which supports all Chrome extensions
| and otherwise works like normal desktop Chrome. You'll want
| to go into the flags and enable the zoom thing (search for
| zoom) and then enable the zoom option under Accessbility in
| Kiwi settings, to fix websites that don't scale correctly.
| Tabs get unloaded/lazy loaded in background due to RAM
| issue.
|
| -Doing anything moderately describable as "productive" or
| "intensive" (example: google maps website) creates more
| heat than the phone can handle over more than 10 minutes.
| Do not buy a Snapdragon 888, or other weak processor device
| (I am aware it is old but some people like used phones).
| Things like particles.js, hidden autoplays, etc that don't
| cause issues on desktop waste TDP on phones. The problem
| isn't necessarily that the phone overheats, it's that
| Samsung makes it so that not only does the battery stop
| charging if it gets over 36 C, it actually starts draining.
| For reference, your body temperature is around 36 C. On the
| S23 Ultra, with the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2, it's more or less
| usable now, with some battery drain from time to time.
| Weirdly, the battery drain issue is solved if you use a
| charger that supports USB PD PPS. The PPS part is VERY
| important. If you look at Samsung schematics, you will see
| that the PMIC does normal USB PD and there's a separate
| chip for PPS. Not all docks support PPS, in fact I'm not
| certain if ANY do. This is an area where more research is
| required. Of course, the fact that the PPS chip isn't
| affected might not be a thermal issue, but rather a
| "Samsung forgot to throttle charging on PPS", which would
| not be a good thing to talk about then because I don't want
| them to "fix" this.
|
| -I cannot imagine development would be particularly easy on
| this device. I briefly looked into getting VSCode on there
| and whatnot but the Android Linux projects seem to have
| fallen quite some from their former glory. While web based
| stuff is likely fine, the aforementioned memory and CPU
| problems will make this difficult to use for anything too
| serious.
|
| -All of the current common remote desktop solutions i.e.
| RustDesk (slow performance), Parsec (keyboard issues, no
| zoom), Reemo (mostly works, no keyboard shortcuts, lag,
| thermal problems), TeamViewer (3fps), Moonlight (mouse
| capture issue, thermal problems), RDP (low fps) etc have
| some kind of usability problem that makes them difficult to
| use for this application, in case you wanted to use the
| phone as a thin client.
| colinjoy wrote:
| > assuming it will work like the iPad Pro
|
| I doubt they would sneak in such a feature without at least
| mentioning it. I expect this to be even more limited, perhaps
| just tethered airplay for better resolution.
| rcarmo wrote:
| It's not even that. It's just direct storage access for
| recording and image previews.
| ksec wrote:
| I hope this is true. Even with a Keyboard and mouse and I can
| browse Internet with it would be great.
| masklinn wrote:
| FWIW keyboards have worked OK all along, I regularly use one
| of my wireless keyboards switched over to the phone to type
| longer stuff, though the autocorrect gets more annoying in
| that case.
|
| Mice are a lot more annoying, because they're part of the
| assistive devices, so you need to enable Assistive Touch, and
| then you either have the mouse connected or the Assistive
| Touch menu taking space on the display, which is probably not
| useful if you're abled. If Assistive Touch is disabled, the
| mouse "works" but you don't get a visible pointer which is
| completely stupid.
|
| Possibly connecting to an external display won't have that
| issue, or iOS 17 will make the experience a bit better for
| non-assistive mousing.
| losvedir wrote:
| I missed the presentation but with talk of these new stereoscopic
| cameras did they mention anything about Apple Vision Pro? Ever
| since that keynote with the kind of dystopian example of wearing
| a headset during the kid's birthday, I assumed the future would
| be the next iPhone taking the "memories" (as I think they called
| them). Was that mentioned at all today?
|
| edit: oh, neat, yeah I missed it at first but it's right in the
| linked press release:
|
| > Coming later this year, iPhone 15 Pro will add a new dimension
| to video capture with the ability to record spatial video for
| Apple Vision Pro.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| The most interesting thing to me is that switching to a new SOC
| process node gives you the option of bumping up performance or
| reducing power draw, and it sounds like Apple has once again
| chosen to reduce power draw.
|
| It seems like other vendors have been going the "push performance
| no matter what it does to power draw and heat" route for a long
| time now.
| ko27 wrote:
| Your conclusion is wrong. There is no difference in battery
| life if you compare to 14 Pro on their site.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| More than one component in the device draws power. Did you
| see the part about the display getting twice as bright, for
| instance?
| awestroke wrote:
| Their website is not a reliable source for performance
| numbers. We'll have to wait for third party benchmarks
| ksec wrote:
| >and it sounds like Apple has once again chosen to reduce power
| draw
|
| We will have to see. They have a 10% performance increase and I
| am betting there will be 5% coming from Clock Speed.
|
| And it is not like Apple could push power draw any further as
| they have maxed out single core power draw. Unlike other
| competitor ( ARM / Snapdragon ) which has a much lower single
| core power draw figures and hence they try to push as much as
| possible.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > We will have to see. They have a 10% performance increase
| and I am betting there will be 5% coming from Clock Speed.
|
| The big cores got faster, but the little ones did not.
|
| > the performance cores are 10 percent faster... the
| efficiency cores are more efficient rather than being faster
|
| https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2023/09/apples-new-
| iphone-15...
|
| Which sounds to me like a new version of the big cores, but
| not of the little cores on a more power efficient process
| node.
|
| However, as always, time will tell.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Why run faster if you are already comfortably number one? It
| makes sense to focus on something that everyone wants
| improvement on: battery life.
| kaba0 wrote:
| To be honest, in general it does improve battery life if you
| are faster. Battery life is a race to CPU sleep mode, and if
| you finish the job faster, the more energy you can save.
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Only for things that are "completable", not for things that
| run in the background persistently
| kaba0 wrote:
| On the CPU game, apple is so far ahead that it might not even
| make sense to talk about other vendors. Apple could
| deliberately downclock their CPUs and still beat the shit out
| of any flagship android. Hell, their 3 years old lineup
| actually beats the current year's top.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I imagine the reasoning is that most people do not use the
| performance, but would value less need to charge the battery.
| highwaylights wrote:
| The most interesting part of this to me isn't the titanium or the
| camera (impressive as it looks), it's the GPU.
|
| They made a point of saying that the GPU had been completely
| ground-up re-designed, and I assume they're intending to keep
| scaling that up over the next few iterations.
|
| They didn't talk about it for very long, but that the phone is
| able to convincingly run AAA games, even at playable if not great
| frame-rates, is really impressive. This puts the iPhone up
| against devices like the Switch and Steam Deck for a lot of
| users. Granted, they don't have Nintendo's games, and they don't
| have Steam's massive back catalogue, but looking forward it does
| make a dedicated handheld gaming system harder to justify, or at
| least makes the phone easier to justify if you're not buying
| both.
|
| It also makes me really interested to see where Apple is going
| with Apple TV and the Mac. With the game porting toolkit already
| announced (and the results people are already getting just using
| it directly to run Windows games), it seems like Apple really
| could eat at least some portion of the gaming market by already
| having a handheld (phone), console (Apple TV), and gaming PC
| (Mac) ready to go in the next few years.
|
| I'm expecting the new M3 Macs next month to lean really heavily
| into discussing the GPU advances and (hopefully) announce a lot
| more support from big studios to bring more games to the Mac.
| 3cats-in-a-coat wrote:
| It also shows the direction the M series, and I'm frankly happy
| with what they've shipped this year. Solid strategy, design and
| engineering.
| turtlebits wrote:
| People have been saying that Mac gaming is around the corner
| for years now. GPU upgrades are the least exiting part of new
| iPhones. I have zero faith that they move the gaming needle,
| especially on iPhones.
|
| The most exciting thing for Mac gaming is probably the Game
| porting toolkit.
| thaanpaa wrote:
| I'm not sure they have. When Macs came with Intel processors,
| everyone who wanted to play games on their Mac just booted
| into Windows for gaming, so there wasn't much pressure to
| make them work on the MacOS side. Because Bootcamp no longer
| works, Apple is under increased pressure to improve game
| performance.
| dimitrios1 wrote:
| > I have zero faith that they move the gaming needle
|
| My faith is placed in the fact that they have been pouring
| resources that amount close to billions on making gaming a
| thing on iPhones and Macs.
|
| As a long time Mac and iPhone gamer, I have seen slow and
| steady incremental progress. I'm personally excited for the
| new GPU.
|
| Besides, I think they get the benefit of the doubt at this
| point. This is Apple, not Google, after all.
| imbusy111 wrote:
| Pointing out the obvious, but the iPhone only has the touch
| input, and no physical controls, so it's not going to work as a
| serious gaming device.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| Serious or not, but for example Diablo Immortal is mobile
| only and it reportedly brings in $1M _daily_.
|
| So some people are seriously playing it with no physical
| controls. =)
|
| For "serious" mobile gamers there are devices like the Razer
| Kishi: https://www.razer.com/mobile-controllers/razer-
| kishi-v2
|
| On this site people tend to forget that there actually are
| people under 30 whose only computing device is a phone. They
| use it for everything.
| ErneX wrote:
| You can use modern gamepads with it, like the PS5 DualSense.
| jwells89 wrote:
| Yeah, bluetooth controller of choice and a kickstand case
| on the biggest iPhone gets you very close to a Switch or
| Deck conceptually.
|
| Once the A17 makes its way to the iPad mini, that'll be
| even closer.
| falcolas wrote:
| If, and only if the developers include controller
| support. Which they largely don't, _even when controllers
| are supported on every other platform._
|
| Two egregious examples: The Final Fantasy Pixel
| Remastered series, and Monster Hunter Stories. The first
| has controller support on both the PC and consoles, but
| not on phones (which came out first). The second launched
| on a console (the 3DS), and has no controller support on
| the phone.
|
| That caveat alone makes it so frustrating to play games
| on the phone IME.
| 0x457 wrote:
| Even if they do include, it's often weird. I wanted to
| try play genshin with controller - you have to complete
| certain parts of the game to unlock settings button. Why?
| jwells89 wrote:
| It's a shame because the UX of controller configuration
| on iOS/macOS/tvOS is the best I've seen outside of
| consoles. Even Windows, the king of gaming, doesn't do as
| well with configuration of Microsoft's own Xbox
| controllers (let alone those of competing companies).
| Instead on Windows Steam is required for any level of
| sanity with controllers.
| dbbk wrote:
| Then you've gotta figure out how to prop your phone up...
| DRW_ wrote:
| There are also plenty of clips for Xbox or PlayStation
| controllers that whilst being a little top heavy, are
| quite comfortable and work well.
| cloin wrote:
| It does however pair very nicely with popular console
| controllers
| jonahhorowitz wrote:
| It works really well with a PS5 controller, and they make
| controllers that snap on the sides too.
| KoftaBob wrote:
| Well yeah but that's a trivial problem to solve by just
| getting a case/attachment with gaming controls on it, like
| the Razer Kishi.
| lp0_on_fire wrote:
| With this announcement it wouldn't surprise me if Apple is
| already working on a first-party case/attachment
| specifically for gaming.
|
| And it wouldn't be their first attempt at such hardware:
|
| https://lowendmac.com/2006/apples-pippin-and-bandais-
| world-m...
| basisword wrote:
| This applies to the Switch too. It's touch screen but has
| external controls (they detach and you can use the
| kickstand). iOS supports gaming controllers so you could use
| it in the same way as the Switch (albeit it doesn't have a
| built in kickstand).
| SketchySeaBeast wrote:
| But if you're bringing your switch you're not just bringing
| the screen. If you are bringing your phone somewhere you
| are bringing just the phone. It's harder to sell and
| justify.
| mcphage wrote:
| > It's touch screen but has external controls
|
| The touch screen is one of the least-used parts of the
| Switch. Which is a little disappointing, since it was so
| heavily and well used on the DS/3DS lines. But so many of
| the ways Nintendo intends you to use the system, the
| touchscreen isn't accessible. So games aren't built around
| it in the same way that it was for their previous
| handhelds.
| sbuk wrote:
| Didn't an infamous CEO say similar about the 'missing'
| physical keyboard and not being a good business device?
| bradgessler wrote:
| I question if Apple really cares about or is serious about
| gaming. My impression is they use it as an excuse to showcase
| hardware improvements since games are happy to soak up pretty
| much any hardware that's thrown at it.
|
| That seems to be where their concern for gaming stops. There is
| Apple Arcade, but it feels like the least amount they could do
| for the size of their company.
|
| I do think they care about it over the longer-term,
| particularly in light Vision Pro and their overall AR strategy.
| philistine wrote:
| Apple is making 30%, just like all the console makers and
| Steam, on every single game transaction on iPhone.
|
| What you're forgetting, and pushing aside, is that the mobile
| gaming market is as big as the _traditional_ gaming market.
| All the phone games make as much money as all the consoles
| and PC gaming together. Apple, with its command of all the
| valuable phone customers, is pulling an estimated 14 billion
| dollars in 2021 in mobile gaming. So Apple is very dumb if
| they don 't care about 14 billion in annual services revenue.
|
| What you're thinking is that _traditional_ gaming is big-boy
| gaming and where the big bucks are. The growth market is
| mobile gaming, with the other segments being stagnant outside
| of big hits. The reality is that Apple is a bigger gaming
| company, by revenue, than Microsoft or Sony, is controlling
| the growth sector, and is thinking accordingly. They have
| financed all on their own a new GPU generation for their
| phone and justified it as a need for gaming and gaming alone.
| Those other companies need partners, like AMD or Nvidia, to
| make them GPUs.
|
| https://www.spglobal.com/marketintelligence/en/news-
| insights...
| smoldesu wrote:
| > The reality is that Apple is a bigger gaming company, by
| revenue, than Microsoft or Sony
|
| The "reality" is that Apple still has to pay other studios
| to port games to their systems. We spent 8 tragic years
| watching them wheel out Tomb Raider demos each keynote as
| if it was a shiny new release. Larian Studios came,
| Blizzard Studios went, but nobody changed the tide of
| gaming on iPhone _or_ Mac. The fact that _Boom Beach_ is
| more profitable than _dear esther_ is not exactly an
| allegorical victory for Apple.
|
| So... here we are. A world where a $300, 20nm Nintendo
| Switch is a better gaming console than a shiny new $800 3nm
| iPhone. Apple's service revenue isn't driven by good games,
| so they have no incentive to build a better system. The
| entire iOS runtime is an antitrust meltdown waiting to
| happen.
| bombcar wrote:
| But how much of "mobile gaming revenue" is shitty "buy
| coins to skip this puzzle" in whatever polished shitpuzzle
| game is the current hotness?
|
| You can only pay-to-play Bejeweled so many times, after
| all.
| wiseowise wrote:
| As much as I want this cesspool to die, unfortunately,
| parent is talking about revenue. And there I can imagine
| mobile market being even bigger than traditional gaming.
| All those shitty casinos and gacha games should rot in
| hell.
| dahwolf wrote:
| That currently seems to be the case, but it's a puzzling
| strategy.
|
| It's a digital company that is trying to increase revenue
| with services instead of just hardware.
|
| How can you ignore gaming whilst offering your own streaming
| service? The gaming market is many multiples in size of all
| of Hollywood.
| bombcar wrote:
| I assume they don't want to compete with their customers on
| gaming, not just yet.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Gaming has a high cost of entry. Xbox posted its first
| profit in 2007, six years after the Xbox launch.
|
| I would imagine that they don't think they have much to
| bring to the table that would leaps and bounds get them
| over the current competition; their entry point would
| probably look like a premium Steam Deck or maybe the Vision
| Pro for AR gaming, but is that an Apple-sized market to
| sink their teeth into? Particularly when none of their
| other devices are traditional-gaming oriented.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Based on the last two events, they increasingly invest more
| and more money into games. And to be honest, it absolutely
| makes sense -- apple's biggest competitor in many areas is
| themselves: people use their iphones for many many years. So
| it does makes sense to invest into services as well.
| _hzw wrote:
| And they will likely have to enable side-loading in the EU next
| year, which will allow us to play almost all retro games
| through emulation.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| Maybe Apple will embrace this then.
|
| Maybe even making deals to compete with emulators + pirated
| ROMs.
|
| Just fantasizing a bit here... thinking of Apple-approved
| N64, GameCube, GBA, PSP, even PS4 emulators with licensed
| games for a somewhat medium to high price tag - why not?
| _hzw wrote:
| Actually, this is up to Nintendo and Sony, not Apple...
| duskwuff wrote:
| And, speaking from experience, Nintendo definitely
| wouldn't be on board. As far as I'm aware, they have
| _never_ authorized any kind of third-party emulation of
| their games; even their first-party emulators like the
| NES Mini or Virtual Console have always been limited-time
| offerings with relatively small selections of games.
| kaba0 wrote:
| Getting the game ROMs is definitely illegal. But they
| can't have any say in the actual emulation and emulation
| software.
| SahAssar wrote:
| Getting ROMs is legal in a lot of circumstances, either
| by backuping the game yourself or if you own the game but
| download a ROM (like
| https://law.stackexchange.com/a/41876)
| 0x457 wrote:
| Good luck having apple to approve a game where to do
| anything you have to google things, the game cannot tell
| you how to google and any public popular resources
| telling how to do it getting struck with DMCA.
| kaba0 wrote:
| They can approve the emulators though, which they don't
| currently.
| moritzwarhier wrote:
| Sure! As I said I was fantasizing, maybe I should have
| qualified this a bit more :)
| klausa wrote:
| >I'm expecting the new M3 Macs next month to lean really
| heavily into discussing the GPU advances and (hopefully)
| announce a lot more support from big studios to bring more
| games to the Mac.
|
| Assuming the trend of iPhone Ax chips showing up in Macs holds
| up, this would be late 2024 / early 2025 Macs and M4, not M3.
|
| M2 is based based on A15, M3 is expected to be based on A16, M4
| would be A17.
| wmf wrote:
| No, all the rumors say M3 is based on A17.
| ErneX wrote:
| I think the M3 Macs will start to come out in 2024.
| summarity wrote:
| To me this is a signal of reusing the GPU innovations that were
| required for the Vision Pro in currently available products and
| then finding a martket for it (gaming)
| sroussey wrote:
| Eh, the GPU changes with ray tracing were supposed to land
| last year as part of A16 but heat issues required them to
| pull it.
|
| The bright side is that if you are on a yearly release
| cadence then you don't let one thing slip the whole SOC
| (assuming, as Apple does, that you have a risk on and risk
| off design going simultaneously).
|
| Your are right on that the Vision Pro will have a M3 not M2.
| stirlo wrote:
| >Your are right on that the Vision Pro will have a M3 not
| M2.
|
| It's been publicly announced as using M2 but I assume they
| just plan to say "we made it even faster" and launch with
| M3 then?
| nebula8804 wrote:
| >Eh, the GPU changes with ray tracing were supposed to land
| last year as part of A16 but heat issues required them to
| pull it.
|
| Where did you read about this? Is there some publication
| that publishes insights into things like this?
| saagarjha wrote:
| Vision Pro is based on the A15 SoC.
| wmf wrote:
| We don't know what's in the R1.
| klausa wrote:
| We know it doesn't have any general purpose compute.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| [flagged]
| alanwreath wrote:
| I already have a couple 3D videos that I've recorded. It's
| one of the most powerful aspects of VR computing. I'm
| hopeful that they continue to iterate on 3d photos and
| video.
|
| It's a space that needs standardization and more big
| players need to be there.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Yeah, we are waiting for the saviour for 20+ years.
| yakz wrote:
| I don't think they care about Switch or other consoles, really.
| Switch sales are nothing compared to what they already sell for
| non-gaming systems.
|
| You'll be able to play the same AAA games on your desktop Mac,
| your Macbook, your iPhone, your iPad, and your Apple Vision Pro
| (on a virtual gigantic screen), locally on the device with no
| WAN streaming required. That will be a relatively large market
| of people with money to spend, hard to ignore.
| paxys wrote:
| Is it though? The promise of gaming on iPhone (and mobile
| gaming in general) has been taken over and destroyed by
| freemium games whose only goal is to push microtransactions.
| What is a marginally better GPU going to accomplish? Help games
| sell me their "bundle of gems" faster?
|
| Developers simply do not have the incentive to build any other
| kinds of games when the current crop of addictive shovelware is
| so damn profitable. The sad part is that Apple encourages this
| practice because it is easy money for them (via their 30% cut).
| The problem needs to be fixed by better quality control and
| transaction/gambling rules, not a faster processor.
| carlosjobim wrote:
| Before smart phones became something for everybody, 99% of
| "gamers" would game on lottery tickets, casinos, slot
| machines and such. They are still the majority and they want
| their slot machines, where they don't have to think or learn
| to progress. Computer / video game tropes are just an
| aesthetic to skin a slot machine on your phone.
| lawlessone wrote:
| Some truth to this, many people playing mobile games would
| never have owned a laptop/PC/console. They play these games
| on the commute or while watching TV. A "full fledged" game
| and it's large upfront costs wouldn't interest them.
| wmf wrote:
| Apple's new gaming strategy (as of today) is ports of console
| games. It's not worth developing good games specifically for
| mobile but that's not necessary if iDevices can run console
| ports.
| gretch wrote:
| This is a really short sighted and defeatist view on the
| potential of mobile gaming. Mobile gaming started before
| iPhones, and it will be around probably for the rest of human
| civilization.
|
| There is no way 1 generation of games can "take over and
| destroy" the "promise of gaming" because there are no
| restrictions on what future innovators can do with the tools
| and the platforms. The existence of some bad games doesn't
| preclude future good games.
|
| As an example, my favorite mobile game is Slay the Spire
| make3 wrote:
| I'm sorry but console and PC games have been infinitely
| better since forever, giving much better products with much
| more limited resources for much of their existence.
|
| Smartphones have existed for a long time now, and the games
| absolutely suck, except the extremely rare high quality
| indie game port like Papers Please or Slay the Spire.
| pradn wrote:
| Nothing will change barring a change in economics
| (subsidies for quality games, Apple not taking a 30% cut on
| microtransactions, somehow prices for good indie games
| going up) or a change in human nature (people seem to just
| play shitty games from what I see in the NYC subway).
|
| We already have beautiful mobile games, like Monument
| Valley. But that's not what the market is about. The very
| term "mobile game" reeks of low quality at this point. I
| don't see it changing.
| __loam wrote:
| Steam also takes 30% from the first $10 million in sales,
| so I'm not sure what it is about the app store that
| incentivizes this. The incentives are arguably identical
| on Steam. I think it has more to do with the nature of
| the device (Touch controls, people using it on their
| bathroom breaks, etc) than it does with any economic
| situations.
| internetter wrote:
| To be fair, steam offers a massive amount of goodies on
| top, including a built in mod store, tools for
| multiplayer, forums, and many more. I'd argue that the
| platform is worth _at least_ 10% if used to it 's fullest
| (and after a certain threshold the 30% goes down anyway
| -- though imo it should start low for small studios)
|
| The same cannot be said for the app store. Save from
| basic DRM (steam has this), leaderboards (steam has this)
| & achievements (steam has this), you get much less for
| that cut.
| Chatting wrote:
| Plus, as a developer, you're not required to go through
| Steam, if you don't think it's worth it.
|
| There are plenty of other options (Epic Games, Microsoft
| Store, etc.), each with a different revenue share
| arrangement. Or you can self-publish on your own website
| and infrastructure (Minecraft did this and it worked out
| pretty well for them).
|
| Most developers (not all!) clearly have decided that the
| value Steam provides (features+audience) is worth it.
| But, crucially, with Steam, it's a choice. With iOS, it's
| not. You are forced to go through the App Store whether
| you like it or not (for now, at least). And if tomorrow
| Apple decides that 30% is not enough and they'd like a
| bit more, there's not much you can do about it.
|
| (Apologies if this is not terribly relevant to the rest
| of the thread, but it bugs me when I see this kind of
| "apples to apples" comparisons between Steam and the App
| Store)
| ask_b123 wrote:
| For me mods and multiplayer are worth more than 10%. That
| said, I also play multiplayer games on the AppStore,
| although the Game Center friends functionality isn't as
| good as Steam's.
| gretch wrote:
| > We already have beautiful mobile games, like Monument
| Valley. But that's not what the market is about. The very
| term "mobile game" reeks of low quality at this point.
|
| What exactly is it that you are after? It seems like you
| are not content simply getting the games you want, such
| as Monument Valley. You also need everyone else to live
| their life a certain way?
|
| Why not simply conclude that the market is big enough for
| everyone to coexist. And as long as there's games for
| you, you don't have to lament other people sitting around
| enjoying candy crush.
| derefr wrote:
| > You also need everyone else to live their life a
| certain way?
|
| Well, yes, I need -- or rather, would prefer -- all the
| people who are addicted to portable slot machines, to
| stop throwing their lives away being addicted to portable
| slot machines.
|
| But I don't blame those people for that, nor do I think
| that trying to get _them_ to each personally attempt to
| overcome their addiction would be practical.
|
| People with gambling addictions are people with a
| particular cognitive vulnerability to variable-scheduled
| rewards. Unlike people with other addictions, who "go
| overboard" on something that other people can "enjoy
| responsibly" (and so which society has a reason to
| otherwise permit), people with gambling addictions are
| the targets of products and services produced _solely_ to
| target them, that people _without_ gambling addictions
| just... don 't see the point of. Slot machines of all
| sorts exist to commercially exploit gambling addicts. And
| they do so very well.
|
| That very exploitation was why the US _had_ outlawed
| casinos in almost every state; why casinos are 19+ to
| enter, even when not serving alcohol; why "casino game"
| video games must be rated M; why even _depictions_ of
| gambling affect the age-ratings for TV shows and movies.
|
| But now that exploitation has leaked. It's no longer
| limited to casinos; it's now everywhere in the palm of
| your hand -- and not just bare-faced as "casino games",
| but also in the guise of everything from shooters to
| RPGs, all with their own variable-scheduled rewards that
| can suck up unbounded amounts of your very real money.
|
| Obviously, I blame the exploiters -- the "gaming" [i.e.
| casino] industry, and the ex-"gaming"-industry
| professionals infecting the _games_ industry with their
| exploitation tactics. And also, I blame society, for not
| punishing the exploiters, not outlawing the exploitation.
|
| > sitting around enjoying candy crush
|
| My dude, Candy Crush is a great, fun, classic, and
| _ethical_ game compared to what they have these days.
| Have you _looked_ at the mobile casual games market in
| the last five years? If the words "rare JPEG" don't mean
| anything to you, then you should really spend a few
| minutes looking into the people throwing away their life
| savings on some of these "games."
| madeofpalk wrote:
| The potential of mobile gaming has came and gone.
|
| Outside of small, niche indie games (which are great and do
| well within their own respect), free-to-play gacha games is
| the 'state of the art.
| nebula8804 wrote:
| At least on a positive note: an iPhone + Dev account + some
| tiny controller addon can equal a great pocket emulation
| machine on the go. If someone can design a nice controller
| add on, we can ditch the Chinese pocket gameboy/switch/other
| extra devices you dont need.
|
| It so absurd: We need to carry the device anyway since its a
| phone, it has a great GPU and there are thousands of existing
| great games that have been created that the device can easily
| run. The only problem has always been the stupidity of the
| code not being available to run on this device. :/
| rcarr wrote:
| You might want to have a look at the razer kishi.
| Alternatively if you want a standalone controller, you
| might want to look at the following 8bitdo products:
|
| - sn30 pro
|
| - lite 2
|
| - zero
|
| - micro
|
| The latter two are comically miniscule. In my opinion the
| sn30 pro is the sweet spot between portability and actually
| being able to play comfortably.
| mdavidn wrote:
| Early mobile games were such a delight. I have fond memories
| of Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, Cut the Rope, Flight
| Control, Threes, Monument Valley, Bad Piggies...
|
| But then predatory freemium games like Clash of Clans and
| newer replacements for Angry Birds and Plants vs Zombies
| burned me out. They eliminated any desire I had to invest
| time or money or attention into mobile games. Popular
| freemium games in the App Store now bury any new gems. It's
| quite disappointing.
|
| A better GPU isn't going to help the situation.
| jerojero wrote:
| I still play Threes! to this day, still haven't been able
| to get a 6000 card even after all these years.
|
| I don't think there's a mobile game out there that has
| given me more entertainment.
| simonh wrote:
| It's still a bit thin on top class games, but I still hold
| out hope for Apple Arcade.
| javajosh wrote:
| _> Angry Birds, Plants vs Zombies, Cut the Rope, Flight
| Control, Threes_
|
| My list of games is basically the same. I think they are
| legitimately rare, and we believe at the time that they are
| not. It's like YouTube. You find one 3blue1brown or Adam
| Neely and you think there are a hundred more. There aren't.
| itishappy wrote:
| Anybody remember GeoDefence or Tap Tap Revenge?
|
| These weren't hidden gems either, these were front and
| center promoted links in the App Store. I'm sure it's
| possible to find experiences like these in modern games,
| but I've given up hope long ago. I don't have time to sift
| through the trash.
| absoluteunit1 wrote:
| I really wish micro transactions were made illegal in
| applications on the app stores...and video games in general.
| It encourages additive behaviour and lowers the quality of
| games as the purpose becomes to make the additive micro
| transaction aspect as addictive as possible.
|
| If some new policy changed this, I think we'd see a whole new
| wave of higher quality games
| NeoTar wrote:
| How would you define a micro-transaction?
|
| Maybe we need a pornography-like definition ("I know it
| when I see it") but I think there is certainly a continuum
| from high-quality DLC / expansions to existing games (which
| can be basically a new game) down to crystals which allow
| you to instantly buy something which you'd have got anyway
| if you had waited.
|
| So, consider a basic, Mario-kart like racing game - which
| of these are OK, and which are micro-transactions?
|
| - buying additional courses,
|
| - buying additional characters (drivers), vehicles, or
| components of vehicle (e.g. wheels, engines, bodies),
|
| - buying purely cosmetic changes (e.g. driver outfits,
| vehicle colours),
|
| - buying permanent upgrades to your vehicle(s) (i.e. more
| speed, better acceleration, better handling)
|
| - buying one-off power-ups that last for a single race, or
| are time-limited (+50% acceleration for 1 hour)
|
| - buying 'cheats' - obvious play-to-win items (e.g. needing
| to complete 1 fewer lap than your opponent),
|
| - buying regular game-progression; e.g. maybe 100
| races/wins/hours of play are normally required to unlock
| all courses, but this can also be instantly purchased.
|
| - any of the above options, but not bought directly, but
| rather via purchasing 'crystals' which can be exchanged for
| the above.
|
| - any of the above options, but in a 'gatcha' style (i.e.
| loot boxes; you cannot choose which upgrade you want),
|
| I think I'd be totally OK with the top three, maybe OK with
| buying permanent upgrades, and unlocking game progression
| (in this case), but the others are too far for me.
| jordanmorgan10 wrote:
| I mean...I don't entirely agree, they've created an entire
| service to avoid the problems you are describing with Apple
| Arcade.
| xienze wrote:
| Yeah, exactly. They've been playing up how the latest
| iPad/iPhone/etc. is just as powerful as <some previous
| generation console> for years now. And I don't doubt that.
| But it doesn't do much good when barely anything approaching
| AAA gaming shows up on the platform. The potential is wasted
| on lots of garbage freemium games.
| Firmwarrior wrote:
| Yeah, I'm so sick of lugging a Switch and a ridiculously
| huge Steam Deck around when my iPhone 14 is way more
| powerful than either one, but all that power is wasted
| since there just aren't enough decent games to play
| armchairhacker wrote:
| > Developers simply do not have the incentive to build any
| other kinds of games when the current crop of addictive
| shovelware is so damn profitable.
|
| Personally, I don't have the incentive because 1) paid mobile
| gaming isn't a big market (see: top paid apps being the exact
| same years-old, curated Apple apps not having many
| reviews/downloads), 2) there aren't many options to develop
| games targeting iOS which also target Android and
| Windows/Linux (at least if you want to use Swift), and 3)
| Apple could remove my game at any notice and I don't get 30%
| of the revenue.
|
| If Apple introduces a way to easily port desktop games to
| iOS, or even develop entirely new games which can run on
| Linux and mac and iPhone, I think we'd see a lot more iOS
| games. Maybe the new GPU isn't only faster but also supports
| Vulkan/wgpu better?
| runjake wrote:
| Did the Game Porting Toolkit[1] and the Unity integrations
| not meet that last need? If not, where have they fallen
| short?
|
| Legitimately asking. I'm not up to speed on the subject.
|
| 1. https://developer.apple.com/games/planning/#bring-games-
| to-a...
| jacobr1 wrote:
| They built Arcade+ in part to provide alternative to
| microtransaction games.
| danudey wrote:
| And there are a lot of games out there featuring
| microtransactions, but which also have Apple Arcade
| versions which don't have microtransactions. It's pretty
| great to be able to grab a game that looks fun and know
| that you can just sit down and play it, rather than having
| to tap through seven different pop-up windows trying to
| sell you on the battle pass, buying boosts, buying more
| coins, spending the coins you already have so that you'll
| have to buy more coins next time you need coins, three
| different currencies, are you sure you want to restart the
| level you can just keep playing for only a buck!, and so
| on.
| mjamesaustin wrote:
| Oh, I did not know this! Can you confirm if
| microtransactions are prohibited amongst Apple Arcade
| games? This would be a big selling point for me.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| They are 100% IAP and ad free.
|
| One of the reasons I got Apple One, the kids can install
| an endless amount of decent to excellent games from there
| and I don't need to worry about them wasting money on
| them or getting predatory ads.
|
| Sneaky Sasquatch is the hidden gem in there. It starts
| off simple, but it's a really cool and complex world you
| can explore
| simonh wrote:
| They are. Apple Arcade is about at the point where it has
| enough great games that it might be worth it. Certainly
| it's well worth paying for a few months to try them all
| out.
| lxgr wrote:
| They are indeed prohibited as far as I know and
| experienced, which makes it a great selling (and gifting)
| point of me as well!
| edualm wrote:
| Not who you are replying to, but I can confirm it!
| snotrockets wrote:
| Not all the conversions are good enough: there are Apple
| arcade games where you can feel the grind of the free-to-
| play mechanisms, only now there's no money involved.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > The promise of gaming on iPhone (and mobile gaming in
| general) has been taken over and destroyed by freemium games
| whose only goal is to push microtransactions.
|
| Wasn't that a reaction to users who refused to pay for games
| and just sideloaded them instead?
|
| I can remember there being five dollar games in the early
| days of iOS that sold well. I can also remember developers
| trying games that had ads until you paid to remove them.
| albedoa wrote:
| > Wasn't that a reaction to users who refused to pay for
| games and just sideloaded them instead?
|
| No. That was a minuscule number of people.
|
| It was a reaction to Candy Crush making insane amounts of
| money using casino mechanics.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > No. That was a minuscule number of people.
|
| I can certainly remember developers of early popular
| games that you paid for up front saying that they tracked
| how many copies of their game were out there, and only a
| minuscule percentage of those games had been paid for,
| lawlessone wrote:
| It's far easier to pirate on PC yet we have plenty of non
| freemium games. And hardest to pirate games on iOS yet
| theres a glut of freemium games. On Android you'd still
| have to explicitly enable side loading
|
| I don't think piracy is the issue here, the issue is on
| mobile devices you already have quick payments setup for
| very fast transactions through the app stores. It's
| easier to assume to assume the person using the phone
| authorized to make the transaction and enable lots of
| small transactions.
|
| On PC it's much easier to enter my card details for each
| new transaction, so i never save the card in Steam etc.
| Doing the same on the phone is tiring, so i have my card
| saved.
|
| Apple and Google also make a little money on these
| transactions and have less incentive to promote non
| freemium games.
| michaelt wrote:
| _> Wasn 't that a reaction to users who refused to pay for
| games and just sideloaded them instead?_
|
| My impression at the time was that the supply of games in
| the app store was just too great, with hundreds of casual
| games being released every day. Thus driving down prices.
|
| And Apple was more than happy to commoditise their
| complement; if 20 developers decided to clone Flappy Bird
| that was fine with Apple.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| I'm talking about early standouts, not also rans. I think
| 2010's Infinity Blade pulled in two million dollars the
| first week, back when the user base of the devices were
| comparatively tiny.
|
| People were willing to pay up front on iOS, but Android
| users just sideloaded, leading to Skinner box free-to-
| play games being the most reliable way to monetize.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Seems like an odd scapegoat. Apple themselves was
| promoting the iPhone with gachapon games earlier today,
| it's not like lootbox titles magically disappeared with
| good DRM. If anything, overly-strong DRM enforcement
| reinforces the power that lootbox-style games have over
| the user. It gives the developer more control over the
| runtime than the end-user, encouraging developers to
| extort the user however they can.
|
| Sideloading makes piracy a service problem instead of a
| freedom one, and Apple knows their service can't compete
| on an unstacked deck.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Seems like an odd scapegoat.
|
| Only if you expect developers and/or studios to work for
| no pay.
|
| Why do you think we live in a world where you need an
| internet connection to play a single player game?
| Developers need a way to be sure you've paid up.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Valve had no problem porting thousands of games to Steam
| Deck without paying developers a dime. It is a proven
| fact that a functional DXVK/Wine runtime can support more
| AAA video games than whatever Apple is paying for.
|
| You keep bringing this around to revenue, but Apple could
| solve this problem if they didn't benefit from the status
| quo. A company 10x smaller than them did it, a company
| with full control over their hardware stack has no excuse
| to drag their feet and copy Open Source's homework.
| chaostheory wrote:
| Steam is a DRM platform. Other than that I agree with
| everything you said.
|
| What you're missing is that Apple has their own proton
| that they're using to help developers port their games
| like what Valve is doing with proton. Imo most of Apple
| still hates games if it didn't bring in so much revenue.
| Now we have a small team trying to change that at Apple
| similar to how WSL for Windows came to being. I just hope
| that the higher ups continue to support and promote
| Apple's "proton"
| smoldesu wrote:
| Apple's Proton is just a fork of DXVK with less upstream
| support and a more restrictive redistribution license.
| The best "support" money can buy is killing Game Porting
| Toolkit and supporting Vulkan in-OS. They're already an
| underdog in the graphics API world, playing hardball with
| people who don't care will just end up in a lot of
| unported games.
| Karunamon wrote:
| Because data collection and upselling, and because
| advertising. Blaming the tiny minority of people who
| pirate for the enshittification plaguing basically all
| software right now is a poor excuse. Show me the numbers.
| paxys wrote:
| If piracy was really that big a problem then the entire PC
| gaming industry wouldn't exist. The issue really was that
| microtransactions were too easy on mobile, and
| freemium/casino-like games were simply making too much
| money, so no developer had the incentive to make anything
| else.
| com2kid wrote:
| Steam, Steam sales, and constantly updated games were the
| fixes to piracy.
|
| If a game gets content updates every other month, re-
| downloading a pirated game, and possibly losing all
| progress, meh.
|
| If a game is going to go on sale for $20 (or $10) after
| awhile, why bother pirating it, just wait.
|
| And Steam is absurdly convenient. Built in voice chat,
| collectables, and forums, means playing games on Steam is
| better than playing pirated games.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > Steam, Steam sales, and constantly updated games were
| the fixes to piracy.
|
| Steam is a DRM platform.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > If piracy was really that big a problem then the entire
| PC gaming industry wouldn't exist.
|
| Ever hear of DRM? How about consoles that brick
| themselves if they detect that they've been modified?
| setr wrote:
| Isn't iOS already one big DRM? Probably much more
| effective versus piracy than something like Denuvo as
| well. And anyways we've already come to expect DRM to for
| any reasonably popular game to be cracked in short order.
|
| In which case, we'd still expect PCs to be in an
| equivalent, if not worse state.
| mcphage wrote:
| I think there will always be a market for freemium games,
| because it's nice to try things without having to put money
| down. But I think the freemium market can co-exist with a
| premium game market. Like, the premium game market still
| exists and still is going strong, no reason it couldn't live
| on mobile devices _also_.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Gamedev here.
|
| If you look at the numbers on mobile, it makes no sense
| from a business perspective to create non-F2P games on this
| platform.
|
| You can still make money with so-called "premium" games,
| that were simply normal games before Apple poisoned the
| well, but the potential is considerably lower.
| danaris wrote:
| I really, _really_ hate the mindset that it "makes no
| sense" to do something that's not absolutely the _most
| profitable course possible_.
|
| If a game developer can make a living making "premium"
| games, then _it makes sense_ to do so, especially with
| the very real ethical problems with making free-to-play
| games laden with microtransactions.
|
| Just because _you_ would only ever choose to do what
| makes you the most money possible, and damn the rest of
| the world, that doesn 't mean everyone would _or should_
| make that choice.
| com2kid wrote:
| > If a game developer can make a living making "premium"
| games, then it makes sense to do so, especially with the
| very real ethical problems with making free-to-play games
| laden with microtransactions.
|
| Most developers cannot make a living selling premium
| games on mobile. There have been plenty of cost
| breakdowns posted to HN by game developers.
|
| Occasionally a big mega-hit can make a profit, but for
| the majority of developers, free is now the only viable
| way.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| The cold hard fact is that F2P games bring in RIDICULOUS
| amounts of money.
|
| I moved from doing code for industrial use and public
| admin as a consultant to mobile gaming.
|
| We have one hit game and the _daily_ marketing (a.k.a.
| user acquisition) budget for us is an order of magnitude
| bigger than the biggest projects I did at my old job.
|
| All the "ethical problems" usually are just older
| (usually) men in IT not understanding that people want to
| pay money to have fun.
|
| Some people go to bars to relax after a work week and
| drop $100 gladly. Others use that for going to the
| movies, some go to have a nice dinner. And some people
| really like relaxing while playing games and they want to
| pay for that, because they think it's worth the price.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| To be clear, I hate f2p, I don't play them and I don't
| make them. But try to raise some funds with that story.
| bombcar wrote:
| I can't think of (offhand) even one premium game that is
| native to iOS, everything is or got a port.
|
| Part of it may be the "don't want to pay upfront" but
| shareware knows how that goes (free first part of the
| game, then pay $30 for the rest or whatever).
| afavour wrote:
| > But I think the freemium market can co-exist with a
| premium game market
|
| I agree... but there isn't one. And I don't think it's
| because of an underpowered GPU.
| mcphage wrote:
| I agree.
| paxys wrote:
| > But I think the freemium market can co-exist with a
| premium game market
|
| Not so when all the big gaming mobile companies are
| assigning their top talent to building stuff like Clash of
| Kings. And why wouldn't they, when they can make so much
| more money doing so than working on a quality prestige game
| that no one will pay for.
|
| > the premium game market still exists and still is going
| strong, no reason it couldn't live on mobile devices also.
|
| It's actually the opposite. Mobile-style microtransactions
| are slowly taking over the premium PC/console gaming
| market.
| aaomidi wrote:
| iPhones are useless for AAA games unless they open the platform
| up more.
|
| One of the reasons stadia failed is that gamers that spend the
| most do not want to keep rebuying games. Apple seems to expect
| people to also keep rebuying games. Just. No.
| stephc_int13 wrote:
| Most smartphones are already faster than the Switch. The
| quality of games on a platform is not directly related to its
| technical capabilities or SDK, but to the business model and
| platform incentives.
|
| Apple has fueled a race-to-the-bottom followed by an almost
| forced transition to f2p, and they benefited immensely in the
| process (30%), but I think that most gamers and indie devs are
| not satisfied.
| iLoveOncall wrote:
| > The quality of games on a platform is not directly related
| to its technical capabilities or SDK, but to the business
| model and platform incentives.
|
| And also (mostly) the ergonomics.
|
| Comparing a phone whose main purpose is definitely not gaming
| (at least the iPhone, I know there are some gaming-first
| phones) to a handheld console will always make the former
| look pathetic for this use-case.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Yes.
|
| The problem with touchscreen-only is that it doesn't feel
| very good, and also any sort of control scheme will mean at
| least temporarily reducing usable area for UX since you
| can't see through your hands.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| I remember being completely impressed by my Note 3 (10 years
| ago almost exactly) playing games like Dead Trigger 2 and
| NFS: Underground. From then on, GPU performance / graphics on
| these tiny displays seemed good enough for me with only minor
| subjective improvements.
|
| I'll second another comment, that another big challenge is
| the simple lack of ergonomics on any phone.
| TheOtherHobbes wrote:
| It seems so immensely cynical. The latest-and-best Apple
| Event PR is in a car crash with the reality - from a gaming
| POV, the iPhone is a platform for user addiction.
|
| I've been watching people around me and the amount of time
| everyone seems to spend tapping away at a phone, head down,
| is like something out of a dystopian movie.
|
| The game addiction market must be worth billions to Apple.
| For all the environmental and other ad copy, there doesn't
| seem to be any concern about the mental and psychological
| effects of creating an ecosystem that _knowingly_ relies on
| exploitative behaviour modification.
|
| I also think the colour scheme is quite cynical. Pastel
| shades on the base model for the - let's say - less
| technically-oriented users. Strong blacks, whites, and
| metallics for the hard-core performance nerds who want that
| Pro tag.
|
| There's something regressive about it all.
| kaba0 wrote:
| I mean, there is a point where user agency should
| definitely be taken into account. For what it's worth,
| apple does have good tools in this area, like measuring
| screen time, limiting it, parental controls. But you can't
| stop people from drinking bleach either..
| nebula8804 wrote:
| People talk about Gen-Z having the most depressed/suicide
| driven people of any generation and they largely came of
| age after the smartphone took over.
|
| At the same time, the advent of a professional easy to
| access camera in everyones pocket transformed the world:
| Arab spring, George Floyd, everything we are witnessing in
| Ukraine. Made possible thanks to the ubiquity of the same
| device that causes a lot of harm.
|
| >I also think the colour scheme is quite cynical. Pastel
| shades on the base model for the - let's say - less
| technically-oriented users. Strong blacks, whites, and
| metallics for the hard-core performance nerds who want that
| Pro tag.
|
| I think they do pastels every other year no? And a lot of
| people buy Pros: all the "influencers" treat it as a tool
| to earn income so of course they prefer the best device of
| them all, I dont think they are actually looking at the
| specs though.
|
| I though the hard core nerds buy things like the Pixel
| phones or the ASUS ROG type phones?
| gloryjulio wrote:
| The problem is apple actively working against the game
| developers, or they just ignore the market completely. See the
| example of vulkan, and deprecation of 32bit games. It doesn't
| matter how good the hardware is. If the platform is not
| supporting the games and all they have are the occasional
| courting of the some of the games, the games won't come to the
| apple platform for free.
|
| Also they are already making the mobile gaming money which is
| already lucrative. Are they also committing enough to the
| 'conventional' gaming?
| kaba0 wrote:
| Metal predates vulkan, and the latter is mostly used on
| Android only. It is not particularly well-liked (too low-
| level for most things), also.
| thaanpaa wrote:
| The App Store is the real issue. Apple's antipathy towards
| developers is perplexing. The number of stories I've heard
| about companies having problems due to some interpretation of
| their policies is ridiculous. There are even horror stories
| about businesses going bankrupt simply because Apple decided
| they were in violation of something and banned them from the
| App Store entirely. I mean, no game company wants to spend
| millions on a game only to have all of their games pulled
| because one of them was too similar to someone else's game or
| something (according to some Apple reviewer with way too much
| power!).
| danhor wrote:
| AAA-like titles were previously tried at the beginning of the
| App Store, mostly ports of older titles. Most Indie Games would
| also run fine on most Smartphones, but never succeeded. Stuff
| that sold great on the Switch. I think the lack of "official"
| nice, high-quality, hasslefree Gamepad, continuing cooling-
| issues and especially the expectation of consumers for low
| prices on Apps results in the Market for "real" games on Phones
| remaining very small.
|
| Apple tried to counteract it with Apple Arcade, but that hasn't
| worked out.
| ThatPlayer wrote:
| It's hard to charge for full priced AAA-games too. There's
| still plenty of good ports on mobile. Games like Civ VI and
| Minecraft, but my friends who have a console or PC would
| rather buy it on mobile. Even if it was a reduced price,
| which Civ VI is.
| mortenjorck wrote:
| I don't know if this is still the case, but for a long time,
| your game would get rejected from the App Store if it
| required an external controller to play. And yet being able
| to design games around that baseline is critical for
| triple-A.
|
| I'm super curious to see what they've done with this current-
| gen, mainline Assassin's Creed game coming to iPhone: there
| is no way the core gameplay of that franchise could translate
| to touch controls, so either Apple dropped the requirement,
| some poor team had the doomed project of building an abysmal
| fallback touch control scheme, or they implemented some kind
| of semi-automated scheme for touch that makes traversal and
| combat less interactive.
| GeekyBear wrote:
| > I don't know if this is still the case, but for a long
| time, your game would get rejected from the App Store if it
| required an external controller to play.
|
| To my knowledge you've always been allowed to provide
| optional game controller support, as long as you supported
| a touch interface too.
| gambiting wrote:
| >>if it required
| gambiting wrote:
| >>there is no way the core gameplay of that franchise could
| translate to touch controls
|
| I mean.....millions of people play proper console games on
| their phones now using various streaming services and touch
| controls.....turns out playing games using shitty touch
| controls is preferable to not playing them at all I guess.
| So yeah, I imagine it's just a simple touch overlay, like
| the one used for XCloud.
| johnmaguire wrote:
| Just gonna throw this out there... for me, one of the main
| reasons I don't play games on my phone, is because it will
| absolutely tank the battery life.
|
| A dedicated device has the benefit of having a sole purpose:
| gaming. If I kill the battery, I just can't play anymore
| games. I can still take calls, browse the web, and text my
| partner.
| cableshaft wrote:
| Yep, same here. I already have enough issues keeping my
| phone charged enough, playing games on it just makes it
| worse.
|
| Every once in a while I do, but it's usually a really basic
| game that uses hardly any resources to run, like a simple
| board game app.
| bombcar wrote:
| This, more than anything, killed Minecraft Earth if I
| recall correctly.
|
| Even people who wanted to play _during Covid_ couldn 't
| because it would just eat the battery to death.
| truncate wrote:
| A power bank is easy cheap and fairly light alternative.
| Instead of carrying additional gaming device, I can carry a
| power bank instead...which is kinda useful even if I drain
| battery for whatever reason. If it completely dies, you'd
| be offline for like what 5 minutes until phone gets enough
| charge to boot again?
| ghaff wrote:
| >Apple tried to counteract it with Apple Arcade, but that
| hasn't worked out.
|
| I'm not really a gamer but I get Arcade as part of a bundle
| and it doesn't really wow me. I sometimes look at "Best
| of..." lists and try a few out on a plane flight and I'm
| mostly meh.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I love Apple Arcade because I can trust whatever I get from
| it for my kids is not a gambling app in disguise.
| ghaff wrote:
| There is that--especially for kids. It may not be very
| good but at least it's not evil.
| wincy wrote:
| There are a few major missteps Apple made over the years that
| make me hesitant to buy any games on iPhone or iPad.
|
| With my Steam catalog I can download something I bought in
| 2004 and still be confident I can play it. I spent $20 on
| Monster Hunter for iPhone and one day iOS updated and it just
| didn't work anymore.
|
| My Switch games will assumably work until the console dies.
|
| Another reason I completely stopped buying games on iOS was
| when The Binding of Isaac was suddenly delisted from the App
| Store. I never got a refund or anything, and because of this
| new versions of Binding of Isaac aren't compatible with Macs
| either. I have hundreds of hours played in that game and it's
| ridiculous that Apple censored it as "depicting child abuse".
| salil999 wrote:
| I could totally see Apple turning the iPhone into a Nintendo
| Switch type device. You can connect it to your Apple TV (maybe
| even wirelessly) and stream games + play with a controller. The
| HW is definitely impressive.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Yeah, very good for your eyesight.
| falcolas wrote:
| I recommend reading glasses, they reduce the eyestrain from
| using up close devices.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Sure, you gonna use glasses for a phone.
| falcolas wrote:
| Yes, yes I do. Especially when I'm using my phone for a
| long period of time.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| Why not use a bigger screen?!?!
| falcolas wrote:
| It's more distance than screen size that causes strain,
| and I can't really pull out a laptop where I use my
| phone.
|
| Plus, reading glasses are hardly an inconvenience in
| everyday life.
| trumbitta2 wrote:
| Serious gaming on iPhone destroys the battery in 1 year, 2
| tops, tho.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| How about serious gaming on a Samsung or Google device?
| pradn wrote:
| The reduction in weight is a major feature - my iPhone 14 Pro
| routinely strains my hand.
| hbn wrote:
| When the 14 Pro came out I bought one day 1 to replace my 12
| mini.
|
| I figured the size would be an issue, and I definitely didn't
| like it as much as the 12 mini. But the worst part I didn't
| even foresee was the weight. It was SUPER uncomfortable to use
| one-handed, I was constantly terrified it would fall out of my
| hand. I ended up returning it and buying a 13 mini.
|
| The switch to titanium is a good move. Even barring the weight,
| while the stainless steel is certainly eye-catching and looks
| great out of the box, as soon as you use the thing it's covered
| in smudges, and infamously is prone to getting covered in
| scratches over time.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| iPhone 14 Pro weight: 206g
|
| iPhone 15 Pro weight: 188g
|
| 8.7%
| HatchedLake721 wrote:
| The best part for me that wasn't mentioned, the slightly rounded
| corners!
|
| I hate holding anything since iPhone 12 in my hands, the edges
| are sharp and cut into your fingers.
|
| Every time I take iPhone X I'm just amazed how comfortable it is
| and what a step back was the iPhone 12 design.
| sroussey wrote:
| I like the flat side as the phone doesn't slip out of my hand
| so easily, but definitely agree that the slight curving will
| make it feel better!
| sneak wrote:
| On the contrary, I vastly prefer the 6/SE/13/14 design, as it
| doesn't rotate along the long axis as easily in my hand.
|
| I was very happy when they abandoned the 10/11 design with the
| rounded edges.
|
| I have very soft hands, and "cut into your fingers" seems
| pretty hyperbolic. The current 14 Pro edge design (typing this
| on one) seems perfectly adequate to me.
|
| (The sharp points at the edges of the finger slot in the middle
| of the MBPs always surprised me with their pointyness, however.
| The last Intel MBP was particularly sharp, however the points
| have been softened a lot in M1/M2 land.)
| deergomoo wrote:
| Visually I much prefer the squared off edges, but I agree. The
| 14 Pro is the first iPhone I've regulsrly used a case with
| because I just cannot keep hold of the damn thing--when the
| phone angles as I reach across the screen I guess the lack of
| surface area touching my hand means it sorta just pops out. I
| find it really bad ergonomically. Flat edges with rounded
| corners seems a nice middle ground.
|
| What I really want is a Pro Mini. I bought a 12 mini because
| that year the hardware gap between Pro and not was very small.
| The battery sucked ass but it was a dream to hold.
| hbn wrote:
| The 14 Pro's edges are also worse because of how damn heavy
| the thing is.
|
| The 15 Pro is said to be about 9% lighter thanks to the
| titanium, so hopefully that will alleviate some of that issue
| too.
| eclipticplane wrote:
| > and the thinnest borders on iPhone.
|
| I must be the only consumer who despises the thin edges on my
| current iPhone 14 pro. I'd like to be able to hold my phone and
| not randomly trigger edge-sensitive gestures like "scroll to top"
| (that you can't disable!).
| Simulacra wrote:
| I have never gotten used the notch. It ruined it visually for
| me.
| theshrike79 wrote:
| On phones it's tolerable, because you can kinda palm it and
| just use the edges of your hand to hold it.
|
| But tiny bezels on tablets? Oof. Like the lates Galaxy Tab. How
| are you supposed to hold it without pressing at least 5 icons
| accidentally?
| etrautmann wrote:
| I agree, but that's mostly addressed by putting a case on it.
| ksec wrote:
| Same here. I dont mind the larger trackpad with smaller edge on
| the new MacBook, or the thin edge on iPhone, providing they can
| make the false sensitive trigger at 100% accuracy. Not 99%, or
| 99.9999%, but infinitely close to 100%. I am not sure even sure
| if that is possible. But right now it isn't. And the random
| trigger is annoying enough to side with you on the subject
| matter.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| A consumer stereo camera in a significant portion of the
| populations pocket is a big deal imo. Going to make the volume of
| VR content much higher.
| seydor wrote:
| a 360 camera , or at least the ability to take 360 photos
| easily would make a bigger difference
| BudaDude wrote:
| 180 camera makes more sense at this stage. 360-degree cameras
| on a phone would be weird when recording with the phone in
| hand. It would be better on a tripod, but I think Apple is
| trying not to complicate it unless professionals want it.
| [deleted]
| ffitch wrote:
| From what I gather the distance between the left and right lens
| will be less than an inch. Technically it's still stereo, but
| don't get your hopes high.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| They didn't say much about it but hopefully they can infer
| enough to do a good job. You can already do mildly ok fake
| depth maps from a single image. I also would like to know if
| this is going to be somehow locked down to Apple Vision or a
| format we could use in a Quest3 or other VR headset.
| artursapek wrote:
| COOL! It looks exactly like my iPhone 14 Pro!
| edandersen wrote:
| USB-C supporting writing ProRes video and photo files directly to
| external storage is something I did not see coming.
|
| That's Apple actually undercutting their own storage upgrades...
| what is going on?
| pretext-1 wrote:
| They also increased the smallest storage size for the 15 Pro
| Max to 256 GB, which is a welcome change.
| satysin wrote:
| Indeed. It effectively drops the price in Europe by EUR130
| (if you wanted a 256GB model)
|
| iPhone 15 Pro Max 256GB is EUR1479
|
| iPhone 14 Pro Max 256GB was EUR1609
|
| That's quite nice and surprising given other companies such
| as Sony and Microsoft increasing their console hardware
| prices in Europe but not the US.
|
| I was expecting the same pricing and storage configurations
| as last year at the _very best_ but a bump in the base level
| storage while keeping the price the same as last year that is
| better than I expected.
| migreenberg wrote:
| They just dropping the 156GB Pro Max SKU. The 15 Pro Max's
| starting price is 100 USD more than the 14 Pro Max's starting
| price.
| jonplackett wrote:
| Only for the 0.01% of users who want to do that.
|
| Also, they kinda had to announce _something_ new this phone
| could do.
| [deleted]
| dan-robertson wrote:
| Think it's basically for actual professional uses for recording
| video (iPhone's often get used as small high-quality cameras
| that can be used in places that larger cameras cannot). If you
| record at 4k in ProRes you will run at (potentially a lot) over
| 1GB/min. Adding another TB is not going to be that big a deal.
| I assume the main limiting thing before was having a reliable
| way to transfer the data out rather than some desire to prevent
| users from doing it.
| amluto wrote:
| If you are recording videos of any length with ProRes, you will
| rapidly run out or space on even the largest capacity iPhone.
| So I think Apple is enabling a new use case more than
| cannibalizing sales of lower storage models.
| MuffinFlavored wrote:
| What time on September 15th can you pre-order? I forgot what time
| I had to wake up early for my iPhone 14 Pro. I think it was 6am
| Eastern?
| rootusrootus wrote:
| I haven't heard an official announcement, but in the past it
| has been 5am Pacific, so 8am Eastern.
| klinquist wrote:
| 8AM eastern. I recommend you go to store.apple.com and "pre-pre
| order" which you can do right now (pick phone, verify carrier).
| Then you just 'check out' on Friday.
| boarush wrote:
| Assassin's Creed Mirage launching on iOS shows that Apple is
| taking gaming seriously. A large part of the presentation was
| talking about the new GPU and the newly developed shader
| architecture. It will be interesting to compare the numbers once
| the devices are available.
| dahwolf wrote:
| A large part as in 1 minute?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| No AV1 encode?
| skrrtww wrote:
| It's a phone. Does it really need AV1 encoding?
| 2OEH8eoCRo0 wrote:
| Does it record video?
| skrrtww wrote:
| If Apple is going to support AV1, it starts with decoding.
| Apple isn't going to give their phone the ability to record
| videos in a format that the desktop OS and the desktop
| computers don't even support.
|
| Once AV1 decoding is present across the product line, I
| imagine the phones might get support for AV1 encoding,
| probably two generations down the line, possibly next
| generation. Still a fairly large if though, given that
| Apple is decently invested in h265.
| sroussey wrote:
| They have too many choices already. Even if they do add an
| encoder at a later iteration, it will likely only be for
| video conferencing. Too small to care about really, given
| that those transistors can used for something else.
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| [deleted]
| ksec wrote:
| They might later add VVC Video encoder instead.
| alanbernstein wrote:
| Hoping this inspires Android manufacturers to finally adopt the
| fantastical technological innovation of "another button".
| liminalsunset wrote:
| Samsung used to provide this on their Galaxy phones. They
| called it the "Bixby" button and unfortunately for a while,
| only hacky solutions to remap it for general usage were
| available.
|
| Seems like on the latest generations, they dropped this feature
| as well, so it's interesting to see Apple revive it.
|
| The biggest problem with this "innovation" is going to be
| teaching my parents how to use it and that "pressing the button
| doesn't always put the phone in silent anymore"
| mikkqu wrote:
| Does that mean that iPhone 15 Pro camera has the same physical
| module as iPhone 14 Pro, apart from some software changes? Or did
| they release a wrong data for their comparator on apple website?
|
| https://pasteboard.co/2vRyDDgKlHCV.png
| sva_ wrote:
| The data must be wrong because the announcement speaks of 5x
| optical zoom.
| drdaeman wrote:
| If I got it right, 5x optical zoom is only available in 15
| Pro Max, not the normal-sized 15 Pro.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| What's the damn point of having the base line and the "Pro"
| line if some features are still going to be locked behind a
| larger (more expensive) device?
|
| I'm considering upgrading but I don't want to carry around
| a Max sized device. I doubt it will fit in my pockets even.
| ChristianGeek wrote:
| I have a 13 Pro Max and carry it in my jeans back pocket.
| zamadatix wrote:
| For those that want the rest of the Pro features like
| newer SoC which don't require additional physical space
| in the phone.
| llbeansandrice wrote:
| Right. But why have the "pro" line if the phones aren't
| equivalent? I'm sure there's probably some opaque reason
| why the smaller size can't have the 5x optical zoom as
| well but I still think it's dumb.
|
| I want the Pro version. I want all of the features, but
| not the Max size. But that phone doesn't exist for some
| reason. I want to believe it's a practical limitation,
| but my guess is the main reason is to up sell.
| brandall10 wrote:
| As the person you responded to just stated, the reason is
| the physical size of the device itself. Apple has done
| this before before w/ the 12 pro vs. pro max.
| mcphage wrote:
| I think you're right--Pro Max has 5x, Pro has 3x.
| SV_BubbleTime wrote:
| 3x :(
|
| Man, I was really hoping for at least 4. There is just no
| way I want to carry a Max.
| sambe wrote:
| I got exactly the same impression. They announced things like
| improved low light performance (but same aperture).
| cromka wrote:
| I got the same exact conclusion.
| noahtallen wrote:
| It's not the same physical module. The physical aspects they
| list (megapixels, aperature) are the same, but the actual 48MP
| sensor they use is improved.
|
| "iPhone 15 pro features a more advanced 48MP main camera, with
| an even larger sensor than iPhone 15 [and therefore iPhone 14
| Pro]. The camera includes a new nanoscale coating to reduce
| lens flare."
|
| See here:
| https://www.youtube.com/live/ZiP1l7jlIIA?si=FFSYTVqY0unVRSqu...
|
| They also mention it enabling new focal lengths and better low
| light performance.
| treprinum wrote:
| The EU prices of iPhone make them luxury objects, there is barely
| any meaningful pricing difference between the cheapest iPhone 15
| (950EUR) and iPhone 15 Pro (1200EUR).
| mplewis wrote:
| How does this compare to the prices of other phones which
| receive 6+ years of manufacturer software support?
| randomdata wrote:
| _> there is barely any meaningful pricing difference between
| the cheapest iPhone 15 (950EUR) and iPhone 15 Pro (1200EUR)._
|
| Out of interest, I picked a random car to compare with. Based
| on the figures made available on the website, the base model
| was $39,347. The fully-loaded model was $49,243. That's the
| same ~25% difference Apple is using here.
|
| Whether or not it is meaningful, it does seem to be in the
| realm of being typical.
| [deleted]
| kantord wrote:
| Great that they finally include USB-C. I am waiting for
|
| - Any browser engine allowed - 3rd party "app stores" allowed -
| Allowed to simulate iPhone without owning or having to use a Mac
|
| before switching from Android
| alberth wrote:
| You're asking for software updates, not hardware updates.
|
| Today is a hardware day.
|
| WWDC (June) is their software day.
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