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Apple blocks game streaming services unless individual games are approved

bbc.com

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Re: Apple blocks game streaming services unless individual games are approved

#241

Post by dwighttk »

Barrin92 wrote: post #113

Just more evidence that large platform and device owners will try to gate-keep and landgrab as much as they can and try to destroy the open web and force competitors into financial agreements to collect economic rent. There finally needs to be regulation on this. No banning of end user services as long as they're legal, I don't want a phone maker controlling what I do on the internet. It's ridiculous. Microsoft in th…

If you’re pro open-web, don’t you want these game streaming services to operate on the open web, i.e. in the browser, i.e. can’t be gate-kept by Apple (or Google)?

Re: Apple blocks game streaming services unless individual games are approved

#242

Post by tacotime »

bigbubba wrote: post #141
treve wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you break any concept/law down far enough, it becomes kinda meaningless. Terms of use, or laws don't have to be written in perfect logical consistency. The important thing is intent. The intent is not to block things that resemble running an application remotely. The intent here is controlling everything that could possibly be sold/distributed as something resembling an application or game. I see these kinds of co…

> If you break any concept/law down far enough, it becomes kinda meaningless. I call bullshit, I think it's mostly just bad laws that become ridiculous when 'broken down'. If you want to convince me otherwise, demonstrate your claim using laws against murder (unambiguously good laws.)

If I was in incredible pain and wanted to end my own life but was not capable on my own I might ask a close friend to help me with that. If that friend had enough empathy to help me fulfil my hypothetical wish then they would be a murderer, but a kind and helpful one.

edit: maybe we want to define murder as killing someone who does not want to be killed. I would ask what you have to say about the "trolley problem". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

Re: Apple blocks game streaming services unless individual games are approved

#243

Post by pessimizer »

soulofmischief wrote: post #96
xnyan wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Netflix is bigger than the nascent game streaming market and more apple users (including me) expect to be able to use it. If they told netflix "we have to approve each movie and tv show on your service, and possibly take revenue from you on a per-video basis", then netflix would walk and would be smart to do so because it's pretty likely apple would come up the loser in that fight. Again, huge number of users, existi…

Your argument is that majority consensus overrides individual freedoms and that is preposterous .

It's not an argument, it's an observation, and it's something we have to deal with.

Re: Apple blocks game streaming services unless individual games are approved

#244

Post by millstone »

whatshisface wrote: post #228
millstone wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I demand open computing. I have it, it's cheaper than ever, like RPis are given away in cereal boxes. I also have an iPad. I know I lose some software access (e.g. Facebook streaming games) but I also gain software, like Slay the Spire and FTL and Bastion. These games are iOS exclusive in part because iOS effectively prevents piracy, which is another way of saying that users cannot run whatever software they want. I'…

> Slay the Spire and FTL and Bastion. These games are iOS exclusive FTL and Bastion aren't iOS exclusive. Here are links to pages where you can find their Linux versions. Out of curiosity, where did you get the idea that they were iOS exclusive? Edit: I hadn't previously heard of it, but googling reveals that Slay the Spire is also available on Steam. The steam page says it has a Linux version. That means that all of…

Fair point and thank you for the clarification. By "iOS exclusive" I should have said "not on Android." I honestly considered it common knowledge that these games are available on Windows, Switch, etc. but maybe not all readers know that.

To refine my point, many successful games come to iOS because it is a controlled environment, with negligible piracy. The games come to Android later or not at all, because it is more of a wild west.

As for productivity, iOS has an undeniable platform advantage, and by that I mean tablets. Apple focuses on the iPad but Android tablets are kind of a joke. Here's androidpolice agreeing: https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/04/21/do-yourself-a-favor...

Re: Apple blocks game streaming services unless individual games are approved

#245

Post by enos_feedler »

IggleSniggle wrote: post #237
enos_feedler wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand what enabling multiple browsers, from an engine standpoint, would achieve. Is it competition? Don't all browsers just implement the same set of standards? What is the lack of competition holding back?

They don’t all implement the same set of standards equally. The one that comes immediately to mind is one that comes up frequently as “hey do you know your website is broken on iOS” on HN is when someone is demoing some really interesting web-tech that requires SharedArrayBuffer (since it enables thread-like behavior in JavaScript and is super useful also for performant interaction with the GPU). Browsers can of cour…

For the first point, that sounds like a standards problem and an ecosystem challenge. The association/consortium or whatever it is needs to protect and fight for this.

For the 2nd, it sounds like there needs to be a way for the web platform to evolve for things that require engine modification. I wonder if the web will break down into smaller standard components and new browsers can be built from those.

Re: Apple blocks game streaming services unless individual games are approved

#246

Post by enos_feedler »

millstone wrote: post #232
enos_feedler wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand what enabling multiple browsers, from an engine standpoint, would achieve. Is it competition? Don't all browsers just implement the same set of standards? What is the lack of competition holding back?

"Enabling multiple browsers" is a red herring. Android enables multiple browser engines, but non-Blink browsers are a rounding error; it's bought nothing in terms of browser diversity. Really it's just code for "let me, a web developer, target Chrome only, so I can just tell Safari users to install Chrome."

Exactly. Run into this problem all the time on Mac with things like Youtube TV and Stadia.

Re: Apple blocks game streaming services unless individual games are approved

#247

Post by whatshisface »

millstone wrote: post #244
whatshisface wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Slay the Spire and FTL and Bastion. These games are iOS exclusive FTL and Bastion aren't iOS exclusive. Here are links to pages where you can find their Linux versions. Out of curiosity, where did you get the idea that they were iOS exclusive? Edit: I hadn't previously heard of it, but googling reveals that Slay the Spire is also available on Steam. The steam page says it has a Linux version. That means that all of…

Fair point and thank you for the clarification. By "iOS exclusive" I should have said "not on Android." I honestly considered it common knowledge that these games are available on Windows, Switch, etc. but maybe not all readers know that. To refine my point, many successful games come to iOS because it is a controlled environment, with negligible piracy. The games come to Android later or not at all, because it is mo…

>many successful games come to iOS because it is a controlled environment, with negligible piracy.

How does that make sense when all of those games were originally developed for the PC platform, which has rampant piracy, even above that of Android?

Re: Apple blocks game streaming services unless individual games are approved

#248

Post by enos_feedler »

jtbayly wrote: post #211
enos_feedler wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still don't understand what enabling multiple browsers, from an engine standpoint, would achieve. Is it competition? Don't all browsers just implement the same set of standards? What is the lack of competition holding back?

True PWA's, for example, including push notifications.

This is false. Google has the ability to create true PWAs on chromebooks with ChromeOS. Why did they include the play store + app model instead of embracing a true PWA experience? Google has enough influence that if they could build a showcase PWA experience on the chromeOS/chromebook platform, they could get web ecosystem adoption. They were able to do this with AMP for instance.

Re: Apple blocks game streaming services unless individual games are approved

#249

Post by calciphus »

zinekeller wrote: post #145
gfxgirl wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

lol. There's a reason Safari is called the new IE. So many features missing or buggy, not following standards.

Actually, most developers with an opinion on "new IE" says that Google Chrome is the new IE. There are cases of Firefox and Safari implementing features and Chrome-specific behavior that they won't endorse but are used by webistes (notably, unsurprisingly, Google's sites) [1, 2, 3]. Additionally, there are features that most have requested but are effectively being blocked by Google [3]. 1: https://hacks.mozilla.org/…

My experience with pretty complicated web development (interactive graphical tools built in webgl, synchronous behavior across hundreds of active clients) was that Safari was responsible for massively more bugs than any other browser we dealt with. IE11, Edge, Chrome, Firefox, Chromium, across OSs from a decade back through modern ones - all of those permutations combined.

Most commonly we'd see just weird things. Every other browser could handle "render this circle lightly colored, put some text inside it." But random versions of Safari would draw "solid black circle" with illegible text. Update the OS (the only way to update Safari) and the bug goes away. So we wrote work around after work around to make the same code that ran everywhere else run on Safari. And before you ask, all of our devs were on macs, but they weren't running random versions of the os where the bug was present. Or worse, the simulator in xcode wouldn't show the error but it would on a device. At one point over 90% of browser-specific bugs (and almost all customer-reported ones) were due to Safari or Safari mobile, despite making up less than 20% of our traffic.

Plus Apple keeps trying to stop people from running test infrastructure of every permutation of os and hardware. It's a nightmare and we just eventually put up a "safari may not work" warning on all our help docs.

For our team Safari was worse than ie6, because at least there everyone shared workarounds and knew how to handle the MS foolishness.

Re: Apple blocks game streaming services unless individual games are approved

#250

Post by dsissitka »

zepto wrote: post #143
627467 wrote: post #11

Seems odd (to be charitable and say the least)... Do they vet music/movie streaming services content too?

Streaming apps arrives are a way to bypass the App Store. That’s why they are banned unless the individual apps or games are submitted individually. It’s not really surprising they don’t want other companies running storefronts on iOS. The ‘consistency’ argument is just not valid.

> Streaming apps arrives are a way to bypass the App Store.

>

> That’s why they are banned unless the individual apps or games are submitted individually.

Spotify is a streaming app. Spotify didn't submit and Apple didn't approve every song.

Shadow is a remote game streaming app. Apple allowed them in the App Store when they removed the ability to launch directly into a game. [0] They won't allow Moonlight to do the same. [1]

[0] https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/6/21357771/apple-cloud-gamin...

[1] https://github.com/moonlight-stream/moonlight-ios/issues/417

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