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Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

polygon.com

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Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#71

Post by kaladin-jasnah »

mattkevan wrote: post #67
kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Jobs also offer Sony to make laptops that ran OS X? Also, random thing, but both Orbis (Playstation operating system) and OS X are based on FreeBSD.

Pretty sure OS X is based on the Mach/XNU kernel and Darwin, not FreeBSD.

I thought there was _some_ influence on the kernel from FreeBSD, even if not that much. I am aware the kernel is not the FreeBSD one, though.

https://developer.apple.com/library/archive/documentation/Da... seems to have information on this.

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#72

Post by klodolph »

RC_ITR wrote: post #4
MBCook wrote: post #3

I know this isn’t new but I still love that Nintendo did this. It’s such a Nintendo thing. They’re a toy company and think like one. Did Sony do this with the Vita cartridges? I don’t remember hearing so (and never thought to taste them?). Heh.

It's actually amazing how Nintendo's "Focus on 1P titles and make HW that is appealing to the masses" used to be its greatest disadvantage and is now probably the only reason for their existence. Kind of Japan's Apple in some ways (with SEGA unfortunately being Japan's NeXT).

Seems like Nintendo tried the same strategy over and over again, and it sometimes works due to the right confluence of decent hardware design (not all of their hardware is good) and the right circumstances.

It worked for the Game Boy. Its competitors were more powerful, but it turns out that people would rather not spend more money for a color screen if it your system chews through a set of six AA batteries in three hours.

It worked for the Switch. Its competitors were more powerful, but it turns out that people like the portability, and it doesn't seem like they're getting cut-down inferior versions of games for other systems.

It didn't work so well for the N64, Game Cube, or Wii U.

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#73

Post by tomcam »

badlucklottery wrote: post #27
MBCook wrote: post #3

I know this isn’t new but I still love that Nintendo did this. It’s such a Nintendo thing. They’re a toy company and think like one. Did Sony do this with the Vita cartridges? I don’t remember hearing so (and never thought to taste them?). Heh.

>Did Sony do this with the Vita cartridges? Well, wonder no longer. I just licked a PS Vita copy of World of Final Fantasy and it only tastes faintly of plastic.

SCIENCE

and thank you

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#74

Post by cultofmetatron »

ortusdux wrote: post #30

The same bitterant has been used in anti-freeze for about a decade now to help prevent poisonings of children and animals. It is also used in air duster cans, which I've found annoying because it can go from your keyboard to your fingers.

> It is also used in air duster cans

obligatory: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L-jp3bgyUCo&ab_channel=A%26E

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#75

Post by nemothekid »

TylerE wrote: post #16
jmole wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sony is Japan’s Apple if anyone is. A company like Nintendo doesn’t seem like it has an American equivalent, and I actually can’t imagine a company like that surviving the ups and downs of the 80s/90s/00s tech cycles in the US, especially with our tendency towards M&A.

I don't get the Sony:Apple comparison at all. If anything, Sony is Japan's Microsoft: Do a gazillion things, many of them poorly, to such a unfocused extent that some of your divisions actually end up competition with each other. Like in Sony's case, how they've had internal battles for decades between the device side (that wants to make devices that are useful) and the content side (that wants DRM out the ass on eve…

>Do a gazillion things, many of them poorly

What does Sony do poorly? Sony has the same dysfunction Apple has - everything has to be invented in house. If you told me that a company invented an high end camera that 20% more than the competitors and used proprietary connectors and memory cards, I wouldn't be surprised if that was Apple.

>decades between the device side (that wants to make devices that are useful) and the content side (that wants DRM out the ass on everything)

Remember FairPlay?

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#76

Post by arghwhat »

cwkoss wrote: post #58
tialaramex wrote: post #53

Yes. In the EU product "denatured alcohol" for most purposes is likewise treated with the same agent. This replaces the widespread use of methanol and similar products which are poisonous (yes even if you call the product "meths" it probably isn't methanol in the EU today). The rationale is that poisoning people is not an appropriate reaction to attempted tax avoidance. Alcohol is only "denatured" because booze is ta…

Does this bitterant leave a residue when the alcohol evaporates? That seems like one benefit of methanol vs bitterant: all of the alcohol can still evaporate without depositing bitterant as a side effect. Are there bitterants that evaporate similarly to alcohol but are not toxic?

We use isopropyl alcohol, which is not denatured, whenever high purity is required.

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#79

Post by toast0 »

ngngngng wrote: post #66
tacker2000 wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont know if you can say that Sony is doing stuff “poorly”. Most of the hardware they make is very solid. Think about their speakers, headphones, the consoles, etc. But yes i agree, they are a huge company with a lot of divisions where sometimes the decisions are at odds. Which parts do you think are doing poorly?

Which parts do you think are doing poorly? The names of their products. How do you keep anything straight when the name of each product is UUID?

That's easy, UUIDs are unique, so it's easy to tell them apart, although it's hard to group them. Much better than deciding what the heck 'new iPad' means or if you want a new old 3ds or a used new 3ds, or if updating iOS means your phone or your router.

Re: Nintendo Switch game cartridges taste offensively bad (2017)

#80

Post by smoldesu »

mattkevan wrote: post #67
kaladin-jasnah wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't Jobs also offer Sony to make laptops that ran OS X? Also, random thing, but both Orbis (Playstation operating system) and OS X are based on FreeBSD.

Pretty sure OS X is based on the Mach/XNU kernel and Darwin, not FreeBSD.

It's a bit of an amalgam, and it honestly depends on which version of OSX you're talking about. Mach itself was designed as an improvement over BSD, and it was more or less a microkernel developed around BSD concepts with binary compatibility. My understanding is that as time went on, performance issues and security concerns forced Apple to poach more and more BSD code onto Mach, which leaves us with the pretty messy codebase they use today. Supposedly (?) a lot of the zombie code is being cleaned up internally, but it's been an ongoing, multi-year process for Apple, probably made even more difficult with their bonafide UNIX certification.
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