Live data from Hacker News

Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

apple.com

281–290 of 512 posts

Re: Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

#281

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

> 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,

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.

Re: Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

#282
post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

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.

Re: Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

#283

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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. Sideloa…

> 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.

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.

Re: Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

#284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

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…

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.

Re: Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

#285
post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 profita…

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 S…

It’s still a bit thin on top class games, but I still hold out hope for Apple Arcade.

Re: Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

#286

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

You're asking for software updates, not hardware updates.

Today is a hardware day.

WWDC (June) is their software day.

Re: Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

#287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 alrea…

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.

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.

Re: Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

#288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 alrea…

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.

They are indeed prohibited as far as I know and experienced, which makes it a great selling (and gifting) point of me as well!

Re: Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

#289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One third of your wish is already answered. You can develop apps on the iPad.

How pray tell ... I was looking into doing that.

Swift Playgrounds

https://www.apple.com/swift/playgrounds/

Re: Apple iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max

#290

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.

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.
Post reply on HN