The problem is, adding a "return" at the end of a function is not, "badly designed benchmarks." Furthermore, adding an unused variable, declared at the top of a function is not, "badly designed benchmarks."
Of course it's bad design, redundant code is bad design.
FOSS games suffer from one big problem: Graphics. For some odd reason it's fairly easy to find good programmers who are willing and able to contribute to free software, but finding a graphics guru that doesn't want more money than he's worth is like pulling teeth.
It's not about graphics programmers, it's about models, textures, sound effects, voice actors, music, motion capture, etc... You need to be able to get providers of all of those elements to work for free.
While (as a game developer) I agree on the open-source game front, I've used both and I can say that Eclipse roundly thumps every square inch of Visual Studio's ass.
Really? You believe Eclipse is actually superior to VS in every way?
I'd say he's just assuming that these services aren't just going to absorb that cost and will likely pass it on to the user which certainly seems to be a reasonable assumption don't you think? Perhaps not the full cost but certainly the majority.
Same price, less bullshit? Sign me up for that!
That is under the assumption the service providers are happy to swallow the entire additional overhead, which is pretty naive.
I guess you've never heard of Carbon, Rosetta, or the Mac 68K emulator? (Although admittedly that last one is non-Jobsy.) Apple has quite a history of subsystem ghettos.
I'd say he probably has, since those are not architecturally inelegant solutions in that they aren't hacks in the current architecture, they are just bolt-ons that can be removed when they aren't needed.
If, by auto-update, you mean it tells you there's an update available after you plug it into a computer and open itunes then you have to select whether to download and install it, then yes. But that's far from the definition of 'auto-update', in fact that's pretty much a manual-update process.
Of course, the next attack will be "Now that apple has a monopoly, we can claim that they are using that monopoly to try to gain a monopoly in another market", such as music or tablet apps.
They already have a big chunk of the online music market and this was gained with products in markets that apple did not dominate.
Also, right now, there are alternatives. Android tablets are a viable choice, it is not the case that "if I want a tablet I can effectively only choose iPad", so a 90% or even a 99.9% market share does not make a monopoly until that is the case.
Wrong, you always had viable choices in desktop computer operating systems too - in fact more choice than the tablet market - yet MS was labeled to have a monopoly there.
No it isn't, it's not something determined by age. And a monopoly isn't a problem because there's only one practical option, that's perfectly fine, it's only if u use that market dominance to leverage another market. Apple does have a monopoly in the tablet market, so long as they don't abuse that monopoly there is no problem.
As I hope you realize, scaling the graphics and scaling the game are two completely different things.
Yes, and many games simply do the latter, unless of course you think viewport aspect fits into the former (which it doesn't).
Just scaling up the graphics does nothing - you're just watching a bigger TV.
If you had used an iphone app in 2x mode on an ipad - stretching instead of scaling to the larger screen - you wouldn't make such a claim.
Tablet-optimized means designed for a bigger screen. For example, more game elements in view (e.g. Angry Birds HD). That's where 65K advantage comes in.
In angry birds HD for the most part everything is just bigger and you get a slightly different viewport because of the difference in aspect ratio, which is not scaling the game at all just changing the viewport aspect (which should be done automatically based on the screen resolution) and having scalable graphics.
Not having Flash is a feature. I don't have it on my desktop and I sure as hell don't want it on my phone or tablet.
Oh come on, you can stop with the idiocy. I chose an ipad because i think it's the best device in that category, but i don't feel the need to ignore the fact that a lot of great web-content is flash-based and that not having the option to be able to view it is a shortcoming. If you need to be forced to not have access to flash in order to not use it then that's your shortcoming, not flash's.
1)Tablet-optimized generally means an application that takes advantage of the extra real estate for a better user experience. No one is "slapping tablet-optimized" on anything - they'd be raked in the reviews, believe me.
What about many of the games? Ones like Angry Birds where the tablet version just scales to the larger screen because it wasn't written to be scalable in the first place?
Perhaps, but they're just not optimized for the larger screen.
Unlike iOS, Android devs are used to dealing with different screen sizes and resolutions.
An exxample would be a piano keyboard app - on the phone, you get an octave, on a tablet you get two (or perhaps two octaves and a third). That makes a big difference in usability.
Like one of the Android piano apps (xPiano i think) that gives you a greater range depending on the size/resolution of the device you run it on. The primary difference between a phone and a tablet is screen size/resolution, Android devs have always had to deal with this anyway so any decent app doesn't have to worry about being 'tablet optimized' if it is scalable. (I don't actually have an Android device, i have an ipad and omnia7, but i have a lot of friends who do).
The "ecosystem" is why I wont buy an iPad or iPhone. I want to be able to decide for myself which software I run on my computer (and dont fool yourself into thinking modern phones & tablets are not computers).
Do you also want to decide for yourself what software runs on the computer in your car? How about the computer in your toaster? Can't something have a computer in it without needing to be customizable?
Of course not, I'm not sure how you can compare a device that is specifically designed to be an 'appliance device' by way of becoming the device specified by a software program to an actual appliance that is not designed to be anything but that specific appliance. It seems you don't understand the difference between an ipad and a toaster.
This brings up the issue, will there be apps sold that are marked iPad2 required?
The Unreal Engine has no problem scaling to whatever hardware you give it. Compared to various PC configurations this should be much simpler. I foresee in the future there may be apps marked iPad2+ required when the hardware performance gets too disparate, but probably not between iPad and iPad2.
With a quoted 9x GPU performance difference and 2x CPU performance difference you really think the difference isn't that disparate? The Unreal Engine itself is quite scalable but it doesn't magically scale your art assets or your shaders or anything like that.
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The problem is, adding a "return" at the end of a function is not, "badly designed benchmarks." Furthermore, adding an unused variable, declared at the top of a function is not, "badly designed benchmarks."
Of course it's bad design, redundant code is bad design.
FOSS games suffer from one big problem: Graphics. For some odd reason it's fairly easy to find good programmers who are willing and able to contribute to free software, but finding a graphics guru that doesn't want more money than he's worth is like pulling teeth.
It's not about graphics programmers, it's about models, textures, sound effects, voice actors, music, motion capture, etc... You need to be able to get providers of all of those elements to work for free.
While (as a game developer) I agree on the open-source game front, I've used both and I can say that Eclipse roundly thumps every square inch of Visual Studio's ass.
Really? You believe Eclipse is actually superior to VS in every way?
That's the most idiotic statement i've read in a while. By that logic OS security only matters if you intend on not running any software.
very nice tools...
like what?
Why are you lying about this issue?
I'd say he's just assuming that these services aren't just going to absorb that cost and will likely pass it on to the user which certainly seems to be a reasonable assumption don't you think? Perhaps not the full cost but certainly the majority.
Same price, less bullshit? Sign me up for that!
That is under the assumption the service providers are happy to swallow the entire additional overhead, which is pretty naive.
I guess you've never heard of Carbon, Rosetta, or the Mac 68K emulator? (Although admittedly that last one is non-Jobsy.) Apple has quite a history of subsystem ghettos.
I'd say he probably has, since those are not architecturally inelegant solutions in that they aren't hacks in the current architecture, they are just bolt-ons that can be removed when they aren't needed.
Unlike IE6, the iPad auto-updates.
If, by auto-update, you mean it tells you there's an update available after you plug it into a computer and open itunes then you have to select whether to download and install it, then yes. But that's far from the definition of 'auto-update', in fact that's pretty much a manual-update process.
Like Windows, Apple, Sun, Oracle?
See Phrase.
You can NOT buy a "smart" phone and put it on ANY provider's network without PAYING for a data contract nowadays.
Prepaid SIM?
Of course, the next attack will be "Now that apple has a monopoly, we can claim that they are using that monopoly to try to gain a monopoly in another market", such as music or tablet apps.
They already have a big chunk of the online music market and this was gained with products in markets that apple did not dominate.
Also, right now, there are alternatives. Android tablets are a viable choice, it is not the case that "if I want a tablet I can effectively only choose iPad", so a 90% or even a 99.9% market share does not make a monopoly until that is the case.
Wrong, you always had viable choices in desktop computer operating systems too - in fact more choice than the tablet market - yet MS was labeled to have a monopoly there.
No it isn't, it's not something determined by age. And a monopoly isn't a problem because there's only one practical option, that's perfectly fine, it's only if u use that market dominance to leverage another market. Apple does have a monopoly in the tablet market, so long as they don't abuse that monopoly there is no problem.
So don't update the OS? For most people OS updates are a nuisance anyways.
Oh yeah, just leave nasty things like that pdf exploit in there. Real good idea.
As I hope you realize, scaling the graphics and scaling the game are two completely different things.
Yes, and many games simply do the latter, unless of course you think viewport aspect fits into the former (which it doesn't).
Just scaling up the graphics does nothing - you're just watching a bigger TV.
If you had used an iphone app in 2x mode on an ipad - stretching instead of scaling to the larger screen - you wouldn't make such a claim.
Tablet-optimized means designed for a bigger screen. For example, more game elements in view (e.g. Angry Birds HD). That's where 65K advantage comes in.
In angry birds HD for the most part everything is just bigger and you get a slightly different viewport because of the difference in aspect ratio, which is not scaling the game at all just changing the viewport aspect (which should be done automatically based on the screen resolution) and having scalable graphics.
Not having Flash is a feature. I don't have it on my desktop and I sure as hell don't want it on my phone or tablet.
Oh come on, you can stop with the idiocy. I chose an ipad because i think it's the best device in that category, but i don't feel the need to ignore the fact that a lot of great web-content is flash-based and that not having the option to be able to view it is a shortcoming. If you need to be forced to not have access to flash in order to not use it then that's your shortcoming, not flash's.
Same with iPad
Last i saw they had ~90% market share with the ipad.
1)Tablet-optimized generally means an application that takes advantage of the extra real estate for a better user experience. No one is "slapping tablet-optimized" on anything - they'd be raked in the reviews, believe me.
What about many of the games? Ones like Angry Birds where the tablet version just scales to the larger screen because it wasn't written to be scalable in the first place?
Perhaps, but they're just not optimized for the larger screen.
Unlike iOS, Android devs are used to dealing with different screen sizes and resolutions.
An exxample would be a piano keyboard app - on the phone, you get an octave, on a tablet you get two (or perhaps two octaves and a third). That makes a big difference in usability.
Like one of the Android piano apps (xPiano i think) that gives you a greater range depending on the size/resolution of the device you run it on. The primary difference between a phone and a tablet is screen size/resolution, Android devs have always had to deal with this anyway so any decent app doesn't have to worry about being 'tablet optimized' if it is scalable. (I don't actually have an Android device, i have an ipad and omnia7, but i have a lot of friends who do).
Updates can be done directly from the App Store.
I think you misunderstood, you can't update the OS without iTunes, which means you need a computer.
The "ecosystem" is why I wont buy an iPad or iPhone. I want to be able to decide for myself which software I run on my computer (and dont fool yourself into thinking modern phones & tablets are not computers).
Do you also want to decide for yourself what software runs on the computer in your car? How about the computer in your toaster? Can't something have a computer in it without needing to be customizable?
Of course not, I'm not sure how you can compare a device that is specifically designed to be an 'appliance device' by way of becoming the device specified by a software program to an actual appliance that is not designed to be anything but that specific appliance. It seems you don't understand the difference between an ipad and a toaster.
This brings up the issue, will there be apps sold that are marked iPad2 required?
The Unreal Engine has no problem scaling to whatever hardware you give it. Compared to various PC configurations this should be much simpler. I foresee in the future there may be apps marked iPad2+ required when the hardware performance gets too disparate, but probably not between iPad and iPad2.
With a quoted 9x GPU performance difference and 2x CPU performance difference you really think the difference isn't that disparate? The Unreal Engine itself is quite scalable but it doesn't magically scale your art assets or your shaders or anything like that.
A tablet is NOT just a big iPhone (or Droid).
Of course it is, the ipad is just a big iphone (without the phone), however this single element makes a significant difference to its functionality.
I'm an Apple customer and I consider that a win.
Lack of choice is a feature? It shits me that i can't just enable flash on a website every now and then when i need it on the ipad.
Perhaps you are too young to remember the days when Windows wasn't an operating system, but a windowing system that ran on top of DOS?
No, which is why i used the term 'is', rather than 'was' or 'always has been'. And even then it wasn't a 'Windows', Windows was a 'window manager'.
Except for the first few years Windows was not an OS!!! Windows was a "windowing add-on".
But their trademark on the Windows name is in reference to an operating system, not a windowing system.