We understand that bad actors are going to appear occasionally, but does the general public? And it's not just one or two apps popping up and getting squashed from time to time, it's the reveal that dozens- that we know about- have been running under Apple's radar.
Regardless of how you feel about the walled garden ecosystem, we can agree that the absolute foundation of it is trust. Users trust Apple to do the heavy lifting of reviewing and vetting applications, to provide security and ease-of-use, in exchange for freedom. If that trust is breached, what good is sticking around? If I can't trust Apple in its own app store, why should I trust it with iCloud, or Keychain, or any of its other services?
Services, it must be pointed out, that are both Apple's fastest-growing money maker, and vital to keeping the iDevice experience "sticky".
I remember hearing that after a bad experience with a car consumers would avoid and mistrust that manufacturer for, on average, ten years. I doubt electronics are that drastic, but losing customers' trust for years is something Apple can't afford, especially since it's worked hard to differentiate itself from the other big five on issues of privacy and trust.
It was actually a way to convey information to a potential investor that protects him from SEC action.
Musk's tweet was at 11:18pm (Eastern Standard), August 7.
If no written confirmation from his funder exists prior to that, he's lying to investors and guilty of fraud. Tesla going private is smart. This move was so far away from smart that SpaceX could use it as a new means of space travel.
1: They keep pissing off their established fan bases with needless changes, reboots, and retcons to appease the Butthurt Brigade.
Continuity is a mess at the best of times, crossovers universally suck, and having to understand a byzantine layer of backstory doesn't draw in new readers. Ignoring that constant growing readership (which is what the big two's shareholders are undoubtedly demanding) is a fool's game, established fanbases die. Either literally or they drift off. New readers are a necessity to keep comics alive, never mind thriving. The movies and TV shows are immensely popular, but not turning into monthly readers despite people loving the characters.
Endless crises on infinite earths are eyerolling and infuriating, I totally agree. Trying to manage literally decades of continuity is also untenable. Long-term serialization is both awesome and slowly rotting away comics' strongest characters. I doubt there's a good solution available at all.
2: Comics are just too freakin' expensive per issue for the amount and quality of content you get.
Agreed. Personally I think getting rid of Diamond would help. Not directly or immediately, but ditching that fucking cancerous system would help out retailers and make publishers more immediately responsible to their customers which in turn would, at least, bring back realistic capitalist supply-and-demand. That's just a pet wish of mine, though.
3: The barrier to entry is so low now that previously ignored but still decent talent can punch their own meal ticket. Unfortunately, that allows for a lot more total and utter shit to flood the pool. But that is less important than the ability to go it your own.
Is this a strike against it? You honestly seem to be arguing both ways here. Lower barrier to entry means more opportunities for new blood. Yeah, there'll be dreck, but let's not pretend that lots of established players aren't shit or that there's no absolutely exquisite new talent on the scene. New writers and artists mean new stories and new readers. All that matters then is getting the best stories into everybody's hands.
Is YouTube forcing these people to put up content?
Not "literal gun to the head" forcing them to post content, but YouTube's algorithms mean that if a channel isn't frequently and regularly uploading it's less likely to be pushed in front of users. That means less engagement (LIKE COMMENT AND SUBSCRIBE) and less money. So YouTube gently encourages it, you could say.
In what way is YouTube anything but a way for these people to post something?
YouTube pays them.
If this is too stressful for them, perhaps they should find a job at McDonald's.
It's incredibly hard to constantly be interesting, avoid repetition, and connect with people. All on a regular schedule, typically with more behind-the-scenes production than you'd expect. While sometimes "find another job" isn't unreasonable, acting like it's not a stressful, challenging career is ridiculous. YouTube isn't helping, thanks to its dedication to questionable algorithms, vague and inconsistent moderation, and constantly-changing rules for actually getting paid for your work.
The Freemont plant has ten thousand workers. How many positions are there at the plant? Does Musk understand them all? Has he been trained and signed off on all of them? Or does he have to be trained and constantly supervised to safely fill the position? Are there no other workers who know how to work that position already? Does nobody need the overtime? Is nobody waiting to be trained/promoted to that position? How does stepping in to fill the personnel slot actually prevent the same incident from happening again?
Bosses should be willing to get their hands dirty when needed. Good bosses understand that getting their hands dirty isn't always the best way they can help.
1. That "absolute" safety may be impossible doesn't change the fact that the only acceptable target is zero.
2. There are dollar trade-offs for implementing safety systems, for sure. There are dollar trade-offs for injuries, too. There are production trade-offs for injuries. There are morale trade-offs for injuries. There are reputation trade-offs for injuries. There are many, many trade-offs for putting your bottom line above your workers.
On the other hand, UAW doesn't bother to mention in their overwork claims that during crunch times Musk has been known to sleep in a sleeping bag at the factory, and has pledged (and at least so far, upheld) to work on any line where any employee gets injured.
Who cares?
Who cares if Musk chooses to sleep in the factory? That doesn't mean the workers aren't being overworked. Musk owns Tesla and is free to set any standard for himself he likes, the workers don't and can't.
Who cares if Musk takes over on the factory line for an injured worker? 1. It's not his job, he shouldn't be there. Solidarity is nice, but he's got to run the company. 2. There. Should. Not. Be. Injuries. On. The. Line. Full stop. No ifs, ands, or buts. The only acceptable target is zero, and the boss stepping in to fill a spot doesn't achieve that.
Your arguments aren't refutations of UAW's points. They highlight them.
Because there's profit to be extracted. Microsoft and other vendors can sell this software to your employer, and your employer can scare a few extra minutes of "productivity" out of you for their bottom line.
Because then you wouldn't have been saying things like:
If you've figured out AI, you go general as soon as you can, because you get everything in one box.
...when Kelly dismisses that the concept of general-purpose AI because we look at intelligence through an anthropocentric lens. "General purpose" actually isn't.
One of the rewards was DRM-free, downloadable copies of the new episodes. Netflix kept this promise even after they picked up the show, and I can download copies at any time. So availability is not an issue.
The thing is that Joel has been very clear about the show's future: despite the kickstarter's success, what will ultimately determine if there'll be a season 12 is how many people watch it on Netflix. And despite MSTies passion for sharing the tapes, I think they're just trusting Joel and going along with his wishes (for now, anyway) because they want to see the show stick around.
On the newest series, the biggest shock was not the new host, but when Gypsy spoke. I don't know if that voice changed happened earlier in the older series (I never watched the SyFy run), but when I did stop watching, Gypsy was still using that weird falsetto.
That's new to this season. They brought in a new actor, Rebecca Hanson, to do the voice (and also be "Synthia" in the mads segments). I'm with you: it's very, very strange at first, especially with the new "from the ceiling" design. Hopefully we'll see more of the new Gypsy and they'll make the most of it.
Also you should dig into the SyFy episodes. Seasons 8-10 have a ridiculous number of gems.
I've watched the first three episodes so far, and the movie sequences are all pure Mystery Science Theater. Not legendary episodes (although holy crap, Cry Wilderness is bananas), but solid throughout.
But the skits feel off. It's not the cast, they're fine off the bat and are finding a rhythm more and more. It's more that the show has more money now than it did before, and a larger crew to go with it. It takes away a lot of the DIY feel from the early episodes, but it doesn't really bring anything new to compensate. The skits feel really flat too, in the physical sense. Compare the "family" visit in 1102 with almost any skit set in Castle Forrester.
Settling in, maybe? Here's hoping. It still feels like Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I'm happy about that.
I have a PSVR, and, with the exception of Resident Evil 7 (which was amazing), it's largely been collecting dust. This isn't the PSVR's fault, because as a piece of hardware it's rock-solid. The real problem, like you said, is there's not enough software support.
That's why I'd advise against the PSVR over a PC solution- assuming the buyer can afford it and doesn't want to wait. While the PSVR is unquestionably the most comfortable headset, and resolution matters a lot less than people might think, the PS4's closed system ultimately hurts it*. At least for now. I've got a handful of fun diversions, one very fun game, and a lot of waiting. If I had a PC-based solution, I could at least find a constant stream of novelties and experiments to try out.
I'm seriously looking forward to the next generation of VR headsets, when the PSVR's superior ergonomics get copied by other companies, but we don't have to worry about being tied to a single storefront.
*to be fair, one big benefit of the PSVR's closed ecosystem is that Sony refuses games that can't maintain 60Hz or better in VR on standard PS4 hardware. There's a lot to be said for knowing that at least I'm not going to be sick because a game chugs and lags.
I don't really gain anything from seeing it in the theater versus watching it on the TV or on my iPad.
That's mostly true, but not entirely. Most films don't really benefit on having the larger screen, or 3D, or rumbling seats, or spraying your face with water or whatever they do. But that doesn't mean there's no benefit to the theatre setting.
Further up in the discussion whoever57 said "You just don't have a good enough A/V system at your house." Most people don't. I know I don't. Either the viewing angle's off, or there's too much light, or the sound mix isn't great, or whatever. On top of all that, sitting and watching a movie in your living room leaves you prone to distraction. Part of that comes down to discipline, and taking the time to set things up as right as possible within your means, but sometimes that's asking a lot of people, and isn't always manageable.
A theatre isolates and insulates you. It's just you, the audience, and the film. You can (and yes this is a terrible, overused term) immerse yourself in what you're watching. While audiences can be good or bad, watching with the right* audience elevates a film. Ultimately you focus on the movie and, assuming it's not crap, can enjoy it more.
Nothing that can't be done outside of a real (and expensive) home theatre set-up, it's worth pointing out, but as I said above that's not realistic for most people.
*what makes a "right" audience is entirely subjective, and based on the movie. I watched Grindhouse and The Raid 2 with audiences that hooted and cheered throughout, and it was perfect. I was the only person in the theatre for Soderberg's Solaris and that was also perfect.
5000$ is a huge barrier to most people. You can't make up that money in sales if you can't put the money down in the first place.
It's a sensible move for Valve to make, 100%, but it only pushes the games on nu-Greenlight to be more predictable and safe, and developed by the already-established or already-affluent. That's not a good recipe for strengthening games in the long run.
We should also consider other advantages of rushing to the eventual arrival of fully autonomous vehicles.
Oh, absolutely. I'm not inherently against self-driving vehicles: the benefits are massive and far-reaching. There are immense economic pitfalls that need to be navigated, but in the long run it's a net gain. As a rough snapshot of where we stand today, however, it's fair to compare Tesla's fatality rate with traditional vehicles (even while it is more nuanced than that).
We all too often miss the advantage of paying a price up front.
We do, but we cannot forget that sometimes the price is people.
The TL;DR version is that Tesla's autopilot has 1 fatality per 130M miles driven, while the US average of all vehicle-related fatalities comes out to about one per 94M miles. That's 94M miles under all roads, all conditions, compared to Tesla's autopilot being driven almost exclusively on highways.
The modern MLB did not spring fully-formed from the earth. Itcame about from the rise and fall and merging and ship-jumping of dozens of professional baseball leagues and teams. So did the NFL, NHL, and every other major professional sports league. They all crawled over the bodies of other leagues, grabbing what they needed, and adding to the corpse pile along the way.
E-sports is in that early stage now. We can either use what we've learned to organize e-sports now on the basis of their strengths and weaknesses, or wait twenty or fifty years for a victor to drag itself out of its own pile of corpses.
And I guarantee you Overwatch won't be what's being played that far down the line.
It's also true that Overwatch will, sooner or later, lose its player base (and I don't mean to knock it! The SO and I both play). At some point Blizzard is going to need to scale back on promotion, events, and prizes. And what's left of the Overwatch League at that point? An e-sports league dedicated to a single game is ephemeral; one of the biggest advantages major league sports has is history. Narratives build around around teams, cities, players, and beyond. The Cubs' World Series win this year is one of the most amazing sports stories I'll ever see in my lifetime. I think baseball is generally boring as hell, but I can still get caught up in a great story.
E-sports leagues dedicated to a single game are not going to have the chance to to build that history and the stories that come with it. A league built with the ebb and flow of video game popularity in mind could support a broad number of games (maybe with developers directly backing) while being able to pivot its biggest events and promotions as time goes on. Teams* and sponsors, which drive leagues, can follow along. Spectators get something they can rely on not just for the next five years but for the next twenty or fifty, building the loyalty and history that ultimately matter.
I think I'm rambling now, so TL;DR if we want e-sports as a whole to prosper we can't depend on leagues that put all their eggs in one basket.
*when I say "teams" here I'm thinking of Kluwe's suggestion of an umbrella team that has multiple groups dedicated to specific games
The leagues it has needs better organization, stability, and developer agnosticism. I don't trust that Blizzard's "Overwatch League" will be kicking around ten years from now, but I expect that MLG and EVO will.
For an idea on how e-sports could actually change to a lasting, reliable force, Chris Kluwe (who's pretty on point for this sort of stuff) spells it out entirely.
That is nearly accurate, except that *every* professional would appreciate a USB port and a Gigabit Ethernet port.
I agree with you on USB-A, Apple probably could have put one or two on there without compromising much. Ethernet's been gone from the Pro models for years now, people have adapted, and it's not coming back (although Grishnakh is right in that there are plenty of networks where it's a requirement).
Of course the elephant in the room is that both USB port and SD port can be used for (cheap) storage extensions. And Apple absolutely wants to prevent that.
Apple sells third-party USB-C-compatible portable hard drives and keys directly, and there are plenty of other manufacturers out there. There's also NAS and a variety of cloud services, not to mention that current storage solutions still work perfectly fine with the (once again, admittedly annoying) dongles. It's not so much an elephant in the room as people might have to adjust a little.
I'm curious why you think Apple would want people to to not have access to cheap storage extensions. Nobody can complain about dongles but then be okay with plugging in portable storage, and I doubt all but the kool-aid chugging-est Apple fans would argue that iCloud is comparable.
Slashdot Mirror
The major social media platforms are already integrating video so there's no reason to use another service.
Reading newspapers and Twitter are fundamentally the exact same experience by that logic.
We understand that bad actors are going to appear occasionally, but does the general public? And it's not just one or two apps popping up and getting squashed from time to time, it's the reveal that dozens- that we know about- have been running under Apple's radar.
Regardless of how you feel about the walled garden ecosystem, we can agree that the absolute foundation of it is trust. Users trust Apple to do the heavy lifting of reviewing and vetting applications, to provide security and ease-of-use, in exchange for freedom. If that trust is breached, what good is sticking around? If I can't trust Apple in its own app store, why should I trust it with iCloud, or Keychain, or any of its other services?
Services, it must be pointed out, that are both Apple's fastest-growing money maker, and vital to keeping the iDevice experience "sticky".
I remember hearing that after a bad experience with a car consumers would avoid and mistrust that manufacturer for, on average, ten years. I doubt electronics are that drastic, but losing customers' trust for years is something Apple can't afford, especially since it's worked hard to differentiate itself from the other big five on issues of privacy and trust.
So yeah, it's a problem.
Though it may be obvious, let me spell it out: in technology, market disruption always starts at the low end.
Weird how that's a truism yet the iPod and iPhone were decried for their cost when they were released.
It was actually a way to convey information to a potential investor that protects him from SEC action.
Musk's tweet was at 11:18pm (Eastern Standard), August 7.
If no written confirmation from his funder exists prior to that, he's lying to investors and guilty of fraud. Tesla going private is smart. This move was so far away from smart that SpaceX could use it as a new means of space travel.
1: They keep pissing off their established fan bases with needless changes, reboots, and retcons to appease the Butthurt Brigade.
Continuity is a mess at the best of times, crossovers universally suck, and having to understand a byzantine layer of backstory doesn't draw in new readers. Ignoring that constant growing readership (which is what the big two's shareholders are undoubtedly demanding) is a fool's game, established fanbases die. Either literally or they drift off. New readers are a necessity to keep comics alive, never mind thriving. The movies and TV shows are immensely popular, but not turning into monthly readers despite people loving the characters.
Endless crises on infinite earths are eyerolling and infuriating, I totally agree. Trying to manage literally decades of continuity is also untenable. Long-term serialization is both awesome and slowly rotting away comics' strongest characters. I doubt there's a good solution available at all.
2: Comics are just too freakin' expensive per issue for the amount and quality of content you get.
Agreed. Personally I think getting rid of Diamond would help. Not directly or immediately, but ditching that fucking cancerous system would help out retailers and make publishers more immediately responsible to their customers which in turn would, at least, bring back realistic capitalist supply-and-demand. That's just a pet wish of mine, though.
3: The barrier to entry is so low now that previously ignored but still decent talent can punch their own meal ticket. Unfortunately, that allows for a lot more total and utter shit to flood the pool. But that is less important than the ability to go it your own.
Is this a strike against it? You honestly seem to be arguing both ways here. Lower barrier to entry means more opportunities for new blood. Yeah, there'll be dreck, but let's not pretend that lots of established players aren't shit or that there's no absolutely exquisite new talent on the scene. New writers and artists mean new stories and new readers. All that matters then is getting the best stories into everybody's hands.
Is YouTube forcing these people to put up content?
Not "literal gun to the head" forcing them to post content, but YouTube's algorithms mean that if a channel isn't frequently and regularly uploading it's less likely to be pushed in front of users. That means less engagement (LIKE COMMENT AND SUBSCRIBE) and less money. So YouTube gently encourages it, you could say.
In what way is YouTube anything but a way for these people to post something?
YouTube pays them.
If this is too stressful for them, perhaps they should find a job at McDonald's.
It's incredibly hard to constantly be interesting, avoid repetition, and connect with people. All on a regular schedule, typically with more behind-the-scenes production than you'd expect. While sometimes "find another job" isn't unreasonable, acting like it's not a stressful, challenging career is ridiculous. YouTube isn't helping, thanks to its dedication to questionable algorithms, vague and inconsistent moderation, and constantly-changing rules for actually getting paid for your work.
The Freemont plant has ten thousand workers. How many positions are there at the plant? Does Musk understand them all? Has he been trained and signed off on all of them? Or does he have to be trained and constantly supervised to safely fill the position? Are there no other workers who know how to work that position already? Does nobody need the overtime? Is nobody waiting to be trained/promoted to that position? How does stepping in to fill the personnel slot actually prevent the same incident from happening again?
Bosses should be willing to get their hands dirty when needed. Good bosses understand that getting their hands dirty isn't always the best way they can help.
1. That "absolute" safety may be impossible doesn't change the fact that the only acceptable target is zero.
2. There are dollar trade-offs for implementing safety systems, for sure. There are dollar trade-offs for injuries, too. There are production trade-offs for injuries. There are morale trade-offs for injuries. There are reputation trade-offs for injuries. There are many, many trade-offs for putting your bottom line above your workers.
On the other hand, UAW doesn't bother to mention in their overwork claims that during crunch times Musk has been known to sleep in a sleeping bag at the factory, and has pledged (and at least so far, upheld) to work on any line where any employee gets injured.
Who cares?
Who cares if Musk chooses to sleep in the factory? That doesn't mean the workers aren't being overworked. Musk owns Tesla and is free to set any standard for himself he likes, the workers don't and can't.
Who cares if Musk takes over on the factory line for an injured worker? 1. It's not his job, he shouldn't be there. Solidarity is nice, but he's got to run the company. 2. There. Should. Not. Be. Injuries. On. The. Line. Full stop. No ifs, ands, or buts. The only acceptable target is zero, and the boss stepping in to fill a spot doesn't achieve that.
Your arguments aren't refutations of UAW's points. They highlight them.
Because there's profit to be extracted. Microsoft and other vendors can sell this software to your employer, and your employer can scare a few extra minutes of "productivity" out of you for their bottom line.
Because then you wouldn't have been saying things like:
If you've figured out AI, you go general as soon as you can, because you get everything in one box.
...when Kelly dismisses that the concept of general-purpose AI because we look at intelligence through an anthropocentric lens. "General purpose" actually isn't.
One of the rewards was DRM-free, downloadable copies of the new episodes. Netflix kept this promise even after they picked up the show, and I can download copies at any time. So availability is not an issue.
The thing is that Joel has been very clear about the show's future: despite the kickstarter's success, what will ultimately determine if there'll be a season 12 is how many people watch it on Netflix. And despite MSTies passion for sharing the tapes, I think they're just trusting Joel and going along with his wishes (for now, anyway) because they want to see the show stick around.
Sometimes, heartfelt pleas work!
Or maybe I'm just being sappy.
On the newest series, the biggest shock was not the new host, but when Gypsy spoke. I don't know if that voice changed happened earlier in the older series (I never watched the SyFy run), but when I did stop watching, Gypsy was still using that weird falsetto.
That's new to this season. They brought in a new actor, Rebecca Hanson, to do the voice (and also be "Synthia" in the mads segments). I'm with you: it's very, very strange at first, especially with the new "from the ceiling" design. Hopefully we'll see more of the new Gypsy and they'll make the most of it.
Also you should dig into the SyFy episodes. Seasons 8-10 have a ridiculous number of gems.
I've watched the first three episodes so far, and the movie sequences are all pure Mystery Science Theater. Not legendary episodes (although holy crap, Cry Wilderness is bananas), but solid throughout.
But the skits feel off. It's not the cast, they're fine off the bat and are finding a rhythm more and more. It's more that the show has more money now than it did before, and a larger crew to go with it. It takes away a lot of the DIY feel from the early episodes, but it doesn't really bring anything new to compensate. The skits feel really flat too, in the physical sense. Compare the "family" visit in 1102 with almost any skit set in Castle Forrester.
Settling in, maybe? Here's hoping. It still feels like Mystery Science Theater 3000, and I'm happy about that.
I have a PSVR, and, with the exception of Resident Evil 7 (which was amazing), it's largely been collecting dust. This isn't the PSVR's fault, because as a piece of hardware it's rock-solid. The real problem, like you said, is there's not enough software support.
That's why I'd advise against the PSVR over a PC solution- assuming the buyer can afford it and doesn't want to wait. While the PSVR is unquestionably the most comfortable headset, and resolution matters a lot less than people might think, the PS4's closed system ultimately hurts it*. At least for now. I've got a handful of fun diversions, one very fun game, and a lot of waiting. If I had a PC-based solution, I could at least find a constant stream of novelties and experiments to try out.
I'm seriously looking forward to the next generation of VR headsets, when the PSVR's superior ergonomics get copied by other companies, but we don't have to worry about being tied to a single storefront.
*to be fair, one big benefit of the PSVR's closed ecosystem is that Sony refuses games that can't maintain 60Hz or better in VR on standard PS4 hardware. There's a lot to be said for knowing that at least I'm not going to be sick because a game chugs and lags.
I don't really gain anything from seeing it in the theater versus watching it on the TV or on my iPad.
That's mostly true, but not entirely. Most films don't really benefit on having the larger screen, or 3D, or rumbling seats, or spraying your face with water or whatever they do. But that doesn't mean there's no benefit to the theatre setting.
Further up in the discussion whoever57 said "You just don't have a good enough A/V system at your house." Most people don't. I know I don't. Either the viewing angle's off, or there's too much light, or the sound mix isn't great, or whatever. On top of all that, sitting and watching a movie in your living room leaves you prone to distraction. Part of that comes down to discipline, and taking the time to set things up as right as possible within your means, but sometimes that's asking a lot of people, and isn't always manageable.
A theatre isolates and insulates you. It's just you, the audience, and the film. You can (and yes this is a terrible, overused term) immerse yourself in what you're watching. While audiences can be good or bad, watching with the right* audience elevates a film. Ultimately you focus on the movie and, assuming it's not crap, can enjoy it more.
Nothing that can't be done outside of a real (and expensive) home theatre set-up, it's worth pointing out, but as I said above that's not realistic for most people.
*what makes a "right" audience is entirely subjective, and based on the movie. I watched Grindhouse and The Raid 2 with audiences that hooted and cheered throughout, and it was perfect. I was the only person in the theatre for Soderberg's Solaris and that was also perfect.
5000$ is a huge barrier to most people. You can't make up that money in sales if you can't put the money down in the first place.
It's a sensible move for Valve to make, 100%, but it only pushes the games on nu-Greenlight to be more predictable and safe, and developed by the already-established or already-affluent. That's not a good recipe for strengthening games in the long run.
100%. I've had the "luxury" of using SSH on a satellite connection, and there's nothing quite like twenty full seconds of lag between keystrokes.
We should also consider other advantages of rushing to the eventual arrival of fully autonomous vehicles.
Oh, absolutely. I'm not inherently against self-driving vehicles: the benefits are massive and far-reaching. There are immense economic pitfalls that need to be navigated, but in the long run it's a net gain. As a rough snapshot of where we stand today, however, it's fair to compare Tesla's fatality rate with traditional vehicles (even while it is more nuanced than that).
We all too often miss the advantage of paying a price up front.
We do, but we cannot forget that sometimes the price is people.
An article over on Forbes already looked into this.
The TL;DR version is that Tesla's autopilot has 1 fatality per 130M miles driven, while the US average of all vehicle-related fatalities comes out to about one per 94M miles. That's 94M miles under all roads, all conditions, compared to Tesla's autopilot being driven almost exclusively on highways.
Beats seeing what else 2016 has in store.
The modern MLB did not spring fully-formed from the earth. Itcame about from the rise and fall and merging and ship-jumping of dozens of professional baseball leagues and teams. So did the NFL, NHL, and every other major professional sports league. They all crawled over the bodies of other leagues, grabbing what they needed, and adding to the corpse pile along the way.
E-sports is in that early stage now. We can either use what we've learned to organize e-sports now on the basis of their strengths and weaknesses, or wait twenty or fifty years for a victor to drag itself out of its own pile of corpses.
And I guarantee you Overwatch won't be what's being played that far down the line.
That is completely true.
It's also true that Overwatch will, sooner or later, lose its player base (and I don't mean to knock it! The SO and I both play). At some point Blizzard is going to need to scale back on promotion, events, and prizes. And what's left of the Overwatch League at that point? An e-sports league dedicated to a single game is ephemeral; one of the biggest advantages major league sports has is history. Narratives build around around teams, cities, players, and beyond. The Cubs' World Series win this year is one of the most amazing sports stories I'll ever see in my lifetime. I think baseball is generally boring as hell, but I can still get caught up in a great story.
E-sports leagues dedicated to a single game are not going to have the chance to to build that history and the stories that come with it. A league built with the ebb and flow of video game popularity in mind could support a broad number of games (maybe with developers directly backing) while being able to pivot its biggest events and promotions as time goes on. Teams* and sponsors, which drive leagues, can follow along. Spectators get something they can rely on not just for the next five years but for the next twenty or fifty, building the loyalty and history that ultimately matter.
I think I'm rambling now, so TL;DR if we want e-sports as a whole to prosper we can't depend on leagues that put all their eggs in one basket.
*when I say "teams" here I'm thinking of Kluwe's suggestion of an umbrella team that has multiple groups dedicated to specific games
The leagues it has needs better organization, stability, and developer agnosticism. I don't trust that Blizzard's "Overwatch League" will be kicking around ten years from now, but I expect that MLG and EVO will.
For an idea on how e-sports could actually change to a lasting, reliable force, Chris Kluwe (who's pretty on point for this sort of stuff) spells it out entirely.
That is nearly accurate, except that *every* professional would appreciate a USB port and a Gigabit Ethernet port.
I agree with you on USB-A, Apple probably could have put one or two on there without compromising much. Ethernet's been gone from the Pro models for years now, people have adapted, and it's not coming back (although Grishnakh is right in that there are plenty of networks where it's a requirement).
Of course the elephant in the room is that both USB port and SD port can be used for (cheap) storage extensions. And Apple absolutely wants to prevent that.
Apple sells third-party USB-C-compatible portable hard drives and keys directly, and there are plenty of other manufacturers out there. There's also NAS and a variety of cloud services, not to mention that current storage solutions still work perfectly fine with the (once again, admittedly annoying) dongles. It's not so much an elephant in the room as people might have to adjust a little.
I'm curious why you think Apple would want people to to not have access to cheap storage extensions. Nobody can complain about dongles but then be okay with plugging in portable storage, and I doubt all but the kool-aid chugging-est Apple fans would argue that iCloud is comparable.