cerebralhawks

Nope... I've been a bit disappointed with the 16 Pro Max in general... I mean it's bigger than my 13 Pro was, but I'm not seeing a massive improvement. 3 years seemed an okay time to wait but I feel like these days you can go a lot longer.

I just can't believe with "Apple Intelligence" and all the bells and whistles they promote and all the shit they talk about previous generations and "the other platform" (never saying names) and they still mess up trace typing so badly. It's just wild.

The one thing I did think about the event was, for the first time ever, I thought, if I needed a new iPhone right now... I'd go base, not pro. 2X Zoom is all I really use on my Pro Max. I don't use the ultrawide. So the base does not have a telephoto, it has a 48MP camera, and it emulates 2X zoom by giving you a 24MP image of the middle. It's literally just cropping. But it has the desired effect and it's good enough for most people.

Sounds like something that wouldn't be too hard to do, given that Plex (and others like it) exists. The difference is, Plex is streaming.

So with a good network, you can just send the game and do the emulation client side, and sync the save and other data back to the server. With a powerful enough host, you can handle the emulation on the host machine and just stream the video, with the client streaming the controls back, but this wouldn't be good for a lot of games (too much latency). Same issue as GeForce NOW. Good if you're near their CDN; otherwise, useless.

Sure did.

That means a 1TB iPhone 16 Pro Max is worth $1100 in trade. As you go down to that, down to the iPhone 13 Mini, it's lower. They don't say how low the entry level model goes.

They never said the base/Mini iPhone 13 would be $1100. They said "up to" which means that's what they offer for the best one.

Okay but what games are considered sexualised and how many people are actually playing them?

Cyberpunk certainly qualifies both. It's got explicit sex, and it's got a large player base. But while uncouth and perverse things happen, you can't really be party to them. You tend to show up after. Maybe your choices might lead to some, but you're not there for it. The only sex involving the player is generally wholesome. Except, you know, the ghost of Johnny Silverhand riding shotgun and not necessarily consenting to it (especially when you hook up with the cop).

Then there's Skyrim. Bigger player base but no sex outside of mods. And there are plenty of mods, but if you look at the player count among people using those mods... it's nowhere near the player count of Skyrim as a whole, or Cyberpunk, or even a lot of the other games. And from there it drops off sharply.

So... what sexualised video games?

You can download it now actually... you'll just be offered the update sometime after that point (most people won't be offered it the day of).

Liquid Ass is actually awesome on iPhone, Watch, and Mac. My wife's iPad isn't in the beta, but it'll be interesting to see how it works there. It's an Air 4, so not the latest, but still should be capable for a few more years (if not longer). It's gotten snubbed on a few things though.

So my question is, do we want ISPs to be liable? If they are, they will be more likely to cut alleged pirates off. If they aren't, then a legal door is open for the rights holders to go after individuals directly.

That was the real question, because they were promising the Live Translation thing before.

Now there are rumours that there will be a Pro 4 next year. I think that sounds dumb, why wouldn't people just wait? AirPods aren't an every-year kind of thing. But there it is. And my Pro 2's are still working good.

Still working out how to feel about this keynote.

I no longer feel like the Pro/Pro Max is the best value. Seriously, what is the base 17 missing? It's a weaker chip but who cares, the 12/13 are still suitable for most tasks. Hell, I'll reach for my Galaxy S10 (2019) over my iPhone 16 Pro Max (2024) for a couple things. Like typing. If the best of Apple Intelligence can't figure out trace typing and a six-year-old Android can, what good is the best iPhone? At least for that.

I think it's weird that they no longer offer an iPhone Plus. I suppose it is true, after all, that phones were getting smaller until they realised we could watch porn on them. Then they started getting bigger. Everyone's trying to ban/age-gate porn now (and I'm not saying that's a bad thing) so Apple's response is to shy away from big phones? I think that gives those of us holding out for another Mini some hope.

Anyway, the base iPhone 17 is basically a reissue of the iPhone 16 Pro but with one fewer camera, and arguably improvements across the board. If you got an iPhone 16 Pro and you aren't using 5X telephoto, I wonder how you're feeling about now. Probably real curious about trade-in values. I thought about it. But I don't wanna be one of those jackasses who upgrades every year. I came from the 13, and I'm thinking if the 19 doesn't knock my socks off, I'll get the 20/X2 and hold onto it for 5 years. If the 19 looks good, I'll get that. As a Stephen King fan (in the Dark Tower, gunslinger Roland's band of merry adventurers was called the Ka'tet of 19) it's gonna be real tempting. Gonna have to get a Ka decal for it. Maybe a Tower decal, too.

Nope, my wife uses Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Discord.

Can't get her to adopt Fediverse equivalents.

I'd say I choose quality over quantity, but she mostly is in artist communities that don't want to move off the old platforms. They say they were there before the crazies, they aren't the problem, so they're not gonna move, even if the people who own those platforms are straight up fascists. I couldn't do it.

Well, you know the 30.06 ammo is kinda hard to come by, so I didn't use it all the time. I'd avoid combat on Liberty Island and just hoard ammo. I modded a mod for it and made a few changes — like after UNATCO "cuts through" the NSF "like a hot knife through butter," with my mod, they don't loot the bodies. So I do. Bit of a reward for getting through without being detected. So then I trade the pistol for the silenced version. The mod that I modded, Shifter, makes unique versions of each guns with a stat or two buffed. I could tell you where the pistol is (Lebedev's bed on the plane) but I forget where the silenced pistol was. May have been in the canals in Hong Kong — so, not worth waiting for. I mean as opposed to slapping the weapon mods on the regular one. So for most guys I'd shoot with the silenced 10mm. Sniper's really only good at range. But, that one mission, where they drop you on top of the 'ton (the hotel in NYC, supposed to be Hilton, but... copyrights) I take everybody out with the sniper rifle (it's like 8 guys tops) before dropping down to street level. I can't remember if it's when you go to Dowd to get the plans to scuttle the freighter, or when you go back to NYC to send the singal from NSF HQ. Been way too long since I played, but really only a year or two. I wish they'd put it on Xbox.

Rockband was a good example of achievement-gating the higher difficulties. You got an achievement for beating the game on Medium, Hard, or Expert. And doing it on one of the two higher ones would unlock the ones below if you didn't already do it on those difficulties. So if you were good enough to beat it on Expert, you got three or four achievements. Now I know you're probably thinking "wait how do you beat Rockband"? By completing the Endless Setlist, which is unlocked when you beat the story mode. The story mode just unlocked the higher tiers of difficulty. The Endless Setlist was all the songs. Six hours and 20 minutes minimum. Oh, and when I said "three or four achievements"? The fourth one is if you do it without pausing or failing (at any difficulty Medium or higher). That one was called the "Bladder of Steel Award." Yes, I own it. You food prep in advance, you do it on vocals, and you time your bathroom breaks very carefully (and drop a deuce in advance as well). But those three achievements for beating it at difficulty? Those are per instrument. I only have the gold (expert) vocals award. I may have the bronze (medium) bass award, but I never got any for guitar or drums.

That's just one example of difficulty and incentives. I like how Deus Ex 1 did it, too. On Easy, you did more damage and took less. On Hard, you did less and took more. On Medium, it was balanced. On Realistic... everyone takes more. That was how I played. I wasn't getting hit. I played a sniper. Even on Easy it was hard to one-shot enemies with a good gun and a headshot. For some reason that didn't kill them. On Realistic, a shot to center mass with my .30-06 will drop any human enemy. A shot to the head will drop the augmented ones. So that's how I play... played. It's not on Xbox and it's not on the Mac. My Mac can run it through Whisky, but I haven't played much more than parts of the first level, so I'm not sure what the compatibility looks like later.

I grew up with Atari and the NES. I think it's actually both ways. I don't think casual games were ever really a pushback against difficult games though, I think they were just trying to reach a wider audience. Take Subway Surfers for example, it's probably the best example of the casual (phone) game. Anyone can pick up and play it, and if you fail, you just start over. IIRC you had to watch an ad first though? I dunno, I got hooked on it and I bought the coin doubler for $5 which also removed the mandatory ads (not the ones you can opt to watch to double some prizes or open ad-gated prize boxes though). That's all I ever paid for it — far less than any paid game. Of course you can't "win" at it either, it just goes on forever. On consoles, you also have Animal Crossing and the like. Games that never end but you can't lose, either. Like you can get stung by wasps or scorpions or bit by tarantulas (though the latter two encounters are rare), but you just pass out and wake up in front of your house with nothing lost. But no, I don't think casual (e.g. Animal Crossing) or accessible (e.g. Subway Surfers) was an active "push back" against the "NES Hard" trend of hard gaming.

Of course, arcade games weren't just hard to be hard — like Subway Surfers and other phone games, they exist to get you to spend money. An arcade game that isn't generating revenue isn't desirable to people who operate arcades.