Nuclear Monster

  • I’ve had the Steam Deck for a few weeks now and I’ve got some thoughts, mainly about the software. There is also a video version of these impressions from a few days ago that demonstrates the good and bad parts of the Steam Deck:

    Prefix

    If you’re already familiar with the history of Linux gaming for the past twenty years, and what I’ve written about in the run up to the launch of the Steam Deck, feel free skip to the next section. I’m just rehashing the past to give context here.

    Otherwise, hi, hello. My name is Jack and I’ve been writing about Linux gaming for the past 20 years. When I started, there were a very few companies porting games to Linux and selling that software in boxes over the web. One or two companies even managed to sell some games at retail stores in the United States, but Loki was the biggest.

    Loki ported what felt like a lot of games at the time, helped develop freely available technologies to bring more games over to Linux, inspired good competition with other companies to bring games over.

    At about the same time, another company called Transgaming came around and forked an open source piece of software called WINE. WINE is what Valve’s Proton is based on, and it sort of lets Windows games run under Linux. The people who push this technology prefer to refer to it as a Windows API compatibility layer. I think of it as Windows emulation, but it doesn’t really matter what anyone calls it. We know what happens when Windows API compatibility layers work well.

    Transgaming’s fork of WINE was initially called WineX, and then Cedega, but the biggest political move Transgaming made was a heist. They took the freely available WINE source code, under a more permissible license then, made improvements to it, and contributed nothing back. Though Transgaming made a promise to release the source code after getting 20,000 subscribers to their commercial fork of WINE, the promise was deleted from their website after a time without any explanation. The license for the WINE project changed to prohibit this from happening again.

    As a writer for Linux Games dot com back then, and someone trying to understand the landscape of playing games on Linux, I tried both the native Linux version of games that Loki and other companies ported, and tried playing games that were only accessible through WINE and WineX. Native Linux games generally worked great. The Windows Compatibility layer experience was a different story.

    At the time, one of the biggest multiplayer games was Valve’s Counter Strike and There were lengthy guides that helped players get the game working in WineX. The WINE experience with Counter Strike matched that of playing other games using WINE, it was frankly unreliable. Even when games would launch, the Windows API Compatibility layer would break mid-game and patches to games would require a response from the developers of whichever WINE fork users were playing with.

    New versions of the DirectX gaming APIs from Microsoft also necessitated a response from Windows API Compatibility layer developers, and those were what companies like Transgaming held back from mainline WINE development so they could sell subscriptions.

    Even with all that, some people managed to have fun playing the games that worked and didn’t have to reboot to Windows. From my perspective it was frustrating to watch as Windows API Compatibility layers ate into the market for native Linux games and I heard from game developers who were just as frustrated that bosses weren’t allowing more games to come to Linux because of the real or imagined potential that games worked under WINE or WineX.

    A lot has changed since the early 2000’s. Loki went out of business due to mismanagement and low sales after a few short years in 2002. The Loki website is still online here thanks to a former employee who keeps the website up.

    Transgaming moved into pushing their Windows API Compatibility layer for macOS and later turned into a real estate hoarding business called Findev that dropped every pretense of caring about Linux or macOS and games.

    Valve eventually released a native version of Steam for Linux and in 2014 tried to get developers to port their games to Linux to support a wave of Steam Machines, prebuilt computers that ran Linux and were mainly focused on a console-like experience which unfortunately did not catch on.

    That brings us to the Steam Deck which was announced last year and users could reserve it for $5 with the final purchase price being between $400 and $700. The Steam Deck is primarily focused on running games through Valve’s fork of WINE called Proton.

    People who made reservations on the first day are still waiting to get their Steam Deck. New reservations won’t be fulfilled for months. I just got mine about a month ago and the ordering process isn’t great but I think Valve is doing their best here. It isn’t as bad as trying to buy a graphics card when graphics card makers and distributors were selling them out the back door by the truckload to cryptocurrency miners, the queue is much better.

    Last year I also interviewed Ryan Gordon and Ethan Lee about their thoughts on the Steam Deck. I highly recommend reading those articles before reading my thoughts here. Gordon and Lee are both third-party developers who port games to Linux and understand the technologies involved here at a much deeper level than I do.

    Steam Deck Software

    I’ve tried playing about a dozen games on the Steam Deck that I was “saving up” for when I had more time. Not having to power up a big desktop computer makes it easier to find that time. That’s the best part of the Steam Deck for people who are just playing games. For developers the Steam Deck has the potential to be anyone’s first Linux gaming computer and game development environment. These are my rough notes about the situation with the Steam Deck today.

    Playing games is great on the Steam Deck when they work because it is a perfect match for the games you put off for later or got distracted when they came out.

    Newer, intense, 3D games often don’t run well by default but may be able to run with lower settings. Elden Ring, for example, often won’t even start for me on the Steam Deck despite being high up on the list of “verified titles” in Valve’s marketing materials. Death Stranding runs but doesn’t look great to me, it might look better with some adjustments to the options but it isn’t even clear to me if Valve is trying to provide good default graphics settings for games or what.

    That some games don’t work despite being listed in Valve’s verification program and related marketing materials as “verified” makes it clear that it isn’t any kind of guarantee the games will continue to work after they’re reviewed by Valve. Past verification is not a promise of present or future compatibility and treating it like it is is a mistake. This unreliability has been a fundamental flaw in claims of Windows API compatibility for the past twenty years.

    Some games do work with Proton, but require shenanigans like choosing a specific version of that Windows API Compatibility Layer.

    Certain native Linux ports are broken on the Steam Deck (Full Throttle and Day of the Tentacle are two examples) because of an issue with the 32-bit compatibility libraries on the Steam Deck. This is kind of ironic given the absolute shit Valve (rightly!) gave Apple about dropping 32bit support in macOS years ago. This issue is supposed to be fixed in an upcoming version of the Steam Deck’s operating system. That updated version is already available in a public beta but I’m running the current “stable” version that the Steam Deck runs by default.

    I’ve seen people on forums for games with native Linux ports telling other users to switch to a different version of Valve’s Windows compatibility layer Proton when the sound is broken. Users aren’t told if they’re running games natively or through a Windows API compatibility layer. Users will not know if they should contact Valve or the game’s developer or what.

    Shatter is another fantastic game that has no sound under Linux and users were telling each other to switch to different versions of Proton, but I don’t know if it is the same issue as what happened with Day of the Tentacle and Full Throttle.

    The support options on the Steam Deck do not point users to Valve to seek help, but instead to third-party developers. This makes no sense for native ports that don’t work on the deck due to Valve’s issues or for Windows games that don’t work with Valve’s Windows API compatibility layer.

    The Heroic Games Launcher is a free application that lets Linux users play games from the Epic Game Store and GOG but the one game (Tony Hawk Pro Skater 1 & 2) I’ve tried within Heroic did not run at all.

    The Steam Deck Software Keyboard

    The Steam Deck’s software keyboard is wonderful to look at, clearly someone at Valve loves mechanical keyboards, but does not always work in daily use so it gets a special section here. Audible and haptic feedback in the software keyboard frequently confirms key presses that aren’t sent. This means I will type out a long password and fail at doing so 9 times out of 10. It’s bad!

    I cannot emphasize enough how terrible typing in long passwords in. I tried to log in to a few websites in desktop mode, if the form doesn’t let you see the password while you’re entering it, it’s going to fail.

    Steam Cloud

    There are enough reports from users about the Steam Cloud save game synchronization system malfunctioning that I find it concerning to use. Users have reported their saves being lost temporarily or permanently due to failure of the system but the main issue I have personally experienced with Steam Cloud save game synchronization is when save games don’t synchronize and I have to manually retry, which always works for some reason.

    The user isn’t told what has gone wrong when Steam Cloud fails, but is simply given the option to try again with a big button labeled retry. Every time I manually retry it works, so why is the button there at all? The system should be trying again without user intervention or something else is going on here.

    I’ve heard that some games also synchronize their graphics options along with save data in Valve’s Steam Cloud, which causes a problem when users are playing games on their desktop computers and on the Steam Deck, but I haven’t run into that problem. Valve supposedly discourages the practice of synchronizing graphics settings alongside game progress.

    Some games don’t use any kind of synchronization system but when they do it highlights how obtuse these systems are and Valve isn’t an outlier here. Every file synchronization system I’ve ever used has had quirks at some point to leave users with concerns. File synchronization seems like a tough problem to solve.

    Desktop Mode

    Valve’s latest version of SteamOS uses Arch Linux as a base, but it’s something most people playing games can skip unless they want to play games outside of Steam or use the desktop mode for general computing.

    It’s important to emphasize that although I’m going to complain about the desktop mode controls, they can be reconfigured. However, the default desktop controls should be great. As they are now, the default desktop mode controls are extremely unintuitive and don’t work the way I expect. There’s no way by default to scroll webpages or other long interfaces with the Steam Deck’s trackpad or thumbstick. Instead you have to click and drag which often means clicking incredibly small pieces of the Linux desktop interface and trying to drag them.

    Software that users can install in the desktop mode of the Steam Deck are also limited to what is available through the Arch Linux Discovery app and bundled in isolated packages called Flatpaks. Valve specifically warns users of the Steam Deck’s desktop mode that software installed outside of Flatpaks may be lost with future updates to Steam OS:

    In addition, anything you install outside of flatpak (via pacman for instance) may be wiped with the next SteamOS update.

    Limiting users to software installed from Flatpaks holds back the potential of the Steam Deck as a development device or just as a mobile computing environment. There are ways to work around the limitation listed in that FAQ, however, /usr/local and the home directory exist to shield users from operating system update wreaking havoc on their software. It doesn’t feel great to be so limited. I don’t know what a good solution is here.

    Steam Deck Hardware

    The hardware feels good overall and performance is fast enough. The control surface varies from Fine in the case of the weird inclusion of two trackpads to Great if we’re talking about the absolutely fantastic directional pad.

    All of that desktop mode stuff is way better with a mouse and keyboard, but the official Steam Deck dock isn’t out yet and the current standard of alternative USB-C pass-thru powered hubs is concerning. I have no idea if they are trustworthy because the various docks appear to always be rebranded pieces of hardware made by other companies. That isn’t unusual or necessarily bad, that is how everything is made now and even the official Valve dock may also be rebranded hardware, but at least then I wouldn’t have to be as concerned about warranty claims being fulfilled.

    Headphones are an issue as well. Do you still have portable wired headphones? I do, but plugging them into a portable device stinks and slows down the experience of picking up and playing games on the Steam Deck. Yeah, Bluetooth headphones also work but they won’t be as smooth to connect as Apple’s AirPods and they will have significant latency.

    There are a ton of competitors to the Steam Deck from other companies who are only shipping versions of Windows. Most of those devices cost a lot more than the Steam Deck and have either similar hardware performance or much better hardware inside but those companies also appear to be operating at a smaller scale than Valve is here. I haven’t tried those devices, and Valve seems to have no problem making SteamOS available to those companies.

    Overall

    As a user the Steam Deck is incredible when games work. It is a great portable computer at a very reasonable price if you can get your hands on one. However, as someone who cares about Linux gaining ground as a platform, many of my concerns before I got the Steam Deck about the “Windows API Compatibility Layer” were unfortunately correct. The danger of these compatibility layers is that the better they get, the less motivation there is to write software for Linux. Valve isn’t being as outrightly evil here as Transgaming was twenty years ago: as far as I can tell Proton’s source code is easily available and the development of Proton is contributing back to WINE. It just isn’t a great gaming experience when games don’t work consistently because they’re run in a Windows API compatibility layer like Proton.

    It feels like Valve’s priorities are broken, most of the Steam library is only playable with the Windows API compatibility layer so of course Valve will focus on the compatibility layer instead of native games. This is the result of the decisions Valve made in designing the Steam Deck and the failure of other game developers to natively port their games to Linux.

    Ultimately, I don’t believe we will know if the Steam Deck can work as a Linux game developer creation and conversion device unless Valve focuses on helping developers port their games again. As it is today, I am still extremely concerned the outcome of the Steam Deck may be as rotten as the TiVo and other devices were in shipping an entirely different interface on top of Linux. In this case the custom Steam Deck user experience is running on top and users have much more access if they seek it out.

    Look, we have to be skeptical of big companies like Valve. They’re not here to make Linux work as a platform but I hope I’m wrong and Valve does eventually help developers port games to Linux.

    Linux gaming has come a long way in 20 years and the Steam Deck is the best shot it has to be fun again.

  • Last week Zachtronics announced a new game, Last Call BBS, and according to the game’s description and a live stream that included Zach Barth himself: Last Call BBS will be the final game from Zachtronics. The simulated computer in Last Call BBS is a Z5 Powerlance that comes preloaded with eight games, some of which look a little bit similar to older games that Zachtronics has made and others are completely new. I’m not seeing much that looks like the programming side of things from other games that Zachtronics has released,  but who knows what’s hidden in there.

    Last Call BBS is coming to Steam for Windows, macOS, and Linux and Microsoft’s PC Game Pass service on July 5th. It’ll be an unfinished Early Access game at first. Unfortunately the deluxe edition of Last Call BBS that includes the stickers and other goodies has already sold out, although Zachtronics has released a free model of the computer to 3D print off of thingiverse and some stickers to print out and slap on it.

  • Lets take a look at a few of the demos from Steam Next Fest 2022 on NuclearMonster Live.

    Here are the games I checked out:

    Anger Foot
    Melatonin
    Ghost Song
    Midnight Fight Express

    Keep in mind that these games aren’t all complete, these are pre-release demo versions, and may be different when they come out.

    Got any more demo recommendations? Let me know in the comments.

  • Every year Apple starts their World Wide Developer’s Conference with a keynote, It’s been a pre-recorded infomercial with solely online sessions for the past two years. This year Apple changed it up and while most of the event was pre-recorded, some developers and journalists were invited to attend an in-person viewing of the pre-recorded video. Encouraging people to travel during a deadly pandemic is not a wise thing when hundreds of people are dying each week and thousands more are getting infected with a potentially deadly or long-term disease.

     

    iOS 16

    Lock Screen Customization, Notifications, Focus Mode Switching

    The way iPhones look when they’re on but the screen is locked is changing in iOS 16 according to Apple’s Craig Federighi. Federighi showed off the new functionality using a portrait mode photo where his children appeared in the foreground, in front and slightly above the time on the lock screen, and the blurred background of the photo remained in the background behind everything. Pressing and holding on the screen let Federighi go into an editing mode to choose a new style or pick out other customization options like a font for the time and date or adding and removing widgets. Like with Apple Watch faces, users can store their customized iPhone lock screens to pick between them later on. Federighi also said that developers could use the WidgetKit API to add information from their apps. Given the grousing I’ve heard from developers about limitations in the current widget system, I’m curious how well that ends up working out.

    Federighi also highlighted changes to the way notifications appear on the lock screen, with new notifications fanning out from the bottom of the screen and a new API called Live Activities that lets developers put information into something that sure looks a lot like a widget instead of a constant stream of notifications. Examples included a basketball game with a scoreboard replacing endless notifications about the game’s score, Uber notifications replaced by a live progress tracker, a Nike workout meter, and a music player that can expand to let the album art take up more of the lock screen.

    The Focus modes introduced last year are also getting updated to include lock screen and home screen selections, and focus filters that go into apps to filter out messages, websites, mail, and calendar events according to Federighi. He said that users would be able to swipe between the lock screens to choose their focus mode.

    Messages in iOS 16

    Messages updates were next from Federighi with the ability to edit and undo sending messages, as well as marking messages as unread. A press release from Apple clarified that messages can only be edited or undone for 15 minutes after they’re sent and they’re recoverable for 30 days after they’re deleted. Presumably only from the sender’s side of the conversation? This feature sounds like it would be easy for people who are making mistakes to abuse it.

    Federighi also said that the Shared with You feature that surfaces photos and links and other things shared in messages would get an API for developers to hook into.

    SharePlay Apps and Messages

    The SharePlay feature that lets users watch videos and do other stuff together during video calls is also getting updated to let users get into a SharePlay app directly from the video call screen or find more apps that support SharePlay. It’s also getting added to Apple’s Messages app so it seems like users don’t need to be on a call to watch a show together, which would be an improvement. My family has enjoyed using SharePlay when it’s available, but we would usually mute the call and turn off the camera because it wasn’t necessary to be on a call at the same time.

    Dictation Improvements

    Federighi had Robby Walker introduce improvements to the dictation feature on the iOS keyboard with a demonstration that showed the on-screen software keyboard remaining in-use for edits during dictation instead of being covered up by the voice interface as it is today with iOS 15. Walker demonstrated selecting text and then using their voice to replace the selected text, and dictating with automatic punctuation. Currently you have to dictate the punctuation by verbally saying “period” or “exclamation mark” to get a . or !

    Walker also said there would be a new API for developers to work with SiriKit and Shortcuts called App Intents.

    Live Text scraping added to Videos, Translation Improvements, Other Detection Improvements

    iOS 15 got the ability for the operating system to scrape text from images, iOS 16 is adding videos. Walker said you would have to pause the video to do this and showed it working on a code sample. I wonder how well that will work as video quality degrades over slower connections and with user interface elements blocking the text. Some apps also reject Apple’s video player and I suspect those just won’t work at all.

    Walker also said that it would be easier to quickly do things with text in images and videos like translations and showed an updated Translate app from Apple that lets people translate using a camera in the app.

    It is can be frustrating to try and select an image instead of the text in the image in iOS 15, so I hope that gets ironed out in iOS 16.

    Speaking of image selection, Walker demonstrated selecting the subject of a photo with a long press and dragging just the part of the image that shows the subject out of the photo by selecting a dog and dragging the dog without the background into a message.

    Walker implied that some or all of these features would also come to Apple’s other operating systems.

    Wallet Stuff: ID & Keys, Tap to Pay, Apple Pay Later, Order Tracking

    Corey Fugman talked about Apple’s work in putting drivers licenses and ID cards into the Wallet app, which is only in Maryland and Arizona for now but said that 11 other states are working on it. Fugman said that some apps would be able to access the ID to verify the user’s age for something like an alcohol purchase. It would only let the app know if the user was over 21 instead of their specific age.

    Fugman said that Apple is trying to make digital keys a standard so that keys can be shared to other operating systems but they would be shareable between Apple users first.

    Fugman talked about how iPhones can “…starting this Month…” do Apple Pay with a tap-to-pay feature without needing other hardware.

    Apple Pay Later is a buy now pay later service that extends credit lending to every day purchases by spreading the cost out over a period of time with preset increments. These services are being pretty widely exploited and rightfully criticized for their usurious nature by advertising no interest but of course making their money on buyers who fail to meet the timeline of repayment and usually charging a fee to merchants for the availability of the service under the pretense of enabling customers to buy things they would otherwise be unable to afford. So instead of owing just a credit card bill every month you could owe money to dozens of lenders for smaller purchases through different apps and bills. Fugman said this feature would require no additional integration for developers.

    Apple Pay Order Tracking was introduced by Fugman to track where orders are at. They’ve really got a shit sandwich here of stuffing usurious garbage into the middle of things that people might fall asleep through.

    Maps Updates

    Federighi said that new map features are coming to 11 more countries later this year, I still can’t get bicycling directions on O?ahu.

    Maps is getting multi-stop routing according to Meg Frost. MapQuest from 1996 probably had this but it does look like Apple has thought out the feature by setting up Siri to help and being able to plan and store these routes. The Maps app will integrate more with stored digital transit payment cards and let you know how much a ride will cost or remind users if they need to reload a card before a ride.

    Frost also said that developers would get better map access through MapKit and more developer stuff later this year.

    Sports

    Rubie Edmondson was introduced to talk about sports stuff and reiterated previously mentioned features like the live activities scoreboard and said that the Apple TV app would display those scoreboards on the lockscreen.

    Edmondson also boasted about Apple TV +’s Friday Night Baseball which isn’t great because it locks baseball games that would otherwise be broadcast for free locally behind yet another paywall. If you’ve already subscribed to Major League Baseball’s MLB TV service, too bad.

    The News app is getting a My Sports section with sports-specific news from your chosen teams.

    Family Sharing Updates

    Craig Federighi said that Apple will be making it easier to create children’s Apple ID accounts, manage their parental controls and screen time, and set up new devices.

    iCloud Shared Photo Library is a new feature that Federighi said would make it easier for families to share photos. There are so many flaws with the current photo sharing systems so this could be great, especially if the photos remain at their full quality. The camera app is also getting a toggle to immediately share photos to a shared library and there’s a feature to automatically share images taken when someone else who is in the shared photo library is nearby. That seems like a potentially broken feature but sure.

    Federighi said everyone who has access to the shared library can edit, remove, and add photos so get ready for a relative who thinks they’re funny to edit in cartoon faces to your important family photos. Federighi even showed an edit going from color to black and white which is a perfect example of how destructive changes like this can be. 

    Safety Check

    Katie Skinner introduced the Safety Check feature specifically with the idea that it would be useful for revoking access to some functionality like privacy permissions and location data when people are escaping abusive situations. It looks useful but it’s especially important to remain skeptical about Apple’s motivations and what they’re providing when they’re talking about functionality like this that is ostensibly to help people in terrible situations. I hope Safety Check does exactly what it promises.

    Home & CarPlay

    Corey Wang talked about Smart Home garbage like the Matter standard for home stuff to communicate with each other and showed a redesigned Home app that categorizes devices or just lets you browse through the entire list of devices in one long list separated by rooms.

    Emily Schubert introduced new changes to CarPlay to add support for more screens, customizable gauge clusters, calendars, music, and widgets to the new screens, bringing truly distracted driving to a whole new level. Vehicles running this next generation version of CarPlay are to be announced late in 2023 which feels like a long way away for Apple to be announcing anything but I suppose they need the developer components in sooner which means they might have been impossible to avoid talking about. 

    iOS 16 Odds & Ends

    Federighi returned to talk about Spatial Audio improvements that would scan your ears to tune Spatial Audio features for you. I turn off Spatial Audio immediately because it sounds like garbage simulated surround sound to me.

    Quick Note is also coming to iOS. when it was previously only available on macOS and iPadOS. It still works very differently in both operating systems and is pretty inconsistent. I am glad to see Quick Note getting improved instead of being dumped into the pile of “marketing named feature we once talked about and then never updated.”

    watchOS 9

    Kevin Lynch appeared in a fitness studio to talk about new features coming to WatchOS 9. Lynch brought up “…four new watch faces” and then showed off a remade Astronomy watch face (are remakes new?), a Lunar calendar watch face, a bizarre watch face called Play Time by an artist named Joi Fulton that has odd characters for numerals, and Metropolitan another weird watch face with a font for the numerals that stretches if you turn the crown. Why is it version 9 of WatchOS and developers still cannot ship their own watch faces? Lynch went on to say that more of the older watch faces are getting “rich complications” which is Apple speak for updating the older software to match current functionality.

    Using Siri will no-longer takes up the whole Watch screen with that interface, there will be banner notifications, and active apps get pinned in the app switcher.

    The Podcasts app on WatchOS 9 is getting discoverability functionality to find and subscribe to new podcasts as well as letting kids use the app when their parents permit it.

    Developers are getting new APIs for the share sheet (the thing that pops up when you tap on a box with an arrow pointing up and out of it) and the photo picker that lets users select images. Callkit will let developers manage VoIP calls on the Apple Watch.

    Craig Bolton showed off new metrics and custom workout modes on the Apple Watch to help runners and other exercise types. Routes will be automatically saved for repeat comparisons and there are new workout types for automatically switching between cycling, swimming, and running for example.

    Remarkably, Apple’s Fitness app has been locked out for everyone who doesn’t have an Apple Watch, Bolton said that with iOS 16 users could finally use the Fitness app without an Apple Watch to see stuff that iPhones can track without other hardware accessories and the results from other fitness apps. I’ve been pretty annoyed that the health benefits of the Apple Watch are unavailable to anyone who can’t afford it. I know that sounds ridiculous, but health should not be a luxury and it’s good more people could benefit from some of these features.

    Dr. Sumbol Ahmad Desai announced updates to Apple’s Sleep app in watchOS 9. Desai said that the updated app would monitor which stage of sleep users are in and said users could optionally plug this data into a research study that Apple is running to help better understand sleep.

    Desai also talked about heart health and atrial fibrillation and said that watchOS 9 would track that data over time.

    Finally, Desai said that watchOS 9 and the Health app in iOS 16 would include medication tracking and warn users about potential drug interactions through manual medication entry and scanning labels.

    M2

    Johny Srouji introduced the M2 second generation of Apple’s processors, re-emphasized Apple’s focus on energy efficiency alongside performance and went over the specs of the base M2 chip. A “second-generation 5 nanometer” process, 20 billion transistors 25% more transistors than the base model of M1, a memory controller that supposedly has 100 gigs per second of bandwidth (50% more than the M1) and up to 24 GB of memory alongside the M2 chip when the M1 was limited to 16 GB. Surprisingly, Srouji admits that the M2 base chip still has less performance than the biggest mobile chips from Intel (without mentioning them by name) but promises “almost 90%” (the chart shows 87%) of the peak performance at less power. The graphs Apple are showing are ridiculous with “Relative performance” on the vertical y axis and “Power consumption” on the x axis. What is “Relative performance”? Who knows! I don’t doubt that these are powerful, efficient chips, but they need better graphs. The one good part of this graph is that Apple says what the competitor’s laptop is in the fine print, it’s the MSI Laptop Prestige 14Evo with Core i7-1260P and 16 GB of memory.

    Srouji said that the base model of M2 could have two more GPU cores to make 10, two more than the M1, for a claimed 35% more GPU performance. Once again we got a silly “Relative performance” chart comparing GPU performance against Intel’s integrated graphics processing, very strange.

    New versions of the secure enclave and neural engine, and more video performance for 8K rounds out the M2 package.

    2022 MacBook Air

    Kristin White introduced a redesigned M2-based MacBook Air for 2022 which dumps the wedge shape in favor for thinness and the big round feet from last year’s MacBook Pro lineup, gets a MagSafe plug that is interestingly color-matched to the four colors of MacBook Air (last year’s MacBook Pro’s MagSafe plugs are all silver), only has two thunderbolt ports, but keeps the audio jack. White claims the new 13.6” display to be Liquid Retina and it has a notch for the webcam which is 1080p and Apple says it has twice the resolution and twice the performance in low light as the previous Air. The performance Apple demonstrates with this webcam is literally unbelievable because it is a professionally lit shot with natural seeming light that does not at all match what I’ve seen from the same camera on the 2021 MacBook Pro. These webcams Apple ships aren’t terrible for laptop webcams but they are garbage compared to the cameras on the iPhone lineup.

    White also said that speaker quality is improved and this I am willing to believe, Apple’s audio quality from their recent laptops has been surprisingly good. The microphone, well there are limits to how good they can get but at least fan noise won’t be a problem because there are no fans in the 2022 MacBook Air.

    White showed off a smaller power adapter that has two USB-C ports, a separately available 67 watt power adapter could also fast-charge the new MacBook Air. White claimed this would bring the Air up to 50% capacity in thirty minutes.

    $1200 for the lowest priced MacBook Air with 256 GB of disk space, 8 cores of CPU and GPU, 8 GB of RAM and a 30 watt USB-C power adapter.

    $1500 for the step up that has 512 GB of disk space, 2 bonus unbroken GPU cores for 10 total and a 35 watt dual USB-C port charger.

    Interestingly, the M1 MacBook Air is still hanging on with the old design and 256 GB of disk space at $1000 on Apple’s website, for now.

    2022 MacBook Pro 13″

    No redesign for the 13” MacBook Pro which differentiates itself from the Air by costing a little more, having fans and the old Touch Bar OLED replacing the F-Row, and a little more battery life.

    $1300 for the base model of 13” MacBook Pro that has 256 GB of disk space, 8 Cores of CPU and 10 Cores of GPU, 8 GB of RAM, and nothing else to write home about.

    $1500 for the step up model that just ups the disk space to 512 GB.

    I have no idea why this 13” model of MacBook Pro exists, except to make up for the fact that the 14” MacBook Pro models start at $2000.

    What a strange situation.

    macOS Ventura Stage Manager & Spotlight

    Craig Federighi demonstrated new features coming to macOS Ventura like Stage Manager that seems to replace fullscreen windows with a centered window and puts other windows off to the side. Federighi said this would help manage situations where there are a lot of applications with open windows. Apps could also be grouped together in the demo with a few visible windows stacked and overlapping in the center of the screen. Finally, Fererighi demonstrated accessing files by clicking on the desktop to hide the currently active application and dragging the files into one of the open app windows on the left side.

    Spotlight on the Mac is also getting updates to quickly glance at the contents of search results by using the quick look feature of macOS with the space key, and search for images in the photo library, files, and on the web or search the contents of images using the live text feature. Federighi showed off starting a timer and running Apple’s Shortcuts scripts from Spotlight and showed how informational search results about shows, music, and other topics, would be improved in Ventura with more detail. Federighi said that these new Spotlight features were also coming to iOS and iPadOS with Spotlight on iOS 16 being accessible by tapping on the dots at the bottom of the home screen.

    Mail in macOS Ventura, iOS 16, iPadOS 16

    Mail is mercifully, finally, getting an undo send option for a few “moments” after hitting send when your brain finally processes the typo it made, according to Darin Adler who also introduced other new features in Mail. Scheduled sending. Follow-up suggestions looks awesome, it suggests replying to emails if you haven’t gotten a response. Remind me does what it should do and reminds you to check in on a thread later on. Adler also said that search is improved in basic ways by checking for typos in the search query, search suggestions, and other improvements.

    Safari on macOS Ventura

    Shared Tab Groups will let friends and family share groups of browser tabs and collaborate on them. I love tab groups but they are one of the least reliable features in the current versions of macOS. I routinely have trouble opening new tabs where they are instantly closed and renaming tab groups is often impossible. There seem to be a lot of others with the same issues online.

    Passkeys

    Adler introduced the Passkeys feature that replaces passwords with crytpographic data that is encoded with Touch ID or Face ID and synchronized across Apple devices. There has been a bit of talk about this lately under the “Fido alliance”  that Adler said includes Google and Microsoft so that Passkeys work on Android and Windows. Adler admitted that the “…transition away from passwords will be a journey.” which is an understatement but I hope it works because passwords are impossible for most people to manage safely and there are so many situations where passworded accounts are the ideal method right now due to sharing logins among teams or family members. 2 factor seemed great, until so many companies went towards text messages as the second factor which are easy to compromise due to telecom companies being completely garbage at security.

    Gaming

    Craig Federighi boasted about Apple’s gaming performance which is incredible because from the perspective of myself and other game developers I speak with, Apple does just about everything they can to push away game developers.

    Metal Improvements

    Jeremy Sandmel introduced new features to Apple’s Metal rendering API in Metal 3. Did you know that Nvidia and AMD both have upscaling pipelines that are becoming more widely adopted? Apple has heard about that too and Sandmel introduced MetalFX Upscaling. No Man’s Sky was demonstrated and Sandmel said it is coming to the Mac “later this year.”

    Sandmel then introduced a Fast resource loading API that Apple didn’t waste any time creating a marketing name for. “This really is a new day for gaming on the Mac.” says Sandmel. The Apple Silicon transition started two years ago and Steam still doesn’t have a native version of the desktop client. Why hasn’t a dump truck full of money and engineers backed up to Valve’s headquarters to make it happen? Why isn’t there a reasonable gaming computer available from Apple? Apple doesn’t care about gaming on the Mac.

    The next game Sandmel said was coming to the Mac is Resident Evil Village. It’s great but it came out last year. No Man’s Sky is six years old. A Capcom representative took over to say that the MacBook Air manages at 1080p and the Mac Studio does well at 4K.

    Continuity

    Federighi returned to talk about the Continuity features of Apple’s operating systems handing off FaceTime calls between devices, which is good, before introducing Continuity Camera to let Macs use the iPhone’s better camera systems. Federighi demonstrated the feature with Johnnie Manzari and Manzari showed how Continuity Camera includes a bunch of features to blur the background and do other tricks but the one that was the most impressive was a desk view that added in a second camera perspective using the ultra-wide camera on the iPhone to give an overhead view of Manzari’s desk. I use software from Elgato called Epoc Cam to use my iPhone’s cameras with the Mac and it is terrible software that crashes and only runs at 30fps. There are a bunch of other competitors out there that also do this and I honestly hope Apple’s version works well because some of the popular competitors have impressive business models like Reincubate’s Camo that’s either $5 a month, $40 a year, or $80 for a “Lifetime license” all of those prices are ridiculous.

    Belkin is supposed to be offering stands to hold iPhones above Macs later this year.

    iPadOS 16

    Federighi reiterated all of the previously announced features in iPadOS 16 before mentioning that Apple is finally shipping their stock Weather app on iPad OS. It took them 12 years.

    After acquiring and starting to sunset the fantastic DarkSky weather app and it’s API, Federighi also mentioned an API for developers called WeatherKit.

    Federighi demonstrated new collaboration features with a team working on a document at the same time and discussing it with shared tabs over a video call. The features are also promised to come to Apple’s other platforms.

    Freeform for iPadOS, macOS, and iOS

    Elizabeth Reid showed off an upcoming app called Freeform that looks a lot like Apple’s Notes app and the semi-defunct Paper app from Fiftythree, except focused on collaboration and creative thinking for diagramming and sharing ideas on an ever-expanding canvas.

    The Return of the Return of Game Center

    Federighi talked about gaming features again like a revamped Game Center interface which has been stuck inside of the Settings app for a long time now and SharePlay gaming to let you play with friends with something that looks a little bit like streaming the game. It wasn’t clear what was going on in the short background video.

    Desktop-class apps on iPadOS 16

    Federighi said that apps on iPadOS are getting more features from their macOS counterparts like customizable toolbars and new APIs for developers.

    Display Scaling on iPadOS 16

    A higher resolution option for apps to show more stuff? Great.

    Stage Manager & External Display Support on iPadOS 16

    Fedrerighi demonstrated iPadOS 16 with overlapping windows managed by Stage Manager on an iPad and on an external monitor. Federighi said that with an iPad and an external monitor there can be eight apps running simultaneously on the iPad.

    Overall

    I’m pretty happy with most of these updates. It’s great that the iPad might finally be a little closer to a real computer with overlapping windows but that improvement is as impressive as the usurious work to add buy now pay later functionality to Apple Pay is disgusting. I cannot imagine any good outcomes that could come from setting up people for failure like that except for potentially doing it in a less evil way than companies like Klarna and Afterpay and that isn’t worth doing. Buy now pay later services should be regulated out of existence.

  • I cannot think of a better example of competition than the 2022 European Tram Championship. Teams of tram drivers from all over Europe compete in a series of six challenges to see which team is the best at driving the tram.

    Each challenge is clearly designed to demonstrate a complete understanding of how to drive safely and with care for the passengers and other people around them, that is why the Trams simulate billiards, bowling, and other challenges. Ultimately the team must also do it quickly by racing between each tram and for the buttons to start and stop the timer.

    Some day I hope it will be safe to travel again so I can attend the European Tram Championship in person.