RCS has failed to take over the market, creating a strong preference for iMessage. Additionally, iPhones just work. The curated App Store means far less malware and buggy crap apps. Pile on the social aspects and few people under 25 are going for iPhones.
Part of me hopes we get something like the EU browser choice mandate out of this. First time you open Safari you pick your search engine from a list of major providers, and maybe the option to pick your own too.
I like the idea of RISC-V, but I need something like a Raspberry Pi except RISC-V. I can accept a little jank, but it needs to be "good enough" if you catch my drift.
Pretty much lol. RMS went off the deep end so no GNU, Torvalds used to call people devil cunts so no Linux kernel. Theo probably did something to upset somebody lol. Maybe we can just use TempleOS and become computing hermits?
I imagine some of the smarter people at Microsoft are seeing the Steam Deck unfold and are realizing it's a potential threat. Desktop is dying, and gaming is one of the few segments still doing alright in the space. Microsoft wants to make sure games continue to be made for Windows even as mobile and consoles take over the lion's share of profits. They haven't been buying up studios just to prop up Xbox 😉. The Deck runs Windows games, and if compatibility ever reaches a point that the average gamer doesn't need to know they aren't running Windows, Microsoft is in big trouble. With the progress made just in the last five years alone, it's an eventual possibility.
Licensing is a cost in an already razor-thin market. If gamers won't care that a device isn't running Windows - they won't install Windows on it, and the OEM will just pocket the difference. Valve also has an advantage traditionally enjoyed by console manufacturers. They can sell it at no profit or even a loss, because Steam Store sales will make the money back.
So long as Valve keeps steady progress and improving compatibility, they will carve out their niche. If they can somehow get studios with major multiplayer games to provide official support, the chicken and egg problem will solve itself.
I hope it does because the biggest problem for handhelds like the Ally is the atrocious experience as soon as you leave steam big picture. Armor Crate is buggy as hell and trying to click anything in windows with the joysticks is not fun. Not to mention the usual Windows shenanigans of “update every damn day” and “spam me with bs about one drive and angry birds”.
We ran into this bug in a production system a few months back. We had a legacy cluster of windows workbenches which connected to each other using an encrypted communications API on an isolated network. We initially couldn’t determine why the system clocks fell out of sync in a rather cascading fashion. Guess this explains it. We ended up resolving it by bridging them to the internet and forcing a sync with time servers. A few months later, it happened again. At the time we thought it to be a bug in Windows. Go figure it was.
I bet Pyro could make a mean pulled pork