Well, this took a little longer than expected, but it was pretty obvious that Google would match Apple’s stance regarding “off-store” payment methods–especially considering their app ecosystem is way more… “creative” in what concerns scalping users.

(Their reaction to Epic’s shenanigans may have been less visible, but only because the media likes to selectively milk headlines for all that they’re worth, and Apple was a juicier target.)

The buried lede, of course, is the vague statement about “making it easier for other app stores” to exist on future versions of Android. That is clearly a pre-emptive move to put forward as part of any anti-trust conversations, and is going to be very interesting to consider from a security perspective (to say the least).

I’m just going to make more popcorn.

I’m quite a bit saddened by this, as I was quite looking forward to see how one of my favorite Sci-Fi series would translate to the screen. There is so much about The Culture that makes it a cult classic, and so much to explore.

This is interesting not just because of the rumors about ESXi, but also because it hints at collaboration with NVIDIA on future ARM platforms and an upcoming joint announcement (which had hitherto escaped my attention).

Not that I expect this to be of immediate use to most people (even companies with massive VMware deployments don’t really have that many ARM-ready workloads), but once server designs stabilize, this might be the first thing traditional IT folk look for.

As much as I am on the fence about Oracle Cloud in general, this seems like the right move to make right now.

ARM also announced new CPU reference designs yesterday, so I expect more OEMs to start shipping server-grade hardware in bulk.

Of course, possible fallout from the NVIDIA deal is a risk, but hopefully that won’t matter.

I’ve had GPT-3 on my personal to-do list for literally months, crossed it out last weekend because I needed to prioritise, and then this happens.

Guess this means I’m going to have to find a project at work to use it, if I can escape the Excel maze I’ve been stuck into of late.

Well, this was extremely unexpected. Microsoft just got itself a bunch of key AAA game studios for around $7.5B (three times what it paid for Minecraft), just in time to boost the recent Game Pass refresh and the very day before Xbox pre-orders.

And that includes two PlayStation 5 launch titles. Ha.

I’m still digesting this in the context of the broader game industry landscape (good thing I keep reading EDGE), but the weirdest thing my brain keeps looping back to is that my current employer now owns Quake.

I wasn’t expecting this to (ever) happen in a million years…

Cue jokes about freezing hell by getting into the Doom simulator business.

I love the subtitle.

That said, I have been looking at VR gear for a few months (as an offshoot of my kids learning Unity/Godot and my own quest for something fun to do, if you’ll pardon the pun) and the previous Quest was at the top of my list until they announced they would be requiring Facebook logins.

This revision’s move to make inter-pupillary adjustment a chore also makes it further unsuitable for shared/family use, so I’m going to give it a hard pass.

Which is a shame, since they had a great ecosystem going and the headset was quite indie/hobbyist friendly.

I’m not at all keen on PC-based VR (it makes no sense for the headset to be 100% dependent on a beefy computer I do not want to maintain) so I’m hoping someone else can muster the vertical integration required to get a standalone, developer-friendly, Android-based headset to market.

But this kind of “evolution” is why we can’t have nice things from most corporations.

I like it. It looks like it has everything you’d really need from the Pro at slightly less than two thirds the price tag (for the storage I deem minimally acceptable).

I’ll wait for reviews and teardowns before passing full judgement, since the Air has always been a bit of an outlier when it comes to the “consumer” iPad range in both features and lifecycle.

But getting one of these instead of a laptop is still massively appealing, and I guess that is exactly the point.

As to yesterday’s other announcements, I’m largely unfazed.

We still can’t pair a Watch to an iPad, and Apple One was especially disappointing given is US-centriciry and that I’m aleady paying for the 2TB iCloud storage plan (for device backups and photos, mostly) and am left without a way to “sidegrade” into a Family plan (which has a pitifully small amount of storage–barely anough for two people, really).

Also unsurprising. We’d been discussing this on and off for a few months now, and even though I’m also quite sad given that I actually made it through all the Quiz Show qualifiers (and was looking forward to competing on stage), it was the right call.

This was the first edition where I was looking forward to actually participating rather than presenting (even though I was going to play host to a few events, as usual).

But I’m most sad that we won’t be able to spend three days in a state of near panic herding cats as the hackathon unfolds, hanging out with the guys at Hipnose as they run the entire show, and having our traditional team dinner (which, for various reasons, we had been holding at a stakehouse after every edition, “geek Christmas” style).

These people are my extended family, and I miss them terribly.

But in between Celso’s recent move to Cloudflare (which wouldn’t stop the event, but would always add more twists) and the way the pandemic is going, there was no other option.

This surprises exactly nobody at this point (see my previous notes), but there will be much wailing and tearing and armchair strategizing as the entire industry tries to find some tea leaves to divine what this might actually mean for the ongoing siege to Intel and (most importantly for me) what the server landscape is going to look like, now that NVIDIA can put together entire systems from the networking hardware (Mellanox) on up.

The UK, also unsurprisingly, is just going to let this happen. They barely understand public health, let alone technology IP.

As a diehard fan of the book (and, by the way, mostly tolerant of the creative liberties David Lynch took, because it was the 80s and a few of them were, well, creative as far as symbolism went), I’m very much looking forward to this – and the trailer actually looks quite good, with a few neat details that seem true to the narrative.

Casting, well, I’m not so sure yet. Maybe it’s just about noticing too many familiar faces out of context. But let’s see what Denis Villeneuve has up his sleeve.

The tool itself is interesting enough, but the rationale for it and the write-up of how it operates (spoiler: it mimics the side-swipes on trackpads) are well worth reading.

As a side comment, it’s interesting to realize that I’m back using an external trackpad on my desktop after parking my Windows machines for a few weeks. I’m curious to see whether I’ll go back to a mouse after returning to work…

This is good news, although I’m not likely to have any real use for the transit info until the pandemic goes away.

I had already noticed we had 3D and updated topography in Lisbon a few months ago, and transit (plus updated POIs) were the only thing making the maps “incomplete”.

Let’s see how accurate it all is over time. Whenever I actually leave the house…

Like everyone else, I’ve been keeping track of the Fortnite/Epic novella, and am still somewhat appalled that Epic went out of their way to break their publisher contracts and make a fuss (regardless of anything else).

I also expect them to cave in and get reinstated in both app stores in record time, because Epic is all about the money to a degree that isn’t immediately apparent without dipping into game dev culture…

Update: Well, it’s August 28th and the iOS version is gone. I’m really curious as to how the Android side of the equation has played out, since they had been kicked out of the Play Store as well and Epic were promoting direct downloads from their site. I guess fighting Apple makes for better press.

But I’m also a bit worried that there had to be an injunction to keep their development tools afloat (although the fear mongering around impact to Unreal Engine involved a fair amount of exaggeration).

I just had a flashback from when mobile operators thought 3G was worth pulling this kind of stunt.

It’s been well over a decade, and the industry I identify with the most still lacks a modicum of common sense–and yet I would go back to working at a telco/internet shop in a flash.

A lot of people are going ballistic over this right now. Me, I’m on the fence.

I’m skeptical for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the form factor itself–I see foldables as much more of a tablet thing than a phone thing (I think whomever came up with the concepts for Westworld is a genius), and have concerns about durability and real-life usability (especially because… Android, but never mind that right now).

On the other hand I do miss the Psion Series 3, the Nokia Communicator, and a bunch of subsequent devices that, albeit not foldable, were great clamshells and well worth the added weight and bulk for going above and beyond being “just a phone”, so I think they might be onto something here.

Update: This FastCompany piece is the closest thing to an actual review right now, and touches on many of my views.

If you share my interest in the ARM server landscape, this is a pretty comprehensive overview.

Not complete, mind you, but they did dig up a few interesting tidbits I wasn’t aware about chipset integration, and it is refreshingly neutral and hype-free.

I just checked my notes and yes, it’s been about three years.

Kind of ironic that I have so little use for maps on the go these days (due to the pandemic, obviously), but good to know Google Maps is coming back to the watch–eventually.

Update (2020-09-09): It’s back, but hardly as useful as it was before, since it can’t be used without starting to navigate on the phone. extremely disappointing, really.

I am extremely sad about this (and find it nonsensical since we’re talking about streaming, and there are plenty of Remote Desktop and video streaming apps out there).

Since I kind of saw this coming a mile away, I actually got myself an NVIDIA Shield a few weeks back. I haven’t had time to write about it at length, but there are two things I can share at this point:

It (metaphorically) hurts to have an Android box plugged into my TV when the Apple TV could theoretically do it all, and it’s still a bit of a hack to run xCloud on it (better than before, though).

But I can stream whatever games I want, and that, ultimately, is the future.

Bonus annoyance: the Android TV experience is surprisingly good. Enough to make me wonder about the long-term survival of the Apple TV outside our little bubble of nerdery and ultra-polished UX.