NXTR

It seems like the gaming division of Microsoft was doing just fine over that same period of time.

If the Xbox One was a complete failure then why would Microsoft make the series X/S?

Unfortunately, Valve would also have to build a CPU translation layer (Like Rosetta 2) since games run on x86 architectures and snapdragon uses an ARM architecture. The steam deck uses a Zen 2 CPU architecture which is already x86 so there would be little motivation on their part to do this. Currently proton uses wine to convert windows api calls into linux calls. The big thing Proton does is allowing games that use DirectX to run on Vulkan which is natively supported in Linux. So unless Valve makes the Steam Deck 2 with ARM or another company decides to make an x86 to ARM translation layer, then I don’t see something like Proton coming to android any time soon.

The performance of the Snapdragon 8 Gen 2 GPU is already about 10-20% faster than the A16 chip, depending on the benchmark.

Even if Qualcomm only gives the Gen 3 a 10% performance increase, that is enough to beat or even surpass the A17 in gpu performance (rumors suggest something closer to a 30% increase). The Gen 2 already outcompetes the A16 in GPU power consumption and efficiency as well. This may change with the A17 since it’s on TSMC’s 3N node, however this node has been having issues which is why TSMC introduced the 3NE and 3NP so we will have to wait for power usage numbers from the A17 to see.

Overall I’m disappointed with the improvements between the A16 and A17. 10% on the CPU and 20% on the GPU (due to have 20% more cores) doesn’t seem like the type of upgrade I would expect from switching nodes. Hopefully next year they can do more with the improved N3 nodes. I’m also getting the feeling that Apple is trying to deploy more complex transformer models on their devices which is why we are seeing such a focus on the NPU.

I think you hit on the main point which is that nobody will pour money into developing for android. Apple also has the ability to make deals with companies with Capcom and Ubisoft to ensure games come to their platforms. I can’t see Google doing this since they already “tried” and failed to have a AAA mobile gaming platform with stadia. The only other company with enough motivation and money to bring big games to android is Samsung, but their mobile chips aren’t doing too well (despite their RDNA 2 architecture making it easier to port games).

I’m guessing it’s to train AI models for Microsoft 365 Copilot.

Although I would love to see it, as long as DirectX is the de facto graphics API, I don’t see Microsoft fading into irrelevance when it comes to the PC gaming market.

Hopefully Microsoft releases a handheld mode instead of just experimenting with it. Besides the interface, they also really need to optimize for performance. Even though, with the steam deck, proton is converting draw calls it still outperforms the same deck running windows with native driver support. This really shows how the mountains of extra crap running on windows hurts gaming performance on these low power devices.

A lot of consumer’s buying habits for products with inelastic demand is driven by cost. If companies weren’t driven by ever increasing profits then there might be more of an incentive to offer a wider variety of crops to consumers. Certain crops are already subsidized by the government to make it profitable for farmers. If other crops were subsidized then perhaps farmers would be more encouraged to grow them and if people see these at normal prices they might also be more interested in buying them. Of course, this would rely on multiple parts of farming being overhauled. For example, there’s a lot of cost sinks, one I can think of is the locked down maintenance of farming equipment (once again driven by the need for increasing profits via fiduciary duty). Eliminating these and other overheads would not only lead to more cost efficient farming, but also cheaper crops and increased variety offered to consumers.

On the flip side I’m worried about manufacturers realizing that the continuous revenue stream from autonomous vehicles is more profitable than selling vehicles outright thereby increasing the cost of buying a vehicle to the point where ownership becomes functionally obsolete except to the ultra-wealthy. This also makes it much easier to restrict the movement of people. Self driving car companies could easily disable the ability to travel to entire areas either because they say they’re too dangerous or not profitable enough to operate in. I can imagine entire cities and rural areas becoming ghost towns. While personally I think autonomous vehicles, in a vacuum, have the potential to save countless lives, the reality is that in time we will be giving the companies making these vehicles the ability to dictate where we can and cannot go.

I’m fine with toll roads, however, I would like to avoid express lanes (usually two lanes of a toll road with extra tolls so it’s less congested) and there doesn’t seem to be a toggle for that. I will admit that for some cities Apple Maps is on par or better than Google maps and for others it’s the opposite. For my city Apple Maps just doesn’t get the job done.

Republicans voters to fantasize about restricting the rights of their fellow citizens but when republican politicians actually implement these into law their voter base tends to be less than enthusiastic. The lack of a “red wave” during the midterms is an example of this. The reality is that most republican voters don’t actually know what republicans stand for. In fact, [many republican voters](https://www.kff.org/medicaid/poll-finding/5-charts-about-public-opinion-on-medicaid/#:~:text=A%20majority%20of%20Democrats%20(89,it%20was%20asked%20in%202019) view Medicaid expansion in a favorable light which is in contrast to their legislators who wish to shrink the size of Medicaid.

As republicans pass more laws to restrict the rights and erode away the already rotting social safety nets in this country, the less support they will receive. Unfortunately, this doesn’t hold true when marginalized groups are targeted. Instead, their base tends to solidify their support. If they aren’t directly or indirectly affected then they don’t care.

To answer your question, I think republicans thought they could get away with restricting abortion rights since their rhetoric didn’t scare away voters in the past. However, when they actually implemented it and it directly affected republican voters the mask came off and their support waned.

The only way Apple Maps is good is if you put in a million requests to fix all of the issues with mislabeled business, incorrect routing, nonexistent places, etc. Only then would I consider Apple Maps to be on par with Google Maps. Since I have an iPhone and like the interface I tend to use Apple Maps more often, but the terrible search (which routinely doesn’t list easy to find locations), awful routing (it loves to take the express lane which has different exits without providing a toggle not to use these lanes), and out of date mapping data (I’ve gone to multiple nonexistent locations) makes me go back to Google Maps every time. I will admit I do love their 3D maps and street view which I find to be higher quality than Google Maps. Besides this and the interface, Apple Maps is inferior to Google Maps.