Linked List: December 27, 2018

Thursday, 27 December 2018

Fortnite Now Runs at 60 FPS on A12 iPhones ★

Richard Leadbetter, writing for Eurogamer:

When Fortnite first appeared on iPhone, we were quick to laud a genuine technological achievement — a visually cut-down version of the full game that was still recognisably Fortnite, that played the same way, that run the same code and allowed users to buddy up with their friends running on console and PC. Recently, Epic took the mobile version of Fortnite to the next level; the latest iOS devices run the game smoothly at 60 frames per second, just like their console equivalents — and the story of how that became possible is absolutely fascinating.

The truth is that aside from minor modifications to unlock the frame-rate and add the option to the game’s menu system, no substantial code revamp was required at all. Fortnite on the latest iPhones runs at 60 frames per second simply by virtue of the new Apple A12 Bionic silicon - or rather its increased power and crucially, its superior thermal performance.

An interesting real-world measure of how far ahead of the rest of the industry Apple’s chip team is. How long will it be before Fortnite runs at 60 FPS on high-end Android phones?

Amazon Crows About Record-Breaking Holiday Season With Nothing but Bezos Numbers ★

“Millions”, “more than” “nearly 3x”, “record holiday season” — not a real number in the bunch. I don’t doubt that Amazon had their best holiday retail year ever — I certainly contributed my share of purchases. But I can’t help but roll my eyes at their “numbers”. If you want to keep your data private, fine, but then you can’t brag about it.

(And it’s a bit sad to know Apple is heading in Amazon’s direction, with their decision to no longer report unit sale numbers.)

Greg Kumparak: ‘Two Years Later, I Still Miss the Headphone Port’ ★

Greg Kumparak, writing for TechCrunch:

None of these are that big of a deal. Charge your damned headphones, Greg. Stop losing your dongles. The thing is: they took a thing that just worked and just made me happy and replaced it with something that, quite often, just bugs the hell out of me. If a friend sent me a YouTube link and I wanted to watch it without bugging everyone around me, I could just use whatever crappy, worn out headphones I happened to have sitting in my bag. Now it’s a process with a bunch of potential points of failure.

“But now its water-resistant!” Water-resistant phones existed before all of this, plenty of which had/have headphone ports. As a recent example, see Samsung’s Galaxy S9 with its IP68 rating (matching that of the iPhone XS).

“But it can be slimmer!” No one was asking for that.

Regular readers know that I’m fully on Team AirPods — I honestly don’t miss the headphone jack on my iPhone or iPad Pro at all. But I sympathize with those who miss it. You certainly can’t argue with the simplicity angle.

But on the thinness front — there really are engineering issues related to the space the headphone jack takes up. I’m not going to say Apple “couldn’t” make an edge-to-edge iPad Pro or iPhone XS or XR with a headphone jack, because I don’t know that for a fact. But look at the XR’s off-center Lightning port. If they couldn’t center the Lightning port, I think there’s a good chance they literally could not fit a headphone jack there. When I asked Apple about the lack of a headphone jack on the new iPad Pros, their answer was simple: “Space.”