4 ms·

Maybe the publishers should start publishing exclusively for sane PC platforms like Mac OS X and Linux instead of Windows. I believe that they can do all three

by ryao 11y ago

Maybe the publishers should start publishing exclusively for sane PC platforms like Mac OS X and Linux instead of Windows. I believe that they can do all three via Steam though.

KirinDave 11y ago
What do you mean by "sane?" From a technical standpoint, Windows is competitive and probably superior to Linux for desktop and portable applications. For server side, Windows is probably not the right choice. And as for OSX... if you express this concern about Microsoft's app platform but not Apple's encroachment on their (poorly managed) app platform? You're being unfair and letting prejudices and populism blind you to the issue. And all of this ignores that the most important computing platforms, the ones on mobile handsets? They're impossibly locked down and no one seems to care.
- yarou 11y ago
  What does this article have to do with the Mac App Store? You can easily disable gatekeeper by right-clicking on a pkg. I don't see any similar mechanism on Windows 10, and anyway, the article is discussing how UWP would lock down APIs for developers, which leads to an overall adverse selection situation for game consumers. And it's laughable that you think Windows 10 is even remotely comparable to Linux for "portable applications". How are Win32 executables portable at all? They don't even work between versions of Windows. Win32 API is still a mess and pretty much everything about Windows is not standards compliant.
  - KirinDave 11y ago
    This complaint is that at any moment, Microsoft might add a feature that only UWP gets. It's not like you can't run unsigned apps on Windows either. Hell, you can run unsigned UWP apps too! You just need to enable developer mode. Apple has this exact same facility in the Mac app store. And has an even tighter lockdown on the iOS store which we all mysteriously pretend is different somehow because reasons and 30somethings nostalgia. Linux on portable devices such as laptops is a comedy of errors, failed device driver support, excuses, and politics breaking battery life. If you say otherwise, you have much lower standards than I do for a modern laptop. > How are Win32 executables portable at all? They don't even work between versions of Windows ... Wait. Wait... I just read this. What? I have DOS executables that still work in windows, let alone very old win32 api executables. Do Linux executables work somewhere else besides Linux without someone bending over backwards to support them (e.g., FreeBSD?).
    - ryao 11y ago
      Those DOS binaries work on Linux with DOSBox. The Linux binaries also work on SmartOS (OpenSolaris).
      - KirinDave 11y ago
        I know that options exist, but uh... I mean Wine doesn't count? It's more the absurd claim that Win32 as an API hasn't made good nods towards backwards compatibility. It has.
        ryao 11y ago
        DOSBox is a separate project from Wine. It has also been said that DOSBox backward compatibility is better than cmd.exe on recent versions of Windows. That being said, Linux can run old binaries just fine. You just need the libraries. Windows does not have a stable syscall API, so that cannot as easily be done with Windows. As for win32, Sun tried to standardize the Windows API during the DOS days to ensure backward compatibility, but Microsoft killed it.
        KirinDave 11y ago
        I'm still not sure how this interjection is relevant to the conversation at hand, but thank you for the interesting information. From what I can tell, you're executing a playbook based on prejudices and not an actual argument. Is OSX less arbitrary in its UI or less locked down? Could it be that developers HAVE to accept Apple's locked down game environment for iOS because it's the only platform that does a good job of combating game piracy? Is the Android App Store actually any better in this regard? Maybe. Maybe not. But all I see here is a very biased set of standards. Windows 10's App store is far less important to the industry than the iOS store in the large, as far more software moves through it. I'm actually hoping for a good discussion of why people are comfortable with the iOS store beyond, "I have historical reasons to hate Microsoft but not Apple." I clearly will not get that from you.
        11y ago
- ryao 11y ago
  I do not consider Windows to be a great desktop platform. It is crawling with malware, the graphical interface is subject to Microsoft's whims to the point where you are stuck with their choices (Metro?), the filesystem performance degrades rapidly from fragmentation, software is installed by executing binaries that give no guarentees about clean up on uninstall, updates are done on an ad hoc manner, the code is proprietary such that improvements can only come from Microdoft, etcetera. Linux has none of those problems. I do not care about Microsoft's attempt to invent an App Store, but Apple's App Store is not annoying game developers while Microsoft's is. If they are upset about it, they should break the status quo by developing for other platforms, many of which are simply better than Windows by virtue of being designed with open standards. in the long term, if they stopped developing for Windows, gamers would abandon it for platforms that do get their attention and the publishers would not need to worry about Microsoft ever again. As for mobile devices, they were always locked down. iOS and Android have managed to open them up with standardized POSIX APIs and ways to run third party software on them. Apple even has made updates no longer carrier dependent. There are ways that they could improve (e.g. Android could get rid of Java and its blobs, iOS could become OSS, etcetera).

by ryao 11y ago

Maybe the publishers should start publishing exclusively for sane PC platforms like Mac OS X and Linux instead of Windows. I believe that they can do all three via Steam though.

KirinDave 11y ago

What do you mean by "sane?" From a technical standpoint, Windows is competitive and probably superior to Linux for desktop and portable applications. For server side, Windows is probably not the right choice. And as for OSX... if you express this concern about Microsoft's app platform but not Apple's encroachment on their (poorly managed) app platform? You're being unfair and letting prejudices and populism blind you to the issue. And all of this ignores that the most important computing platforms, the ones on mobile handsets? They're impossibly locked down and no one seems to care.

yarou 11y ago
What does this article have to do with the Mac App Store? You can easily disable gatekeeper by right-clicking on a pkg. I don't see any similar mechanism on Windows 10, and anyway, the article is discussing how UWP would lock down APIs for developers, which leads to an overall adverse selection situation for game consumers. And it's laughable that you think Windows 10 is even remotely comparable to Linux for "portable applications". How are Win32 executables portable at all? They don't even work between versions of Windows. Win32 API is still a mess and pretty much everything about Windows is not standards compliant.
- KirinDave 11y ago
  This complaint is that at any moment, Microsoft might add a feature that only UWP gets. It's not like you can't run unsigned apps on Windows either. Hell, you can run unsigned UWP apps too! You just need to enable developer mode. Apple has this exact same facility in the Mac app store. And has an even tighter lockdown on the iOS store which we all mysteriously pretend is different somehow because reasons and 30somethings nostalgia. Linux on portable devices such as laptops is a comedy of errors, failed device driver support, excuses, and politics breaking battery life. If you say otherwise, you have much lower standards than I do for a modern laptop. > How are Win32 executables portable at all? They don't even work between versions of Windows ... Wait. Wait... I just read this. What? I have DOS executables that still work in windows, let alone very old win32 api executables. Do Linux executables work somewhere else besides Linux without someone bending over backwards to support them (e.g., FreeBSD?).
  - ryao 11y ago
    Those DOS binaries work on Linux with DOSBox. The Linux binaries also work on SmartOS (OpenSolaris).
    - KirinDave 11y ago
      I know that options exist, but uh... I mean Wine doesn't count? It's more the absurd claim that Win32 as an API hasn't made good nods towards backwards compatibility. It has.
      - ryao 11y ago
        DOSBox is a separate project from Wine. It has also been said that DOSBox backward compatibility is better than cmd.exe on recent versions of Windows. That being said, Linux can run old binaries just fine. You just need the libraries. Windows does not have a stable syscall API, so that cannot as easily be done with Windows. As for win32, Sun tried to standardize the Windows API during the DOS days to ensure backward compatibility, but Microsoft killed it.
        KirinDave 11y ago
        I'm still not sure how this interjection is relevant to the conversation at hand, but thank you for the interesting information. From what I can tell, you're executing a playbook based on prejudices and not an actual argument. Is OSX less arbitrary in its UI or less locked down? Could it be that developers HAVE to accept Apple's locked down game environment for iOS because it's the only platform that does a good job of combating game piracy? Is the Android App Store actually any better in this regard? Maybe. Maybe not. But all I see here is a very biased set of standards. Windows 10's App store is far less important to the industry than the iOS store in the large, as far more software moves through it. I'm actually hoping for a good discussion of why people are comfortable with the iOS store beyond, "I have historical reasons to hate Microsoft but not Apple." I clearly will not get that from you.
        11y ago
ryao 11y ago
I do not consider Windows to be a great desktop platform. It is crawling with malware, the graphical interface is subject to Microsoft's whims to the point where you are stuck with their choices (Metro?), the filesystem performance degrades rapidly from fragmentation, software is installed by executing binaries that give no guarentees about clean up on uninstall, updates are done on an ad hoc manner, the code is proprietary such that improvements can only come from Microdoft, etcetera. Linux has none of those problems. I do not care about Microsoft's attempt to invent an App Store, but Apple's App Store is not annoying game developers while Microsoft's is. If they are upset about it, they should break the status quo by developing for other platforms, many of which are simply better than Windows by virtue of being designed with open standards. in the long term, if they stopped developing for Windows, gamers would abandon it for platforms that do get their attention and the publishers would not need to worry about Microsoft ever again. As for mobile devices, they were always locked down. iOS and Android have managed to open them up with standardized POSIX APIs and ways to run third party software on them. Apple even has made updates no longer carrier dependent. There are ways that they could improve (e.g. Android could get rid of Java and its blobs, iOS could become OSS, etcetera).