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This is so cute and cool! While I don't know, whether I want to play long Quake sessions on my watch, it shows that the Apple watch is a quite powerful compute
by _ph_ 4y ago
This is so cute and cool! While I don't know, whether I want to play long Quake sessions on my watch, it shows that the Apple watch is a quite powerful compute device. Actually, it should be more powerful than most workstations of the 90ies, as it has a dual-core 64bit Processor.
It also shows, how much the watch and some other Apple devices are held back by the software restrictions. Basically any software released in the 90ies should run easily on the watch. Of course, due to the small screen size and the lack of a keyboard, a totally different UI would be needed, but if people were really free to experiment and distribute, a huge field of new software could be opened.
- kemiller 4y agoTBH I would say in the case of the watch, it's held back much more by energy budgets than software; the software is just enforcing that. It's cute that you can run Quake on it, but for how long before it killed the battery? 20 mins? You can see Apple pushing the bounds of what it can get away with and still maintain acceptable battery life from generation to generation.
- Pulcinella 4y agoYeah you can’t directly use Metal or MetalKit on the watch, so you can’t do completely custom rendering of anything in the GPU (which is why this port has to use software rendering), but even if you could would probably just be blowing through the battery in under an hour. SceneKit is available. Not sure what the battery life is like when it’s used for anything other than displaying a simple 3D model briefly (e.g. like the fitness medals).
- Terretta 4y agoWho is stopping you from doing what exactly? What would be true if you were not stopped? Who is not free to experiment and distribute? What does the huge field consist of?
- snoot 4y agoI second this - people keep making this claim, but I haven’t heard anyone articulate what would come into existence, especially since whatever it is could presumably be made on Linux.
- TazeTSchnitzel 4y agoApple only allows running software on Apple devices if Apple has signed it, and the SDK for watchOS has some artificial limitations.
- thomasahle 4y ago> it shows that the Apple watch is a quite powerful compute device. I would have honestly expected the watch to be able to play much more than Quake.