PPSSPP:
PPSSPP is an open source PSP emulator, that lets you run your own PlayStation Portable games on your various devices. PPSSPP is officially available on Android through Google Play, PC, Mac, and recently iOS through the App Store. There is also a Linux flatpak build. The project is ongoing for more than 11 years now, and has been downloaded over 100M times. It has millions of active users on Android.
[…]
For some time now, I have simply not been able to update the paid iOS version on Apple’s App Store. The free version flies through review in a few hours, while the near-identical paid version is just stuck.
[…]
Below is an authentic conversation with App Store Review.
[…]
I tried appealing the previous conversation to the App Store review board, with no result.
It’s just so frustrating. I want to get a bugfix update out, and I can’t.
App Review is continually complaining about things that either aren’t true or that were allowed for other apps, including from the same developer.
Via Craig Grannell, who terms the situation “kafkaesque” (Mastodon):
Apple never wanted emulators on the App Store. I imagine it felt strong-armed into allowing them, due to EU regulators getting antsy, or as a means to attempt to derail third-party app AltStore, which an awful lot of people primarily cared about due to Nintendo emulator Delta. Even with that, Apple first authorised a terrible rip-off over Delta, and everything since has been at best a crapshoot.
[…]
These aren’t the only issues emulator authors have faced. Last I checked, MAME4iOS was in limbo. Several other emulator authors have given up. Meanwhile, Apple merrily approves emulators that barely work and are exploitative crap. A cynic might wonder whether this is intent, to showcase the worst of emulation and put people off.
Craig Grannell:
Increasingly feels like they were only allowed to blunt AltStore and Delta. Now that’s over with, several emulator authors are having trouble with approvals or updates.
Francisco Tolmasky:
Imagine you’re the most valuable company on Earth. Billions of dollars of cash on hand. Best engineers in the world. You could legitimately leave an impact on anything you work on. And one of the primary things you choose to focus on is stubbornly policing fucking game emulators. Like forget about whether it’s good or bad, it is just so unbelievably small minded. An Apple running on all 8 cylinders wouldn’t have time to give a shit about stuff like this.
Take a moment to wrap your head around the fact that Apple fought a multi-year court battle to try to prevent you from putting links in your app. I get that that may have significant revenue effects — but the point is that a company with Apple’s resources should have way more interesting and impactful ways of generating revenue. There is something deeply broken from a creativity perspective if “don’t let app devs talk to users” represents the state of the art in business strategy at Apple.
[…]
No one is even asking Apple to do anything. No one is asking Apple to make sure old apps run. There’s no maintenance burden being requested. Just don’t literally devote time to 1) stopping these projects and then 2) in an act of truly bizarre pettiness, approving a weird competing copycat emulator? Like honestly, would love to hear the reasoning on this move. Only shady ripoff emulators are allowed? This is all so clearly in bad faith that I can’t understand any defense of it.
Previously:
App Review App Store App Store Rejection Emulator Game iOS iOS 18 iOS App PPSSPP Sony PlayStation
Dave Winer:
We’re losing the word “podcast” very quickly. It’s come to mean video interviews on YouTube mostly. Our only hope is upgrading the open platform in a way that stimulates the imagination of creators, and there’s no time to waste. If you make a podcast client, it’s time to start collaborating with competitors and people who create RSS-based podcasts to take advantage of the open platforms with no silo walls, otherwise having a podcast will mean getting distribution deals from Google, Apple, Spotify and Amazon. And they, as we know, are nuzzling up to the government leaders, who will want to impose severe limits.
Previously:
Update (2024-12-04): Ben Cohen:
But this year, YouTube passed the competition and became the most popular service for podcasts in the U.S., with 31% of weekly podcast listeners saying it’s now the platform they use the most, according to Edison Research.
Via Nick Heer:
Cohen omits key context for why YouTube is suddenly a key podcast platform: Google Podcasts was shut down this year with users and podcasters alike instructed to move to YouTube. According to Buzzsprout’s 2023 analytics, Google Podcasts was used by only 2.5% of global listeners. YouTube is not listed in their report, perhaps because it exists in its own bubble instead of being part of the broader RSS-feed-reading podcast client ecosystem.
But where Google was previously bifurcating its market share, it aligned its users behind a single client. And, it would seem, that audience responded favourably.
[…]
Of the top twenty podcasts according to Edison Research, fifteen have what I would deem meaningful and regular video components.
[…]
Also, YouTube channels have RSS feeds, though that is not very useful in an audio-only client like Overcast.
Previously:
Podcasts RSS Video Web YouTube
CNBC (MacRumors, Hacker News):
Intel ousted CEO Pat Gelsinger over the weekend, capping a tumultuous nearly four-year tenure at what was America’s leading semiconductor company before its stock price and market share collapsed.
The company announced Gelsinger’s resignation Monday morning, which a person familiar with the matter said came after a contentious board meeting last week over Gelsinger’s perceived failure to respond to Nvidia’s competitive edge and a lack of confidence in Gelsinger’s turnaround plans.
[…]
Gelsinger set out an audacious plan when he arrived in 2021 to transform the languishing company into a chipmaking juggernaut. He sought to achieve parity with the two leading chipmakers, Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. He pursued big buildouts in the U.S. and around the world, a costly endeavor that weighed heavily on Intel’s free cash flow and increased the company’s debt load.
He also wooed government investment, positioning Intel as the single-largest beneficiary of the U.S. CHIPS and Science Act. Government money has begun to flow to Intel in recent weeks and will aid the company’s chip fabs in Arizona and Ohio.
Rui Carmo:
Pat Gelsinger’s abrupt exit from Intel raises more questions than it answers, especially given the timing right after securing CHIPS Act funding. It feels like a classic case of boardroom drama, where the lack of a smooth transition hints at deeper issues—-perhaps a clash of visions or a failure to deliver on ambitious projects.
Ben Thompson (Dithering):
It seems likely that the board has cold feet about the foundry business, and a split may be forthcoming.
John Carmack:
I’m concerned to see Pat Gelsinger ousted as Intel CEO. He wasn’t a firebrand visionary, and it wasn’t exactly going great, but he was deeply technical, and I don’t expect his replacement to equal him there. “Business harder” isn’t going to return Intel to greatness, only technical achievement will.
Previously:
Update (2024-12-04): Charlie Demerjian (Hacker News):
Our views that Gelsinger did turn the ship are unchanged. Intel had a cultural problem, not a technical one and the one thing Pat did was change the culture for the better. There are green shoots of this popping up here and there if you know where to look with more coming every day. As we described yesterday, the problem is that technical changes happen over a three year timescale, finance looks at one year or less.
[…]
Why was this mess allowed to not only fester but continue and grow? Because the internal incentive structure was so broken that it encouraged employees to lie for profit. Worse yet lies went unpunished. SemiAccurate has many emails, texts, and had conversations about meetings where this happened.
[…]
As SemiAccurate keeps saying, Intel had a cultural problem, not a technical one. The technical problems were a symptom of the underlying culture and could not be fixed without a cultural sea change. Pat did that, or at least did most of it, and it was working. Sure he made some serious missteps and at times cheesed off many folk in the financial world, but he did the right things to fix the company. And he was just fired for it. I don’t have words that can express my disdain for the Intel board that will pass muster in a family publication such as SemiAccurate.
Sean Hollister:
Gelsinger was a lifer who joined the company at age 18 and spent 30 years on the job, from 1979 to 2009, before returning to lead the company in 2021. Even some people who’ve left Intel as a result of Gelsinger’s layoffs tell me they believed he was the right person for the job. They believed in his strategy to regain silicon leadership, they liked that he was an engineer himself, and they liked that he was there to fix long-standing technology problems left (or ignored) by previous CEOs.
Remember the 486, Intel’s 1989 flagship CPU that was the first x86 chip with over a million transistors? Gelsinger was the lead architect. Later, he became Intel’s first CTO, helping push industry standard technologies like USB and Wi-Fi as well as Intel chip design.
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Over a decade ago, Intel spent billions investing in Dutch multinational ASML, which is today the most important company in chips. It’s the only firm in the world that manufactures machines capable of pulverizing a ball of tin, using high-power lasers, such that it emits an extremely tight wavelength of ultraviolet light to efficiently carve circuits into silicon wafers, a process known as EUV.
Intel initially believed in the tech, even carving out a $4.1 billion stake in the company, then decided not to order the pricey machines. But Taiwan’s TSMC did — and went on to become the undisputed leader in silicon manufacturing[…]
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His hunch: Intel’s board may want to split off its foundry business entirely, above and beyond the spinoff that Gelsinger already announced, turning Intel into a company that simply designs chips like its direct rivals.
Oxide Computer Company:
How did Intel get here? Some of the cultural problems may be deep in the DNA. Bryan and Adam have some ideas for what happens next, and who might be the next CEO.
They are anti-Gelsinger.
See also: John Gruber.
Update (2024-12-06): See also Gelsinger’s oral history with the Computer History Museum (parts 1 and 2) and the Acquired and Sharp Tech podcasts.
Update (2024-12-09): Alex Heath (via Hacker News):
I wanted to hear what [Rene] Haas thought should happen to his longtime frenemy. There were reports that he approached Intel about buying a big chunk of the company before Gelsinger was ousted. At the same time, Arm is also rumored to be eyeing an expansion into building its own chips and not just licensing its designs.
Haas and I touched on all that and more in an exclusive interview earlier today, which will air in full on a future episode of Decoder.
Doug O’Laughlin (via Hacker News):
Pat wanted to pursue the big, bold IFS bet, with 100s of thousands of wafers, when the reality is just getting 10s of thousands of wafers is a massive problem as is. Pat has a bit of an optimistic naivety that comes into play, and I am sure it was likely frustrating. But the reality is he’s the single best candidate for the company.
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This begs the question—what the hell was the board doing? Today, I will talk about Pat Gelsinger, the Intel board, and an example of when boards and short-termism fail. Yes, maybe splitting up the company would result in a better result for shareholders, but it would be much worse for America.
I would liken firing Pat in the final hour of 18A to quitting the final round of chemotherapy in cancer treatment. Instead of seeing the long and painful process through, I think the board will let Intel die and be sold for parts. It’s the correct answer to maximize relatively short-term shareholder value, but it's a nearsighted move that the Intel board specializes in.
Bryan Cantrill (Mastodon, Hacker News):
The host CPU discussion ended up confirming our beliefs
(befitting our
writing-intensive culture at Oxide
we wrote up our findings in
RFD 12 Host CPU Evaluation),
and the NIC discussion similarly was a dead end. The switching silicon discussion, however,
was interesting: Tofino was TSMC-fabbed (the only Intel part at the time fabbed outside of Intel)
and we found the programmable nature of it via
P4 to be really compelling.
[…]
"Go PC" was an embodiment of the arrogance
that I feared came from the top; how could anyone think that Intel’s biggest problem in 2021 was competing against… the Mac?!
[…]
Skepticism of Gelsinger’s plan for Intel aside, we at Oxide anxiously watched Tofino. At Intel, the team itself believed it was safe under Gelsinger, and things did indeed seem okay for a while. Fast-forward two years to 2023, and we got an urgent request for a call from the executive leading the Tofino effort. Fearing the worst, we were honestly somewhat relieved to learn that Tofino hadn’t been killed outright — but all future development of the part had been cancelled.
[…]
In the end, for all of the decisions that we made at Oxide — out of all of the companies and parts that we bet on, out of all the
partners that we had sent
RFD 68 Partnership as Shared Values to — only one had walked away from us, and it was
the largest and best capitalized partner, who had repeatedly told us that they would not do exactly what they in fact did.
How can Intel ever expected to be trusted when they treat partners this way?
See also: ksec and Ben Thompson.
Business Firing Intel Processors
Adam Engst:
Because CSV is an interchange format, I usually import files into a spreadsheet, make any necessary changes, and then save, print, or export for whatever my next step is. I usually use Excel for processing because it can save an opened CSV without a separate export step, which Numbers requires. Google Sheets would also require exporting and would clutter my Google Drive with temporary documents that I need only briefly.
Please don’t interpret my usage of Excel as an endorsement, though. I have a fractious relationship with Excel, particularly when working with running times, which spreadsheets treat like times of day and often reformat in weird ways.
[…]
I ran across an intriguing app earlier this year that has become my go-to tool for working with CSV files: Modern CSV. When you launch it, it looks like a spreadsheet, displaying data in rows and columns, but it doesn’t require that you write formulas to manipulate data. Instead, it has an extensive set of data manipulation capabilities that you apply directly to the contents of a CSV file. In essence, Modern CSV uses CSV as its native format and lets you choose common data transformation, conversion, concatenation, and other actions from menus instead of pre-parsing files in a text editor or building formulas and juggling results columns in a spreadsheet app. With CSV as the native file format, you skip all that to work directly with tabular data.
If you need more than what Excel and BBEdit can do, this looks great.
Previously:
BBEdit CSV Mac Mac App macOS 15 Sequoia Microsoft Excel Modern CSV
