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Comment by edude03 | Hacker News Reader

This is super impressive on paper, but it feels like there aren't really many applications that can take advantage of this power on a phone due to thermal and (battery) power constraints.

Is the idea that mobile workloads are spiky so it can boost to full speed to render a webpage for example then go back to sleep? Are there / can there be any applications that sustain high clock speeds?

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As far as I’ve gathered, race to idle has definitely been a focal point for Apple when it comes to power management along with coalescence of CPU and antenna wakeups — the system batches up work, powers up components, burns through the work as quickly as possible, and then returns components to idle/sleep.

This is also why on iOS, apps that become known for abusing or mismanaging background processing are penalized and have their background processes run less often. Even just a couple of processes waffling around instead of completing their tasks and quitting can keep the system from idling and have a big negative impact.

Well they're bringing AAA games like Resident Evil 4 Remake and Assassin's Creed Mirage to the iPhone, complete with raytracing support, so it looks like it'll be a golden age of Apple gaming soon enough.

So, it looks like Apple will be taking the console path to gaming, instead of the PC way.

They'll be available on all Apple Silicon devices including Macs, as the processors are so similar.

Games made with a controller in mind are miserable experiences on a touchscreen. Phones are awkward and uncomfortable to hold like a controller, the lack of physical buttons provides no tactile feedback on where to press, the lack of shoulder buttons means overloading your thumbs with even more inputs, and your fingers obscure half the screen.

And if the implication is that they'll port those iOS games to Mac, then I wouldn't count on it if it takes even a single iota of extra effort on their end. There are more Linux gamers than Mac gamers, and yet game devs still can't be arsed to test their games on Steam Deck.

Which is why you can stream your iPhone to a TV and connect a controller. There are also many controllers that clip onto the iPhone itself for a Switch-like experience.

I don't think they expect people to seriously play Resident Evil 4 with touch controls. I imagine most people who actually complete the game will use either the controllers that attach to the side of the phone like a Switch, controllers that have a mount on top to hold the phone, a normal Bluetooth controls like a Dualshock with their phone in some other dock, or stream everything to an Apple TV.

I have been surprised they have not been more aggressive with the chips in AppleTV and signed more deals to port games to the platform. In some ways Apple is well positioned to be a player in the game space, but they seem to lack the commitment and flexibility required to make it work.

Mobile gaming is gaming and Apple owns mobile. They own a slice of the gaming space already.

> they seem to lack the commitment

Tale as old as time.

Apple has historically been terrible about committing to gaming which has led to game developers ignoring the platform. I do hope that Apple actually stays the course this time around and with the M* series of chips they've raised the floor for what game developers can count on having available.

I really thought they would have made a bigger play for gaming on the Apple TV (The hardware, not the app, not the service, I still can't get over that...), they pushed a little at the start but with most Apple gaming initiatives (aside from mobile) it seems to have fizzled out.

You know you can connect an Xbox or PlayStation controller to an iPhone?

> And if the implication is that they'll port those iOS games to Mac, then I wouldn't count on it if it takes even a single iota of extra effort on their end

The games will come to all Apple Silicon devices as the architectures are very similar if not the same (M1 iPad vs M1 Mac). Apple also released the Game Porting Toolkit and I can already play games at decent framerates with Whisky [0] which utilizes GPTK. Keep in mind this is basically beta software that's not even for the end user to use but as a developer tool to help port their games over.

And obviously the games when on iOS won't be played with touch controls, it's for playing with a Bluetooth controller.

[0] https://github.com/Whisky-App/Whisky

The new iPhones can now connect to a monitor via USB-C, so with that and a Bluetooth controller you’ve got a good stew going.

You can connect a controller to an iphone.

Sounds like Apple will be needing branded oven mitts to hold the thing in the store's accessories section.

iPhone could be a legit game console if developers wanted it to. Pair a Bluetooth game controller with screen mirroring and there you go. There are so many games on Steam I wish they would port to iPhone. It's like having this incredibly powerful device in your pocket and you can't actually use it for anything.

Remember that whatever is in the A series chips ends up in future M series chips too, only with lower thermal and battery restrictions.

I think this would be the base of the future M4.

Latency. I may spend 1,000 times as long looking at a website as it takes to render but that doesn’t mean taking a long time to render is ok.

This is why modern consumer processors have boost modes followed by thermal throttling.

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