Category Archives: Video Games

A blocky voxel world spanning an iPhone and iPad, stopping at the edge of a Mac laptop whose screen shows a padlock

Minecraft Bedrock Runs Great on My iPhone and iPad. My Mac? Apple Lets Microsoft Say No.

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Originally published on snarky.tech.

The iPhone Duo is finally out, Apple’s first foldable, starting at a cool $1,999, and the internet has already found its favorite complaint: the apps. A big, beautiful folding screen, and a bunch of third-party apps that show up on that gorgeous inner screen letterboxed with black bars like it’s a DVD from 2004. Reviewers called out apps like Telegram and Disney Plus as not optimized yet, and Engadget’s Sam Rutherford summed it up: “The difference between optimized and unoptimized apps is the biggest growing pain you’ll face on Apple’s first foldable.” (via tom’s guide)

Fine. New form factor, developers need time, Apple says devs are “rapidly updating” their apps. I get it. But it got me thinking about an app support problem that isn’t new at all, that Apple could have fixed years ago, and that got a lot dumber this week.

Exhibit A: Minecraft

Minecraft Bedrock Edition runs great on my iPhone. It runs great on my iPad. Touch controls, controller support, the Marketplace, Realms, all of it. And most importantly, Bedrock is the version that lets you play with your friends on Xbox, Switch, PlayStation, Windows, and phones.

Now sit down at a Mac. You get Minecraft: Java Edition. Java is a perfectly good game, the modding scene is legendary, but its cross-play is Windows, Mac, and Linux Java players only. Bedrock cross-play is Windows, Xbox, Switch, PlayStation, and mobile. The two don’t talk to each other. Mojang spells it out on its own help pages.

So the kid with the iPad can jump into a world with their cousin on a Switch. The same kid on a Mac, signed into the same Microsoft account, cannot. Same company, same game, same family of Apple chips. Different answer.

And this isn’t a hardware problem. Things are bad enough that a fan developer has been working on an unofficial project called Blockintosh to get Bedrock running on Apple silicon Macs, because apparently Apple and the company that owns Xbox couldn’t sort it out between them.

The checkbox that ruins everything

Here’s the part that drives me nuts. Ever since the M1, Apple silicon Macs can run iPhone and iPad apps straight from the Mac App Store. No port, no rewrite. Apple’s own developer documentation says these apps “use the same frameworks, resources, and runtime environments” as they do on iOS and iPadOS, and they show up on the Mac by default. Unless the developer goes into App Store Connect and unchecks “Make this app available.” (Apple’s developer docs)

That’s it. That’s the wall. A checkbox.

Minecraft’s iPhone and iPad app doesn’t show up for Apple silicon Macs in the Mac App Store. Given that the default is “available,” that pretty strongly suggests someone on the Minecraft side unchecked the box. Microsoft hasn’t said why, as far as I can find. People have literally posted on Minecraft’s own feedback site asking them to just flip it back on.

Is the iPad version a perfect Mac game? No. It’d need decent keyboard and mouse support to feel right. But “not perfect” beats “not allowed,” and Mojang already has keyboard and mouse controls in the Windows version of Bedrock. They know how.

And now the Mac has a touchscreen

This week Apple announced the MacBook Pro with a PROLED XDR display. Yes, a touchscreen Mac. After years of Apple people telling us touchscreens on laptops were a bad idea, here we are. It starts at $2,899 for the 14-inch, ships November 6, and Apple says “macOS automatically translates touches into clicks.” (apple newsroom)

Think about that. The single biggest argument against iPad apps on the Mac was “these are touch apps, and the Mac doesn’t have touch.” Well, now it does. Apple just built the ideal machine for running iPhone and iPad apps, and developers can still say “nope, not on that one.”

So I can tap my way around macOS on a $2,899 laptop, but I can’t tap my way around the Minecraft app I already paid for on my iPad. Cool. Very Pro.

Apple should make it the rule

Apple loves telling developers what they have to do. Use our payment system. Follow our design rules. Support the latest screen sizes. Apple even made a “Made for iPhone Duo” badge to nudge developers to optimize for the foldable. So here’s a rule I’d actually like to see:

  • If your app runs on iPhone and iPad, it runs on Apple silicon Macs too. No opt-out checkbox.
  • If it genuinely doesn’t work on the Mac, fix it or ship a real Mac version. Apple already lets a Mac version replace the iPad one in the store.
  • Give developers a “works with touch Mac” badge and actually promote the apps that do it right.

I know the counter arguments. Some developers don’t want to support another platform. Some apps rely on hardware the Mac doesn’t have, like cellular or the rear camera. Some companies have a separate Mac app they want to sell. Fine, carve out the edge cases. But “we’d rather you buy a different version of our game” or “we just didn’t feel like it” isn’t an edge case.

It’s one chip family, one App Store, and now one touchscreen. Why can’t I run ALL my apps on my Mac? Apple, you built the hardware. Finish the job.

Introduction to Motion Capture Technology

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If you are in the New York City Area, and if you are interested in learning how all those cool animations are made in movies, commercials and video games, you should think about signing up for my class. I will be teaching a course showing the pipeline of capturing the data, processing the information, blending sequences of animation, and rending a final character animation this Fall (2009).  If you are interested please see the advertisement below and feel free to email me with questions.  I will not offer this as a distance course, but if there is interest (please leave a comment) I will think of doing this in the future.  The software I will cover in this course is as follows: Vicon IQ/Nexus/Blade, Autodesk Motionbuilder and Maya, and Newtek Lightwave.  If you have interest please contact the admissions office at Long Island University in Brooklyn, NY at (718) 488-1011.  More information on admissions is available here: LIU admissions.

MA678 Flyer

Great and not-so-great things about the internet in Japan 2008

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As I stated earlier, I am visiting Japan for the first time in 10 years this Thanksgiving break. After a couple of days, there are a few things that have really stood out to me.

Electronics are not as advanced over the rest of the world as they used to be. There are still alot of cool things here, but there is nothing I have seen so far that I am just dying to have. 10 years ago, this was very different…

The prices of things have not changed at the same rate here as in North America (ESPECIALLY Canada). The last time I was here, there were many things I wanted to buy, the the prices where prohibitively expensive. Granted, at the time I was a graduate student working on my Master’s degree and money was a bit harder to come by — but — the prices of things here is definitely cheaper. Eating out is now quite a bit cheaper than in New York City (depends on the restaurant of course).

The internet is the thing that is sticking out the most to me. 10 years ago ISDN was a luxury that most people only dreamed of. 128kbps was jsut amazing speed and you could actually download the newest version of Netscape 4 in under 1 hour. It was just great at the time. Now with fiber, cable, and DSL connections being plentiful here, I can watch TV via sling AND Video chat with friends and family through Skype for no cost at all. I spend more than $200 on phone calls the last time I was here!!

With all this good stuff, there must be some bad. The bad part of the internet experience I am finding so far is related to content filtering. It seems that many companies and providers are IP filtering connections and seem to block any connections not originating from the U.S.A. This is lame. One problem that is really bothering me is that Steam is not allowing me to download Left 4 Dead onto my laptop so I can kill some zombies. I already purchased the game and have been playing it on my desktop as well as my computer at work. I forgot to install the game on my laptop before I left, but didnt think much about it since I knew there would be a fast internet connection waiting for me in Japan. Well, to make a long story short, Steam is not allowing me to download any new content while I am connecting from Japan. I have tested this theory using VNC to my systems at work and at home. No problems there. Anyway, this lameness aside, I have found a way around other filters. SOCKS 5 Proxys are great. I installed WinSocks on my computer at home. I am connecting to the computer via Hamachi using a VPN. This allows me to not open ports on my router for this. Makes it very easy. Anyway, using a program called ProxyCap, I can redirect programs running on mylaptop to mask their IP address to that of my home system. This allows lots of things to work now. In particular, I am thoroughly enjoying watching NFL football via DirecTV’s Superfan program. It refused to connect without the proxy, but when I change the settings, I have live NFL football in all its glory right on my laptop. This is very nice.

Anyway, lots of good, and a few bad things (no killing of zombies is pretty bad…) to mention here. I will post more as the trip goes on.

Video Tutorials on Motion Capture 2

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Here is the second in my series of motion capture tutorials. The first focused on setting up a naming template in Nexus. This tutorial will describe the process of cleaning optical data and filling gaps when occlusion of reflective markers occurs. The video below is part one. If you play it to the end, you will see links to the further parts.