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Cake day: July 24th, 2023

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  • Interesting that it uses a dedicated 9070 (ugh that name), rather than being a custom APU, like the other AMD consoles and the deck. That just adds cost and design complexity. You’ve got to package multiple chips, have separate power circuitry for both, have separate memory pools, and a more complex cooling system.

    That said, perhaps they’re being cautious - if you can’t sell a lot of them, a custom APU isn’t worth it. It’s also probably much faster to bring to market if you’re using off-the-shelf parts.

    E: the source appears to only say Valve is working on 9070 drivers, therefore a steam machine must use a 9070. That’s a bit of a logic jump. For starters, any driver work on the 9070 will improve any other RDNA4 chips (including APUs). Also, Valve has done driver work on plenty of things that they don’t use in their own hardware, from various AMD cards, Intel graphics, and even work on the open source Nvidia drivers - they are gearing up to a general release of SteamOS, after all.

    TL;DR: this rumour is almost certainly bullshit.





  • There are some in this community who are willing to go into “2008 web forum user in a PlayStation vs Xbox thread” over basically any consumer electronics they buy. Not just in terms of PC handhelds, but stuff like graphics card vendor too. It’s wild.

    Bought a steam deck? Well then everything else is utter SHIT and those people are MORONS. Anybody that doesn’t buy a Steam Deck should be Windows only, even if that disadvantages me too!

    We should be welcoming of people running whatever OS they want, and welcoming of manufacturers giving the option of SteamOS. Even more so when it will benefit Linux (and by extension Steam Deck) gamers.





  • If you don’t like the apps and the fact that they aren’t maintained anymore, complain to Google.

    They don’t have to use AOSP apps that haven’t been maintained in years. They take part of the blame for that. They’re the ones who decided to include it in their ROM.

    There is a pre-installed app store

    Yes, with 3 apps. That’s not really an app store, is it?

    They don’t even recommended any app store other than the Play Store, which you have to jump through some hoops to enable.

    Digging through their social media posts, they say their recommendation is to download and update each of your apps by downloading it from each developer directly. That is bad UX.

    You listing obscure app stores that they don’t preinstall and actually seem to advise against is not proof that they care for UX.

    They don’t want to include any unnecessary bloat, so they leave the OS very minimalistic on purpose.

    I understand that. That’s fine. I was complaining about the lack of attention to UX. Replacing the alarm clock app with a modern one, for example, isn’t bloat, but it is good for UX.

    You’re completely ignoring my entire point: the fundamentals are decent but the UX seemingly gets zero attention, which I find unfortunate. Your comment backs me up, even, because it talks of convoluted steps to improve the experience that the devs either don’t speak of, or actively discourage.

    Not everyone likes to spend 5 hours tinkering on their phone and looking through vague guides to have it work normally.




  • There is no fight, they’re different markets. Sure they’re similar on the surface, but I use my deck differently to the Switch.

    But if people insist on having this be a stupid “war”, then Nintendo would obviously win. Even a Wii U level flop would vastly outsell the Deck, Deck 2, or any PC handheld. The Switch sold over 147 million.

    I will continue to mainly play on my Deck while hoping for a Deck 2, and consider picking up a Switch 2 if the price is right and there are good couch multiplayer games. We don’t need to turn this into a Sony Vs Microsoft-style fanboy war.


  • I was running GrapheneOS on the Pixel 7, but it’s quite lacking in care towards UX (the preinstalled apps, for example, are AOSP apps seemingly taken from multiple versions of android with different UI designs, all of which are ancient. There’s no preinstalled apps store, although they seem to recommend using the play store and recommend against F-droid?)

    You also need to spend a while figuring things out. Sometimes the FAQ is helpful for that, other times it’s really not.

    The security is remarkable but I feel they could give other areas more care.

    No contactless payment is really tough too. I hate carrying my wallet. That’s not their fault though.