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PaperclipPerfector  4mo ago (text post)   1920 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for January 5, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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I'm surprised that throughout the past few weeks I've seen no discussion on handheld computing a la the Steam deck, so here it is.

I've fairly recently gotten my hands on a Steam deck OLED, and it's everything that I've wanted a modded PSP to be (maybe a touch too large). A higher quality brighter screen is a significant improvement from the old LCD I had from yesteryear. Having Arch OS behind the scenes comes at a significant benefit as well, as full software support means you can literally run common applications, Emulators, etc. with actual software support! Oh, and it can run steam games too, I guess.

Anyways, I think it goes to say I enjoyed messing around with it a lot and have actually started tackling a non-0 amount of my steam backlog. My hope is that the success of these handheld compute units will create incentives for Microsoft to actually take a look at a lightweight version of their OS for ease of use without the endless need for internet connection to send telemetry and personal information and maybe implement some battery-optimizing techniques. I'm not holding my breath but one can hope!

Genuine portable computing's long been an underserved and overfragmented market. My gaming uses tend to revolve around keyboards, but this design space has a lot of utility for things like (giant-)pocket-sized tablets for note-taking and light management devices that are otherwise not very well-served -- either PalmPilot- or Pi-level devices that can do too little, or GPD Win-knockoffs that are way too high-end for most users.

I am a little worried about how much they're willing to explore. Valve's had enough success to at least drive imitators (Asus Ally), but there's a lot of design decisions in both the original and OLED variant that point towards a lot of caution in design scaling (both devices use MIPI displays, and the original IPS one was a weird left-over from a generic tablet display with a funky aspect ratio). Valve has historically been careful in general, but if it's more than just their normal engineering-by-the-shelf, either indicates that they don't want to put down the capital, or don't think they can get the manufacturing interest in it.

To date, Valve has never meaningfully iterated on their hardware.

First the Steam Link and Steam Machines, until they lost interest in that.
Then the Index, until they (mostly) lost interest in that.
Now the Steam Deck. It's only been out for a year and a bit and they replaced the screen- sure, faster than Nintendo did, but that's a really low bar.

Sure, the Switch 2 has absolutely sold a lot of units- far more than any other Valve hardware product has- but I can understand why a manufacturer wouldn't be interested in seriously developing the Gabe Gear with a track record of no repeat business- especially if they're now saying "there won't be a new one for a while", and when Valve says "a while"...

At least never releasing a second version of a thing prevents people from asking them when the third one's coming.

At least never releasing a second version of a thing prevents people from asking them when the third one's coming.

The most wounding comment I've ever read on the Motte.

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