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We put iOS the 12 beta on an iPhone 5S: Here's what happened
Fortnite's Insane Rocket Launch May Be The Greatest Collective Gaming Moment In History
Summer Games Done Quick raises $2.1 million for charity

We put iOS the 12 beta on an iPhone 5S: Here's what happened

Posted: 01 Jul 2018 06:06 AM PDT

The iOS 12 beta has a boatload of features to grab your attention: Memoji, group FaceTime calls and improved notifications.

But one of the most significant changes is performance gains under the hood, especially for older devices like the iPhone 5S.

Apple made some big claims during the WWDC keynote when iOS 12 was first unveiled. Using the example of an iPhone 6 Plus:

Apps launch up to 40 percent faster
Keyboard comes up 50 percent faster
Slide to take a photo is 70 percent faster

On paper, these appear to be big improvements. But the iPhone 6 Plus isn't even the oldest device that can run iOS 12. That's the iPhone 5S.

So to see how the newest iOS performs on the oldest phone, we took two 16GB iPhone 5S models and factory reset them. Then we replicated some examples from the keynote. One was running the iOS 12 public beta and the other iOS 11.4.

We don't claim this to be a scientific test, just an anecdotal account of how quickly the OS performed when performing real-world tasks. Bear in mind that iOS 12 is still in public beta and performance may change between now and the final release in the fall.

Now Playing: Watch this: iOS 12 beta speed test: How fast is it on older phones?

2:16

Here's how the iOS 12 public beta fared -- watch the video above to see what it looks like in real time.

iOS 12 beta speed test

Task	How much faster was iOS 12?
Launching Mail	0.25 second
Launching Safari (completely loading CNET.com)	3.5 seconds
Launching Maps	Identical
Slide to take a photo from lock screen	0.5 second
Keyboard comes up (in Messages)	1 second
Share sheet comes up (in Safari)	1 second
Siri completing a request	0.5 second

Launching apps like Safari and Mail were noticeably faster in the iOS 12 beta, but the difference in others, including Weather and Maps, was hardly visible.

Apple's claim during the keynote was that the share sheet comes up twice as fast when the system is under load. We found that the share sheet came up much faster than it did on iOS 11, even when there were no other apps open. However, this result wasn't always consistent -- after running it several times in a row, iOS 11.4 mostly caught up to the beta.

Startup time was the category where the iOS 12 beta clearly fell behind. iOS 11.4 loaded much faster and was ready to go 9 seconds before iOS 12.

Stay tuned for official performance testing once the final version of iOS 12 is released.

iOS 12 beta: Release date, hidden features and lots more.

How to get iOS 12 right now: Apple is ready for your feedback.

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Fortnite's Insane Rocket Launch May Be The Greatest Collective Gaming Moment In History

Posted: 30 Jun 2018 02:16 PM PDT

They did it, they really did it.

I was extremely skeptical when Epic Games announced that Fortnite’s rocket launch would not be some sort of world event added in a patch, where suddenly players log in and find the thing sailing through the sky instead of nestled on its launch pad. But rather, they claimed that the rocket would launch across all games, on every platform, in every match, at 10:30 AM PT today.

From a technical perspective, this seemed like something tough to pull off, but even if it was possible to do something that crazy, a collective, singular event across every game, it seemed destined to crash Fortnite’s servers at the very least, as its huge playerbase all tried to queue up for a view at the exact same moment. Fortnite is not exactly the most stable of games on a good day, constantly dealing with patch issues, mode removal and other server problems. This seemed like it was asking for trouble.

But in the end, the event went off without a hitch. Players gathered all around the rocket, or floated down from the battle bus, or celebrated a Victory Royale and…

Saw the rocket launch from the villain base in Snobby Shores
Saw a booster fall off of it and land in Anarchy Acres
Look like the rocket was about to nosedive toward Tilted Towers, before warping through a series of portals, the last of which opened up a giant, permanent crack in the sky that will almost certainly lead into season 5’s mystery theme

Before the launch, I joked that the Fortnite rocket would be our generation’s moon landing, but honestly, there was something incredibly cool about this entire process. The buzz of an entire community waiting for this thing to launch. In-game, watching people lay down their arms and simply stand by one another to watch the launch as it drew closer, even though everyone was easy pickings if someone did decide to murder people (though I’m sure this happened in some games). There’s the awe of experiencing this yourself in the game, or watching it instead through the eyes of your favorite streamers who reacted in real time with hundreds of thousands of viewers in chat, trying to process what exactly it was they were seeing.

I have simply never seen an event like this in gaming, a truly collective moment in a community that comes down not to something everyone experiences on their own time, but something that happens to the game in a can’t-miss, one-time-only experience at a specific point in time. But even if you did miss it, the collaboration of the community continues with tens, hundreds of thousands of screenshots and video posted of every angle of the launch and resulting chaos to social media. It’s truly something to behold.

I cannot really compare this to anything I’ve ever seen in gaming. There are “collective” gaming moments in the sense that everyone can relate to what it felt like to experiencing the final twist in the original BioShock, or playing through the haunting ending of The Last of Us or making that fateful choice between Kaidan and Ashley in Mass Effect. But again, those may be shared “moments,” but depending on the player, they could happen hours, days, months or years apart.

Some MMOs have “world events” but again, nothing quite like this, and on this scale. Granted I haven’t played enough WoW to know if anything compares there, but I can’t imagine that’s the case. Elsewhere, I think we can say that there are live, shared moments when it comes to big esports wins, but that’s a different category than what I’m talking about here.

Epic/@BigManFanelli

Epic has created a new class of player experience with Fortnite. They are moving beyond “this is a fun battle royale” title, and fundamentally changing how games work and are experienced by their players. This is a recent development too. I bet Epic would have liked to be able to slam the comet into Dusty Divot last season in a live event like this, but perhaps they didn’t have the capability. But now that they do, we’re likely to see a lot more “must see” events like this in the game, and hopefully in other titles too, if competitors can follow suit.

I am pretty in awe of what happened here today. In terms of both the craziness of the event (the portals! The sky crack!) which was not what anyone was expecting, but also the technical chops to pull something like this off flawlessly, and how closely it bound together a millions-strong community. It really was something to behold, and I will never forget it.

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Summer Games Done Quick raises $2.1 million for charity

Posted: 01 Jul 2018 08:06 AM PDT

Speed running event a colossal success

Another week of amazing speed running mayhem drew to a close yesterday as Summer Games Done Quick 2018 packed up its wild week of death glitches, frame clips, cutscene skips and out-of-bounds shortcuts, all in an an effort to raise top dollar for charity.

It was an amazing success, with the total raised standing at $2,122,229 when the stream finally went off-air. This is a personal best for the SGDQ event, beating last year's total by some $400,000. Donations - and players - came in from across the globe, once again utilising the hobby we love so dearly to do some good for those less fortunate.

The money raised will go to non-profit organisation Medecins Sans Frontieres, an International network of professionals who provide medical aid, care and relief to those who need it - wherever its needed - regardless of race, colour, creed or political persuasion. It is tireless - often dangerous - work, but the good men and women of MSF continue to save countless lives thanks to the talent of their amazing staff and the generous donations of their benefactors.

If you want to check out any of the great runs from the last week, then you can find them all queued up on the SGDQ VOD Reddit. The seven-day marathon saw speedruns on titles such as Resident Evil 4, Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and Half-Life, as well as GDQ regulars Super Metroid and Metal Gear Solid. Players engaged in head-to-head races on classics such as Shantae and the Pirate's Curse and Mega Man 8. There were also some fun gimmick runs, such as a one-handed playthrough of Super Mario Bros.

Games Done Quick remains one of the best examples of how the video gaming community can come today to help to make a difference in this weary world. While the eternally tiresome "Evils of Video Games" headlines may be making an unwelcome return right now, events such as SGDQ ultimately showcase a truth that we, all of us, have known for years.

The next event, Awesome Games Done Quick, takes place in Rockville, MD between January 6-13, 2019. That gives you a good chunk of time to get practicing!