In about 20 days I'll be taking a cruise and will effectively have no internet access. It's going to be a long trip with many sea days, so I'm looking for something that I can pick up on moments when I just want a bit more stimulation. The last time I took a trip like this I ended up playing Castlevania: Symphony of the Night.

I do have a preference for action-based titles since they tend to be easy to pick up and stop, but I also like games that require a bit of thought.

I was considering subscribing to Apple Arcade again since it would let me access a number of games I would enjoy, but I'm not sure how often it would need to contact Apple to confirm the status of my subscription. Data will be extremely expensive on this trip, especially when out at sea.

About ten years ago, Sony promised they'd change how we play games. With the launch of the Playstation Vita, they showed us a world in which one could start playing a game at home on your big powerful console, and then you could take it with you in the form of cross-play, where your saves synced via the cloud and you could play the Vita version right where you dropped off. And of course, for games that didn't have a Vita version, there was always the option of streaming your games.

Of course, we know how well that worked out. There were maybe 5 games where you could buy both versions of the game at once, and the majority of the games that supported cross-play required you to buy the same game twice. Streaming is still what everyone's pushing today, but in many places (coughAmericacough) there isn't a good enough connection to stream games with a good experience - especially if it's got twitchy gameplay.

Time has passed and many companies have began to offer a service model for games - subscribe to a program, and you get free access to games. And many of these services have some sort of cross-play component to them, where you get access to multiple platforms, or even with streaming versions, but they all have their downsides.

But it turns out that one company offers a gaming service that actually does offer each of their games in native versions across computers, consoles, and phones, has cross-play support, and doesn't have any of the downsides of streaming, and it's from a company that most people don't associate with gaming - especially when it comes to computer games. I'm speaking, of course, about Apple Arcade.

Sure, it all only works on Apple hardware, and the console part is a bit of a stretch (who actually owns an Apple TV?), but it works remarkably well. And unlike a number of other systems I have tried, it works seamlessly - you can save your game on your mac, launch your game on your iPhone, and instantly be playing your game. And the higher-end games with nice 3D graphics actually do look remarkably better on the big screen.

Of course, the selection of games is much different than any other games service, but I find myself surprised at how many games I legitimately want to play. Sure, there are a lot of 'iPhone' style casual games - right now they just released a bunch of previously released iPhone games cleaned up and stripped of monetization schemes - but I view that as a positive thing - sometimes you just want something simple to pass time with that doesn't need to take space in your brain. But at the same time there are also bigger and more aspiring titles available. There's a new action game from PLATINUMGAMES with an Okami-like artstyle, a brand new RPG from Mistwalker built on top of dioramas, and complex adventure games like Beyond a Steel Sky.

Apple arcade, is, however, missing one notable meta-genre from it's library - Triple-A games. And honestly, I kind of love it for that. The majority of the games companies represented are independent, and that means that many of them are going to be able to offer me new types of gameplay or narratives that you won't get from the big guys. What other service is going to offer experiences like Assemble With Care? And from an ethical point of view, I'd rather reward independent creators who are pushing out these high-quality pieces of work than giant companies who are famous for exploiting their workers.

While Apple Arcade obviously won't be a good choice for everyone since it's limited to Apple hardware, and if you're already in Apple's ecosystem, you probably already know about it (they're surprisingly aggressive at marketing their free trial - which is actually what got me to write this in the first place). I had originally written them off as all casual games, but with the last big release of games it's got some pretty fantastic releases. It's worth trying if you've only got an iPhone, but it's more than worth it if you've got a recent Mac or Apple TV.

I upgraded to Apple One because it was only $3 more a month for TV and Arcade split between my family plan members. So why not?

Looking for recommendations of what's fun to play in the Arcade. I'll take anything, but if you're looking for what I like the last games I really enjoyed playing were: Fire Emblem: Three Houses, Disco Elysium, Persona 5 Royal and Animal Crossing: New Horizons. As you can tell, I really don't play mobile games much.

Thank in advance.

This post is born from another discussion we have currently on tildes about the benefits of LineageOS. Please, check it out if you wanna discuss about the benefits of the custom ROM scene.
Here, instead, I ask primarily about hardware, not about software. Although, as always, they later intersect.

My question comes from my search for a new phone, I have been rocking a Moto G5 Plus since 2018 (it was released in 2017 and I bought it second-hand) and my experience has been great overall. I knew that I could root this phone so that I did in September 2018 and from there I haven't gone back to stock ever since. Mistakes aside, the experience has been great overall and has nourish my interest in computing. But, this phone is 3 and a half years old and I definitely notice it. One, due to the wear and second the 2GB of RAM my model had (XT1680). I'm in no hurry in a change though, I think I could use it for some more years and I can say that thanks to an amazing community that still supports this phone. (Seriously, I am using Android 10 with the latest patch, unthinkable!).

Nevertheless, as a thought experiment, or as a backup plan, or useful for anyone interested in being part of custom ROMs, I would like to ask you guys which do you think are the most dev-friendly phone in the market right now?

The criteria would be:

• It has a unlockable bootloader.
• The kernel has been released and is available.
• Has a community that constantly supports it.
• It doesn't have 2GB of RAM

Please, write any phone you have the idea that has a modding scene. I'm afraid that some will not be available in my country, but I want to make it as international possible so I insist, write any phone that has that criteria. And feedback for the english will also be appreciated.

In numerous occasions I accidentally deleted comments on mobile. Sometimes I can use navigation history to restore them but not always. This can be rather frustrating. Maybe there should be some extra confirmation that’s not easy to accidentally click in order to delete stuff on mobile

I'm currently in the process of reading the excellent "Lessons Learned in Software Testing: A Context-Driven Approach". Early on the following is mentioned.

Test common threats before exotic threats.

Seems reasonable enough. That said, it got me thinking It'd be cool to generate a list of such threats for future devs/testers to draw on. So...I'm calling on the collective experience of any Tilders involved in iOS or Android development to lend a hand.

In your time working on mobile, what issues have you encountered that you would you classify as exotic? I.e those issues that infrequently arise but when they do can cause major damage. Any and all help is appreciated.