lol are you serious? API is nothing to do with hardware?

an API is only as good as its hardware. It cant provide virtually what is not available physically.

1) Because memory is is the bottleneck for X1 resolution. Thats why MS made adjustments to their SDK remember?

2) Sony could do that too since they have reserved a similar amount of memory, it just wouldnt be called directX, it would be called something else. If you really think X1 is gonna get direct x, updates to API, OS and SDK's and sony are just gonna sit idle, you are wrong. Until then, as it stands, theres nothing to suggest the X1 is 'far more flexible and capable' than the PS4 because its not.

Obviously you don't understand what they are talking about when they talk about "OS". It is only the kernel that is quite the same. Windows itself contains a lot more than just the kernel, of course...

Starting with a wrong understanding, the post had to be messed up.

Ehm, you might consider taking a few classes in... well, computer science might be a good start. There is some relation but an OS with API has nothing to do with resolution. The OS MS built actually *is* flexible and especially lightweight but it doesn't *add* performance, of course.

@Bolded

You've lost me. Are you talking about Windows 8, Windows Phone 8, or Xbox One? I have all 3 and none of them shove ads in your face. The closest is the Xbox with a 'Featured' bar down the right hand side of the home screen.

My moneys on hackers patching dumped xbone games to run in windows.

Its the API which allows developers to close the gap between what hardware can do in theory and what it does practically. No updates will allow X1 to match PS4, but updates will allow it to maximise the potential of the hardware.

the PS4 already allows enough tools for developers to not try hard and still make 1080p possible.... thats flexible. Restricting developers to certain optimisation methods (because of the API) in order to reach 1080p, is not flexible.

Luckily, people dont need computer science lessons to understand that software doesnt change hardware, it just pushes it to its limits... limits which the X1 is far from reaching (hence its not flexible).

Using the word flexible for software which developers cant use to easily get 1080p on a machine as powerful as XB1 is crazy.

When DX12 comes, you might have a slightly stronger case to try again (assuming sony so absolutely nothing). Until then take all the computer science lessons you need.

i don't see why this is a good thing.

if i wanted window 8 on my tv i hook up a pc to my tv. part of what i like about consoles is the streamlined/simpler interface that makes that things i do with a console easy. this whole "one experience" thing is a terrible idea. i don't own multiple devices in my house because i want them all to be identical,.. i have multiple devices because each excels a specific type of task.

Really?

A ship has eighteen engines.  All conntected to a single driveshaft in order to propel a ship.  Another ship has twelve engines but each connect to its own drive shaft.  Each driveshaft has the same four-bladed brass prop of the same weight and bearing as the others. 

Which one is more powerful and capable of doing more work?  The ship with eighteen engines but only and one prop, or the ship with twelve engines and twelve props?

Doesn't matter how close to the hardware you get, and both Mantle and DirectX12 get the developer closer to the hardware than DirectX11 or OpenGL does.  But the one major feature that DirectX12 has over Mantle, and AMD has acknowledged this, is that DirectX12 offers parallelism.  Everything other than DirectX12 currently only utilizes a single core to the GPU.  One core to marshall all the communication.  DirectX12 allows every core on the CPU to communicate directly with the GPU, so a game can split off a thread and have that thread utilize a CPU core to do work and communicate directly with the GPU to get it done.

So, no.  The hardware is no different in the Xbox One.  However, the way in which developers will use the hardware in the Xbox One as well as the PC does utilize the existing hardware more efficiently and more to its fullest extent.  That's the power of software.

And I never suggested the Xbox One was more powerful than the PS4.  I said, in a conversation regarding the OS, that the Xbox One's OS was more flexible and capable than the PS4s.

Again, what does the flexibility of the OS have to do with resolution?  Resolution is a matter of hardware capability, not software capability.  Yes, Microsoft can and DirectX12 will make software more efficient, thus allowing for improved graphic fidelity, but the hardware is still capable of achieving the graphic fidelity.

For one, what makes you think Microsoft doesn't already own the patents for parallelism in a graphical API?  Considering neither NVidia, Intel, nor AMD have offered anything similar to DirectX12, what makes you think anyone else will be able to develop an API on the same level as DirectX12?  DirectX12 talks to the hardware on the same level as Mantle, yet offers parallelism with the GPU.  Who's going to write that capability for free and give it to Sony?  Sony's not a software developer.  Their OS is FreeBSD with their UI on top of it.  The only thing Sony knows how to do is take an OS that someone else wrote, put it on hardware, stick a UI on top of it, and throw some apps in it.  They don't know how to write kernels or APIs. 

Until they know how to do that, then as it stands, a Microsoft OS will always be more capable and flexible than any OS that Sony can install on a piece of hardware.

It doesn't matter how good the hardware is if the code is inefficient.  DirectX12 removes a substantial inefficiency in the hardware.  Any Windows PC capable of supporting DirectX12 will offer substantially greater efficiency, and that includes the Xbox One.  I know first-hand the importance of efficient code vs. more hardware and I can attest to the fact that no matter how much you have and how good the hardware is, unless you improve the software you won't see any improvement in performance. 

Doesn't matter if you're talking in-house code or packaged code.  I've dealth with it. 

Very few people can say this, but I've actually gone through the experience of a mainframe crash because of software inefficiencies that got so out of hand they obliterated the resources of an IBM mainframe.  So don't try and suggest to me the importance of hardware over software.  Hardware is only important to people who know nothing about software, because they think the hardware is like an engine in a car.  The reality is, however, that software is the gasoline/petrol that creates the horsepower the hardware is capable of. 

And that my good...whatever is a fact.