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Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

developer.apple.com

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Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#151

Post by drb91 »

lewisinc wrote: post #140
_bxg1 wrote: post #32

Ugggggh. As if graphics support on macOS weren't middling enough already. It's like they're trying to become as irrelevant as possible in that area. I could understand if they were deprecating it in favor of Vulkan. That would be in-line with Apple's history of aggressively pushing forward new standards. But by no means do they have the clout to coerce developers into their own bespoke graphics API that doesn't work…

Well, at least in the Rust ecosystem there is https://github.com/gfx-rs/gfx which provides backends for Vulcan, Direct X 12, Metal and OpenGL. I'm not sure it's super relevant outside of the Rust ecosystem right now, but it's worth spreading the word around of such solutions.

How is the cross api shader support?

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#152

Post by pfranz »

mellinoe wrote: post #29
vortico wrote: post #5

Lol, Metal is Mac-only which relies heavily on CoreWhatever dependencies and thus can never be cross-platform, right? The only reason any game or CAD developer even supports Mac at all is because OpenGL is a cross-platform API that works great on Windows, Mac, and Linux, so they only have to write one type of shader program, etc. No game developer in the world will write both an OpenGL/DirectX/Vulcan and Metal render…

> No game developer in the world will write both an OpenGL/DirectX/Vulcan and Metal renderer for the purpose of staying up to date with Apple's "deprecations". Actually, most game developers do that. Pretty much every game (even ones with a custom, "non-AAA" engine) will have some kind of abstraction layer for dealing with graphics API's. Writing an additional backend for Metal is not a monumental undertaking -- it's…

That's kind of true for games, but he's totally right about CAD and other software. Big 3d applications Nuke, Houdini, Maya all use OpenGL. Before OSX, Mac versions either didn't exist or were kept up about as well as IE or Word was. Over the past 5-10 years they've been reliably released for OSX at the same time Windows and Linux versions were (they all originated on IRIX). They all have a lot of other development going on and I don't see any of these companies making and maintaining a Metal version.

I'm sure the Mac version of these tools aren't used by any studio with more than 5 people, but independent contractors, small studios, and individuals working at home really benefit (or else they wouldn't have bothered to port and maintain up until now).

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#153

Post by badminton1 »

Sephr wrote: post #55
_bxg1 wrote: post #32

Ugggggh. As if graphics support on macOS weren't middling enough already. It's like they're trying to become as irrelevant as possible in that area. I could understand if they were deprecating it in favor of Vulkan. That would be in-line with Apple's history of aggressively pushing forward new standards. But by no means do they have the clout to coerce developers into their own bespoke graphics API that doesn't work…

Fortunately you can still use Vulkan on iOS and Mac OS through MoltenVK[1], a Vulkan implemention in Metal. [1] https://github.com/KhronosGroup/MoltenVK

[flagged]

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#154

Post by jrs95 »

exelius wrote: post #128
jrs95 wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I disagree, I think Apple is still rather committed to the Mac even if it is no longer their #1 priority. Even if it's a small part of their profits, it's a big source of the strength of their brand (visually speaking, a Mac stands out against a PC far more than an iPhone stands out against any other smartphone), and that's something that's crucial for all of their products. Bad press about the Mac damages the brand,…

Sure; but users stopped buying computer hardware on specs last decade (or at least the mass market Apple is chasing). Macs aren’t even any more expensive than top-end PC laptops. They’re just a brand choice.

They definitely aren’t usually buying them because of typical CPU/RAM specs or whatever, but I think things like battery life, trackpad, keyboard, display, general build quality are all still very relevant aspects of hardware that people pay attention to. The slow upgrade cycle is definitely hurting things and generally slowing everything down, but it’s not as terrible as it’s often made out to be. It’s been a few years since the 5K iMac launched and it’s still a great desktop. The Mac Pro was botched but at least they’re fixing it. We’ve only had 2 years of weak MacBook Pro releases, and it’s very possible that the next release later this year will address both major issues: a bad keyboard and no 32GB RAM option. The keyboard will matter more for most people, but the added RAM plus 2 more CPU cores and Vega graphics will be a big win for true pro users. I don’t think they’ve necessarily “coasted” on Macs just because the last couple years have been weak. It’s more accurate IMO to say they’ve just fucked up a couple times in the last 5 years — specifically with the Mac Pro and the butterfly keyboard devices.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#155

Post by astrange »

opencl wrote: post #97
_bxg1 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, but the whole point of both Vulkan and Metal is to bring out more performance by being lower-level. I'd assume that at least part of that benefit is lost when you use something like this.

A lot of the point of Vulkan is not having to rewrite your entire graphics stack for every OS you want to target.

But you have to rewrite it for every major hardware vendor, or else you won't get the performance you want.

GL should always work for the simple case, but instead you need to rewrite to avoid bugs in its many layers. And once you have Vulkan/Metal, industry-specific wrappers are better than the impossible to debug procedural GL junk.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#156

Post by kilon »

Unknoob wrote: post #31

Aren't most of the games on MacOS running on OpenGL? This is going to kill all the older titles that are not maintained anymore. Terrible move just to push Metal down people throats. As if MacOS gaming wasn't dead enough.

Nope most of them use some sort of game Engine, unreal and Unity dominate.

MacOS gaming is not only not dead it’s flourishing rapidly. Take a trip to Steam shop. You will find a massive amount of games are made for MacOS and the numbers are growing rapidly since Apple lost interest into OpenGL. But then MacOS has reached a 10% of the desktop market making it much harder to ignore than in the past when it barely reached 3%. With iOS dominating mobile revenue , Appple is the undisputed king of gaming for over a decade now.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#157

Post by lainga »

Tloewald wrote: post #144
mankash666 wrote: post #96

The classic "Fuck Off" hubris from Apple. Their B.S. is getting out of hand. List of gripes: 1. Heavy handed regulation of app store: This needs intervention from regulatory authorities. Apple has successfully inserted itself between the consumer and producer of apps. It plays kingmaker, and very clearly promotes internal apps to the competition (recent ban of the Steam app is a prime example). It's only legal recour…

1. If cable tv providers can get away with disintermediating TV viewers from TV stations I don’t see how Apple is any worse, especially since I can still buy third party apps, but I can’t either set up or tune into an indie TV station. Amazon is a far worse problem with respect to books (and without any demonstrable user benefit) so good luck waiting for regulation here. 2. Again, you can use Chrome on a Mac. The App…

There's no need to turn this on the commenter.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#158

Post by wolfgke »

exelius wrote: post #91
patrickg_zill wrote: post #80

To me this signals that the Second Moribundity of Apple is nigh. The First Moribundity was the period in the 1990s when Apple was coasting on the DTP and Photoshop advantage over Windows they had, reducing the features of their desktops and not innovating. Schindler, a smart but ineffective leader, was replaced by Gil Amelio, a star in his prior field but unable to get Apple headed in the right direction. It took Job…

Everyone is coasting in the desktop / laptop market. Refresh cycles are like 5-10 years on PCs now, and it’s not clear tablets even have a refresh cycle. You can’t get growth on PC hardware anymore, not even if you’re Apple. So it goes into maintenance mode. Nobody even really sells desktop PCs anymore except custom gaming rigs and low-power kiosk boxes. Apple is all about mobile phones, the Apple Watch and air pods…

> Nobody even really sells desktop PCs anymore except custom gaming rigs and low-power kiosk boxes.

My personal impression is that while pre-built PCs are mostly sold to businesses, there is a strong growing trend since a few years to build your own PC from parts. I really do observe that if mobility is not an issue, people now tend to move away from laptops towards self-built PCs (or often rather: let a good friend build one). I don't want to go into the details what advantages these have over laptops, but just mention customizability with respect to requirements (e.g. very silent, very high-power, ...) and repairability.

A small (but only small) contributing factor is that laptops do not have sufficient power for VR, so you really need a stationary PC for VR.

The strongest "dampening factors" with respect to this trend are the growing prices of GPUs, because lots of cryptocurrency miners (in the last years in particular Ethereum) hoard them (but it is my impression that this will somewhat ebb away as soon as attractive ASICs for Ethereum get released) and the growing prices of RAM lately. On the other hand the release of Ryzen made building of PCs with either very high-performance or very good cost-benefit ratio feasible.

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#159

Post by jfk92n8 »

randiantech wrote: post #145
mankash666 wrote: post #96

The classic "Fuck Off" hubris from Apple. Their B.S. is getting out of hand. List of gripes: 1. Heavy handed regulation of app store: This needs intervention from regulatory authorities. Apple has successfully inserted itself between the consumer and producer of apps. It plays kingmaker, and very clearly promotes internal apps to the competition (recent ban of the Steam app is a prime example). It's only legal recour…

Instead of looking for gov punishment, make people change their minds showing this evidence of why Apple is sucking big time.

Ok, Ayn

Re: Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL

#160

Post by [deleted] »

SXX wrote: post #108
mankash666 wrote: post #96

The classic "Fuck Off" hubris from Apple. Their B.S. is getting out of hand. List of gripes: 1. Heavy handed regulation of app store: This needs intervention from regulatory authorities. Apple has successfully inserted itself between the consumer and producer of apps. It plays kingmaker, and very clearly promotes internal apps to the competition (recent ban of the Steam app is a prime example). It's only legal recour…

Everything on that list is relevant, but please keep in mind that banning custom browser engines isn't particularly bad thing for everyone. Of course Apple doing it to force web developers to keep supporting Safari since no one can simply expect iOS users to install Chrome, but it's also benefit open web greatly since it's preserve status quo that we have more than just one browser engine. The day Apple stop doing it…

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