Autodesk dropping support for Alias and VRED in macOS Mojave over OpenGL deprecation

AppleInsider

Autodesk has published a support document announcing that it is stopping development of its Alias and VRED vertical market packages, and that older versions will not work on Mojave due to Apple's OpenGL deprecation.

According to a note posted on Autodesk's support website, while older Alias versions can run on High Sierra or earlier, "no versions of VRED will run on that operating system due to the OpenGL deprecation." The change, according to the Autodesk note, "allows Autodesk development teams to focus on bringing innovations to market faster, and allows for more frequent software updates."

"In the end, the entire Alias and VRED community will benefit from this streamlined approach," wrote the company.

This follows the announcement by Apple in June at WWDC that Mojave will require graphics hardware to support Metal, and that active development has ceased for OpenGL and OpenCL on the Mac.

It isn't clear why Autodesk made the declaration that OpenGL's deprecation was responsible for the applications not working in Mojave. Deprecation does not mean removed, and the existing OpenGL implementation in High Sierra remains in Mojave.

The move at present does not appear to affect the core AutoDesk product. Alias is used for automotive and industrial design, while VRED is 3D visualization software. Neither Mac version has been updated recently.

According to the company, Mac users have multiple options. Users can switch to the Windows version and use a Boot Camp workaround, or they can remain on High Sierra or other Mac versions without upgrading to Mojave.

AppleInsider has reached out to Autodesk for comment.

elijahg

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

danox

Autodesk family of products sucks on the Mac, I was hoping they were leaving to clear the field for Vectorwork's and Archicad....

mark fearing

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

But Apple isn't dropping support per se. It's still there. I imagine it's simply the fact that they don't have enough mac customers using it? Or they can't find programmers capable of doing the work?

commentzilla

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

Autodesk has always be lazy to support the Mac. They don't bother to keep it current even when they do support the Mac. Everyone is dropping OpenGL and it's subpar performance. Eventually they'll have no choice but to update their outdated software. They've never really been relevant to the Mac, so I'm not sure it matters all that much.

It's also important to remember that Windows has Direct X. Apple cannot produce the same or better performance with a generic API for their own silicon, Metal + A Series chips will give them an advantage that no one else has in the market. Give it time.

elijahg

mark fearing said:

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

But Apple isn't dropping support per se. It's still there. I imagine it's simply the fact that they don't have enough mac customers using it? Or they can't find programmers capable of doing the work?

It is but there's no point in developing for a deprecated API, Apple can and will ditch it at the drop of a hat, rendering anything OpenGL-based useless.

commentzilla said:

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

Autodesk has always be lazy to support the Mac. They don't bother to keep it current even when they do support the Mac. Everyone is dropping OpenGL and it's subpar performance. Eventually they'll have no choice but to update their outdated software. They've never really been relevant to the Mac, so I'm not sure it matters all that much.

It's also important to remember that Windows has Direct X. Apple cannot produce the same or better performance with a generic API for their own silicon, Metal + A Series chips will give them an advantage that no one else has in the market. Give it time.

They aways have I agree, but I fear it's just the start of a deluge of abandoned Mac software by others too - and especially open source projects. Open source isn't really dropping OpenGL because they don't have the manpower to convert to anything else. And even if they did drop OpenGL, they'll support Vulkan instead with is comparatively gigantic installed base. It's not worth them supporting Metal.

I've posted similar before, but to paraphrase: with iOS Apple has such a huge and potentially high-spending customer base. Apple has a huge amount of leverage and can do pretty much as it likes and as iOS is such a valuable market, it's absolutely worth developers switching to Metal. In contrast, Apple has almost no leverage in the desktop OS market. Macs have barely any market share so it's not worth most developers spending disproportionate time supporting it. So instead they just abandon it. Especially with open source software, Mac support is just a tickbox; no effort required.

Even if Apple were to guarantee to maintain OpenGL for a few MacOS versions it'd give developers time to switch to something else, and for MoltenVK (a Vulkan to Metal shim) to mature. It remains to be seen what the performance of Vulkan/Metal is like with scientific and engineering software, early evidence appears to be it's worse than OpenGL.

As per usual the apparent march of "progress" to the detriment of Apple's customers.

tmay

danox said:

Autodesk family of products sucks on the Mac, I was hoping they were leaving to clear the field for Vectorwork's and Archicad....

Fusion 360 support on the Mac is extremely good, and there's a possibility that it will end up on the iPad in the future. Then again, this is a cloud product built to replace Inventor within the next decade. I would think that current AutoCAD products on the Mac aren't going to be deprecated.

macxpress

Oh boy...here comes the doom and gloom! 

mikethemartian

commentzilla said:

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

Autodesk has always be lazy to support the Mac. They don't bother to keep it current even when they do support the Mac. Everyone is dropping OpenGL and it's subpar performance. Eventually they'll have no choice but to update their outdated software. They've never really been relevant to the Mac, so I'm not sure it matters all that much.

It's also important to remember that Windows has Direct X. Apple cannot produce the same or better performance with a generic API for their own silicon, Metal + A Series chips will give them an advantage that no one else has in the market. Give it time.

Seems more like the Mac is irrelevant to the industry they serve.

macxpress

mikethemartian said:

commentzilla said:

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

Autodesk has always be lazy to support the Mac. They don't bother to keep it current even when they do support the Mac. Everyone is dropping OpenGL and it's subpar performance. Eventually they'll have no choice but to update their outdated software. They've never really been relevant to the Mac, so I'm not sure it matters all that much.

It's also important to remember that Windows has Direct X. Apple cannot produce the same or better performance with a generic API for their own silicon, Metal + A Series chips will give them an advantage that no one else has in the market. Give it time.

Seems more like the Mac is irrelevant to the industry they serve.

Then why did they get into the Mac platform in the first place?

lowededwookie

The problem is that Metal isn’t being given the credit it’s due. The people here bemoaning the dropping of OpenGL aren’t giving Metal a chance because they seem to have a prejudice against the fact that it started on iOS but they’re dumb because they’ve not actually looked at how awesome Metal actually is on iOS.

Now macOS has Metal it means that a high powered games can easily be ported to the Mac which will show Metal’s true power on greater specced machines and not just mobile devices. Throw in machine learning and imagine an FPS with amazing graphics and an AI that makes all the Quake based FPS games of today look like imbeciles. Now imagine once Apple allows developers to write code for iOS and macOS at the same time next year how much penetration gaming will have.

With OpenGL being deprecated we might see a drop off in games coming to Mac or we will see these ports being wrapped for Metal instead and then we’ll see if dropping OpenGL is a good or bad thing but my personal belief is that it’s going to be a great thing.

The problem is that programmers are being lazy and not even writing games for the Mac properly anyway so their opinion is about as worthless as a festering ball of dog snot. Start porting games directly for Metal instead of wrapping DirectX games for OpenGL and then we’ll take you seriously.

mcdave

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

Stow the ‘oppressed 12-year old’ act nobody’s fooled.  Cheap tricks to trigger an imposition with Ballmer-esque ‘my way or the highway’ babble doesn’t wash with Apple users.  Apple decides what it’s products do, we decide if we buy them.

Perhaps the headline should read; “Company that can’t be bothered to update it’s software retroactively blames Apple.”

I was hoping Autodesk would come to the Metal-party mainly on iPad but, like Adobe, I guess they’ll just be an also-ran as any developer who puts self-interest before customer experience deserves to be.

mcdave

Bleating aside, Apple’s strategy is a little difficult to fathom here.  I understand why OpenGL needs to go (as does the industry, hence Vulkan) but Apple should have dangled a bigger carrot.  If they had a 1st-party GPU which delivered Metal performance well beyond AMD & Nvidia architectures with a nod to OpenGL/CL - that would be compelling. Saying ‘who’s with us’ before explaining why is a test of faith and, in our increasingly self-victimising culture, plays right into the hands of detractors .

georgie01

lowededwookie said:

...
The problem is that programmers are being lazy and not even writing games for the Mac properly anyway so their opinion is about as worthless as a festering ball of dog snot. Start porting games directly for Metal instead of wrapping DirectX games for OpenGL and then we’ll take you seriously.

This is an essential point. Most developers who are serious about developing for the Mac will port to Metal. Because they care. Those developers who only do the minimal work necessary to create a version which runs on macOS don’t really have a worthwhile opinion about what’s best for the platform. Kind of like when Microsoft finally decided to create a worthwhile version of Office for the Mac, they showed they cared and their software was significantly better.

elijahg

lowededwookie said:

The problem is that Metal isn’t being given the credit it’s due. The people here bemoaning the dropping of OpenGL aren’t giving Metal a chance because they seem to have a prejudice against the fact that it started on iOS but they’re dumb because they’ve not actually looked at how awesome Metal actually is on iOS.

So how do you know it's any use for scientific and engineering work? Apple has repeatedly shown off Metal's impressive use in games, but hasn't once mentioned anything about its use for getting work done. Some people have to do actual work, y'know, and would rather use a Mac to do it.

lowededwookie said:

Now macOS has Metal it means that a high powered games can easily be ported to the Mac which will show Metal’s true power on greater specced machines and not just mobile devices.

"High powered games" ported from iOS to Mac? Haha, ok. What about the actual "high powered" games from Windows, that require a beefy desktop GPU rather than a tiny mobile one? You really think developers are going to say "oh wow, Apple has released Metal for Mac, we'll spend 20% of our time releasing a game for the 0.1% of gamers that are on Macs"?

lowededwookie said:

The problem is that programmers are being lazy and not even writing games for the Mac properly anyway so their opinion is about as worthless as a festering ball of dog snot. Start porting games directly for Metal instead of wrapping DirectX games for OpenGL and then we’ll take you seriously.

You can write code can you? You know how much effort is required to rewrite a game engine for a different API? There's a country mile difference between "programmers are being lazy" and the actual reason, marketshare of the Mac. It's not worth their time, be they working for a company, indie or open source. Plus you'd rather have no software vs software that's not designed specifically for the Mac? You'd best ditch macOS then, because most of it wasn't designed for the Mac. Oh and stop assuming it's all about games, OpenGL is used in a lot more than just games, whereas Metal isn't, and there's no indication it will be suitable for anything but.

mcdave said:

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

Stow the ‘oppressed 12-year old’ act nobody’s fooled.  Cheap tricks to trigger an imposition with Ballmer-esque ‘my way or the highway’ babble doesn’t wash with Apple users.  Apple decides what it’s products do, we decide if we buy them.

Perhaps the headline should read; “Company that can’t be bothered to update it’s software retroactively blames Apple.”

I was hoping Autodesk would come to the Metal-party mainly on iPad but, like Adobe, I guess they’ll just be an also-ran as any developer who puts self-interest before customer experience deserves to be.

Yep and look what happened to Microsoft under Ballmer. Now Satya is embracing open source and MS has begun to find its rudder once more. Apple is going in the opposite direction, becoming slowly more and more closed and incompatible, as they were in the mid 90's. And we all know how popular the mid-90's Apple was. "Cheap tricks to trigger an imposition" what? 

mcdave said:

Apple decides what it’s products do, we decide if we buy them.

Yep and Apple of late seems to doing it's damnedest to make computers with so many compromises people aren't happy with them, buying them begrudgingly because it's the only option with MacOS.

 Also preeeeetty sure Autodesk isn't an also-ran. Their software is used in a vast number of industries. The seat you're sat on was probably designed with Autodesk software. Apple likely uses it to model their Macs. So no, they're not becoming irrelevant anytime soon no matter how far you bury your head in the Apple-shaped sand,

canukstorm

elijahg said:

mark fearing said:

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

But Apple isn't dropping support per se. It's still there. I imagine it's simply the fact that they don't have enough mac customers using it? Or they can't find programmers capable of doing the work?

It is but there's no point in developing for a deprecated API, Apple can and will ditch it at the drop of a hat, rendering anything OpenGL-based useless.

commentzilla said:

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

Autodesk has always be lazy to support the Mac. They don't bother to keep it current even when they do support the Mac. Everyone is dropping OpenGL and it's subpar performance. Eventually they'll have no choice but to update their outdated software. They've never really been relevant to the Mac, so I'm not sure it matters all that much.

It's also important to remember that Windows has Direct X. Apple cannot produce the same or better performance with a generic API for their own silicon, Metal + A Series chips will give them an advantage that no one else has in the market. Give it time.

They aways have I agree, but I fear it's just the start of a deluge of abandoned Mac software by others too - and especially open source projects. Open source isn't really dropping OpenGL because they don't have the manpower to convert to anything else. And even if they did drop OpenGL, they'll support Vulkan instead with is comparatively gigantic installed base. It's not worth them supporting Metal.

I've posted similar before, but to paraphrase: with iOS Apple has such a huge and potentially high-spending customer base. Apple has a huge amount of leverage and can do pretty much as it likes and as iOS is such a valuable market, it's absolutely worth developers switching to Metal. In contrast, Apple has almost no leverage in the desktop OS market. Macs have barely any market share so it's not worth most developers spending disproportionate time supporting it. So instead they just abandon it. Especially with open source software, Mac support is just a tickbox; no effort required.

Even if Apple were to guarantee to maintain OpenGL for a few MacOS versions it'd give developers time to switch to something else, and for MoltenVK (a Vulkan to Metal shim) to mature. It remains to be seen what the performance of Vulkan/Metal is like with scientific and engineering software, early evidence appears to be it's worse than OpenGL.

As per usual the apparent march of "progress" to the detriment of Apple's customers.

Then why would Apple go through the trouble of creating a new Mac Pro, which is aimed at very niche market, if what you say is true?

volcan

Autodesk is a Windows centric company although they are interested in iOS ports of various applications for field work but the functionally is very limited for now. Their official position is that they will release new versions of the desktop MacOS applications when Apple delivers appropriate hardware for implementation. Historically there are so many third party plugins using Windows based architecture that will never be available for MacOS, it makes it practically unwise to base your business on the MacOS versions of AutoCad. When an associate sends you a file and all you see is a bounding box for a significant aspect of a design you have instant fail.

Maya, on the other hand, may be more cross platform compatible than AutoCad.

tmay

elijahg said:

lowededwookie said:

The problem is that Metal isn’t being given the credit it’s due. The people here bemoaning the dropping of OpenGL aren’t giving Metal a chance because they seem to have a prejudice against the fact that it started on iOS but they’re dumb because they’ve not actually looked at how awesome Metal actually is on iOS.

So how do you know it's any use for scientific and engineering work? Apple has repeatedly shown off Metal's impressive use in games, but hasn't once mentioned anything about its use for getting work done. Some people have to do actual work, y'know, and would rather use a Mac to do it.

lowededwookie said:

Now macOS has Metal it means that a high powered games can easily be ported to the Mac which will show Metal’s true power on greater specced machines and not just mobile devices.

"High powered games" ported from iOS to Mac? Haha, ok. What about the actual "high powered" games from Windows, that require a beefy desktop GPU rather than a tiny mobile one? You really think developers are going to say "oh wow, Apple has released Metal for Mac, we'll spend 20% of our time releasing a game for the 0.1% of gamers that are on Macs"?

lowededwookie said:

The problem is that programmers are being lazy and not even writing games for the Mac properly anyway so their opinion is about as worthless as a festering ball of dog snot. Start porting games directly for Metal instead of wrapping DirectX games for OpenGL and then we’ll take you seriously.

You can write code can you? You know how much effort is required to rewrite a game engine for a different API? There's a country mile difference between "programmers are being lazy" and the actual reason, marketshare of the Mac. It's not worth their time, be they working for a company, indie or open source. Plus you'd rather have no software vs software that's not designed specifically for the Mac? You'd best ditch macOS then, because most of it wasn't designed for the Mac. Oh and stop assuming it's all about games, OpenGL is used in a lot more than just games, whereas Metal isn't, and there's no indication it will be suitable for anything but.

mcdave said:

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

Stow the ‘oppressed 12-year old’ act nobody’s fooled.  Cheap tricks to trigger an imposition with Ballmer-esque ‘my way or the highway’ babble doesn’t wash with Apple users.  Apple decides what it’s products do, we decide if we buy them.

Perhaps the headline should read; “Company that can’t be bothered to update it’s software retroactively blames Apple.”

I was hoping Autodesk would come to the Metal-party mainly on iPad but, like Adobe, I guess they’ll just be an also-ran as any developer who puts self-interest before customer experience deserves to be.

Yep and look what happened to Microsoft under Ballmer. Now Satya is embracing open source and MS has begun to find its rudder once more. Apple is going in the opposite direction, becoming slowly more and more closed and incompatible, as they were in the mid 90's. And we all know how popular the mid-90's Apple was. "Cheap tricks to trigger an imposition" what? 

mcdave said:

Apple decides what it’s products do, we decide if we buy them.

Yep and Apple of late seems to doing it's damnedest to make computers with so many compromises people aren't happy with them, buying them begrudgingly because it's the only option with MacOS.

 Also preeeeetty sure Autodesk isn't an also-ran. Their software is used in a vast number of industries. The seat you're sat on was probably designed with Autodesk software. Apple likely uses it to model their Macs. So no, they're not becoming irrelevant anytime soon no matter how far you bury your head in the Apple-shaped sand,

AFAIK, the three major PLM software companies are Siemens, Dassault, and PTC. Autodesk is at the next lower tier with Inventor Pro, along with SolidEdge (Siemens), SolidWorks(Dassault), and likely there is a number of others out there in foreign use or niche industries.
My recollection is that Apple users Siemens NX.

OpenGL is obsolete. It's just that these legacy codebase's are a bitch to transition to anything better. Apple is correct to move on, even if it costs them some users.

From a guy running SolidWorks and Inventor Pro/Inventor HSM on a Lenovo D20 running Windows 7, of which I have two other "sibling" machines for spare parts.

slurpy

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

Apple has signaled a long time ago that they will be dropping support for OpenGL. This is on the lazy as fuck developers who don't care enough to update their products, not on Apple. Apple has dropped hundreds of outdated technologies over the years, software and hardware, and ultimately it has made their products better, as well as leading to better experiences for everyone. And is Apple "listened to customers" we'd still have serial ports and optical drives, so no, Apple doesn't need to "listen" when it comes to shit like this, if they did nothing would ever move forward. It has been short term pain for the sake of longer term gain every SINGLE time. 

georgie01

elijahg said:

You can write code can you? You know how much effort is required to rewrite a game engine for a different API? There's a country mile difference between "programmers are being lazy" and the actual reason, marketshare of the Mac. It's not worth their time, be they working for a company, indie or open source. Plus you'd rather have no software vs software that's not designed specifically for the Mac? You'd best ditch macOS then, because most of it wasn't designed for the Mac. Oh and stop assuming it's all about games, OpenGL is used in a lot more than just games, whereas Metal isn't, and there's no indication it will be suitable for anything but.

Although you weren’t addressing me, I’ve been doing software development (i.e. writing code) for the past 20 years, including various 3D projects that weren’t game related. I know what’s involved in porting between APIs. There is an element of investment vs return as you point out, but you’re not taking into account that those people who don’t have the resources to do a proper port to multiple operating systems are already doing a poor job on one or more OS. To create a good application that app must ‘fit in’ on each platform, which means there will already be differences between the same app on multiple platforms. A company not invested enough in doing this (for whatever legitimate reason) is not really in a position to moan and complain they aren’t getting what they want and request features from a platform they don’t really care about. Personally I’m quite happy to lose substandard apps from macOS even if they are useful.

Secondly, it’s silly to say Metal hasn’t been proven for non-games. Do you suppose that the graphics API knows whether it’s being used for games or scientific applications? Games are often used as the baseline because they maximise GPU performance more so than other applications, even though they’re not ‘real work’. 

mikethemartian

macxpress said:

mikethemartian said:

commentzilla said:

elijahg said:

Oh great, as predicted Apple's abandonment of OpenGL is causing developers to drop macOS support even before Mojave is out. Maybe a few more of these announcements will cause them to change course, though Apple's not really known for listening to its customers on things like this. But of course, this is good for Apple customers and Apple knows best..! 

Autodesk has always be lazy to support the Mac. They don't bother to keep it current even when they do support the Mac. Everyone is dropping OpenGL and it's subpar performance. Eventually they'll have no choice but to update their outdated software. They've never really been relevant to the Mac, so I'm not sure it matters all that much.

It's also important to remember that Windows has Direct X. Apple cannot produce the same or better performance with a generic API for their own silicon, Metal + A Series chips will give them an advantage that no one else has in the market. Give it time.

Seems more like the Mac is irrelevant to the industry they serve.

Then why did they get into the Mac platform in the first place?

I don’t use Autodesk software so I’m not familiar with it but the EM simulation software I use is usually cross platform: Windows, Linux and Mac. There is a layer of abstraction between the application and the hardware it is running on. So the software isn’t written specifically to run on a Mac. It relies on that middle layer to work.