If Apple were serious about Metal, they would have released it on Windows and Linux.
That’s dumb. Apple has 250 billion or so in cash, however. Why they can’t make an agreement with these companies to lend out Apple engineers? The engineers would help the third parties rewrite their software to take advantage of Apple’s new products and technologies. Look, we know that these companies don’t care about modernizing anything. Hell, corporate environments themselves hate updating software in the first place. So if Apple wants people* to use their new technologies, they’ll have to be proactive about getting third parties to update their software, rather than simply expecting them to do it.
*People meaning “professional software companies”, which admittedly Apple doesn’t give a shit about anymore since they really only make currency off people who don’t know where the power switch is on their computer.
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.
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 Eventually they'll have no choice but to update their outdated software.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.
What looks like detriment today will look like advantage tomorrow.
Not if the end result is that whole classes of software disappears from the platform.
In SJ's time the company was fighting tooth and nail to keep as many users as possible on, or attracted to the platform. Now management seem to be content with user migrating off to Windows or Linux. That or they delude themselves the iPad Pro can fill the gap. do
What whole classes of software are disappearing? Alias and VRED are niche products. And AutoCAD, which hasn’t left, has many competitors who are quite commented to Mac. So what are you talking about?
A large number of scientific, EDU, 3D and 2D graphics, in addition to open source libraries and titles that all depend on OpenGL, and where it is highly unlikely that they ever will be ported to 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.
Point is that Apple is trying to use great iOS customer base as carrot for companies to port to MacOS. They deprecate OpenGL because it’s not running on iOS and make it easy to port iOS apps to MacOS and opposite MacOS apps to iOS with new frameworks. So if you are developing for Mac with Metal suddenly you get also access to big customer base of iOS and this is quite big carrot. Also if you use for games Unity or similar environments, Metal is no problem.
I really think this announcement from Autodesk it entirely dishonest. They've decided to discontinue macOS support and now they want to make it look as if it was Apple's fault, which is nonsense.
Sort of like Adobe's dropping FrameMaker for the Mac. Don't update the software for a couple years, then claim that poor sales (of the dusty thing) was because nobody was interested in it. Ignoring years of "when are you going to update/fix the package"?
The problem people are overlooking here is not with apple no longer supporting opengl, or that Autodesk is cancelling apps for Mac, but the fact that Autodesk only had 4-5 developers on these apps, instead of roughly 20 in years past. So now is a good time to cancel the apps that are clearly not viable enough to afford more developers on. MacOS is not the platform for serious 3d work, and hasn't been since the cheesegraters were discontinued...
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?
High Sierra and Mojave introduced OpenGL bugs that Apple doesn't seem wont to fix now that it's deprecated. May be it more than the deprecated status alone.
Anyways -
"In the end, the entire Alias and VRED community will benefit from this streamlined approach," wrote the company.
Reads a bit like they could potentially be moving over to Metal anyways? The entire community will benefit...
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.
Actually not everyone is dropping OpenGL. In fact the reason outfits like Apple couldnt get any traction in a modernized OpenGL is the resistance on the committee from the big graphics companies.
Mantle, Metal and the other new APIs came about as an alternative to OpenGL due to OpenGL being a prisoner of the people responsible for its development.
Complaining is futile. Accept what they offer or go elsewhere.
But there is no elsewhere to go. If you want to be in show business you have to go to Hollywood. If you want to be in advertising, you need to go to New York. If you want to be in architecture/mechanical engineering you go with Autodesk in order to be compatible with your industry peers. Mac enthusiasts sometimes pay a price for their platform preference. You have to decide if you want to be a professional architect/engineer or do you want to be Mac exclusive, because the two are for the most part mutually exclusive. Sure you can struggle along as a Mac loner in a Windows centric industry but is that what you really want to do? Even with AutoCad 2018 for Mac it was missing several features and toolsets which were available only on Windows due to underlying Windows only technologies that have no equivalent in MacOS. Forget about Autodesk not supporting Mac in AutoCad 2019. They barely supported it in AutoCad 2018.
While i understand your point AutoCAD has come under huge pressure from companies offering 3D or solid modeling applications. At least in the mechanical engineering field they have. Solidworks all on its own has seen significant migration away from AutoCAD.
Now tgat isnt to say AutoCAD has disappeared but as a 2D platform it is legacy software.
This is an interesting thread with a lot of people not too happy with Apple and their transition to Metal. I honestly think Apple is doing the right thing here even if im a bit put off by Apples managemrnt of the Mac line.
The reason is pretty simple, they hit a wall with OpenGL! Tearing down that wall wasnt feasible so they built something new. That is good because OpenGL has been around for a long time now (decades) and too many companies arecinvested in it for rapid change.
Because of this we now have a very performant graphics lib that is a close relative of an up and coming industry standard. That standard being Vulkan. Considering that performance of these new APIis is dramatically better than OpenGL, OpenGL will soon become a bit of history seen only in legacy software.
I believe this will become more evident as new software is released and old updated. Yes even in the open source world Vulkan is getting real traction - it is the modern way! However people need to realize just how new Vulkan and Metal are, it will take time to displace OpenGL. In five years time you will see very little being done in OpenGL even in the open source world.
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.
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.
What looks like detriment today will look like advantage tomorrow.
Not if the end result is that whole classes of software disappears from the platform.
In SJ's time the company was fighting tooth and nail to keep as many users as possible on, or attracted to the platform. Now management seem to be content with user migrating off to Windows or Linux. That or they delude themselves the iPad Pro can fill the gap. do
What whole classes of software are disappearing? Alias and VRED are niche products. And AutoCAD, which hasn’t left, has many competitors who are quite commented to Mac. So what are you talking about?
A large number of scientific, EDU, 3D and 2D graphics, in addition to open source libraries and titles that all depend on OpenGL, and where it is highly unlikely that they ever will be ported to Metal.
What evidence do you present that these entire categories of software are, in fact, vanishing from Mac never to return? How are you able to read the future?
Complaining is futile. Accept what they offer or go elsewhere.
But there is no elsewhere to go. If you want to be in show business you have to go to Hollywood. If you want to be in advertising, you need to go to New York. If you want to be in architecture/mechanical engineering you go with Autodesk in order to be compatible with your industry peers. Mac enthusiasts sometimes pay a price for their platform preference. You have to decide if you want to be a professional architect/engineer or do you want to be Mac exclusive, because the two are for the most part mutually exclusive. Sure you can struggle along as a Mac loner in a Windows centric industry but is that what you really want to do? Even with AutoCad 2018 for Mac it was missing several features and toolsets which were available only on Windows due to underlying Windows only technologies that have no equivalent in MacOS. Forget about Autodesk not supporting Mac in AutoCad 2019. They barely supported it in AutoCad 2018.
While i understand your point AutoCAD has come under huge pressure from companies offering 3D or solid modeling applications. At least in the mechanical engineering field they have. Solidworks all on its own has seen significant migration away from AutoCAD.
Now tgat isnt to say AutoCAD has disappeared but as a 2D platform it is legacy software.
While true for AutoCAD, I would also note that SolidWorks Corporation has nothing comparable to AutoDesk Fusion 360, which is a very low cost, or free in some cases, robust MCAD package with Maker capabilities, such as CNC programming and STL editing. Considering that the Ultimate version with nonlinear FEA and 5 Axis programming is only a few hundreds dollars difference in yearly subscription from the lowest end SW package, I'm thinking that AutoDesk isn't overly concerned with that matchup.
wizard69 said:While i understand your point AutoCAD has come under huge pressure from companies offering 3D or solid modeling applications. At least in the mechanical engineering field they have. Solidworks all on its own has seen significant migration away from AutoCAD.
Now tgat isnt to say AutoCAD has disappeared but as a 2D platform it is legacy software.
AutoCad is not simply a 2D CAD application although their recent mobile offerings under the program "Only One" currently only supports 2D. The full desktop Windows version is a very capable 3D environment. In my previous remarks I should have said structural engineering vs mechanical engineering to differentiate from the niche that is SolidWorks which I view as mechanical engineering software for small parts type of 3D printing, injection molding, CNC etc. although I have no actual experience working with it.
ElCapitan said: A large number of scientific, EDU, 3D and 2D graphics, in addition to open source libraries and titles that all depend on OpenGL, and where it is highly unlikely that they ever will be ported to Metal.
What evidence do you present that these entire categories of software are, in fact, vanishing from Mac never to return? How are you able to read the future?
I'm not sure I'd say it is a sure thing... but I know other developers who are questioning the future on the Mac at this point due to this announcement. And, as others have said, I'd imagine there are hundreds of various utilities and apps that aren't going to move to Metal.
I guess my question is, if Metal is even a suitable replacement. Assuming Apple wants professional apps on iOS at some point, I'd hope so. But, running complex solids CAD or working with several million polygons in a 3D app is a whole different animal than Pokemon or Temple Run.
wizard69 said: I believe this will become more evident as new software is released and old updated. Yes even in the open source world Vulkan is getting real traction - it is the modern way! However people need to realize just how new Vulkan and Metal are, it will take time to displace OpenGL. In five years time you will see very little being done in OpenGL even in the open source world.
What is the relationship between Metal and Vulkan? Is Apple going to support Vulkan?
wizard69 said: ... Now tgat isnt to say AutoCAD has disappeared but as a 2D platform it is legacy software.
AutoCad is not simply a 2D CAD application although their recent mobile offerings under the program "Only One" currently only supports 2D. The full desktop Windows version is a very capable 3D environment. In my previous remarks I should have said structural engineering vs mechanical engineering to differentiate from the niche that is SolidWorks which I view as mechanical engineering software for small parts type of 3D printing, injection molding, CNC etc. although I have no actual experience working with it.
IMO, it's kind of the Word of CAD. While I haven't kept up with it all for a while now, their implementation of 3D was quite different from solids modelers. But, as you say, it kind of depends on the type of work you are doing.
So they are making a loss and this move is just cost-cutting, nothing to do with OpenGL.
I'm no business expert but perhaps an Autodesk purchase would be both doable and fiscally responsible. Get their full suite ported native to Mac OS and where practical, to iOS and then spin the company off.
Comments
*People meaning “professional software companies”, which admittedly Apple doesn’t give a shit about anymore since they really only make currency off people who don’t know where the power switch is on their computer.
Also if you use for games Unity or similar environments, Metal is no problem.
High Sierra and Mojave introduced OpenGL bugs that Apple doesn't seem wont to fix now that it's deprecated. May be it more than the deprecated status alone.
Anyways -
"In the end, the entire Alias and VRED community will benefit from this streamlined approach," wrote the company.
Reads a bit like they could potentially be moving over to Metal anyways? The entire community will benefit...
Mantle, Metal and the other new APIs came about as an alternative to OpenGL due to OpenGL being a prisoner of the people responsible for its development.
Now tgat isnt to say AutoCAD has disappeared but as a 2D platform it is legacy software.
The reason is pretty simple, they hit a wall with OpenGL! Tearing down that wall wasnt feasible so they built something new. That is good because OpenGL has been around for a long time now (decades) and too many companies arecinvested in it for rapid change.
Because of this we now have a very performant graphics lib that is a close relative of an up and coming industry standard. That standard being Vulkan. Considering that performance of these new APIis is dramatically better than OpenGL, OpenGL will soon become a bit of history seen only in legacy software.
I believe this will become more evident as new software is released and old updated. Yes even in the open source world Vulkan is getting real traction - it is the modern way! However people need to realize just how new Vulkan and Metal are, it will take time to displace OpenGL. In five years time you will see very little being done in OpenGL even in the open source world.
I guess my question is, if Metal is even a suitable replacement. Assuming Apple wants professional apps on iOS at some point, I'd hope so. But, running complex solids CAD or working with several million polygons in a 3D app is a whole different animal than Pokemon or Temple Run.
What is the relationship between Metal and Vulkan? Is Apple going to support Vulkan?
IMO, it's kind of the Word of CAD. While I haven't kept up with it all for a while now, their implementation of 3D was quite different from solids modelers. But, as you say, it kind of depends on the type of work you are doing.