OpenGL, OpenCL deprecated in favor of Metal 2 in macOS 10.14 Mojave

loopless · June 5, 2018 4:49PM

This is the kiss of death for CAD/CAE on the Mac..OpenGL is widely used across nearly all cad/cae applications.

nht · June 5, 2018 4:53PM

rcfa said:

As much as performance is great, part of the appeal of the Mac was superior compliance with open industry standards.

Looks like Apple feels iOS’ market penetration gives it enough clout to start acting like M$ and simply become ever more proprietary. Sad.

Apple could have either worked within standards bodies to move OpenGL/OpenCL towards Metal, create an OpenGL/OpenCL API on top of Metal, or opened up Metal like they opened up Swift for industry-wide adoption.

That approach worked so well for Sun...

cgwerks · June 5, 2018 5:33PM

kbeat said:

That said, without a little push, devs can be very, very slow to adapt, as adapting requires time and effort up front. If it can be avoided, they'll avoid it, but this should do the trick. Oh, and to those inclined to panic over such things, if devs and publishers are making money selling their games and apps on macOS, they will continue to do so. If they don't, they won't. This will not have any impact in terms of releasing software. If they're making money, they'll adapt, like devs always do.

Didn't several of the 3D/CAD apps that were PC based do a Mac port because it was relatively simple to do? If they have to go back and rework things to work with Metal, I'm wondering if that might push them back to Windows only. But, I haven't kept up enough on it to really understand the impact, I'll admit.

wizard69 said:
Not enough! Im not sure if Apple gives a damn anymore but you wont see professional apps moving away from OpenGL. Professional in this case being CAD/CAM type tools. Games i dont care about that much and frankly there is huge incentive for those developers to switch. The problem lies squarely in the realm of likited distribution software where developers cant justify a different API on every platform. Thus you either get no ports at all or Mac OS specific apps.

Yeah, that's my fear. Maybe I should have worded it differently than 'creatives' as I guess that makes people assume Photoshop.

guillone · June 10, 2018 2:19AM

I only use Apple software, so makes no difference to me what their underlying platform is.
Just get on with bringing the new hardware already.....

OpenGL, OpenCL deprecated in favor of Metal 2 in macOS 10.14 Mojave

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