Why macOS Mojave requires Metal -- and deprecates OpenGL

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  • Reply 21 of 137
    jimh2jimh2 Posts: 611member
    MacPro said:
    Very informative, thanks.

    Question, what is the impact on the latest Macs running Windows 10 and beyond under Boot Camp, I assume none and Window will just continue as is, even on the latest Macs?
    No impact as Windows will continue to use OpenGL and work as it always has. 
    watto_cobra
  • Reply 22 of 137
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member

    mjtomlin said:
    tylersdad said:
    This still makes no sense at all. There is no reason why Apple can't support their native SDK (Metal) and OpenGL. Microsoft has been doing this for decades with DirectX.

    The majority of game developers won't bother with creating Metal versions of their rendering engines. There won't be enough customers to justify it.

    Two things...

    First, Apple hasn't updated OpenGL for a while now. Probably when they starting pushing Metal. So the OpenGL implementation included with iOS and macOS are fairly old, I think it's at 2.1, while the latest is 4.6. So there really is only a limited amount of "cross platform" compatibility for developers.

    Second, the entire industry is moving away from OpenGL. There is now a Khronos project, Vulkan, that is meant to replace OpenGL and OpenGL ES. And there is a version that "runs" on top of Apple's Metal called MoltenVk, so if developers must have cross platform compatibility, then they can move to it, instead of Metal.
    It is my understanding that Vulkan and Metal are very similar, possibly developed from the same code base.    Im not a 3D graphics programmer so i can't say from experience from using the 2 APIs.  If true there is very little in the way of shimming required.  

    As for OpenGL the problem there is that CAD and engineering software businesses depend upon it and had enough control over the development process to prevent OpenGL modernization.   The gaming industry on the other hand rushed to leave OpenGL behind.    This is almost completely due to performance issues with OpenGL, basically game developers want as much performance as they can get.  

    On the otherhand developers of engineering and visulization software are more concerned about stability, correctness and other issues.   I suspect that most of these developers will leave OpenGL behind for Vulkan at some point.   They simply are not in a rush and frankly Vulkan needs to stabilize.   So what im saying here is that i expect Vulkan to be the industry standard moving forward.   That means API translation libraries for Apples Metal for non game related apps.  
    cgWerkswatto_cobraAlex1Nmacplusplus
  • Reply 23 of 137
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    snailer said:
    Looks like I'm gonna have to upgrade my Mac Pro 5,1 graphics card. I'm running a Radeon HD 7950 3GB. Does anybody know what cards support Metal on my machine?
    None. We’re stuck. Even if you happened to buy a third party GPU that supports Metal, you still can’t use it. You can’t install install Mojave with the card installed because the graphics drivers will be wiped upon update. To install new graphics drivers, you would have to use a different graphics card to see the UI, but none of the ones that DO work with Mojave can be used in a Mac Pro.

    EDIT: Hang on, you MIGHT be able to boot it after a Mojave install, blind-type your way into your account, and then use screen sharing to run the driver install from a virtualized desktop.
    The Mojave beta does not as of yet support the 5,1. Support has been promised for release, though.

    And OpenGL is not wiped from macOS yet. It's just been officially deprecated after years of neglect. It's still in Mojave.
    edited June 2018 watto_cobraAlex1N
  • Reply 24 of 137
    wizard69wizard69 Posts: 13,377member
    It is built in obsolescence. Windows will run on 15 year old computers while Mac OS will refuse to run on any Mac built more than six years ago. There is really no technical reason why Mac OS could not run on a 2010 Intel CPU. These are decisions made at the top of the company. Apple does what is best for Apple and not for its customers. The reason developers are not up in arms about Apple dropping OpenGL and OpenCL is that it really happened years ago when Apple stopped updating it. Mac OS is now about five years out of date. When you look at the extremely poor library of AAA games available on the Mac, know that it is Apple's poor hardware features and lack of cross platform software support that is the major reason. Of course people don't buy Macs to play games. Pretty soon people won't buy Macs at all.
    I've been hearing this for 15 years, and yet, here we are.

    When does "pretty soon" arrive?
    Actually for me "pretty soon" arrived this year in January.   Not so much because of Metal but rather due to Apples apathy with respect to the Mac lineup.  That is the hardware is either so outdated or of such low quality that my money for a new laptop went someplace else.    I really hated to do that because there is a lot to like about Mac OS.  The problem is i can program in Python on just about any machine these days and my other uses only occasionally leverage the full potential of the systems. Notably this is delivered on a laptop with modern hardware (better CPU, far better GPU, ports that keep my legacy hardware usable, a great screen &etc), all on a laptop that is $700 less that Apples solutions.  

    So yeah "pretty soon" is already here.   Yeah Windows sucks, there is no debate there but Linux can be a good alternative.   All i can say is that Apple must start updating its hardware because software is only part of the machine.  It has been more than a decade since Apples machines have been such a pathetic value.   I really cant tolerate price increases on such poor machines either.    So yeah there are problems in Mac land.  
    elijahgwilliamlondonAlex1N
  • Reply 25 of 137
    Mike WuertheleMike Wuerthele Posts: 6,858administrator
    wizard69 said:
    It is built in obsolescence. Windows will run on 15 year old computers while Mac OS will refuse to run on any Mac built more than six years ago. There is really no technical reason why Mac OS could not run on a 2010 Intel CPU. These are decisions made at the top of the company. Apple does what is best for Apple and not for its customers. The reason developers are not up in arms about Apple dropping OpenGL and OpenCL is that it really happened years ago when Apple stopped updating it. Mac OS is now about five years out of date. When you look at the extremely poor library of AAA games available on the Mac, know that it is Apple's poor hardware features and lack of cross platform software support that is the major reason. Of course people don't buy Macs to play games. Pretty soon people won't buy Macs at all.
    I've been hearing this for 15 years, and yet, here we are.

    When does "pretty soon" arrive?
    Actually for me "pretty soon" arrived this year in January.   Not so much because of Metal but rather due to Apples apathy with respect to the Mac lineup.  That is the hardware is either so outdated or of such low quality that my money for a new laptop went someplace else.    I really hated to do that because there is a lot to like about Mac OS.  The problem is i can program in Python on just about any machine these days and my other uses only occasionally leverage the full potential of the systems. Notably this is delivered on a laptop with modern hardware (better CPU, far better GPU, ports that keep my legacy hardware usable, a great screen &etc), all on a laptop that is $700 less that Apples solutions.  

    So yeah "pretty soon" is already here.   Yeah Windows sucks, there is no debate there but Linux can be a good alternative.   All i can say is that Apple must start updating its hardware because software is only part of the machine.  It has been more than a decade since Apples machines have been such a pathetic value.   I really cant tolerate price increases on such poor machines either.    So yeah there are problems in Mac land.  
    Don't get me wrong, I understand why you're there. Everybody has to make decisions about what the right tool for the right job is.

    But saying that everybody is there and nobody is buying Macs flies in the face of facts.
    edited June 2018 SoliroundaboutnowStrangeDayswilliamlondonmuthuk_vanalingamwatto_cobraAlex1Nmacplusplus
  • Reply 26 of 137
    looplessloopless Posts: 325member
    Deprecating OpenGL will be the 'kiss of death' for many CAE and CAD programs on the Mac. CAE/CAD software has different needs to games. Typically large amount of 3D data with simple rendering - and OpenGL does just fine, thank you.

    Most people may not realize that Microsoft has been deprecating OpenGL for many years without killing it.

    Windows ships with OpenGL 1.1 -the vendors ( nVidia/AMD/Intel) have to provide OpenGL implementations for their cards, not Microsoft. The reason they do is that the CAE/CAD software industry is mainly OpenGL based, sells a lot of high end Windows workstations for Microsoft and Dell/HP and I honestly can't see them moving away from OpenGL anytime soon. So Apple will kill OpenGL on MacOS,  and the CAD/CAE companies will just stick exclusively to Windows.
    elijahgshell3000ElCapitanloquiturcgWerkswatto_cobraAlex1N
  • Reply 27 of 137
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    And OpenGL is not wiped from macOS yet. It's just been officially deprecated after years of neglect. It's still in Mojave.
    Sounds like we could maybe get that Metal-compatible GPU driver installed if dosdude can work up a copy of Mojave with the OpenGL renderer reactivated.
    loquiturwatto_cobra
  • Reply 28 of 137
    shell3000shell3000 Posts: 1unconfirmed, member
    Sorry, not helpful, as long as there is no list of "Metal-capable graphics cards" ...
    williamlondon
  • Reply 29 of 137
    kbeekbee Posts: 25member
    Moving away from OpenGL (and not moving to Vulkan) is one of Apples biggest mistakes:
    - OpenGL and it's successor Vulkan are industry standards, Metal is a proprietary Apple technology (the way Microsoft would have done it).
    - Lots of technologies are built on top of industry standards, all software developers developing cross platform applications rely on industry standards.
    - Embedded systems ship with OpenGL (with Vulkan being not available right now on most platforms).
    - Famous frameworks like Qt are build on top of OpenGL and offer a little bit of Vulkan.
    - Famous tools like Blender are built on top of OpenGL and don't care about Metal.
    - Not a single Linux platform supports something like Metal or DirecxtX (to name both proprietary technologies in a single sentence).
    - The Web is build on top of standards - ever heard of WebGL? There won't be a WebMetal or WebDirectX.

    Game engines:
    Yeah! Game engines support Metal! But if we have a closer look, a lot of this game engines use frameworks like MoltenVK to map their Vulkan calls to Metal.
    Shame on you Apple! There is a good and open standard and Apple doesn't support it!

    Apple custom GPU:
    So why is Apple moving in the direction of Metal? Cause Apple is building it's own custom GPU and so Apple doesn't have to implement OpenGL or Vulkan functionalities! Makes sense from Apples point of view but it maybe breaks compatibility with Vulkan/OpenGL in the future.
    No one knows if the next Vulkan version will be supported on the next Apple GPU version cause Apple just doesn't care.

    What Apple should have done is replacing OpenGL with Vulkan. A lot of developers including myself are turning away from Apple. Slow GPU, bad hardware, bad keyboards, everything soldered and glued, no ports, not replaceable SSD/RAM, no powerhorse Mac Pro - and the best no more OpenGL/Vulkan support in the future.

    Goodby Apple

    P.S.
    This was my first post in 12 years Appleinsider. It was always fun to read the articles but in the past Appleinsider articles read like Apple press releases.
     

    elijahgwilliamlondoncgWerksshell3000
  • Reply 30 of 137
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member
    tylersdad said:
    This still makes no sense at all. There is no reason why Apple can't support their native SDK (Metal) and OpenGL. Microsoft has been doing this for decades with DirectX.

    The majority of game developers won't bother with creating Metal versions of their rendering engines. There won't be enough customers to justify it.
    What about 3D games targeting iOS? There certainly are enough customers to justify coding for iOS, and if you can easily pick up macOS too, why not? I'm pretty sure it's iOS that is the leverage here.

    As for it making "no sense at all", unless you're a 3D graphics programmer, I have to weight your opinion on what makes sense technically accordingly. You're not, right?
    williamlondonmuthuk_vanalingamwatto_cobraAlex1N
  • Reply 31 of 137
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member

    It is built in obsolescence. Windows will run on 15 year old computers while Mac OS will refuse to run on any Mac built more than six years ago. There is really no technical reason why Mac OS could not run on a 2010 Intel CPU. These are decisions made at the top of the company. Apple does what is best for Apple and not for its customers. The reason developers are not up in arms about Apple dropping OpenGL and OpenCL is that it really happened years ago when Apple stopped updating it. Mac OS is now about five years out of date. When you look at the extremely poor library of AAA games available on the Mac, know that it is Apple's poor hardware features and lack of cross platform software support that is the major reason. Of course people don't buy Macs to play games. Pretty soon people won't buy Macs at all.
    Patenty false garbage. I'm currently running the latest macOS on my 2011 -- a seven-year-old system. And it runs very well (I'm a software dev and this is my desktop machine). I have not had the same pleasant experience running Windows on seven-year-old hardware. Have you?

    The rest of your post is uninformed nonsense.
    roundaboutnowtallest skilRayz2016williamlondonwatto_cobraAlex1N
  • Reply 32 of 137
    tomahawktomahawk Posts: 178member
    mjtomlin said:
    tylersdad said:
    This still makes no sense at all. There is no reason why Apple can't support their native SDK (Metal) and OpenGL. Microsoft has been doing this for decades with DirectX.

    The majority of game developers won't bother with creating Metal versions of their rendering engines. There won't be enough customers to justify it.

    Two things...

    First, Apple hasn't updated OpenGL for a while now. Probably when they starting pushing Metal. So the OpenGL implementation included with iOS and macOS are fairly old, I think it's at 2.1, while the latest is 4.6. So there really is only a limited amount of "cross platform" compatibility for developers.

    Second, the entire industry is moving away from OpenGL. There is now a Khronos project, Vulkan, that is meant to replace OpenGL and OpenGL ES. And there is a version that "runs" on top of Apple's Metal called MoltenVk, so if developers must have cross platform compatibility, then they can move to it, instead of Metal.
    Being able to move to Metal on new projects is great.  How about the thousands of scientific programs that were written for Linux that can be compiled on macOS because OpenGL is supported.  Many of those types of programs are written, released and never updated again.

    It is interesting that at the same time Microsoft is adding Linux support within Windows, Apple is doing something that might eliminate the compatibility they've had for years.  One of the strong selling points for Mac's with OS X in the scientific community has always been they could run their Unix/Linux programs and Microsoft Office at the same time.  Removing OpenGL will break many of those programs and help push the science community to Windows, where they can now run their Unix/Linux programs and Office.

    There is no reason Apple couldn't deprecate OpenGL for development but assure users they will continue to support older programs using OpenGL.  Heck, putting a little effort into updating to a newer version and some updates for xQuartz (X11) wouldn't kill them either.  Or announce a path to move OpenGL support to a project that can be installed to provide the support needed for these programs.  Then developers will have an incentive to use Metal, but support for OpenGL would still be available for existing code.
    edited June 2018 elijahgcgWerksAlex1N
  • Reply 33 of 137
    djames4242djames4242 Posts: 651member
    sflocal said:
    It is built in obsolescence. Windows will run on 15 year old computers while Mac OS will refuse to run on any Mac built more than six years ago. There is really no technical reason why Mac OS could not run on a 2010 Intel CPU. These are decisions made at the top of the company. Apple does what is best for Apple and not for its customers. The reason developers are not up in arms about Apple dropping OpenGL and OpenCL is that it really happened years ago when Apple stopped updating it. Mac OS is now about five years out of date. When you look at the extremely poor library of AAA games available on the Mac, know that it is Apple's poor hardware features and lack of cross platform software support that is the major reason. Of course people don't buy Macs to play games. Pretty soon people won't buy Macs at all.
    Oh give us a break.  Sure, Windows will run on a 15 year old computer, but if you want to get actual WORK done on that computer, you're SOOL.  Enough with the tired, moot debate.  It's obvious you have an agenda, so just move on.

    I run all variants of Windows on my Mac (as a VM) for corporate work, and I am more than happy that Apple does not follow that same path.  

    Not only does Windows run like crap on old hardware, that Microsoft keeps support for this older hardware is part of why it's such a gawd-awful, relatively unreliable operating system. I get it - Microsoft is kind of in a hard position because of its dominance in corporations. They have to continue to support this old stuff, but it comes at a high price.

    I'm also really glad that Apple doesn't continue to support legacy hardware. My seven-year-old MacBook Pro is about to be obsolete because of it, but that's part of the price I pay as a Mac enthusiast. It sucks because it's one of the last machines you can upgrade (I long ago ripped out the optical drive in favor of a second storage device, and have upgrade its RAM twice), but I will suck it up and replace it with a retina machine next year.
    macxpresswatto_cobraAlex1N
  • Reply 34 of 137
    techconctechconc Posts: 275member
    tylersdad said:
    This still makes no sense at all. There is no reason why Apple can't support their native SDK (Metal) and OpenGL. Microsoft has been doing this for decades with DirectX.

    The majority of game developers won't bother with creating Metal versions of their rendering engines. There won't be enough customers to justify it.
    As Mike mentioned, all of the major game engines already have been updated to support Metal. Apple made that point very clear when they debutted Meal years ago. Could Apple continue to support OpenGL, start to support Vulcan, etc? Yes, they could. However, it would be a waste of resources. Right now, the only benefit of continuing to support OpenGL is not to break old applications that have not been updated and ported to Metal. It has already been 4 years now since Metal came out. The writing was on the wall. Apple will likely keep OpenGL in the current deprecated state for another release or two of the OS. After that, I would expect it will be gone. The benefits are that all programs that are running on your machine will be much better optimized. At some point, it's time to flush out the stale garbage that hasn't been updated in years. All of the major players are on board. Not just games, but major apps from Adobe, etc. In the end, I believe this is a good thing for the platform overall.
    watto_cobraAlex1Nmacplusplus
  • Reply 35 of 137
    georgie01georgie01 Posts: 436member
    kbee said:
    Moving away from OpenGL (and not moving to Vulkan) is one of Apples biggest mistakes:
    - OpenGL and it's successor Vulkan are industry standards, Metal is a proprietary Apple technology (the way Microsoft would have done it).
    - Lots of technologies are built on top of industry standards, all software developers developing cross platform applications rely on industry standards.
    - Embedded systems ship with OpenGL (with Vulkan being not available right now on most platforms).
    - Famous frameworks like Qt are build on top of OpenGL and offer a little bit of Vulkan.
    - Famous tools like Blender are built on top of OpenGL and don't care about Metal.
    - Not a single Linux platform supports something like Metal or DirecxtX (to name both proprietary technologies in a single sentence).
    - The Web is build on top of standards - ever heard of WebGL? There won't be a WebMetal or WebDirectX.

    Game engines:
    Yeah! Game engines support Metal! But if we have a closer look, a lot of this game engines use frameworks like MoltenVK to map their Vulkan calls to Metal.
    Shame on you Apple! There is a good and open standard and Apple doesn't support it!

    Apple custom GPU:
    So why is Apple moving in the direction of Metal? Cause Apple is building it's own custom GPU and so Apple doesn't have to implement OpenGL or Vulkan functionalities! Makes sense from Apples point of view but it maybe breaks compatibility with Vulkan/OpenGL in the future.
    No one knows if the next Vulkan version will be supported on the next Apple GPU version cause Apple just doesn't care.

    What Apple should have done is replacing OpenGL with Vulkan. A lot of developers including myself are turning away from Apple. Slow GPU, bad hardware, bad keyboards, everything soldered and glued, no ports, not replaceable SSD/RAM, no powerhorse Mac Pro - and the best no more OpenGL/Vulkan support in the future.

    Goodby Apple

    P.S.
    This was my first post in 12 years Appleinsider. It was always fun to read the articles but in the past Appleinsider articles read like Apple press releases.
     

    Rather than indulge in presumptuous ideas based on passionate feelings, it is a lot more worthwhile to guess that Apple developed Metal because they felt they knew how to get more performance out of their own hardware than an ‘open standard’ could—that sounds pro-consumer to me, to be offered the best performance on the device I paid too much money for. They possibly are also hoping they can leverage iOS’s strength to encourage developers to embrace it on macOS as well. In fact, all of that is a lot more likely than the ideas you presented above.

    It doesn’t mean anyone needs to like Metal, but complaining Apple is anti-consumer because of it is rather absurd.

    Oh, and btw, I have yet to see an app based on Qt that doesn’t have a sucky UI/UX. It’s a framework for developers who either don’t have the resources to produce a proper UI for different platforms or who lack taste or understanding. That’s not a good example to be using to support your point.
    edited June 2018 StrangeDaysroundaboutnowtechconcwatto_cobraAlex1N
  • Reply 36 of 137
    IreneWIreneW Posts: 303member
    georgie01 said:
    kbee said:
    Moving away from OpenGL (and not moving to Vulkan) is one of Apples biggest mistakes:
    - OpenGL and it's successor Vulkan are industry standards, Metal is a proprietary Apple technology (the way Microsoft would have done it).
    - Lots of technologies are built on top of industry standards, all software developers developing cross platform applications rely on industry standards.
    - Embedded systems ship with OpenGL (with Vulkan being not available right now on most platforms).
    - Famous frameworks like Qt are build on top of OpenGL and offer a little bit of Vulkan.
    - Famous tools like Blender are built on top of OpenGL and don't care about Metal.
    - Not a single Linux platform supports something like Metal or DirecxtX (to name both proprietary technologies in a single sentence).
    - The Web is build on top of standards - ever heard of WebGL? There won't be a WebMetal or WebDirectX.

    Game engines:
    Yeah! Game engines support Metal! But if we have a closer look, a lot of this game engines use frameworks like MoltenVK to map their Vulkan calls to Metal.
    Shame on you Apple! There is a good and open standard and Apple doesn't support it!

    Apple custom GPU:
    So why is Apple moving in the direction of Metal? Cause Apple is building it's own custom GPU and so Apple doesn't have to implement OpenGL or Vulkan functionalities! Makes sense from Apples point of view but it maybe breaks compatibility with Vulkan/OpenGL in the future.
    No one knows if the next Vulkan version will be supported on the next Apple GPU version cause Apple just doesn't care.

    What Apple should have done is replacing OpenGL with Vulkan. A lot of developers including myself are turning away from Apple. Slow GPU, bad hardware, bad keyboards, everything soldered and glued, no ports, not replaceable SSD/RAM, no powerhorse Mac Pro - and the best no more OpenGL/Vulkan support in the future.

    Goodby Apple

    P.S.
    This was my first post in 12 years Appleinsider. It was always fun to read the articles but in the past Appleinsider articles read like Apple press releases.
     

    Rather than indulge in presumptuous ideas based on passionate feelings, it is a lot more worthwhile to guess that Apple developed Metal because they felt they knew how to get more performance out of their own hardware than an ‘open standard’ could—that sounds pro-consumer to me, to be offered the best performance on the device I paid too much money for. They possibly are also hoping they can leverage iOS’s strength to encourage developers to embrace it on macOS as well. In fact, all of that is a lot more likely than the ideas you presented above.

    It doesn’t mean anyone needs to like Metal, but complaining Apple is anti-consumer because of it is rather absurd.

    Oh, and btw, I have yet to see an app based on Qt that doesn’t have a sucky UI/UX. It’s a framework for developers who either don’t have the resources to produce a proper UI for different platforms or who lack taste or understanding. That’s not a good example to be using to support your point.

    Agreed, these UIs tend to suck. But the applications themselves are often specialized one-of-a-kind programs that can be extremely valuable in their domain. 

    We have left macOS several years ago (except for the iOS devs), but there are quite a few test applications in this category that exist on Mac just because QT does it "for free".
    cgWerkswatto_cobraAlex1N
  • Reply 37 of 137
    auxioauxio Posts: 2,717member
    wizard69 said:
    It is built in obsolescence. Windows will run on 15 year old computers while Mac OS will refuse to run on any Mac built more than six years ago. There is really no technical reason why Mac OS could not run on a 2010 Intel CPU. These are decisions made at the top of the company. Apple does what is best for Apple and not for its customers. The reason developers are not up in arms about Apple dropping OpenGL and OpenCL is that it really happened years ago when Apple stopped updating it. Mac OS is now about five years out of date. When you look at the extremely poor library of AAA games available on the Mac, know that it is Apple's poor hardware features and lack of cross platform software support that is the major reason. Of course people don't buy Macs to play games. Pretty soon people won't buy Macs at all.
    I've been hearing this for 15 years, and yet, here we are.

    When does "pretty soon" arrive?
    Actually for me "pretty soon" arrived this year in January.   Not so much because of Metal but rather due to Apples apathy with respect to the Mac lineup.  That is the hardware is either so outdated or of such low quality that my money for a new laptop went someplace else.    I really hated to do that because there is a lot to like about Mac OS.  The problem is i can program in Python on just about any machine these days and my other uses only occasionally leverage the full potential of the systems. Notably this is delivered on a laptop with modern hardware (better CPU, far better GPU, ports that keep my legacy hardware usable, a great screen &etc), all on a laptop that is $700 less that Apples solutions.  

    So yeah "pretty soon" is already here.   Yeah Windows sucks, there is no debate there but Linux can be a good alternative.   All i can say is that Apple must start updating its hardware because software is only part of the machine.  It has been more than a decade since Apples machines have been such a pathetic value.   I really cant tolerate price increases on such poor machines either.    So yeah there are problems in Mac land.  
    Pretty soon isn't even close for me, and I'm someone who has worked on dozens of different machines/OSes over the years (including Linux).  If your only dimension for measurement is specs, and your time isn't valuable to you, then sure, pick the cheapest machine possible.  However, here have been my reasons for buying a computer over the past 7 years:

    1) My wife needed a new laptop.  Her needs from a laptop are communication via email, social media, etc, browsing the web, light graphic design work, and for it to be as easy to handle as possible (small, light, doesn't heat up).  I had no hesitation in buying a MacBook Air for her because I knew that I would need to be doing tech support for the machine whenever anything went wrong.  And, from experience, things go wrong far more often on PCs than Macs (far too many configuration issues).  My time is valuable to me, and so the slightly higher cost of a MBA vs a PC are well worth the headache and time savings from supporting that machine in the long run.  Not to mention that she absolutely loves it.

    2) I needed a cross-platform development laptop (native applications).  No brainer here getting a MacBook Pro since a Mac can be used to develop for every OS.  It's more than powerful enough to develop even large applications.  And it's honestly the best laptop I've ever used.

    3) I needed to replace an aging Linux-based NAS/router/streaming box.  While using Linux for this was a great learning experience when I was younger, I had grown tired of spending countless hours reconfiguring it on every major OS update.  Not to mention the lower power consumption of a Mac Mini compared to a PC tower really appealed to me.  And sure enough, I spend far less time configuring the Mac Mini, and it "just works" for whatever networking task I need.  I can delve down into the BSD-level networking tools if I need to, but most of the time I don't have to, which is nice.  Again, a huge time savings for me.

    For me, there are far more dimensions to buying a computer than just specs and initial cost alone.  Time savings and ease of use are major factors in my decision.  For people like myself, "pretty soon" will never arrive unless PCs get a whole lot easier to use and reliable.
    edited June 2018 watto_cobraAlex1Nmacplusplus
  • Reply 38 of 137
    igerardigerard Posts: 14member
    Well, in this story, I don't have any issues with the OpenGL deprecated status.

    I do some programming in Metal and I like it, I like the work made by Apple with Xcode and the GPU/Metal debugger, impressive work!

    What is very annoying is the level of not good enough performance Apple achieve with Metal.

    Ok to take his own route, and ditch other tech, but if you take this road you need to rock seriously and offer something superior!

    elijahgwatto_cobra
  • Reply 39 of 137
    nhtnht Posts: 4,522member
    OMG, more sky is falling histrionics.

    1) Deprecated doesn't mean removed.  Even removed doesn't mean uninstallable.  I have the latest java on my machine. None of the OpenGL apps that run today will not run tomorrow.
    2) Vulkan runs on MacOS today.  DOTA 2 runs on Vulkan/VulkanMK. The sky ain't falling, dogs and cats won't be living together, etc.
    Eric_WVGGStrangeDayspropodwatto_cobraAlex1N
  • Reply 40 of 137
    StrangeDaysStrangeDays Posts: 12,834member
    wizard69 said:
    It is built in obsolescence. Windows will run on 15 year old computers while Mac OS will refuse to run on any Mac built more than six years ago. There is really no technical reason why Mac OS could not run on a 2010 Intel CPU. These are decisions made at the top of the company. Apple does what is best for Apple and not for its customers. The reason developers are not up in arms about Apple dropping OpenGL and OpenCL is that it really happened years ago when Apple stopped updating it. Mac OS is now about five years out of date. When you look at the extremely poor library of AAA games available on the Mac, know that it is Apple's poor hardware features and lack of cross platform software support that is the major reason. Of course people don't buy Macs to play games. Pretty soon people won't buy Macs at all.
    I've been hearing this for 15 years, and yet, here we are.

    When does "pretty soon" arrive?
    Actually for me "pretty soon" arrived this year in January.   Not so much because of Metal but rather due to Apples apathy with respect to the Mac lineup.  That is the hardware is either so outdated or of such low quality that my money for a new laptop went someplace else.    I really hated to do that because there is a lot to like about Mac OS.  The problem is i can program in Python on just about any machine these days and my other uses only occasionally leverage the full potential of the systems. Notably this is delivered on a laptop with modern hardware (better CPU, far better GPU, ports that keep my legacy hardware usable, a great screen &etc), all on a laptop that is $700 less that Apples solutions.  

    So yeah "pretty soon" is already here.   Yeah Windows sucks, there is no debate there but Linux can be a good alternative.   All i can say is that Apple must start updating its hardware because software is only part of the machine.  It has been more than a decade since Apples machines have been such a pathetic value.   I really cant tolerate price increases on such poor machines either.    So yeah there are problems in Mac land.  
    Rubbish. I bought a rMBP a few years ago and it's a kickass machine, making your claims of "pathetic value" quite absurd. Just more foot-stomping from the crowd that wants it noooooowwww.
    techconcwilliamlondonwatto_cobraAlex1Nmacplusplus
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