Why macOS Mojave requires Metal -- and deprecates OpenGL

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  • Reply 101 of 137
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    cgWerks said:
    mcdave said:
    Why are you attributing so much significance to incremental hardware gains?
    Please explain incremental hardware gains.
    What’s to suggest that any of Apple’s next revisions will be anything other than simple spec bumps, and from that fact–how significant a gain is the performance between Intel generations at this point? We’re not seeing the 30% or 20% we saw back in the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo days. And no one’s going to have quantum co-processors available for a decade or more.
    edited June 2018 Alex1N
  • Reply 102 of 137
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    nht said:

    There is dissenting opinion and there's trolling.  

    Apple hasn't "abandoned professionals and creatives".  You have a sub-optimal devops strategy but the majority of developers are just fine as are creatives.  Hence the rising sales of Macs from 13.6M in 2010 to 19.2M in 2017.  So yes, folks with a 7+ year replacement cycle don't do a whole lot for Apple.  

    Apple hasn't made an xMac (inexpensive headless desktop with expansion) since the PPC days and isn't likely to ever again.  The forthcoming Mac Pro will be expensive.  Any new mini will be gimped.  If that's what you want then Dell, HP, Lenovo, etc await.  They make decent gear and both Windows 10 and Linux are fine operating systems.

    Go pound sand with your "fanboy" nonsense.  You, Avon and Wizard are constant in your whining about how terrible Apple is.  At least Gatorguy is getting paid by Google. 
    I believe the expression is “sic burn”. 
  • Reply 103 of 137
    mcdavemcdave Posts: 1,927member
    I’m unsure the title of this article is explained properly.  For me, the main reason to push a move to Apple’s own graphics API would be to usher in Apple’s own graphics hardware.
  • Reply 104 of 137
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    Rayz2016 said:

    lmac said:
    Pretty soon people won't buy Macs at all. Well it’s not like Apple is making new Macs that anyone wants. Shitty laptop keyboards, overpriced Black iMac, outdated locked down pro and hobbled mini. Tired of waiting for a new Mac.
    Oh good, this again.
    Well you removed the downvote button, what did you think was going to happen?
    Reading the previous comments might be helpful to this particular poster. But, why do that? That takes two whole minutes out of a day.

    That's kinda the point.

    I'm not going to spare even two minutes to read through 90% of whining/trolling/general weirdness that make up your forums just so you good folk can keep your page time/clicks high. Time is a valuable; it has to be earned. 
    Alex1N
  • Reply 105 of 137
    Rayz2016Rayz2016 Posts: 6,957member
    cgWerks said:
    Rayz2016 said:
    Why is it that these people who threaten to leave never do?
    The grass (on the whole) still isn't greener, and/or the pain/cost of doing so is too high. However, that doesn't indicate there isn't a problem on this side of the fence worthy of complaint, and pointing out the longer-term result.

    Think of any relationship. If you have a good friend who starts abusing your relationship, do you just instantly break off the relationship? Or, do you start pointing out the abuses and letting them know that if they don't correct their ways, eventually the relationship will be damaged such that you'll break it off. So... if that friend just said, 'well you haven't left yet, so there mustn't be an issue...', would that be valid?


    Yeah, but here's the thing. 

    You don't know if the grass isn't greener on the other side, because you haven't tried it. In much the same way that folk don't know if the new laptop would work for them because they've never tried them. You have demonstrated an inability to try, then adapt, or if you cannot, try something else. 

    And your relationship analogy is the worst advice I've ever read online. The second any relationship becomes abusive, you get the hell out. No ifs, buts or second chances.

    My mother was a nurse, and she spent quite a lot of time patching up folk (men and women) attempting to 'correct' an abusive relationship.

    Sure, and I'd like to see more testing.
    But, it makes me wonder what we're talking about with Metal. Apple says a lot about performance, but are they talking about iOS games? Or, are they talking about console-quality or PC quality games? Are they talking about professional level apps? My gut tells me they are talking about the low-hanging fruit (iOS games driving iDevice sales). This also fits nicely with the iOS developers coming to the Mac strategy.

    I don't have much interest in what your gut tells you, to be honest. I'm more interested in actual facts.

    edited June 2018 Soliwilliamlondon
  • Reply 106 of 137
    avon b7avon b7 Posts: 7,622member
    Rayz2016 said:
    cgWerks said:
    Rayz2016 said:
    Why is it that these people who threaten to leave never do?
    The grass (on the whole) still isn't greener, and/or the pain/cost of doing so is too high. However, that doesn't indicate there isn't a problem on this side of the fence worthy of complaint, and pointing out the longer-term result.

    Think of any relationship. If you have a good friend who starts abusing your relationship, do you just instantly break off the relationship? Or, do you start pointing out the abuses and letting them know that if they don't correct their ways, eventually the relationship will be damaged such that you'll break it off. So... if that friend just said, 'well you haven't left yet, so there mustn't be an issue...', would that be valid?


    Yeah, but here's the thing. 

    You don't know if the grass isn't greener on the other side, because you haven't tried it. In much the same way that folk don't know if the new laptop would work for them because they've never tried them. You have demonstrated an inability to try, then adapt, or if you cannot, try something else. 

    And your relationship analogy is the worst advice I've ever read online. The second any relationship becomes abusive, you get the hell out. No ifs, buts or second chances.

    My mother was a nurse, and she spent quite a lot of time patching up folk (men and women) attempting to 'correct' an abusive relationship.

    Sure, and I'd like to see more testing.
    But, it makes me wonder what we're talking about with Metal. Apple says a lot about performance, but are they talking about iOS games? Or, are they talking about console-quality or PC quality games? Are they talking about professional level apps? My gut tells me they are talking about the low-hanging fruit (iOS games driving iDevice sales). This also fits nicely with the iOS developers coming to the Mac strategy.

    I don't have much interest in what your gut tells you, to be honest. I'm more interested in actual facts.

    The facts are exactly what we are talking about.

    Lack of updates (Mini, Pro, iMac, MB, MBP)
    Dubious design decisions (thinness, upgradeability, repairability)
    Price
    Etc

    Then there are opinions based on those facts and some people just can't handle seeing them expressed here simply because they consider it to be 'trolling', 'negative' and/or 'anti-Apple'. We also see the sarcastic remarks that accompany the labelling and the finger pointing.

    The irony is that many of those that accuse others of this or that have been proven very wrong in the past.

    It wasn't long ago when I was insistently told Apple wasn't for me because I said they needed to restructure the pricing bands. I was told Apple was a premium brand and that wouldn't change. I gave all the facts and supported them with links to research which supported my opinion but it was just that - an opinion. Then in September Apple dropped the bomb and did exactly what I was saying. We now have the broadest pricing bands and product offering in the history of the iPhone.

    Then the same thing happened with the so called 'legacy' ports after the MBP went USB-C. Well, they are still here, alive and kicking. Those people were wrong again.

    The same thing happened with the MBA which was EOL in the minds of those people. Well, it's still here (and possibly selling more than the MB/MBP) two years later with rumours of a refresh.

    Etc, etc.

    Is it really so difficult to accept a differing opinion without resorting to labelling people? Without snide remarks?





    cgWerkselijahgsmalm
  • Reply 107 of 137
    IreneWIreneW Posts: 303member
    Multi user FaceTime is mentioned several times, both in the original text and in the comments. Can someone explain what this has to do with deprecating Open GL?
    Other messaging platforms have offered multi user video calls for several years already.
  • Reply 108 of 137
    jblongzjblongz Posts: 165member
    Let the company move on.  Apple was ridiculed for not having a physical keyboard on the iPhone and evidently set a trend.  Where’s Blackberry?  Complacency makes the world a boring place.  Hardcore developers will take on the challenge of relearning. 
  • Reply 109 of 137
    cgWerkscgWerks Posts: 2,952member
    tallest skil said:
    What’s to suggest that any of Apple’s next revisions will be anything other than simple spec bumps, and from that fact–how significant a gain is the performance between Intel generations at this point? We’re not seeing the 30% or 20% we saw back in the Core Duo and Core 2 Duo days. And no one’s going to have quantum co-processors available for a decade or more.
    Hey, I'm OK with that so long as I get modern ports. But, there are also newer processors with more cores in the same thermal footprint. Maybe those things don't matter to Apple's new target market (though one might think modern ports do), but they matter to any prosumer to pro users.

    Heck, I'll take a an updated Mini with 4 or 6 cores that is slower in single-core performance if it had modern ports, SSD, etc. I'd take a 4-6 core MBP in the 2015 chassis with updated ports, again, even if it were a speed slowdown.

    The problem here has nothing to do with lack of performance updates... it has to do with updates at all (or at least improvement updates, rather than degradation 'updates').

    The reality of physics and Intel timelines is the reality for the whole rest of the PC industry as well... yet they don't seem to be having the issues Apple does. It's less than a non-excuse, it's insulting to any of Apple's thinking users.

    mcdave said:
    I’m unsure the title of this article is explained properly.  For me, the main reason to push a move to Apple’s own graphics API would be to usher in Apple’s own graphics hardware.
    I wouldn't doubt that. The question I'd have going down that road is if Apple is in a position to compete with other GPU makers, or if the end-game is Pokemon II on iDevices.

    Rayz2016 said:
    You don't know if the grass isn't greener on the other side, because you haven't tried it. In much the same way that folk don't know if the new laptop would work for them because they've never tried them. You have demonstrated an inability to try, then adapt, or if you cannot, try something else. 
    What makes you think that? While I don't have a ton of time in on Windows 10, I spent most of my career working in IT with Windows machines (most recently in a Sr position of a nearly Fortune 50 company). I've also managed Unix boxen over the years and built my own MythTV.

    We also have a 2017 MBP here in the house. What haven't I tried?

    Rayz2016 said:
    And your relationship analogy is the worst advice I've ever read online. The second any relationship becomes abusive, you get the hell out. No ifs, buts or second chances.
    My mother was a nurse, and she spent quite a lot of time patching up folk (men and women) attempting to 'correct' an abusive relationship.
    Never mind the equivocation on the term abuse given the context of the discussion... but I suppose if it works to make your argument feel stronger... ;)

    Rayz2016 said:
    I don't have much interest in what your gut tells you, to be honest. I'm more interested in actual facts.
    I'm all ears. Why don't you go ahead and enlighten me? How many polygons do you typically work with in your 3D scenes? How is Metal doing with those? What 3D solids modeling app do you use? Is it Metal compatible?

    jblongz said:
    Let the company move on.  Apple was ridiculed for not having a physical keyboard on the iPhone and evidently set a trend.  Where’s Blackberry?  Complacency makes the world a boring place.  Hardcore developers will take on the challenge of relearning. 
    I'm always all for moving on with better things... whether it is better things is what is in question.

    This reminds me of one of my favorite CS Lewis quotes... "We all want progress, but if you're on the wrong road, progress means doing an about-turn and walking back to the right road; in that case, the man who turns back soonest is the most progressive."
    edited June 2018 elijahg
  • Reply 110 of 137
    tipootipoo Posts: 1,141member
    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.


    Makes me curious - what API is Windows using to draw Explorer? 
  • Reply 111 of 137
    tipootipoo Posts: 1,141member
    llowejr 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.
    Ya right, try running Windows 10 on a stock 15 year old PC, not going to happen!!!


    OAD exaggerated by a few years, but in terms of 15 years, so 2003, Windows 8 ran on an Athlon XP from that year, I know that first hand, and 10 will run on a yonah core duo. 


    I'm not agreeing with the rest of the other persons statement by the way, just saying the 15 years is only off by a smidge. But Windows also carries forward a lot of baggage for this reason. 
    cgWerks
  • Reply 112 of 137
    When I started using Macs in the late 1980s, most creatives in design, advertising and film used Macs--there was an entire infrastructure of printing, color, and 3rd-party tech support that made it the desktop of choice. There was a "halo effect" that creatives gave to Macs, one that let Apple charge higher prices for its showy computers and then, its mobile devices. When the trashcan Mac came out, it presented a challenge for 3D artists, filmmakers, and game developers. While Apple had always lagged behind Wintel machines in available graphics cards, the AMD-only trashcan meant that you had to jump through endless hoops to run the proprietary CUDA platform in Nvidia cards. When Nvidia GTX 10_0 GPUs dropped a few years ago, they were a quantum leap forward--and there were no Mac drivers. Last year when Nvidia finally got around to writing Mac drivers for these cards, the only Macs that could run them as is were the Mid 2012 Macs (for a variety of reasons). Nvidia stock traded at around $29-32 in 2016 and recently hit a high of $269. In an article published today (July 1) on The Street website titled "Doubting Nvidia's Future Is Dumb," one analyst notes " AI is a multi-decade investment theme and Nvidia's technologies sit in the pole position. As users train and tweak their AI algorithms, the GPU has proven to be the most effective hardware, sometimes by an order of magnitude." When Apple threw the industry a bone this year with external video card support, it was too little, too late. If Macs can't natively run Nvidia cards without an external enclosure, and they are deprecating the Macs that can, it places Apple desktops as an outlier in the black collar world. I'll use Macs until I can't, but when my old MacBook Pro died recently, I looked at the laptops Apple is offering now and nothing can meet my needs. 

    tallest skilavon b7cgWerkselijahg
  • Reply 113 of 137
    cgWerkscgWerks Posts: 2,952member
    ... AI is a multi-decade investment theme and Nvidia's technologies sit in the pole position. As users train and tweak their AI algorithms, the GPU has proven to be the most effective hardware, sometimes by an order of magnitude."
    ...
    When Apple threw the industry a bone this year with external video card support, it was too little, too late. If Macs can't natively run Nvidia cards without an external enclosure ...
    I mostly agree with what you've said, but wanted to comment on a couple of lines.

    re: AI - The possible correction I'd caution at to this, is that IMO, AI is quite over-hyped right now. The question is how long before reality sets in. Anyway, there might be some corrective there for anyone betting too much on AI.

    re: threw a bone - I just don't think Apple really gives a rip. They need the Mac around for a while yet, but they seem to be targeting it towards a few vertical use-cases and screw everything else.
    elijahgwilliamlondon
  • Reply 114 of 137
    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.

    I think this is wrong. Purchase a card from macvidcards.com

    They have Metal support and are plug and play.

    Plugged a 1080Ti in on Wednesday without drivers installed as a test. Booted (Apple logo as they make the cards EFI compatible) and desktop appeared without an issue. Slightly slow and choppy until the NVidia web driver is installed (along with CUDA but that isn’t necessary if you aren’t using it) after a restart it’s golden. 

    So the machine is perfectly capable of running without drivers. 

    If only Apple would bake NVidia drivers into macOS by default. 


  • Reply 115 of 137
    tallest skiltallest skil Posts: 43,388member
    I think this is wrong. Purchase a card from macvidcards.com
    Yeah, but… I have a card already. That’s the rub.
    Booted (Apple logo as they make the cards EFI compatible)
    That’s my only problem right now. If I want to switch my boot OS, I just have to do it blind. The problem with Mojave will be that my only Apple-supported card doesn’t support Metal, and my Metal-supported card “doesn’t support” Apple. I think I’ll have to run the OS installer itself blind (somehow), hope that I can get to my desktop, and then auto-accept a screen share from another Mac to install the nVidia driver. It probably isn’t possible, simply because it’s not possible to know when the installer is finished and what page the installer is on.

    Can stock GTX 980s be flashed? I’m sure it’s entirely dependent on the size of the… I forget the acronym. The chip on which BIOS/EFI is stored. I think the EFI booting requires a 512 and only some cards have that… 
  • Reply 116 of 137
    This whole thread is so funny lol. I wouldn't be surprised if most even slightly controversial articles' threads were like this lol. 
  • Reply 117 of 137
    asciiascii Posts: 5,936member
    In an article published today (July 1) on The Street website titled "Doubting Nvidia's Future Is Dumb," one analyst notes " AI is a multi-decade investment theme and Nvidia's technologies sit in the pole position. As users train and tweak their AI algorithms, the GPU has proven to be the most effective hardware, sometimes by an order of magnitude."
    In the Tesla Q2 earnings call on Aug 1, Elon Musk announced a project they have been quietly working on for the last few years to design their own neural net processor (for autodrive image processing). He said their solution in 100x faster than the Nvidia solution they are currently using, for the same cost. So I am wondering if, looking back in future, GPUs will turn out to have only been a stop-gap solution for AI processing?
  • Reply 118 of 137
    In this authors mumbling someone may think that OpenGL is for CPU and Metal for GPU. It it is wrong. OpenGL was designed for GPU and utilizes it offloading CPU. It also requires special features and they were introduced in mid 2000 to Apple computers - not in '90. In eraly Mac OS X Apple was using different rendering engine at the time and it was not Open GL - it was called Quartz. What is with Metal is the fact that Apple goes propriatery (again) for further enhancements and optimizations.

    What we see essentially is Apple return to propraietary engines in much more advanced form than Quartz and it is now called Metal. Again nothing new, but extension of proprietarry hardware designs. Open GL is graphics standard across syst6ems and languages.
  • Reply 119 of 137
    danvmdanvm Posts: 1,400member
    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?
    Windows 10 runs like shit on 7 years old hardware I cant even imagine 15 years! 

    People will buy more Macs from now on. 


    In my experience with many of my customers, Windows 10 runs without issues on 5-7 years PC, at least for browsing, MS Office and ERP applications.  One of my customers had 5-7 years workstations running Revit and AutoCAD with no issues at all.  It's obvious that low cost PC's won't work well after 5-7 years, but a high quality PC will work fine for many years. 
    williamlondon
  • Reply 120 of 137
    danvmdanvm Posts: 1,400member

    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.
    My customers have no issues running their 5-7 years PC's with Windows 10.  Maybe your experience is related to the hardware and not Windows 10.
    williamlondon
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