General Discussions

[kingfish]

"Apple announced at WWDC it would be ending its support for OpenGL and OpenCL. While neither is particularly surprising given Apple’s previous willingness to ignore progression in OpenGL versions, the announcement still kicked off some controversy from game developers who already feel less-than-beloved. To head off some of the blowback, Apple recently released a video on Metal for OpenGL developers to explain some of its thinking and how the situation would unfold going forward.

"Right now, Apple is just deprecating the standard. OpenGL won’t be used or preferred, but it isn’t going anywhere, either. But in the future — probably in the next few years — that’ll inevitably change. Again, that’s something we can generally count on, because Apple isn’t in the habit of just leaving support for deprecated capabilities in its operating systems. When it told developers to start prioritizing 64-bit apps in the iOS App Store, it was as a prelude to removing the ability to run 32-bit applications altogether. It’s since told macOS users to prepare for the same transition."

"But in this case, the implications are larger. Apple only introduced Metal in 2014, which means any game for Mac built prior to that point (and realistically, quite a few built after) will only run on OpenGL. Apple, which has spent years more or less not supporting gaming to any particular degree, is also guaranteeing that the Mac will be an even more difficult platform to encourage developers to code for, since they’ll have to use a specific API unique to Apple to do it. Now, instead of porting to OGL as a means of ensuring that games work in both Linux and macOS, developers will have to port to macOS separately — if they bother to do so at all."

Apple Defends Killing OpenGL, OpenCL as Developers Threaten Revolt - ExtremeTech

[black_zion]

What can I say, bad Mac, bad!

[colesdav]

I wonder what the implications of this are for AMD ROCm and OpenCL development on RX Vega cards?

[ajlueke]

But Vulkan will still run on top of Metal using the MoltenVK library, as well as Linux and Windows.  Better just develop games using that. 

[pokester]

he whole world is supposed to use computers the way they tell you too. Apple is form over function every time. Never count on being able to do anything tomorrow the way you do it today as Apple changes what the "Apple Way" is like the weather. They don't care about the majority as long as 10% keep drinking the cool aid. I might add that I use a Mac every day and have for 28 years. Apple cares very little about your ability to use your computer the way you want. Heck if you read there licenses I'm not sure you can even call it your computer. I love the stability throughout the years but this past decade has proven to me they care little about the end user and only about ever increasing profits. Of course they don't care about OpenGL, they are the most closed ecosystem on the planet. Luckily most gamers are not gaming on a Mac, in the overall scheme of things, this likely affects very few. Still a bad call IMHO.