Apple Deprecates OpenGL & OpenCL

[illwieckz]

Lol. I was already laughing at the escuses of my mac user friends who find ridiculous reasons for why it is ok they have to plug several connectors over connectors in order to plug ethernet, headphone, power, screen, etc.

That's so true, and that's exactly what's going on on the software part with things like MoltenVk: wrappers above wrappers etc. (^_^)'

[Awesomeness]

so what is going to happen with Webgl?

http://angleproject.org/ will simply get a Metal back-end.

[dragorth]

So, I wonder if Maya will be written to use Metal, or if Apple will have to continue supporting OpenGL for a long time.

[DMJC]

Bye bye Maya, and Warcraft 3... Oh and Starcraft 2.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Apple was pretty well into profitability when they helped create OpenCL and Steve Jobs had already returned them to profitability when they really went for OpenGL in the really early 2000s. You really couldn't be much further from the truth if you tried. Apple's embrace of open APIs and source had mostly to do with original NeXT developers like Avie Tevanian who were into it and had much to say in Apple's software development efforts. These days Tevanian & Co are mostly gone and the end result is what you can see.

However considering what Metal is capable of and how it was basically developed specifically because the Khronos group was dragging it's proverbial heels I can understand why Apple is depricating OpenGL in favor of Metal. For them the situation essentially boils down to three options, either duplicate effort and continue to support competing APIs, screw over third party developers that have chosen to pick support your proprietary API created at a time when there was no open API like it or then depricate some APIs you haven't properly maintained for years as you've been focusing on your own new APIs.

I wish they had embraced OpenCL 2 and Vulkan, but considering the circumstances I'm not going to fault them for choosing the way they did. Let's hope the Vulkan-over-Metal API continues delivering the kinds of results we've seen with DOTA 2.

Apple created OpenCL, hence they own the trademark. They gave it to Khronos to further expand it and make it an industry wide standard.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Does anyone need reminding that the single biggest OpenCL vendor still, AMD, is on OpenCL 1.2 and not OpenCL 2.x and that the HSA initiative was a bust? We seen 24 months go by and OpenCL has yet to have a fully flushed out OpenCL 1.2 kernel supported solution that isn't part of the Pro Stack. Even the Pro stack is stuck on 1.2.

So yes, Khronos, AMD, IBM, etc., have all been dragging their feet, but it's not surprising the President of Khronos being from Nvidia have been dragging their feet to support OpenCL since its inception: they only want CUDA. So bitch somewhere else. 99% of you folks don't run OS X so why bitch?

[schmidtbag]

OpenGL...meh. But OpenCL...that bites! I hear Nvidia chuckling in the background.

Funny, I actually think the exact opposite of everything you said:
OpenGL is used by soooo many applications. Ditching that could render Mac OS unusable for anyone who isn't using the latest of everything, and most games will be rendered unplayable (or should I say... not rendered at all *badum tss*).
OpenCL, meanwhile, isn't that important to Mac users. You could probably count on both hands the amount of Mac-compatible programs with functioning and useful OpenCL support.
Nvidia, meanwhile, will be shut out entirely, since they aren't on good terms with Apple at the moment. It doesn't appear there will be any new Mac products with Nvidia GPUs any time soon, so CUDA is going to be on its way out, and I'm not sure Nvidia is going to be willing to put so much time and effort into Metal when their Mac userbase will be steadily shrinking.

[PackRat]

Does anyone need reminding that the single biggest OpenCL vendor still, AMD, is on OpenCL 1.2 and not OpenCL 2.x and that the HSA initiative was a bust? We seen 24 months go by and OpenCL has yet to have a fully flushed out OpenCL 1.2 kernel supported solution that isn't part of the Pro Stack. Even the Pro stack is stuck on 1.2.

So yes, Khronos, AMD, IBM, etc., have all been dragging their feet, but it's not surprising the President of Khronos being from Nvidia have been dragging their feet to support OpenCL since its inception: they only want CUDA. So bitch somewhere else. 99% of you folks don't run OS X so why bitch?

Nobody here talking about os x: "Apple quietly confirmed they are deprecating OpenGL and OpenCL within macOS."- phoronix

[TemplarGR]

Why should we care? Apple is going downhill fast anyway. They always produced shitty overpriced products, and these days they can't even manufacture hype anymore. No one cares about Apple anymore, outside of the usual more-money-than-brains types who still use them as status symbols.

Did they deprecate features? So what? Great news, that means more developers will stop using them and supporting them faster. Good riddance.

[TemplarGR]

Apple adopted open standards because they were near to bankruptcy at that time. Open Standards helped them to get at least some kind of support. Now Apple is very successful and they can pull out their old vendor-lockin strategy again.

Apple in all it's old glory again.

Yeah, and like the old days, they will soon be reduced to being a complete joke of the industry....

I never bought an Apple product in my life, and have always "campaigned" against their garbage. Apple is one of the most greedy/unethical corporations in the world. Yes, i know corporations are supposed to make profits, that's their job, yada yada. But there are ethical ways to profit and unethical ways to exploit your clients. Apple is of the second kind.

Apple is exploiting psychological manipulation and marketing tricks in order to fool people into assigning more value to their products than they deserve, and thus sell cheaper hardware for more money. Ever seen those huge queues for every new Apple product in the news? Yes, marketing trick. It's a sham to manufacture hype.

You don't get to be filthy rich by offering value to consumers. The more profitable a company is, the more it steals from the clients. Because profits are income minus cost of producing. So when Apple gets record profits all the time, it is not because they sell value to customers, it is because they take cheap shit and sell them at a premium. Oh and they exploit poor workers in China, so much so that they had to put safety nets outside the factories to prevent suicides. LOL.

People who thought that Apple was "the good guys", didn't pay attention. Like Google. It seems these days these giant behemoths have become more blatant and more people can see their evil now, but i swear 10-15 years ago you couldn't stop hearing praise for these companies...