Apple Deprecates OpenGL & OpenCL

[Weasel]

Or they could just use Vulkan to release on Windows and Linux in the same time. I mean, when they get new dev to replace directx dev. Vulkan make sense because it's the API that provide the biggest amount of users without making engine that use more than one API. Plus they can even use MoltenVK so One API for all "PC" including Apple one. But Apple get a wrapper instead of native but it will still work anyway, they get less performance like they are use to becose of there crappy OpenGL support. Plus Linux don't need Native games, Wine with Nine(DX9) and DXVK(DX11) run fast enough.. So much that some (lot) of Native Apple games work way worse than running the Windows version on Linux.

Yeah, actually, games like DOOM don't have Linux ports despite the fact they use Vulkan or OpenGL. It's more than just about the graphics API. But wine is excellent and can bridge this gap.

While the Linux kernel is very solid and has sound design with backwards compatibility, you can't really say the same about the fragmented libraries for Linux, especially when they're so fucking unstable (in terms of compatibility) because most developers have no idea how to design a proper API or keep the old API while adding a new one. Because "dropping" stuff is in such fashion to those morons. Linus even said that there's plenty of idiots who try to break backwards compatibility or APIs in the kernel's interface to userland (syscalls), and he now finds it more sad than upsetting that he STILL has to remind them to not do it. I mean I agree with him, it's sad people have to be constantly told to NOT break something or drop it, when it should be a default mindset.

You see many games fully statically linked, which just shows that they fully trust the kernel but not the userland, lol.

I think DirectX 12 is pretty good thing for Linux, because it translates far easier to Vulkan without much loss in performance compared to previous DX versions. Yeah, Vulkan would be even better, but it's still better than the situation before. Hopefully Wine gets it to acceptable implementation soon enough (a few months).

[onicsis]

Serious things like scientific research, engineering CAD/CAM/CAE etc which require heavy usage of OpenGL or OpenCL it's never not done on a Mac.
Macs are used only by hipsters who hunt pokemons with their stupid iPhones, not real aliens using powerful radiotelecopes

[chithanh]

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.

Only a note: the biggest OpenCl vendor is Intel. And Intel supports OpenCl 2.x.

I think that both Apple and Qualcomm are bigger than Intel in terms of unit sales. Mediatek maybe too, but I am not fully sure. That would make Qualcomm the biggest OpenCL vendor, and Adreno supports OpenCL 2.0 since A5x series.

[bridgman]

How can an almost 1$ TRILLION company not invest a couple of fucking developers to make a wrapper to keep their "legacy technologies" alive at least for "legacy applications", and yet we have a couple of developers working for free doing it with DirectX? (I'm talking about VK9 and DXVK, not vkd3d)

Just a pet peeve (although it mostly peeves me when people are talking about AMD)...

Yes Apple has a market cap of almost $1 trillion, but market cap has nothing to do with the company's ability to spend money on <what you want>. It just indicates what the funds invested in the company over time (probably a MUCH smaller amount) are worth today to the investors.

Even revenues (~$250B/yr for Apple) don't mean much, since most of that money has to go right back out the door again for cost of goods sold, R&D and other expenses.

The only dollar value worth citing is net profit, although in Apple's case that is also pretty significant (~$45B/yr).

So not disagreeing with your post, just the numbers

[Danny3]

I don't particularly enjoy this decision as well, but can we avoid useless comments like that? Some of the smartest people I know (mostly developers but also some designers) use exclusively macOS. Some people in their day jobs cannot afford to spend time fixing and configuring their OS, or are forced to use a proprietary OS because of compatibility with particular software, and that definitely does not make them stupid. If anything, comments like this paint the Linux community as a bunch of angry assholes.

Ok for developers, but could you say the same thing about iPhone, iPad buyers?
They are Apple customers too.
I was talking about people who buy Apple devices in general not about MAC OS users only.

[GruenSein]

Serious things like scientific research, engineering CAD/CAM/CAE etc which require heavy usage of OpenGL or OpenCL it's never not done on a Mac.
Macs are used only by hipsters who hunt pokemons with their stupid iPhones, not real aliens using powerful radiotelecopes

Ever been to any University HPC department? I don't think so...

[boboviz]

Serious things like scientific research, engineering CAD/CAM/CAE etc which require heavy usage of OpenGL or OpenCL it's never not done on a Mac.
Macs are used only by hipsters who hunt pokemons with their stupid iPhones, not real aliens using powerful radiotelecopes

Some thing like protein folding, earthquakes simulations and others gpgpu projects run under linux cluster or others hpc environments.
Apple guys are not interested in these fields

[boboviz]

Ever been to any University HPC department? I don't think so...

Yes, Mac is used for PowerPoint presentations.

[Marc Driftmeyer]

Uh, if i'm not wrong all big "graphical suite"' vendors (apple born with these kind of app) like Adobe, Corel, Autodesk use OpenCl in their products with great results. So, now?

In case people can't read

https://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-ProRender-for-Maya-v2.3-Release-Notes.aspx

Radeon ProRender for Maya v2.3 Highlights

• • Support for macOS High Sierra 10.13.3+ using Metal® 2. eGPU devices requires macOS® High Sierra 10.13.4.
  • PBR Shader and Denoiser added in the render settings.
  • An additional control for setting camera exposure to allow adding more motion blur is added.
  • Texture gamma settings are now handled correctly.
  • Physically based lighting controls greatly improve lighting setups.
    • Additional area light shapes include: Rectangle, Disk, Cylinder, and Spheres.
    • Light color can be set by temperature, color, texture, or all three.
    • Intensity can be set additionally with physical units.
  • Maya Remap HSV and Gamma Correct nodes are supported.
  • More AOV's have been added for compositing.

https://support.amd.com/en-us/kb-articles/Pages/Radeon-ProRender-for-Blender-v1.6-Release-Notes.aspx

Radeon ProRender for Blender v1.6 Highlights

• • Support for macOS High Sierra 10.13.3+ using Metal® 2. eGPU devices requires macOS® High Sierra 10.13.4.
  • PBR and Uber shader get more intuitive subsurface scattering parameters, simply set a scattering color and length for how far internal reflection should go in a surface.
  • PBR Shader Updates:
    • PBR shader is updated to easily do glass, organic, metal, plastic or diffuse materials.
    • Emissive weight is added to mix emissivity with the surface.
    • Cycles "Principled Shader" is converted to PBR nodes when using material conversion.
  • Uber Shader Updates:
    • Uber is now the default shader when adding a material.
  • Many new AOV's, useful for compositing or diagnostics are added to render passes.
    • These now appear automatically in Blender's compositor as well.
  • An additional control for setting camera exposure to allow adding more motion blur is added.
  • Image texture nodes now have a setting for "Texture Gamma". Set this to "sRGB" for color maps (such as PBR albedo textures). All other texture usually should stay as the default setting, "Linear". This will fix washed out looking color textures.
  • Physically based lighting controls greatly improve lighting setups.
    • Additional area light shapes include: Rectangle, Disk, Cylinder, and Spheres.
    • Light color can be set by temperature, color, texture, or all three.
    • Intensity can be set additionally with physical units.
  • Color Ramp Shaders are now available.
  • Max diffuse/reflection depth controls are added. This allows performance optimization for scenes that don't need much GI.
  • Adaptive Subdivision - in addition to setting a uniform subdivision level, this control allows setting subdivision level that "adapts" based on how large an object is to the camera. Closer objects will refine more, while far away object will not over-subdivide. This setting is in pixel units, so "1" will subdivide to approximately one pixel in size, set it to higher for coarser subdivision or lower for finer.
  • Blender smoke is rendered as a volume object.
  • Area lights can be made invisible to reflections.

I personally had to remind Ton to contact AMD about how to port Metal 2 API in Blender seeing as AMD has already ported their Renderer for Blender on MacOS using Metal 2 API.


AUTODESK Corporation is an early Test Corporation inside Apple. They've been working with Metal and Metal 2 API in pre-release for several years. They most certainly will have their applications using Metal on the timeline Apple has set with deprecation the first day it goes into effect. That is to say, the day macOS 10.14 is released their apps will be miraculously Metal 2 ready.

[GruenSein]

Yes, Mac is used for PowerPoint presentations.

And we have finally reached the point, at which I will leave this discussion. A plain "No, I've never been in touch with any such organizations" would've sufficed.

Edit: To end on a friendlier note: Yes, sometimes Macs are also used for PowerPoint in suchdepartments. One of their benefits is that you get most of the Linux stuff and many of the libraries and tools can easily be installed under macOS and you can still use widely used software like MS Office without any hassle, emulation or compatability issues.