Apple Deprecates OpenGL & OpenCL

[starshipeleven]

Is this done for any reason other than vendor lock-in?

It's Apple, you even need to ask these questions?

[paupav]

Please more bad news phoronix. This week wasn't bad enough.
If internet was monarchy, king of the internet would have already killed you as his least favorite messenger.

[L_A_G]

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 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.

[GruenSein]

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. I can't wait for reasons why it is ok they won't be able to use these so many open source programs that only work with opengl.

Though possibly 'legacy' will still mean 'works well' and will stay like that forever (ie support never dropped).

You mean the way it is literally explained in the article? The way I understand is that there won’t be feature updates but whatever works now will keep working for the foreseeable future.

[mannerov]

You mean the way it is literally explained in the article? The way I understand is that there won’t be feature updates but whatever works now will keep working for the foreseeable future.

I'm afraid the two APIs will slowly work less and less well with new hardware, and finally completly drop it.

[-MacNuke-]

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.

There was no reason for Metal at all. Apples OpenGL implementation was outdated, horribly slow and full of bugs and they did not even try to fix that. Even today Metal 2 can't compete with OpenGL 4.5...

Metal was created because they wanted a Vendor-LockIn, nothing else. Apple did not even try to get onto the Vulkan board.

[mulenmar]

Let's see: trashcan Mac Pro thermal issues, limited-ram Macbook Pro with high-failure-rate keyboards, iPhone updates that shorten battery life, no headphone jack on said iPhones, intentionally dropping what support for the open graphics standard they had when every game developer is doing cross-platform stuff nowdays, lock-in "for days", and a massively higher price...

Yep, that's definitely Thinking Different.

Shame, at least their hardware used to be impressive.

[GunpowaderGuy]

khronos should do the same , but to benefit vulkan

[TheOne]

Is time for some capable soul to write an OpenGL implementation atop Vulkan...

[Leopard]

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's OpenGL movement was purely a John Carmack effect , nothing more.

id Software and Carmack were rockstars , Quake was the peak point of pc gaming and most importantly " slices on the cake was not splitted yet ".

So in a that kind of situation Carmack told " OpenGL is the way if you want me to release the game on Mac , including giving a speech about it on your conference "

Nothing with bankrupt or loving cross platform anyway. That was the fastest way to get benefit from existing beast.