Apple Announces A New 3D API, OpenGL Competitor: Metal

[curaga]

I just don't see him hyping up Apple. I see him defending them against stupid allegations like most of the ones made in this thread, and if that makes him a fanboy then ROFL. If you want to group together and get things done then please, please be realistic and pragmatic rather than

Yes, that is typical fanboy or clearly-paid-shill behavior. If you haven't seen such before, perhaps you have rose-tinted glasses on.

All this crap about lock in is just silly to me. A 3D API is the least likely thing to cause significant porting issues.

How many apps have you ported from DX to GL?

[jimbohale]

Yeah... Even Driftmeyer doesn't do that, but wizard69 does it all the time, it's like he reads through entire threads and decides to defend Apple against the forum dwellers post by post...

I just don't see him hyping up Apple. I see him defending them against stupid allegations like most of the ones made in this thread, and if that makes him a fanboy then ROFL. If you want to group together and get things done then please, please be realistic and pragmatic rather than

AHJDIOSDJIOSFJIOFS OMG APPLE IS PLANNING ON DOING THEIR OWN 3D LANGUAGE FOR THEIR OWN HARDWARE ON THEIR OWN OPERATING SYSTEM WHICH IS HAS MINORITY MARKET SHARE THIS WILL SOMEHOW LEAD TO OPENGL BEING HURT SOMEHOW EVEN THOUGH IM NOT A PROGRAMMER I ONLY USE LINUX ON THE DESKTOP THEREFORE I SOMEHOW KNOW SOMETHING I OBVIOUSLY KNOW NOTHING ABOUT

as if that helps ANYONE, and as if that will get people to take you guys seriously.

I'm going to re-iterate, Swift is good. Really good. It's not good because Apple made it, it's good because Apple paid some smart engineers a lot of money to make it, much like Go *appears* to be good (although admitted I haven't had a reason to use it seriously, I've made a few small programs with it and it was easy). If you people want to get something good done out of this focus on Swift being open sourced if it's not.

[Luke_Wolf]

He's not a fanboy because he said I'm wrong, he's a fanboy because he posted 20 straight messages extolling the amazing impeccable flawlessness of Apple. And this isn't the first time he's done that.

Yeah... Even Driftmeyer doesn't do that, but wizard69 does it all the time, it's like he reads through entire threads and decides to defend Apple against the forum dwellers post by post...

[jimbohale]

He's not a fanboy because he said I'm wrong, he's a fanboy because he posted 20 straight messages extolling the amazing impeccable flawlessness of Apple. And this isn't the first time he's done that.

In this particular thread I haven't seen him *at all* extoll the flawlessness of Apple. I happen to agree with his statements, including as a programmer that Swift is an improvement over Objective-C, for a lot of reasons. I also agree that having a different 3D api isn't the biggest thing in terms of porting apps. Maybe if Mantle was actually open they *might* have adopted that instead. Realistically probably not because this is a very specialized 3D API.

All I'm saying is that you guys need to stop focusing on what Apple is doing in their little corner of their minor market share on their phones and focus on what actually COULD have an effect, which is Swift. You guys should focus on it being open source. It has a FAR larger impact, and it runs on OS X as well as iOS. It's much harder to port a Swift application to C or C++ than it is to port an Objective-C application although admittedly it's still harder, a C++ application is going to be structured similarly to an Objective-C application so it's doable in steps while Swift entirely changes quite a few things and things like functions as a first class citizen don't have replacements, same with random things like it's mapping functions. Personally I hope Swift is open sourced and it winds up overtaking C++, but that's just me. It has nothing to do with me being an Apple fanboy because I'm not, it has everything to do with me using Swift and using C++, and much preferring Swift because I respect when something is good regardless of who it is from.

[johnc]

Someone says you're wrong and that instantly makes them a fanboy.

He's not a fanboy because he said I'm wrong, he's a fanboy because he posted 20 straight messages extolling the amazing impeccable flawlessness of Apple. And this isn't the first time he's done that.

[jimbohale]

Yeah, that's why there are just as many OpenGL games as Direct3D games on the PC.

...ohh, wait...

But it's good to have the Lt. Official Apple Fanboy on hand to straighten us all out.

This is what makes you SO wrong. Someone says you're wrong and that instantly makes them a fanboy. I don't believe you're talking about me since I wasn't quoted, but I defended Metal as something that isn't as ridiculous as you think it is, and therefore fall under your spectrum of fanboy. YOU are the reason this scene isn't taken seriously. YOU.

What you've said is a fallacy. Direct3D generally works better on Windows which is the dominant platform on computers and is much easier to program for. I don't believe real programmers care very much about which 3D api they use, I think most real programmers learn them all (or the relevant ones such as OpenGL* or Direct3D, at the moment) and will use whichever is most suited. I think that this is a non-issue that non-3d programmers need to fuck off. You should focus on the real issues, such as whether or not Swift is going to be open sourced (which we don't know yet, that's a WAY bigger deal than Metal). If it is, then good, otherwise that's a much bigger example of vendor lock-in than Metal. An entire programming language and base APIs vs a single 3D api that's written specifically for a minority of devices.

[Anarchy]

The vast major it of those Android users don't have hardware even capable of running the games that run on Apples hardware.

Totally, dude! Apple hardware ftw!

[johnc]

All this crap about lock in is just silly to me. A 3D API is the least likely thing to cause significant porting issues.

Yeah, that's why there are just as many OpenGL games as Direct3D games on the PC.

...ohh, wait...

But it's good to have the Lt. Official Apple Fanboy on hand to straighten us all out.

[wizard69]

Except Android is in no way tied to Java. Use the NDK and you can write C and C++ code, and you're already a lot closer (and yes, Android has a C OpenGL ES library).
Hack the NDK a little and you can write Objective-C code (Edit the rebuilt scripts that come with the NDK to use --enable-languages=objc when building gcc, then rebuild. Bundle the libobjc runtime library with your app. And yes, I've actually done this, so I know what I'm talking about) - and suddenly porting iOS code that uses standard APIs like OpenGL ES becomes an easy and quick thing (iOS code that heavily relies on Cocoa Touch is a different matter).

That's why Apple is scared of standard APIs.

Baloney! This is all about performance nothing more.

[wizard69]

The reason they're doing Swift is likely just because they're not content with Objective-C anymore (realistically, who else besides Apple used it on a large scale).

This is pretty much what people at Apple has said, Objective C has pretty much ran its course as a technology. It is a rather old technology too, close to 35 years old now.

It's not similar at all to Go structurally, it's more of a functional language where functions are first-class, much like Scala. It uses one file instead of two (header & object are the same thing). It might *look* similar to Go to a non-Go or a non-Swift programmer, but it's not even remotely close. Again, far more similar to Scala than to Go. Either way, I suspect their primary reason for Swift is that they wanted to make it easier than Objective C. It's very well documented, and interoperability is good between the two.

It would really help if people knocking Swift and metal would spend some time on Apples developer web site and actually inform themselves, as you point out Swift incorporates many modern features from a number of languages.

NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO. NO.

WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG. WRONG.

Right now, OpenGL ES from iOS to Android is not very similar. Yes, it technically has some of the same method names but realistically they're DIFFERENT PROGRAMMING LANGUAGES. Think about that for a moment. Yes, that means entirely different because Objective C and Java are not very similar. At the moment it's *already* very difficult to port from one to the other, it's not as easy as you make it sound.

You are everything that is wrong with the tech world, and please just take a break until you realize what is true and what is false. You're hurting everyone by making these stupid comments and assumptions.

All this crap about lock in is just silly to me. A 3D API is the least likely thing to cause significant porting issues.