Apple Rejects iOS App For Using MoltenVK Vulkan, Alleged Non-Public API

[Awesomeness]

The explanation about non-public API is most likely a smokescreen to avoid an anti-trust case, something the iOS ecosystem has been dangerously close to for years.

No. The market share of iOS is dwarfed by Android. Apple is in its "were not a monopoly, so we can make insane profits and treat the customers as badly as we want" comfort zone.

[andre30correia]

Exactly my thoughts.

Apple want to be able to roll out updates to their OS without apps braking. If apps brake during an update this is bad for their users and many of their users will even blame Apple. Hence Apple almost certainly maintain stable public APIs and request developers don't touch the private internals.

I found some stackoverflow threads discussing this:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/1773615/apple-and-private-apis

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...p-if-one-is-us

IOS upgrades most of time brake the system, I earn a lot of money because of it every year.

[mphuZ]

I guess that Valve and the rest of the developers should stop caring about the multi-platform for mac OS.

[shmerl]

How is it "not public" if it's open source? Apple are just lock-in jerks, who want to push their Metal trash and discourage developers from using cross platform APIs.

Apple should really be severely punished for this monopolistic behavior.

[Weasel]

Remember when I said Apple is butthurt about MoltenVK? Some people were still skeptical I guess, they never learn...

[Weasel]

How does banning MoltenVK protect their walled garden? It's just an intermediate layer that sits between an app and some Apple APIs. It has a positive benefit for apple in that it makes it easier, faster and cheaper for app developers to port games to iOS. Games almost always have their own interface and UX that is separate from the typical iOS interface and UX. So it's not like we're talking about GTK+ being ported to iOS and braking the iPhone user experience.

You make no sense. With that logic, nobody would ever pursue a proprietary API, because they could just as well use open one, if all they cared about is having more apps run on it.

With MoltenVK, very very very few devs will develop for Metal. They don't want that, they are jealous on Microsoft's DirectX and want to pull something similar to "lock in" people to their crap ecosystem. Look at "DirectX-exclusive" apps for what I'm talking about. That's what they want to do, but it's never gonna happen, because their ecosystem is pure garbage.

They want to "be in control" with their pathetic choices and breaking compatibility so that devs have no choice but follow them (in their dreams).

[pabloski]

How is it "not public" if it's open source?

Good question. Also everything I can read in the programmer's manual is open and I can use it.

Also, is there some written rule about not using "closed APIs"? Appstore is handled like a dictatorship.

[pabloski]

With MoltenVK, very very very few devs will develop for Metal.

This is it. MoltenVK gives developers the means to use Vulkan on every platform. Also MoltenVK ( I suppose ) is slightly slower than a native Vulkan implementation, which means games will experience a performance overhead on iOS. The same has happened with OpenGL on Windows ( courtesy of MS in this case ). But Apple doesn't have the leverage MS has and MS could lose the leverage in regard to Vulkan, so we could see an API war over Vulkan on Windows too.

[cybertraveler]

How is it "not public" if it's open source? Apple are just lock-in jerks, who want to push their Metal trash and discourage developers from using cross platform APIs.

Apple should really be severely punished for this monopolistic behavior.

Re first sentence: to understand this you need to understand the difference between a public API and private method, functions and data structures. It's obvious from what you've said that you don't understand this difference.

Re second sentence: Apple do not have a monopoly. No need to call for threats of violence against a company that isn't even doing what you claim.

[cybertraveler]

You make no sense. With that logic, nobody would ever pursue a proprietary API, because they could just as well use open one, if all they cared about is having more apps run on it.

With MoltenVK, very very very few devs will develop for Metal. They don't want that, they are jealous on Microsoft's DirectX and want to pull something similar to "lock in" people to their crap ecosystem. Look at "DirectX-exclusive" apps for what I'm talking about. That's what they want to do, but it's never gonna happen, because their ecosystem is pure garbage.

They want to "be in control" with their pathetic choices and breaking compatibility so that devs have no choice but follow them (in their dreams).

re first sentence: I really don't get your point. Proprietary APIs often expose features that open APIs don't. Or the proprietary API has some performance benefit. Sometimes proprietary APIs are created simply because the existing open APIs / standards are insufficient for their needs and they want to rapidly innovate unrestricted by any existing standards.

re second sentence: You clearly haven't thought about this. If someone has already made a Vulkan app, then it's very likely that they will prefer to use MoltenVK over writing a Metal port. Even if they did write a metal port, they would not be locked in to Apple's platform as they had already written a Vulkan version of their app. If someone is writing an app from scratch, then they may indeed pick Metal and may be more likely to pick metal if Apple try to kick Vulkan apps off their store. However; this will not likely lead to vendor lock-in because Apple don't have a monopoly position in the phone or desktop market. If anything this will simply discourage developers from developing for iOS in favour of developing for the much bigger, Android and Windows (where Vulkan can be used).

re third sentence: this is unbelievable to me. It's quite likely that this change is being done to stop compatibility being broken. IE stop devs using private APIs to make the upgrade process nicer for existing users.


For all of you that are ranting at Apple. If you don't like their stuff don't buy it. They don't have a monopoly over their markets. You're not forced to use their stuff. There are obvious upsides to their control over their appstore and ecosystem. Please stop calling for state violence against this company and if you don't understand something (eg the different between public and private calls/data in a library/framework) then... I don't know. Maybe read a little.