Apple Proposing A New, Lower-Level Graphics API For The Web

[L_A_G]

did apple ever give a valid, logical reason why they ditched vulkan and created their own in house metal api?

Apple never adopted Vulkan so you can't really say they ditched it.

Metal became available to the public in June 2014 while Vulkan was only announced in March 2015. I know open source fanatics think Apple should be a slave to open APIs, but try to remember that the people in the Khronos group were initially very hesitant to start work on a new low level API and thought the "almost zero driver overhead" enhancements to OpenGL were enough. Apple saw that this wasn't enough and started work on their own API long before the Khronos group saw the error of their ways so you can't expect Apple to just drop all that work on a whim and shoot their own API in the foot by supporting Vulkan.

Also, am I really the only one who's concerned about the idea of a low level API for web browsers? When running arbitrary code from the internet in your browser you're going to want any malicious code to be able to do as little damage as possible. Part of the solution so far has been to not allow low level access and instead try to wall off all code running in the browser from anything important.

Back in the early days of WebGL there was a lot of talk about how insecure it was because due to being based on OpenGL and needing to be able to bypass a lot of browser security mechanisms to work properly. A "WebGLNext" based on Vulkan would essentially be the same problem all over again, except even worse.

Because of that I personally think a low level graphics idea is a lot like solar roadways, i.e an appealing concept, but a very bad idea when you actually get into the technical specifics of it.

[geearf]

Mantle, Metal, and Direct3D12 all seemed to sprout out around the same time and no one would have guessed at the time AMD would hand over Mantle to start an open standard

Metal started in June 2014, Direct3D 12 in July 2015.
Mantle was from February 2014.
Now the question is when was Apple aware of Mantle. I always thought that like D3D it was inspired by it, but the release date are so close...

[discordian]

So what I can I expect from this, finally flash is on its way out, now there is not one but 2 standards that will allow 3D Ads to cripple the browser?
I cant see anything good that came from WebGL, but maybe I am alone when I want the browser to be able to display Information and dont want to run more complex stuff in it than layouting and sorting tables. Soon your Operating system will boot faster than your Browser.

[GruenSein]

Metal started in June 2014, Direct3D 12 in July 2015.
Mantle was from February 2014.
Now the question is when was Apple aware of Mantle. I always thought that like D3D it was inspired by it, but the release date are so close...

I think, you are underestimating development time. While the open drivers for vulkan seem to be progressing quickly now, coming up with a good API takes longer. My guess is that Apple startet their work on Metal long before AMD announced Mantle to the public. The only space that has been using low level APIs for a long time is the XBox/PS sort of thing. My guess is, AMD and Apple saw the need to reduce CPU-Overhead in parallel. AMD learned from their involvement in the development of the current gen consoles and Apple just needed to drive the (at that time) insanely high pixel counts in their mobile devices with a relatively good GPU and a relatively slow mobile CPU. At the time, Mantle was announced, their plans concerning Metal were most likely already pretty far along.

[adakite]

What kind of fools are they, thinking anyone is going to buy this shit? They are the only reason we don't have one single explicit graphics API for all the platforms.

I would say that Microsoft with is the one to blame on that point (i.e., DirectX), while OpenGL was already there, supported and opened by SGI.

[adakite]

Apple doing something that might possibly become useful for the first time since the 90s, cool.

They provided a nice POSIX, certified UNIX system with an efficient DE experience to the scientific community which, back to 2000's was intensively on Solaris, HP-UX, IRIX....Then since SL, they started to bullshit their own Operating System and I can tell you that a lot of the science community is moving to Linux for their desktop/workstation since 2 or 3 years, It's a deep-seated move I can tell you.

[Vistaus]

LLVM? OpenCL? WebKit? (The last one maybe not ok)

Apart from that, why do we need a new API? What is the problem with simply reusing Vulkan?

Not too sure about LLVM and OpenCL but WebKit isn't something Apple invented; they simply forked KDE's KHTML project.

[GruenSein]

Not too sure about LLVM and OpenCL but WebKit isn't something Apple invented; they simply forked KDE's KHTML project.

Inventing is one thing. I am not sure, if they actually invented LLVM, WebKit, or CUPS. They did essentially do the lion's share of the development work on those projects in recent years, though. So, they do contribute to open source projects and adhere to such standards.. ...when it suits them. Their primary concern isn't pleasing the OSS crowd. That's a lot to ask from a company anyway. How about we stop either praising or trashing Apple. Some stuff they do is awesome. Some isn't.

[Vistaus]

Inventing is one thing. I am not sure, if they actually invented LLVM, WebKit, or CUPS. They did essentially do the lion's share of the development work on those projects in recent years, though. So, they do contribute to open source projects and adhere to such standards.. ...when it suits them. Their primary concern isn't pleasing the OSS crowd. That's a lot to ask from a company anyway. How about we stop either praising or trashing Apple. Some stuff they do is awesome. Some isn't.

Yeah, let's at least give 'em credit where due: they did take over development of some (open source) projects and keep developing it. Unlike a certain other company called Oracle...

[bug77]

So what I can I expect from this, finally flash is on its way out, now there is not one but 2 standards that will allow 3D Ads to cripple the browser?
I cant see anything good that came from WebGL, but maybe I am alone when I want the browser to be able to display Information and dont want to run more complex stuff in it than layouting and sorting tables. Soon your Operating system will boot faster than your Browser.

Well, Google maps uses WebGL. Probably Microsoft's, too, but I'm not sure.
It's definitely not general purpose tech though. Plus, did I mention how much I hate this reinventing the desktop in a browser?