Apple Unveils "Metal 2" Graphics API, Better Performance & Capabilities For VR

[wizard69]

There could literally never be another game or application using OpenGL again, and yet it would still be more important than Metal for years.

That is so true, people only think about games here. One reason OpenGL got bogged down was the fact that many companies simply didn't want massive changes to upset their code bases. Thus for awhile everybody went their own way.

Wha tis interesting here with Apple is their strong tilt to support machine learning which appears to be a big part of High Sierra. I suspect this is part of what is driving them to do their own GPU. Metal will be leveraging the coming Apple GPU to a significant extent.

[wizard69]

Nobody should care about Metal, it's dead anyway.
As mobile games gradually switches to Vulkan over OpenGL ES, iOS will be left behind. This will sooner or later "force" Apple to support Vulkan.

That is delusional in my mind. The Apple ecosystem is so huge that it is foolish of a developer not to use their technologies. You may not like that idea but right now their isn't a more heavily used mobile OS.

[shmerl]

You may not like that idea but right now their isn't a more heavily used mobile OS.

Apple lost to Android already (in sheer numbers). But they still remain big, and will probably remain big in foreseeable future.

[GruenSein]

You're thinking of it from the pleb luser perspective, people here are thinking what a shame it is that Apple is alienating the broader 3D graphics development community, and forsaking the most credible attempt at a universal accelerated graphics API. They have every right to do it, but that doesn't mean people need to pretend to like it. I'm not an Apple user, I'm a developer who has published applications on their platforms, and from my perspective it is an immense waste of time and talent for Apple to be doing this unless their new GPU architecture is going to gain something from it, and there has been no indication of that being the case.

I totally see that it might be annoying to learn more than one low level API. Maybe, Apple feels that they are too big to be ignored in terms of their technology and so they introduced Metal to retain tight control over their graphics stack supporting the "walled garden"-theory. I think, there are historic reasons for Metal as it was the first low level API available in production OSs and it got big through iOS rather quickly. On a technological level, I'll leave it up to pro devs to decide which technology serves their needs best.

[starshipeleven]

OpenGL is dead. It's on long-term life support. Vulkan interchange with Metal is already in the works for what matter glTF 2.0. Game developers have embraced both, but more are already using Metal across Apple's ecosystem.

This is highly exaggerated, Metal support is near non-existant outside of Apple-only software, and OpenGL is still what most software uses so not getting drivers for it up to spec is a Win8 maneuver.

It's not Apple's job to do the heavy lifting for the FOSS community who only cares about one platform: Linux.

It is not the FOSS community's job to do the heavy lifting for Apple who only cares about one platform: Apple.

[Luke_Wolf]

That is delusional in my mind. The Apple ecosystem is so huge that it is foolish of a developer not to use their technologies. You may not like that idea but right now their isn't a more heavily used mobile OS.

As we can quite clearly see here not even close:

http://www.idc.com/promo/smartphone-market-share/vendor

Apple had dropped to 10-15% share in smartphone space back in 2011 I believe, and it was 2013 that Android tablet sales exceeded iOS tablet sales. Tablets other than Windows Tablets are now dead, because the media tablet idea didn't have a strong argument for it while stylus tablets did. The iPad also died when Apple released the iPhone 6 Plus in 2014 as what the consumer market broadly actually wants is a 5-6 inch phone as other IDC statistics have shown.

So by consequence, no... the stack is far more like:

• Android (85-90% of smartphone market)
• Windows (90%+ of consumer desktop market)
• ...
• ...
• ...
• ...
• ...
• ...
• ...
• ...
• iOS (10-15% of smartphone market)
• OS X (3% of consumer desktop market)
• Linux (1% of consumer desktop market)

Which by consequence means that Apple is slitting their own throat just to be different... just like some other company that starts with a C did. The difference is that Apple actually has a stockpile unlike Canonical did, and so can keep at this game almost indefinitely. They are in no position to make such demands or changes however and they will either step up or be left behind by developers. Meanwhile ... The Nintendo Switch runs Vulkan, and there's claims that Sony announced that the next gen playstation would support Vulkan which is certainly believable although I can't find articles backing it up... so we're headed towards a single cross platform API and Apple burned their invitation.

[nomadewolf]

Direct3d is not an open standard either.

That might explain why everyone here is voicing in favor of Vulkan and not Direct3D...

[GruenSein]

This is highly exaggerated, Metal support is near non-existant outside of Apple-only software, and OpenGL is still what most software uses so not getting drivers for it up to spec is a Win8 maneuver.

It is not the FOSS community's job to do the heavy lifting for Apple who only cares about one platform: Apple.

Hmm, are you sure? Blizzard and Unreal for instance support Metal quite well. With Valve and SteamVR coming to macOS, a bunch of major players seem to be willing to support Metal, whatever the reasons might be. Maybe, we're overestimating the differences between the low level APIs. Their point is to make the GPU functionality available without heavy abstractions. The GPUs are the same no matter if you run Linux, Windows, or macOS. Perhaps (and that is just speculation on my part) going from Vulkan to Metal and vice versa is not as much work as going from D3D11 to OpenGL.

Another thing to consider is not just the amount of devices which run iOS or Android etc. It's also the amount the average user of such devices spends on apps. My guess is that Apple users spend a lot more money on apps and therefore remain very relevant to developers.

Also, where is the FOSS community doing Apple's work? I'd say with LLVM, CUPS, webkit etc. they are contributing to FOSS projects when it is of use to them, which is fine. No company will ever develop open source software without gaining something from it.

[memeka]

macOS high sierra has its display server on metal2.

there are enough reasons for apple not to go vulkan. just like why macOS until now it was not using X11.
they can push changes faster and make better use of their custom chips's features. especially now when they will make their own mobile GPUs. anyone that saw how fast metal has evolved vs vulkan would not ask "why don't they go vulkan"...

[starshipeleven]

Hmm, are you sure? Blizzard and Unreal for instance support Metal quite well.

Blizzard has a long history of Mac support and Unreal is a multiplatform game engine so the rendering is a module that can be swapped (simplification) and most infrastructure for that has always been in place.

With Valve and SteamVR coming to macOS, a bunch of major players seem to be willing to support Metal, whatever the reasons might be.

Not to sound like I don't believe you but I didn't see that. Could you post some sources for this?

Last time I looked there were one VR hardware maker (Oculus I think) that said things like "Apple makes devices with crap GPUs so we don't see why we should support MacOS", did the situation change?

Maybe, we're overestimating the differences between the low level APIs. Their point is to make the GPU functionality available without heavy abstractions. The GPUs are the same no matter if you run Linux, Windows, or macOS. Perhaps (and that is just speculation on my part) going from Vulkan to Metal and vice versa is not as much work as going from D3D11 to OpenGL.

This makes sense and I was keeping this in mind already, as going from DX12 to Vulkan is much easier than dx11 to OGL.
The main issue is that for an app that must run multiplatform you need to make it able to offload on different backends, so kinda multiplatform. Sure it is less a PITA than before but it's not free.

Another thing to consider is not just the amount of devices which run iOS or Android etc. It's also the amount the average user of such devices spends on apps. My guess is that Apple users spend a lot more money on apps and therefore remain very relevant to developers.

an app is kinda non-cross-platform anyway, so yeah, not what I was talking about (multiplatform stuff).

Also, where is the FOSS community doing Apple's work? I'd say with LLVM, CUPS, webkit etc. they are contributing to FOSS projects when it is of use to them, which is fine. No company will ever develop open source software without gaining something from it.

Which is the same I'm saying. If there is a gain on both sides then there is a trade, if one side gains and the other loses (like to add Metal support to FOSS applications to run them on MacOS) then there is no trade.
Note that most FOSS applications don't sell anything so there is even less reason to add Metal support than if we were talking of commercial closedsource application.

Heck it makes FAR more sense to add DX12 than Metal.