Apple Depreciates OpenGL and OpenCL in MacOS

rgMekanic

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Apple has announced today in a post on it's Developer page, that OpenGL and OpenCL will be depreciated in the upcoming macOS 10.14, stating that games and graphics intensive apps that use OpenGL should adopt Apple's API Metal. Similarly apps that use OpenCL for computational tasks are supposed to adopt Metal, and Metal Performance Shaders. From the article:

Metal is designed from the ground up to provide the best access to the modern GPUs on iOS, macOS, and tvOS devices. Metal avoids the overhead inherent in legacy technologies and exposes the latest graphics processing functionality. Unified support for graphics and compute in Metal lets your apps efficiently utilize the latest rendering techniques. For information about developing apps and games using Metal, see the developer documentation for Metal, Metal Performance Shaders, and MetalKit. For information about migrating OpenGL code to Metal, see Mixing Metal and OpenGL Rendering in a View.

This seems like a very bad idea in my opinion. While I'm all for new APIs (Bring on more Vulcan titles!), forcing it on developers, and doing who knows what when it comes to the performance of legacy applications just seems wrong.
 
Apple has announced today in a post on it's Developer page, that OpenGL and OpenCL will be depreciated in the upcoming macOS 10.14, stating that games and graphics intensive apps that use OpenGL should adopt Apple's API Metal. Similarly apps that use OpenCL for computational tasks are supposed to adopt Metal, and Metal Performance Shaders. From the article:

Metal is designed from the ground up to provide the best access to the modern GPUs on iOS, macOS, and tvOS devices. Metal avoids the overhead inherent in legacy technologies and exposes the latest graphics processing functionality. Unified support for graphics and compute in Metal lets your apps efficiently utilize the latest rendering techniques. For information about developing apps and games using Metal, see the developer documentation for Metal, Metal Performance Shaders, and MetalKit. For information about migrating OpenGL code to Metal, see Mixing Metal and OpenGL Rendering in a View.

This seems like a very bad idea in my opinion. While I'm all for new APIs (Bring on more Vulcan titles!), forcing it on developers, and doing who knows what when it comes to the performance of legacy applications just seems wrong.

It seems bad at first glance, but given their strategy of moving to their own desktop CPU/APU architecture by 2020 it would seem to make sense.
 
its ok apple has decided you no longer need open gl or open cl apps. it is now time to get rid of those applications and move on to newer metal based apps. because they are better.
because this is the apple way . not your way . be damned what you need.
 
It seems bad at first glance, but given their strategy of moving to their own desktop CPU/APU architecture by 2020 it would seem to make sense.

Agreed. This would be unnecessary unless they're planning for something that isn't part of OpenGL, or they're planning a true shared system architecture.


P.S. All the new flavors of Diet Coke in the slim 12 oz. cans taste like shit.
 
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OpenGL and especially OpenCL are as the name implies, open, platform independent specs that are quite powerful. Why the hell would Apple want to push forward on a proprietary API that means everyone else would have a more difficult time supporting their... .oh yeah. That's right. Its Apple. They don't care.

If they wanted to use their relatively walled garden for good to move to more modern APIs, why not Vulkan instead? I don't see any reason to choose Metal with the exception f "not invented here" hubris. Vulkan would mean Apple would be taking a step to move adoption of the next cross-platform open graphics and compute API forward; Metal just means more difficulty porting to Apple OSes if you're forced to move everything to Metal and can't even really fall back on OpenGL/CL anymore. Hopefully even Apple will realize the error of this and that they'd benefit more by simply focusing on Vulkan, but that ecosystem - and it seems the minds of many users and developers alike - seem so closed and insular that they will survive in their little walled garden without anyone who doesn't want to do things The Apple Way (tm)
 
Sounds right in line with all things Apple does: when they decided users didn't need a headphone jack anymore on their phones, or any other USB ports than the 1 on their macbook, or heack when they decided to stop supporting 32 bit apps.
 
Hopefully it only harms porting to Apple but I can see how some might not want to port to Linux without Mac. I think that's a dumb move myself. Hopefully devs flip Metal the bird. Rewarding scummy behavior by using Metal vs OpenGL or Vulkan even if you would rather not sends a bad message.
 
That Apple with a bite out of it that they have kept around must have grown some mind-altering mold that sent spores into the air and all the people in charge of design and advertising have been affected by it for at least a couple years now.
 
OpenGL and especially OpenCL are as the name implies, open, platform independent specs that are quite powerful. Why the hell would Apple want to push forward on a proprietary API that means everyone else would have a more difficult time supporting their... .oh yeah. That's right. Its Apple. They don't care.

If they wanted to use their relatively walled garden for good to move to more modern APIs, why not Vulkan instead? I don't see any reason to choose Metal with the exception f "not invented here" hubris. Vulkan would mean Apple would be taking a step to move adoption of the next cross-platform open graphics and compute API forward; Metal just means more difficulty porting to Apple OSes if you're forced to move everything to Metal and can't even really fall back on OpenGL/CL anymore. Hopefully even Apple will realize the error of this and that they'd benefit more by simply focusing on Vulkan, but that ecosystem - and it seems the minds of many users and developers alike - seem so closed and insular that they will survive in their little walled garden without anyone who doesn't want to do things The Apple Way (tm)

It also makes it difficult to measure the performance differences with other platforms.
Once they are making their own chips, they will only support their own API which is optimized for that chip.
Easier to hide any performance issues, since they can fudge the API to skip frames, etc.

Then they can use their fake benchmarks to say Apple has the fasted video cards.
 
Steam was trying to get a good selection of apple compatible games in the list. Not sure how many developers are going to want to have so many API's to program against.
 
Steam was trying to get a good selection of apple compatible games in the list. Not sure how many developers are going to want to have so many API's to program against.

Well, if the desktop platform is basically the same as iOS that would negate the issue as you’d be expanding your market to more then just Macintosh.

I just don’t see any other reason why Apple would do this. They are obviously converging their mobile and desktop in a few years.
 
Macs aren't relevant for gaming anyways. Who wants to write a game that will be run on a bunch of overpriced underpowered laptops? No one.
 
Vulcan is an installed Library on macOS while OpenGL and OpenCL are built into the OS itself. There is nothing stopping anybody from installing the Vulcan library and going to town.
While it sucks for GL and CL both those libraries are a mess and I can understand why they would want to drop support for them.
 
Vulcan is an installed Library on macOS while OpenGL and OpenCL are built into the OS itself. There is nothing stopping anybody from installing the Vulcan library and going to town.

Yes there is: Driver support. Driver's are the main reason OGL on Macs sucks so badly, since the latest drivers aren't conformant to the API.

And despite all the issues with Macs, the still maintain 4x the userbase of Linux.
 
Way to harm your brand.
Apple never ceases to amaze.
 
I have nothing positive to contribute to this discussion.

It seems to me that Apple is never going to regain it's dominance as a gaming platform if they do not force developers to adopt yet another API. There are probably many dozens of studios looking forward to porting their latest games to something new.
 
so... Apple liked to release games a half-decade after the rest of the world and wants to go back to that?

just.... lol.
 
It also makes it difficult to measure the performance differences with other platforms.
Once they are making their own chips, they will only support their own API which is optimized for that chip.
Easier to hide any performance issues, since they can fudge the API to skip frames, etc.

Then they can use their fake benchmarks to say Apple has the fasted video cards.

And let the smokescreen begin. . . .well this model can render 15% more pixieslices than the last and 20% more quplexes than leading competitors. But wait, what's a quplex? Oh it's like a rendersnoz, you know.

I'm pretty sure that app makers will likely have to pay higher licensing fees to help support this new api.
 
its ok apple has decided you no longer need open gl or open cl apps. it is now time to get rid of those applications and move on to newer metal based apps. because they are better.
because this is the apple way . not your way . be damned what you need.

you must really be hurt about your head phone jack being ripped out of your phone.

sooo apple found a way to force you to not hold on to your old app which will no longer work with your attempts to be current on operating system releases. I would THINK this goes hand in hand... and yet some orgs still run windows XP. Just because it works does not mean you should continue to use it. If it were not for some industry leaders (yes apple is one of them) forcing new ways of doing things (in this case - a software re-write) we may still be back in the black and white TV days.

change is good.
 
How about that! Apple finally found a way to completely kill gaming on their products! One less port to worry about.
 
Don't get me wrong, I recognize that pointing out something about macOS/Apple at HardForums is kinda pointless, but

Apps built using OpenGL and OpenCL will continue to run in macOS 10.14, but these legacy technologies are deprecated in macOS 10.14.

Deprecated APIs typically remain present and usable in the system for a reasonable time past the release in which they were deprecated. However, active development on them ceases, and the APIs receive only minor changes to accommodate security patches or to fix other critical bugs. Deprecated APIs may be removed entirely from a future version of the operating system.

So, OpenGL/OpenCL will still work on the next version of macOS (and likely the version after as a complete guess), this is the start of the migration away from OpenGL/OpenCL.

I expect it is likely related to moving away from Intel processors to ARM processors by 2020 that's the scuttlebutt.


For better or worse, Apple has always been about leaving tech behind when they don't think it is of value anymore.
I do not always agree with those choices (looking at you headphone jacks), but honestly they've been right way more often than wrong (looking at you Floppys/CD/DVD/32bit/etc)

/shrug
 
Nothing seems to harm them. Tthey could hand out a turd in a box, and people would still come back to them cuz apple!

Other companies have gotten away with this. They company that makes Cards Against Humanity sold a product calleed Bull$hit, and people bought it up. It actually sold out, because people thought that they were getting an exclusive card for the game. They literally got a box of bull feces.

Proof: http://time.com/3634443/cards-against-humanity-poop-black-friday/
 
Considering Mac has always been the go-to platform for drafters and architects, and all those programs are OpenGL intensive, this seems like a stab in the back to some of their core users.
 
its ok apple has decided you no longer need open gl or open cl apps. it is now time to get rid of those applications and move on to newer metal based apps. because they are better.
because this is the apple way . not your way . be damned what you need.

If you're that serious about needing api's, you're probably NOT running a mac to begin with.



another thread #543432432 of windows/linux users ripping Apple updates they don't and will never use
 
Macs aren't relevant for gaming anyways. Who wants to write a game that will be run on a bunch of overpriced underpowered laptops? No one.

Yeah they won't ever get any AAA games like Mad Max, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Mafia III, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Xcom 2, not to mention they would never get thousands of other games across mutliple stores. Never happen...........

Dozens and dozens of gamers worldwide are taking this really hard.

Last Steam hardware survey had Mac at 3.07%. Last number of users Valve talked about was 125 million users. That makes roughly 3.83 million Mac users just on Steam. That's quite a few dozen. School system must be shit wherever you live. Need to up the math skills.
 
Considering Mac has always been the go-to platform for drafters and architects, and all those programs are OpenGL intensive, this seems like a stab in the back to some of their core users.
Here is a list of the hardware that already supports Metal as well as the list of software already using it. After looking at that, I’m pretty sure Apple is confident that anybody who will be using 10.14 is already using the newer versions of that software. Metal has been their official graphics API since 2014 that’s a solid 4 years of them telling developers that this was coming and it looks like most of them got the hint.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_(API)
 
Yeah they won't ever get any AAA games like Mad Max, Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, Mafia III, Rise of the Tomb Raider, Xcom 2, not to mention they would never get thousands of other games across mutliple stores. Never happen...........



Last Steam hardware survey had Mac at 3.07%. Last number of users Valve talked about was 125 million users. That makes roughly 3.83 million Mac users just on Steam. That's quite a few dozen. School system must be shit wherever you live. Need to up the math skills.

All the games you listed there are already using the Metal API for their Mac versions. And it looks like the vast majority of MacOS steam titles are too.
 
Face it, folks. It's Apple's playground, thus Apple's rules. Doesn't matter if it's the Apple rules of the week, you play by Apple's rules.

Why do you think some of the iToy apps are intentionally crippled? Because the Apple Mafia wants their cut. (Audible for iToy, anyone?)

Got a older but perfectly working Apple computer or iToy? The Apple Mafia doesn't like that, and you have to buy the newest computer or iToy.

Trying to run MacOS on the non-blessed Apple hardware? The Apple Mafia remind you what NO means.
 
For those worried about games on Mac and this change; Unity 5, Unreal 4, EGO, and Source 2, just to name the big ones already use the Metal API either directly or through a compatibility framework.
 
you must really be hurt about your head phone jack being ripped out of your phone.

sooo apple found a way to force you to not hold on to your old app which will no longer work with your attempts to be current on operating system releases. I would THINK this goes hand in hand... and yet some orgs still run windows XP. Just because it works does not mean you should continue to use it. If it were not for some industry leaders (yes apple is one of them) forcing new ways of doing things (in this case - a software re-write) we may still be back in the black and white TV days.

change is good.

And forced change can be expensive.
Not everyone has the resources to rewrite apps or replace expensive equipment just because the OS vendor doesn't want to support an old API.
 
Apple $48.1B away from a $1tn market cap as of this writing.


They can do what they want folks.


I, for one, welcome our new shiny Metal overlord!
 
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