With news doing the rounds about the latest update to macOS, it turns out they're finally admitting they're doing nothing with their support of OpenGL and it's to be deprecated.
See here, where it says:
Deprecation of OpenGL and OpenCL
Apps built using OpenGL and OpenCL will continue to run in macOS 10.14, but these legacy technologies are deprecated in macOS 10.14. Games and graphics-intensive apps that use OpenGL should now adopt Metal. Similarly, apps that use OpenCL for computational tasks should now adopt Metal and Metal Performance Shaders.
I've seen so many complaints about the poor OpenGL support on macOS for quite some time, so it's not exactly a surprise. It's going to be a shock for those game developers not using a pre-made game engine like Unity and the likes.
"This isn't a Mac news website" I hear you scream at your monitor. Yeah, I know. However, this could have a big impact on Linux gaming, for better or worse. It could lead to developers either dropping Mac support due to the small market share and not being worth having to learn another (closed) API, or it could mean them dropping OpenGL in favour of Metal and not doing Linux version for the smaller again market share.
Interesting times we live in. Thankfully, the big game engines will take away some of the pain for developers. My Twitter feed has been—colourful this evening when news of this came in. Here's some initial reactions:
Jupiter Hell + DRL - D**m, the Roguelike developer:
Jupiter Hell is the last game that I'll do that will have OSX support. https://t.co/662OLJ0hqj
— Kornel Kisielewicz (@epyoncf) June 4, 2018
Defender's Quest developer:
If Apple thinks this is going to drive Metal adoption, they're nuts. All this means is "All aboard the Vulkan train!"https://t.co/szY0WuJ2Oz
— Lars Doucet (@larsiusprime) June 4, 2018
(Or just ignore Mac entirely, as Apple itself is doing more each day themselves)
MidBoss developer:
Fuck Apple. If they insist on going this route I may just have to start exclusively shipping Electron web builds of my games on Mac to ensure things will keep working. Sorry for those of you on Macs but 2% of my games users is not worth implementing a whole new back end for. https://t.co/lPoqpwOL9n
— 'Shark Hugs' Eniko (@Enichan) June 4, 2018
Starsector developer:
This would mean the end of OS X support by Starsector. Unless @LWJGL comes up with some dark magic? https://t.co/2RaKk0Q5fw
— Alexander Mosolov (@amosolov) June 4, 2018
Maia developer:
I won't port thousands of lines of my engine to a non standard proprietary API. Neither will many other developers either on principle or due to OSX's tiny install base. Here lies the end of games on Apple's desktop platform. pic.twitter.com/nKUWiMKwDS
— Simon Roth (@SimoRoth) June 4, 2018
The list goes on and on like that. What will be interesting to see, is if more developers who are building the tools themselves look to projects like MoltenVK to use Vulkan on both Linux and Mac.
I do have to wonder, if Valve knew this was coming and helped get MoltenVK open sourced to help for when this situation eventually came.
What are your thoughts?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
GustyGhost Jun 6, 2018
Quoting: saclautaaI wonder how long Apple will keep trying to get away with the crap they've been pulling in recent years. First removing every port under the sun from their devices, now removing support for the most widely used graphics APIs... It's like they don't want customers anymore.
They want customers. They want customers who use peripherals that only plug into apple devices. They want customers that use programs runnable only through apple APIs. They want customers who cannot migrate away to competition.
Quoting: GustyGhostQuoting: saclautaaI wonder how long Apple will keep trying to get away with the crap they've been pulling in recent years. First removing every port under the sun from their devices, now removing support for the most widely used graphics APIs... It's like they don't want customers anymore.
They want customers. They want customers who use peripherals that only plug into apple devices. They want customers that use programs runnable only through apple APIs. They want customers who cannot migrate away to competition.
True, hopefully people begin to see through their bullshit and migrate before it's too late.
Quoting: saclautaaQuoting: GustyGhostQuoting: saclautaaI wonder how long Apple will keep trying to get away with the crap they've been pulling in recent years. First removing every port under the sun from their devices, now removing support for the most widely used graphics APIs... It's like they don't want customers anymore.
They want customers. They want customers who use peripherals that only plug into apple devices. They want customers that use programs runnable only through apple APIs. They want customers who cannot migrate away to competition.
True, hopefully people begin to see through their bullshit and migrate before it's too late.
I would like to agree with you, but I'm too pessimistic... It's pretty the same with the Microsoft/Windows environment and I only see few people drop that for Linux. The majority still stay on it... I think most of people won't see it before it's too late, unfortunately. :(
Mohandevir Jun 8, 2018
Edit: At some point the walls of the garden are going to get so high that the sun won't be able to shed light on the apple tree and it will go barren. :)
Last edited by Mohandevir on 8 June 2018 at 8:23 pm UTC
wvstolzing Jun 8, 2018
Quoting: MohandevirOr they are just aiming to completely axe the MacBook line and eventually concentrate on their mobile division only (crazy rumor I read somewhere)...
I'm not sure whether there's anything official to corroborate this, but since 2015-2016 'insiders' have been reporting that there isn't a dedicated 'macOS' team at Apple anymore; it's basically a side-project for the iOS team.
See, e.g.:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-12-20/how-apple-alienated-mac-loyalists
https://www.theverge.com/2016/12/21/14037686/apple-macbook-macos-focus-mobile-features-ios
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/report-apples-mac-team-is-getting-a-lot-less-attention-than-before/
Coupled with various rumors that they might switch to an ARM variant (designed at least partly in-house) on the desktop machines, I don't think it's too crazy to predict that the Mac's future is to become a beefier ipad.
I'm not sure what that entails exactly, but I don't think they'll let go of their 'content creator' customers *entirely* (despite having given them 'the finger' repeatedly over the past decade). For all we know, Adobe might be preparing not just for the transition to Metal, but also to ARM. Though whatever the Mac line ends up turning into, their absurd 'forced obsolescence' policy will have to change.
Sir_Diealot Jun 10, 2018
In short: it has been soft-deprecated for years, he expects it to work for a couple more years and there are plans for a metal backend which will in part also help the development of a Vulkan or DX12 backend since they have a similar architecture.
That's a very pragmatic approach. We probably all hope for Vulkan everywhere rather than three similar yet different APIs, but there is little we can do other than to make Vulkan better.
Quoting: GuestQuoting: elmapulwhy would you develop for an platform with 10.000 users when you can develop for an platform like ps4 with 70 millions of users?Why you think making a game for AtariVCS is making a game for only 10.000 users when Atari uses Linux?? When you make a game for Linux you're making a game for AtariVCS.
the issue is, AtariVCS will not change our marketshare from 1% to 2%,3% and so on, so its irrelevant as an product.
Quoting: [email protected]Quoting: elmapuli hate to say that, but that decision will have an negative effect on us, and positive on then.
iOS is a "money making machine" so many game engines support metal or will support metal so they can be used to make iOS apps, now that apple will ditch support for iOS its more likely that more games will support metal than they will keep suporting openGL.
we have an lower marketshare, most big companies will ditch support for linux insteda of mac.
apple is the richest tech company, even if some companies dont want to support then, they can afford to purchase some support including exclusive games.
The same can be said for Android which in fact is a bigger pie than iOS alone.
Most Android implementations ship with some form of OpenGL and more modern, higher end ones also ship with Vulkan too.
android indeed has an highter marketshare, but most of the money comes from the iOS market.
making money for iOS is more profitable than for android unfourtunatelly.
Quoting: elmapulandroid indeed has an highter marketshare, but most of the money comes from the iOS market.Wait, what? How does that work?! I did a quick google--Android is currently at like six times iOS market share. So like, do iphone users pay six times as much for games, or play six times as many games per capita? Or do the "stores" on Android phones take a cut so massive that game publishers only get 1/6th as much money per game?
making money for iOS is more profitable than for android unfourtunatelly.
None of this seems very plausible. I can see iphone users, probably more prosperous than Android users on average (both individually and considering that wealthier countries buy more iphones), paying and playing somewhat more each. But enough to outweigh the massive difference in numbers? I'm finding that frankly hard to believe.
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