Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: manus76Oh it's simple: as i said the original question was why so much Apple bashing as if it had tremendous impact on the state of linux gaming. Does it?
Apple is a company and it will do all it can to earn money, maybe having an extra API specifically tailored for your hardware brings money. If one wants to challenge Apple on that front they need a company too, linux isn't one.

Because Apple is one of the worst cases of lock-in proponents. Metal is the example here. You apparently agree. If you don't understand why it deserves criticism, then I guess you think damage to the industry progress is good and falls into "do what you can to earn money". That's not the first time someone tries to justify such crooked practice.

And if you just don't get why Apple is criticized, and not other lock-in proponents like MS, Sony and etc. it's because the conversation was about Apple above. Of course all of them deserve this criticism.

Imagine the following for the sake of argument: Apple supports Vulkan and all of MacOS games suddenly appear on linux. How many games would that be? 100? 1000? 2000? What kind of impact would it have on linux gaming? Would it mean linux gaming market share (what the original article is about and not about Apple) would explode overnight? That is my question: does this warrant all of this bashing and bitching about a company driven by profit?
I realise from linux gamers' perspective lock-in is not a great idea, but as already mentioned: a company operating on the capitalist market must take other things into consideration, not necessarily how a couple of nerds feel about computer graphics API's.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: manus76I do understand that but again: Does Apple force anyone to release their games (or software in general) on MacOS? Do programmers know beforehand they will need to support another backend? If they do know and still release on MacOS is this Apple's fault or the programmers'?

Forcing is the wrong word here. Developers target bigger markets first naturally. So if they need to support N graphics APIs instead of 1, they'll spend N times more effort / money / time on doing it, instead of focusing on improving other things. And out of those N, they'll focus on bigger ones first. And it is lock-in jerks' fault, that instead of collaborating on the common standard, they created their lock-ins, to make the above effort much harder. HTML history can demonstrate you the benefits of the common open standard, and the damage lock-in can cause.

The bottom line, you got the point of lock-in being a tax. So I don't see what you are even arguing about.

Oh it's simple: as i said the original question was why so much Apple bashing as if it had tremendous impact on the state of linux gaming. Does it?
Apple is a company and it will do all it can to earn money, maybe having an extra API specifically tailored for your hardware brings money. If one wants to challenge Apple on that front they need a company too, linux isn't one.

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: manus76You did not explain, you gave an example (Epic and their UE) to which i gave a counterexample (Croteam Talos Principle/SS). And there are dozens of other examples of games released on multiple platforms/backends which somehow work and are profitable.

No work comes for free. Work of supporting additional APIs costs money and effort. I.e. it's a tax. Sure, some can afford it, but you are very mistaken if you think it's free (either in time, money, people and so on). Some can afford this tax more than others, but it's still a tax. It creates a barrier of entry, and in general, has a chilling effect on competing platforms of those who create this tax with lock-in. That's the while idea behind it. If you still don't understand, read some general articles about the damage of vendor lock-in.

I do understand that but again: Does Apple force anyone to release their games (or software in general) on MacOS? Do programmers know beforehand they will need to support another backend? If they do know and still release on MacOS is this Apple's fault or the programmers'?

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Quoting: Shmerl

Quoting: manus76What does it have to do with Apple?

I just explained it above. What exactly you didn't understand? At least I see no point in repeating what I said, unless you have a specific misunderstanding of how pushing lock-in taxes developers.

To summarize. Any lock-in of some major participant in the industry creates a tax, or if you want a barrier of entry, which can deter some, or simply cause them spend more time on development or reduce quality of less prioritized options.

You did not explain, you gave an example (Epic and their UE) to which i gave a counterexample (Croteam Talos Principle/SS). And there are dozens of other examples of games released on multiple platforms/backends which somehow work and are profitable.
Anyway my original question was why this thread turned into Apple bashing, and what does Apple have to do with the state of linux gaming. Does Apple force anyone to release their games (or software in general) on MacOS?
Do programmers know beforehand they will need to support another backend? If they do know and still release on MacOS is this Apple's fault or the programmers'?

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Quoting: ShmerlAll that has a negative impact. Consider for example engine developers like Epic and their UE. Because they need to support multiple redundant backends (DX, Metal, GNM, and then OpenGL/Vulkan), what do you think they are focused on more? Bigger ones of course. That's why games like Everspace suffer from bugs on Linux that aren't fixed in a long time. All that is a direct consequence of lock-in jerks pushing their APIs, instead of using open ones which would allow engine developers to produce higher quality result for each OS. What other practical demonstration of that impact do you need?

What does it have to do with Apple? Desktop-Gamingwise Apple plays almost no role in the big scheme of things - who buys a Mac to play games anyway? Also 'Redundant backends'? If it brings money it's not, from programmers' perspective, redundant I guess. Another point: there are examples of developers successfully supporting multiple backends (e.g.Serious Sam/The Talos Priniciple off the top of my head) without all that much trouble it seems.
So: is that all, as you write, 'consequence of lock-in jerks pushing their APIs'? Or maybe some teams are not competent enough? Work on other projects?

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Does it all impact linux gaming in any way? In other words: do you think there would be a lot people suddenly installing a linux distro on their computers if Apple changed its practices?
The biggest thing that happened in linux gaming is Steam, and even now, couple of years later with a relatively mature client and several thousands of games we don't see billions of people abandoning MacOS let alone Windows and moving to linux. What makes people think that a couple of games more on 'our platform' would suddenly change that?

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Yes, the world is sometimes an unpleasant place to live. There are bad and wrong things happening and there are multibillion dollar corporations operating on the capitalist market driven solely by (surprise) profit.
The thread is about linux gaming and not about Apple, even if there was a direct link between Apple's practices and the state of linux gaming at the moment, I haven't seen anyone demonstrating such a link.

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Why has this thread turned into 'Apple is an evil corporation' diatribe? I thought it was about Linux gaming and I can't recall seeing anyone putting a gun to people's heads, forcing them to buy an Apple product (or Microsoft's for that matter). At least not where I live.

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And what is wrong exactly with 'thrusting boobs into one's face'? :P

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This open source vs closed source, drm on/off debate gets really old and annoying. If you don't like something, don't use it, if you do, do use it, just don't claim moral high ground because of your choice (one way or the other). I, though an open source fan, am grateful to Valve for what they've been doing past few years probably because i still remember the good, old times when we had something like 5 games on linux (hyperbole).

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