Slashdot Mirror


Apple Deprecates OpenGL and OpenCL in macOS 10.14 Mojave

In macOS 10.14 Mojave, which Apple unveiled on Monday, the company is deprecating OpenGL and OpenCL technologies in its desktop operating system. In an announcement post to developers, the company wrote: 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. PCGamer reports that several developers have expressed disappointment over the decision. AnandTech reports that the company is doing away with OpenGL and OpenCL in iOS and its other operating systems as well.

12 of 269 comments (clear)

  1. No doubt... by x0ra · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Ignoring standards, enforcing proprietary interface... no doubt, Apple is the new Microsoft :-/

    1. Re:No doubt... by Tough+Love · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Ignoring standards, enforcing proprietary interface... no doubt, Apple is the new Microsoft :-/

      Last nail in the coffin for the concept of Apple as engineering workstation. But that concept died long ago. Seriously, Apple will get hammered for this one, and not just by engineers. Dropping OpenGL is not an option, there is just too much code in the wild. OpenCL maybe, but I don't see Apple gaining any love for that either, quite the contrary. My take on it: Apple is setting itself up to eat crow a year down the road and humbly slither back into the Vulkan/OpenCL camp.

      The only one who gets hurt by this latest "your're holding your headphone jack wrong" blunder is Apple. Can't shed a tear.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    2. Re: No doubt... by Tough+Love · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Apple got its tail kicked by Linux in the animation industry, others to follow. Tried Krita? It rules.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
    3. Re: No doubt... by Tough+Love · · Score: 4, Informative

      an outdated one

      If you think OpenGL is outdated then you are living on a different planet. The OpenGL 4.6 and OpenGL Shading Language 4.60 Specifications were released on July 31, 2017 There is not even a remote chance that OpenGL will be displaced by Vulkan in the big dollar engineering sector, which is more than enough to ensure that OpenGL lives on forever, never mind the thousands of applications using those libraries. Vulkan for performance games, OpenGL for pretty much everything else. That is the status quo and it won't be changing fast, if ever.

      Apple is courageously moving in an idiot direction. Just keep doing it please.

      --
      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
  2. Re:WTF is metal? by slew · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I guess Apple doesn't want to play with others?

    You just noticed that?

  3. Mandatory XKCD by Zorro · · Score: 4, Funny

    https://xkcd.com/927/

  4. Apple loves throwing away their users by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Thanks for throwing away the scientific community Apple. The penguin welcomes them with open arms. But at least Apple users have memojis.

  5. The infuriating part for me... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Is OpenGL support *FINALLY* got good enough on linux to support both native and emulated software for the past 20 years... and now everybody is for ripping it all back out again before the fine polishing is done and replace it with something ELSE.

    This is why we never have nice things in the computer world. Nobody is willing to take a pause on the standards train and finish up something so it is verifiable, immutable, and secure, while working on the either the next iteration of the standard, or an entirely new standard experimentally while benefiting from the existence of the old stable one until the new standard at least reaches the same level of stability as the old one had when the new one was started. As a result we've got a nightmarish morass of half implemented and broke standards some of whose least documented corner cases cause software breakage that may be difficult or possible to infer in future bug fixing endeavors because the particular iteration of documentation or discussion of the bug in question no longer exists.

  6. Re:Oh, fuck.... by Junta · · Score: 5, Insightful

    No, we have one standard (OpenGL and subsequently Vulkan) and two proprietary implementations (DirectX and Metal).

    In Windows land, the only thing that is required to work (by Microsoft) is DirectX, but in practice the GPU vendors always have to support OpenGL and Vulkan.

    It may be possible that Apple is taking a similar stance (according to Microsoft in the strictest interpretation, neither OpenGL or Vulkan is 'supported' in Windows either, last I heard). I don't know if GPU driver vendors are going to be similarly empowered to bring Vulkan support regardless of the OS not doing so.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  7. Re:Goodbye Games by Junta · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I remember when Microsoft dropped OpenGL from the Windows platform. In practice, nothing changed as the GPU vendors kept providing OpenGL implementations anyway.

    It just meant that MS was stopping the rather crappy job they were doing with OpenGL that the GPU vendors were already replacing anyway.

    It being Apple, they could throw a bigger fit and forbid it, but at least it's possible that OS dropping support may mean nothing in practice.

    --
    XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
  8. Re:Oh, fuck.... by DarkOx · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Which should pretty much tell you that OSX is dead now. Apple is just figuring out the recipe for boiling the frogs slowly enough they don't know what is happening. Looks like they go it down

    0) Build a large library of applications in the locked down iOS eco system
    2) Don't abandon but scale back the technical and QA investments in OSX just enough that people feel it across a few generations.
    3) Choke out the MacOS ecosystem by making it complete with iOS apps that can now run on OSX.
    4) Convince existing MacOS users to move to iOS devices because hey all your software is iOS apps now anyway.
    5) Walled garden complete, semi open platform gone, most customers retained and locked in, profit!

    Heck there isnt even a ??? step

    --
    Repeal the 17th Amendment TODAY! Also Please Read http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.html
  9. Re:Oh, fuck.... by Tough+Love · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Metal came before Vulcan retard.

    Apple cultist much? Shows.

    Mantle came before Vulkan. Mantle came before Metal. Apple knew that the Vulcan standard was in development and idiotically forked Metal from it. Vulcan is a standard, Metal is not. Metal is just a piece of proprietary crap, that does not have the broad, consistent feature set of Vulkan and does not have the developer mind share or the application base. Mantle will descend further into crapland while Vulkan goes on to new amazing achievements. (Have you seen the demos? Have you seen the shipping games? Can you spell "Doom"? Heh.)

    --
    When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.