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Apple is a major Vulkan supporter and is on the "Board of Promoters". They went for Metal because they needed and wanted better performance long before Vulkan

by SG- 11y ago

Apple is a major Vulkan supporter and is on the "Board of Promoters". They went for Metal because they needed and wanted better performance long before Vulkan was going to be released. My guess is we'll see Vulkan in the next major OSX/iOS release.

mtgx 11y ago
Long before? Didn't they just adopt Metal on Mac OS mid last year? Surely they knew Vulkan is almost done. I think they just wanted to see if they can push major game developers to adopt Metal for Mac games early on. If they could do that - awesome for them, and they would never have to adopt Vulkan. If they can't, they'll have to adopt Vulkan. Here's hoping the latter will happen.
- masklinn 11y ago
  > Long before? Didn't they just adopt Metal on Mac OS mid last year? Surely they knew Vulkan is almost done. Metal was made available in iOS8, in September 2014, almost 18 months ago. That's pretty long. In fact the first Metal public demo predates the Vulkan private kickoff meeting. > I think they just wanted to see if they can push major game developers to adopt Metal for Mac games early on. Mid-2015 they made their iOS graphics API — which had been available for nearly a year at this point — available on OSX. Fact remains that they realised a need for and started working on a lower-overhead API much earlier than Vulkan was conceived let alone released, likely circa 2012~2013 if they were almost done by mid-2014.
- creshal 11y ago
  > Didn't they just adopt Metal on Mac OS mid last year? Surely they knew Vulkan is almost done. Vulkan was announced in December 2014, with no significant commitment. iOS 8 including Metal was announced mid-2014, and would have been in development for a considerable time before. By the time it was announced for OSX, Vulkan was still anaemic and not showing significant progress. So it does make sense to keep using Metal for them. > I think they just wanted to see if they can push major game developers to adopt Metal for Mac games early on. If they could do that - awesome for them, and they would never have to adopt Vulkan. If that was the plan, it's probably going to fail: The developers of Unity e.g. found Metal, DX12 and Vulkan so similar that they estimate to be able to support all three with minimal development overhead.
  - mtgx 11y ago
    Why does everyone misinterpret my comment to mean that I was talking about iOS? I know Metal was announced for iOS earlier - I was talking about the support for Mac OS X. They had no good reason to adopt it for Mac OS X at that point, if they were planning on adopting Vulkan in the near future anyway. Unless, like I said, they'd prefer to keep Metal over Vulkan, and wanted to give it a head start to see if PC game developers would start adopting it. > If that was the plan, it's probably going to fail: The developers of Unity e.g. found Metal, DX12 and Vulkan so similar that they estimate to be able to support all three with minimal development overhead. I'm not sure how you see that as a "failure". If they are so similar that game engine developers will keep Metal around anyway, then we'll see games be built on Metal, not Vulkan, for Mac OS X. How is that a "failure"? It would mean Metal "won".
    - masklinn 11y ago
      > They had no good reason to adopt it for Mac OS X at that point Of course they did: it was already their API of choice on iOS, platform unification alone makes it a damn good idea to adopt it for OSX: iOS is by far their most popular gaming platform, integrating the API back to OSX makes it more likely they'd get more OSX support. Not to mention a mid-2015 release of Metal-on-OSX means they'd probably been working on it since the Metal-on-iOS release. On top of fragmenting their platforms, waiting for Metal would have meant a year-long delay.
      - shmerl 11y ago
        > Of course they did They did have a reason, except it's nowhere good. They don't want to support Vulkan because it increases their lock-in control and puts extra tax on cross platform development. Same reason MS doesn't want to support it on Xbox. It's not a good reason, it's pretty crooked but very Apple like.
        webjprgm 11y ago
        Apple isn't usually about "locking people in" but more about controlling the experience. That can lead to the same thing, where they want everyone to use their API and not someone else's, but the difference is whether they have greedy, malicious intent or not. I don't think they do. Having good intentions means they are more likely to surprise you and do something good eventually. Still, I wouldn't hold my breath on Apple supporting Vulkan soon. Their OpenGL support is usually a few versions behind so if they do ever support Vulkan I would expect it to be late.
- baq 11y ago
  vulcan was actually a hastily thrown together proposition in response to the shocking (to OpenGL people) announcement of Metal by Apple. it helped a lot that AMD jumped on board by donating Mantle to Khronos.
exDM69 11y ago
Fwiw, all it takes is an annual fee to be on that list which is insignificantly small for someone like Apple. That's by no means an indication that Apple is a supporter in any meaningful way. They have said nothing about Vulkan in public at any point.
pjmlp 11y ago
Being on the board means zero. Console vendors are also there and they never cared about OpenGL support, regardless of urban legends. The only console to ever support OpenGL was the PS3 with the OpenGL ES 1.0 / Cg combo that very few ever bothered to use. Also remember that although Apple created OpenCL, their implementation leaves a lot to wish for.
- SXX 11y ago
  PS3 and PS4 both support OpenGL ES via wrapper on top of their low-level proprietary API. Also Nintendo had OpenGL ES support on all their consoles (at least on 3Ds for sure)..
  - pjmlp 11y ago
    Keyword being a wrapper, so no native support. Nintendo uses GX and GX2.
bitwize 11y ago
Apple was on the X consortium too and did fuckall with it. If you want to be conspiratorial, they could have been there to undermine X so more people would develop for Mac. Draw your own conclusions w.r.t. Vulkan.

by SG- 11y ago

mtgx 11y ago

Long before? Didn't they just adopt Metal on Mac OS mid last year? Surely they knew Vulkan is almost done. I think they just wanted to see if they can push major game developers to adopt Metal for Mac games early on. If they could do that - awesome for them, and they would never have to adopt Vulkan. If they can't, they'll have to adopt Vulkan. Here's hoping the latter will happen.

masklinn 11y ago
> Long before? Didn't they just adopt Metal on Mac OS mid last year? Surely they knew Vulkan is almost done. Metal was made available in iOS8, in September 2014, almost 18 months ago. That's pretty long. In fact the first Metal public demo predates the Vulkan private kickoff meeting. > I think they just wanted to see if they can push major game developers to adopt Metal for Mac games early on. Mid-2015 they made their iOS graphics API — which had been available for nearly a year at this point — available on OSX. Fact remains that they realised a need for and started working on a lower-overhead API much earlier than Vulkan was conceived let alone released, likely circa 2012~2013 if they were almost done by mid-2014.
creshal 11y ago
> Didn't they just adopt Metal on Mac OS mid last year? Surely they knew Vulkan is almost done. Vulkan was announced in December 2014, with no significant commitment. iOS 8 including Metal was announced mid-2014, and would have been in development for a considerable time before. By the time it was announced for OSX, Vulkan was still anaemic and not showing significant progress. So it does make sense to keep using Metal for them. > I think they just wanted to see if they can push major game developers to adopt Metal for Mac games early on. If they could do that - awesome for them, and they would never have to adopt Vulkan. If that was the plan, it's probably going to fail: The developers of Unity e.g. found Metal, DX12 and Vulkan so similar that they estimate to be able to support all three with minimal development overhead.
- mtgx 11y ago
  Why does everyone misinterpret my comment to mean that I was talking about iOS? I know Metal was announced for iOS earlier - I was talking about the support for Mac OS X. They had no good reason to adopt it for Mac OS X at that point, if they were planning on adopting Vulkan in the near future anyway. Unless, like I said, they'd prefer to keep Metal over Vulkan, and wanted to give it a head start to see if PC game developers would start adopting it. > If that was the plan, it's probably going to fail: The developers of Unity e.g. found Metal, DX12 and Vulkan so similar that they estimate to be able to support all three with minimal development overhead. I'm not sure how you see that as a "failure". If they are so similar that game engine developers will keep Metal around anyway, then we'll see games be built on Metal, not Vulkan, for Mac OS X. How is that a "failure"? It would mean Metal "won".
  - masklinn 11y ago
    > They had no good reason to adopt it for Mac OS X at that point Of course they did: it was already their API of choice on iOS, platform unification alone makes it a damn good idea to adopt it for OSX: iOS is by far their most popular gaming platform, integrating the API back to OSX makes it more likely they'd get more OSX support. Not to mention a mid-2015 release of Metal-on-OSX means they'd probably been working on it since the Metal-on-iOS release. On top of fragmenting their platforms, waiting for Metal would have meant a year-long delay.
    - shmerl 11y ago
      > Of course they did They did have a reason, except it's nowhere good. They don't want to support Vulkan because it increases their lock-in control and puts extra tax on cross platform development. Same reason MS doesn't want to support it on Xbox. It's not a good reason, it's pretty crooked but very Apple like.
      - webjprgm 11y ago
        Apple isn't usually about "locking people in" but more about controlling the experience. That can lead to the same thing, where they want everyone to use their API and not someone else's, but the difference is whether they have greedy, malicious intent or not. I don't think they do. Having good intentions means they are more likely to surprise you and do something good eventually. Still, I wouldn't hold my breath on Apple supporting Vulkan soon. Their OpenGL support is usually a few versions behind so if they do ever support Vulkan I would expect it to be late.
baq 11y ago
vulcan was actually a hastily thrown together proposition in response to the shocking (to OpenGL people) announcement of Metal by Apple. it helped a lot that AMD jumped on board by donating Mantle to Khronos.

exDM69 11y ago

Fwiw, all it takes is an annual fee to be on that list which is insignificantly small for someone like Apple. That's by no means an indication that Apple is a supporter in any meaningful way. They have said nothing about Vulkan in public at any point.

pjmlp 11y ago

Being on the board means zero. Console vendors are also there and they never cared about OpenGL support, regardless of urban legends. The only console to ever support OpenGL was the PS3 with the OpenGL ES 1.0 / Cg combo that very few ever bothered to use. Also remember that although Apple created OpenCL, their implementation leaves a lot to wish for.

SXX 11y ago
PS3 and PS4 both support OpenGL ES via wrapper on top of their low-level proprietary API. Also Nintendo had OpenGL ES support on all their consoles (at least on 3Ds for sure)..
- pjmlp 11y ago
  Keyword being a wrapper, so no native support. Nintendo uses GX and GX2.

bitwize 11y ago

Apple was on the X consortium too and did fuckall with it. If you want to be conspiratorial, they could have been there to undermine X so more people would develop for Mac. Draw your own conclusions w.r.t. Vulkan.