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An afterthought is pretty strong word. It has direct equivalents to most of Vulkan's concepts (resource heaps, command buffers and queues, etc.). It's definitel

An afterthought is pretty strong word. It has direct equivalents to most of Vulkan's concepts (resource heaps, command buffers and queues, etc.). It's definitely miles ahead of OpenGL on any platform. What Vulkan features do you think can't be added into Metal without effectively trashing the whole thing?

throwaway91111 10y ago
No, you're correct, afterthought is not the word I want to use. Apples actions certainly show forethought and planning. I meant instead that the graphics support overall has felt like an afterthought: radar bugs open without meaningful response for months, outdated graphics hardware and drivers, no option for choice between brands when that means you can't run CUDA on "pro" computers, no support for vulkan (though I think there's an official mapping Vulkan into Metal that hasn't materialized yet)... the list gets tiring to read after 15 years of waiting for apple to actively support their software/hardware combos to their equivalent capacities on windows, let alone supporting recent hardware or novel apis. However, I can't help but seeing it modeled on the Direct X vendor lock-in model that starved Apple of games (and users because of those games). While it may not be a sign of change in Apple, it is a sign to me I shouldn't depend on them to provide products that meet my needs as a cross-platform developer. All those years I invested in a neglected OpenGL I should have devoted instead to directx; perhaps I would be less bitter now.
- pcwalton 10y ago
  For what it's worth, during the development of Pathfinder, I have spent more time working around OpenGL driver bugs on Apple systems (at least 4 or 5) than any other system (zero).
mixedCase 10y ago
> It has direct equivalents to most of Vulkan's concepts (resource heaps, command buffers and queues, etc.) It isn't cross-platform, so it lacks the most important of all of Vulkan's features.

throwaway91111 10y ago

No, you're correct, afterthought is not the word I want to use. Apples actions certainly show forethought and planning. I meant instead that the graphics support overall has felt like an afterthought: radar bugs open without meaningful response for months, outdated graphics hardware and drivers, no option for choice between brands when that means you can't run CUDA on "pro" computers, no support for vulkan (though I think there's an official mapping Vulkan into Metal that hasn't materialized yet)... the list gets tiring to read after 15 years of waiting for apple to actively support their software/hardware combos to their equivalent capacities on windows, let alone supporting recent hardware or novel apis. However, I can't help but seeing it modeled on the Direct X vendor lock-in model that starved Apple of games (and users because of those games). While it may not be a sign of change in Apple, it is a sign to me I shouldn't depend on them to provide products that meet my needs as a cross-platform developer. All those years I invested in a neglected OpenGL I should have devoted instead to directx; perhaps I would be less bitter now.

pcwalton 10y ago
For what it's worth, during the development of Pathfinder, I have spent more time working around OpenGL driver bugs on Apple systems (at least 4 or 5) than any other system (zero).

mixedCase 10y ago

> It has direct equivalents to most of Vulkan's concepts (resource heaps, command buffers and queues, etc.) It isn't cross-platform, so it lacks the most important of all of Vulkan's features.