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Not everything that runs on OpenGL is a video game. Tons of applications out there that just won't have the budget to do a rewrite(and even fewer were probably
by vvanders 8y ago
Not everything that runs on OpenGL is a video game. Tons of applications out there that just won't have the budget to do a rewrite(and even fewer were probably setup with the right architecture if they were depending on OpenGL in the first place).
- endorphone 8y agoTrue, but they didn't remove OpenGL, they simply deprecated it (e.g. don't expect any updates to it, new tooling will not be built around it, etc). That shouldn't affect legacy apps.
- jakobegger 8y agoYes, and deprecation doesn’t mean a lot on the Mac. Apple often deprecates stuff and still leaves it in. They remove it only when there’s something to be gained. (eg. linking with the system-provided OpenSSL has been deprecated for years, but AFAIK they still ship it.)
- rarepostinlurkr 8y agoChicken and egg. If they remove it apps stop working, if apps don’t update they can’t remove it.
- xienze 8y agoI’m not so sure they’re worried about apps breaking. They’ve certainly stuck to the “no more 32bit iOS apps” thing.
- seandougall 8y agoApple can get away with that on iOS, but they're a lot more conservative with macOS. To expand on your example, I maintain a legacy app that is stuck in 32-bit land because it relies on the QuickTime framework. QuickTime has been deprecated for seven years, and the transition to 64-bit has been in progress for over a decade, and yet my legacy app runs just fine even under the Mojave beta. There are multiple time bombs lurking in that app, and one of these days I'm going to have to rewrite it from the ground up, but I've been astonished at how long it has lasted. Apple knows it would be bad karma to make a large number of legacy apps and games suddenly break on the Mac. They're not idiots; they have a perfectly good idea of the scale of mutiny that would ensue. So I'll eat my hat if OpenGL doesn't continue to work for at least the better part of the next decade.
- jcelerier 8y ago> QuickTime has been deprecated for seven years, It has entirely been removed from the latest (since 10.12 IIRC?) SDKs so now you have to keep older SDKs just to build your app.
- seandougall 8y agoTrue — 10.12 is my recollection as well — but I’ve been bitten so many times by compiling under a new SDK, especially with an older build target, that I do that as a matter of course anyway.
- cmsj 8y agoThey said in the Platform State of the Union that Mojave will be the last macOS that runs 32bit apps, so QuickTime.framework and your app are running out of time!
- seandougall 8y agoHuzzah! Thanks for the heads-up. I’m looking forward to catching up on the whole SOTU.
- rarepostinlurkr 8y agoThey specifically mentioned QuickTime in the release notes as well.
- rarepostinlurkr 8y agoI find it hard to fathom that people think a huge software company like Apple doesn’t have awareness of the impact of its changes or people responsible for compatibility.
- archagon 8y agoThey mentioned in the State of the Union that this is the first step towards removing it.
- blt 8y agoIf there isn't one already, I'm sure someone will implement OpenGL on top of Metal when it's needed badly enough. At least they're going closer to the hardware, not further away.
- theandrewbailey 8y agoAlready there: https://moltengl.com/moltenvk/ https://moltengl.com/moltenvk/ "MoltenVK is a runtime library that maps Vulkan to Apple's Metal graphics framework on iOS and macOS."
- chris_wot 8y agoLibreOffice uses OpenGL and OpenCL extensively.
- sbuk 8y agoWhy use Libre Office on a Mac when Pages, Numbers and Keynote are free (as in beer)? I’m going to go out on a limb and make a baseless argument that the Libre Office install base on the Mac is very low. On iOS it’s non-existent.
- chris_wot 8y agoThere is no way that Pages, Numbers and Keynote can open as wide a range of file formats that LibreOffice can. And there are way more features in LibreOffice. On iOS, dunno, you probably have a point there.
- Lievelingsduif 8y agoHaving used pages and word, please don't tell people to use Pages for everything. It doesn't have the features you need when you're creating more complex documents. Last time I've used it it didn't even allow you to have different sections which allow you switch between the rotation of pages.
- BurningCycles 8y agoIndeed, I directly thought of 3d applications like Blender, Maya, etc which use OpenGL. It's a very weird move to me, even if the software in question will be kept compatible with Apple's Legacy OpenGL, these versions will be worse than their counterparts running on other platforms making use of new shiny OpenGL features. It's like Apple is saying 'we don't care' to the 3d professional market, also doesn't Photoshop rely on OpenGL these days as well ?
- raverbashing 8y ago> Photoshop rely on OpenGL these days as well ? Yes, though with Adobe's relationship with Apple they probably got all the handholding and resources to do the port to Metal.
- ctrl-j 8y agoI'm not sure about that. Or maybe Adobe just doesn't care. My 2017 Macbook Pro has horseshit graphical bugs in both Illustrator and Photoshop. I'm exclusively doing all my graphics work on my Windows 10 machine now (even though windows and my Wacom tablet do not play nice together.)
- sgift 8y ago> even though windows and my Wacom tablet do not play nice together. They don't? Whats the matter? (mine works great, but I'm not a heavy user so curious if it depends on the model or I just didn't run into it so far)
- shahar2k 8y agomicrosoft changed the pen behavior in one of the creators' updates and now the pen buttons behave strangely (randomly dont work in certain applications) as well as the pen being registered as a finger in legacy applications for a while... making windows 7 the only really viable way to use wacom for a professional (speaking as one) let alone the inability to reconfigure things like n-trig pens to have hover right click/middle click functionality, it's been INCREDIBLY frustrating without any communication from microsoft.