9 ms·

Discontinuation of Mac Support for Autodesk Alias and VRED

90 points by redial 8y ago

saagarjha 8y ago
> Prior versions of Alias (2019.0 and earlier) can continue to run on High Sierra or earlier operating system versions. > Alias is not supported on High Sierra due to a macOS incompatibility that Apple does not currently plan to fix. Wait, so is Alias supposed to work on High Sierra (which has a non-deprecated OpenGL) or not?
- KenanSulayman 8y ago
  I think the "can continue to run on High Sierra" is a typo -- the last paragraph somewhat clearly states that it runs on Sierra but doesn't on High Sierra onwards.
- yardie 8y ago
  High Sierra 10.13.4 has changed the display API in some pretty fundamental ways. I'm down a screen because our iMacs can only drive 2 external displays now. DisplayLink, Duet and other exotic soft GPUs are broken. I regret the day I agreed to this damn update.
oneplane 8y ago
That article is pretty salty, it seems they want Apply to supply them with OpenGL "or else". Either they are using an engine that doesn't allow for other low level rendering options or they simply don't want to.
- striking 8y ago
  I don't blame them. If the market on macOS isn't big enough to justify a Metal rewrite, I'd do the same.
- larsiusprime 8y ago
  Seems rational to me. Why should a vendor continue to support an operating system with only ~6% global market share, now that continuing to reach that tiny sliver suddenly requires that they rewrite their entire rendering stack to target Apple's proprietary API's that don't work anywhere else?
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    This marketshare might be much more in terms of their userbase though. Macs are dominant in the creative industries.
    - larsiusprime 8y ago
      I bet Autodesk has extremely precise information about how big their mac userbase is for these products, and I'm going to guess that it's not enough to justify an entire rewrite using a proprietary Mac rendering system. I'm certain they've done the math and are confident that it's better for them to expect users will either switch to PC's, install Windows using bootcamp, or stay on old versions of Mac OS. They say as much right in the article.
    - delfinom 8y ago
      I assure you that creative space is the arts and the high level software domain. Engineers (mechanical, low level software, firmware) are Windows and Linux predominately.
    - Spooky23 8y ago
      Remember that Apple started screwing up as Microsoft got its shit together. My guess is the defective laptop issue alone is driving a measurebale shift. The reason many folks were going Mac was the Unix tool chain, which Apple is also allowing to rot. Microsoft is basically shipping Ubuntu.
      - Rjevski 8y ago
        I’m not sure where is Microsoft getting their shit together. Last time I checked, Windows 10 is still a shit-show and completely unusable as a workstation. It’s good as a toy to play Candy Crush, sure (it even comes preinstalled!) but definitely not suitable for real work.
- snarfy 8y ago
  It should be salty. It's extremely arrogant to kill OpenGL and expect all app developers to rewrite their apps using Metal. The last I looked MacOS market share wasn't doing so well. And how much of that market is CAD? Maybe they did a simple ROI calculation and determined it simply was not worth the development, but might have been if Apple would meet them half way and support OpenGL.
  - jchb 8y ago
    The other Autodesk products use DirectX rather than OpenGL on Windows since years back. Apparently a big reason for this was the sketchy OpenGL driver support on Windows, which caused issues with many consumer-level graphics cards. So this is not necessarily an issue with Apples deprecation of OpenGL, but could as well be Autodesk wanting to move also the Alias product to DirectX only.
  - chongli 8y ago
    Total macOS marketshare is irrelevant. The vast majority of Windows home and office PCs are never going to install Alias. A better question is what's the relative marketshare in the 3D content creation and video production space? There I think you'll find Macs doing a lot better (or at least they were when Apple actually had a pro machine people wanted).
    - iainmerrick 8y ago
      So Apple gets to decide if they want to spend resources to support that market (maintaining OpenGL) and Autodesk similarly get to decide if they want to support Macs (by porting to Metal). Looks like both have signaled that high-end CAD on Macs is not big enough to be worth their time. This seems more damaging to Apple than to Autodesk. If Apple let these niche-but-lucrative markets wither away one by one, where does the Mac end up?
      - chongli 8y ago
        This seems more damaging to Apple than to Autodesk. I think that's very difficult for us to judge. Apple has access to far more data than we do. They may have decided that Autodesk's entire market is not worth their time. Apple is a very strange company. Even though they're among the largest companies in the entire world in terms of value, they don't operate like a large company. They shift their product teams around all the time which seems to cause some products to get neglected for a really long time.
- blattimwind 8y ago
  Apple: OpenGL is now discontinued on our OS. ISV: We're not going to do a special port to $proprietaryAPI of $singlepercentmarketshareOS of our x-million LOC each applications. Hackernews: Look how salty $ISV is.
  - oneplane 8y ago
    ISV had years do to this, and when porting the first time did this for macOS-only anyway (Windows uses DirectX). Moving from OpenGL 2 to OpenGL 4 would have been just as much work as moving to Metal 2.
- cesarb 8y ago
  > Either they are using an engine that doesn't allow for other low level rendering options According to Wikipedia, the first version of Alias is from the 80s, and it initially ran only on IRIX. From that, I'd guess that it was initially written using IRIS GL, the predecessor of OpenGL. It probably doesn't have a separate "rendering engine"; IRIS GL and later OpenGL concepts and calls are probably strewn all over the code. Porting to anything else would probably be a significant effort.
- jakobegger 8y ago
  With recent releases, Apple has been breaking things every year. They remove support for Obj-C GC, 32bit apps, Open GL, they limit Apple Script, they make it hard to run unsigned code, make it harder to run certain kinds of apps, etc. Each deprecation on its own is understandable, and probably makes sense when the goal is a modern, safer OS. But when macOS is not your main target market, at some point it doesn't pay off anymore to try to keep up with the annual technology changes. If you have a big code base, those yearly modernisations are a lot of effort. And Apple doesn't make the impression that they care about things they break. I've filed a lot of bug reports with Apple for regressions, but if it's not a mainstream issue they just won't fix it. If you're lucky, you'll get a reply saying that they don't support your use case anymore. So they just break some stuff, and app developers need to find workarounds. I really understand if at some point the developer says, this isn't worth it, we'll just focus on the more profitable platform. At the price range of Autodesk, buying a new PC to run the software isn't really a big issue...
  - oneplane 8y ago
    I suppose they somewhat directly contradict Microsoft's model where they try to keep supporting certain API and ABI compatibilities for over 20 years. As 'easy' as that is for the third party developer, it might not be the best way to handle an operating system. New insights are constantly gained, and older systems still have faults; the Microsoft model leaves you with a broken system that cannot be fixed until a major redesign, the Apple model leaves you with broken third party software that can be fixed by the developer but nobody else.
- coldcode 8y ago
  Guessing its probably a 32 bit app as well. Old crufty codebases are too hard to make radical changes to. I'm sure they rather keep shipping an ancient crappy codebase for huge piles of $$$ then rewrite it and have to spend money. Converting well written OpenGl to Metal is not all that hard. Converting a dreadful pile of crap to anything is.
tempodox 8y ago
I can understand Autodesk not wanting to bother with Mac development any more. Apple's aggressive and inconsiderate moves make it a pain to even maintain existing app projects on the Mac.
- acomjean 8y ago
  Plus the lack of a pro level desktop machine (excepting the imac pro. all-in-one) isn't helping apple with power users that Autodesk users presumably are. They announced new ones are coming a year ago but still no details or a real release date. Its a shame as the macos application packaging system makes makes for an easy way distribute and run applications.
  - MisterOctober 8y ago
    Yep -- this kind of touches on some of the issues in the recent thread on the Mac Mini -- Apple's hardware offerings have been diminishing in utility for pro / power users for some time now -- it's like they're intentionally abandoning the pro market. Not surprising that Autodesk is discontinuing support.
  - syshum 8y ago
    Apple prefers to tell you a $1,000 device every 12-18 months as opposed to a $2000 device every 3-5years... Plus they make a ton more money on Apps on from the store in mobile. It is all economics, they do not care about the pro user anymore because the pro user is not where they make money
    - scarface74 8y ago
      If that were true, they wouldn’t still be supporting the iPhone 5s that was introduced in 2012 with iOS 12 - which will be introduced this year. How many Android phones even get two years worth of updates let alone 6.
      - syshum 8y ago
        Incorrect, long term support is actually required because of the insane prices they want to charge and market saturation. Like with cars, the used market supports the selling of new devices. This is something Android manufacturers need to figure out.
joshvm 8y ago
Somewhat ironic that apparently a lot of Apple products have been designed using Alias, at least the original iMac, according to a biography of Jony Ive. https://books.google.com/books?id=CRZuAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT106&lpg=PT106&dq=autodesk+alias+apple+computer&ots=Xprx2bJZaG&sig=CPJD7j6JY8TU6Jaeg7kcFkS59G4&q=autodesk%20alias%20apple%20computer&f=false#v=snippet&q=autodesk%20alias%20apple%20computer&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=CRZuAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT106&lpg=...
- Spooky23 8y ago
  Perhaps we will see improvements to boot camp now.
  - floatingatoll 8y ago
    Boot Camp works fine today. What improvements do you believe would be necessary to make it valuable to you?
nottorp 8y ago
Can't blame them for not wanting to port to Metal. However, I found that out from the comments on HN - because when I opened the page the article was covered by a full popup informing me that they 'care about my privacy'. And then they probably wanted me to agree to being tracked. Not sure because I instaclosed it.
- tener 8y ago
  Actually they make it super easy to say 'no to all tracking' which is very nice. Good for them.
  - mgiannopoulos 8y ago
    Do they actually not use cookies though? Someone should look into all these consent pop ups and if they actually effect anything.
    - nottorp 8y ago
      I don't understand why I should have to go through that popup to read a public announcement anyway.
    - untog 8y ago
      If they don't they can be sued for it (at least in the EU) so I imagine a company like Autodesk does check these things.
      - nottorp 8y ago
        But... all they have to do is not track me... :)
0x0 8y ago
Mojave only deprecates OpenGL, but it doesn't remove it as far as I understand. It will continue to ship with the (somewhat outdated) OpenGL version that macOS has provided for several years, no? Did they even try running their own product on the Mojave betas? Seems strange to discontinue a working product just because an API is marked "deprecated"?
- lloeki 8y ago
  I've been building and running OpenGL toy applications[0] on Mojave public betas without issue just to check on that. You just get lots of deprecation warnings at compile time that you can quench by defining GL_SILENCE_DEPRECATION. Excerpt: ./nsopengl_example.h:5:5: warning: 'NSOpenGLContext' is deprecated: first deprecated in macOS 10.14 - Please use Metal or MetalKit. [-Wdeprecated-declarations] NSOpenGLContext* _openGLContext; ^ /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Headers/NSOpenGL.h:202:12: note: 'NSOpenGLContext' has been explicitly marked deprecated here @interface NSOpenGLContext : NSObject <NSLocking> ^ nsopengl_example.m:97:9: warning: 'glVertex3f' is deprecated: first deprecated in macOS 10.14 - OpenGL API deprecated. (Define GL_SILENCE_DEPRECATION to silence these warnings) [-Wdeprecated-declarations] glVertex3f( 0.0, 0.6, 0.0); ^ Nothing is gone yet. I suspect they'll proceed in a similar way as with OpenSSL, first deprecate, then remove headers, and keep the libs around for quite some time for legacy applications. In Mojave public beta /usr/lib still contains libssl.0.9.7.dylib and libssl.0.9.8.dylib, and it's been quite some time (El Capitan [1]) since you haven't been able to build against them. The trickier part with OpenGL though is the graphic drivers. I suppose at some point in the future drivers for fresh new GPUs won't include OpenGL support. Maybe they'll include a GL-to-Metal akin to MoltenGL in that case, maybe not, or a third-party will create just that to run legacy applications. Anyway I bet it's a long road ahead and won't happen overnight. [0]: https://gitlab.com/lloeki/nsopengl_example https://gitlab.com/lloeki/nsopengl_example [1]: https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build/issues/797 https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build/issues/797
- untog 8y ago
  Apple have announced plans to deprecate OpenGL. Whether they do it next year or in three years the writing is still on the wall, and I can't blame any company that doesn't want to invest their time and money on a platform that'll be a dead end. Even if it isn't removed yet it presumably won't be getting updates that other platforms will. (Plus, Autodesk might be trying to convince Apple to change their minds with a move like this)
iamgopal 8y ago
Mac in future will only be used for iOS development.
- deleted 8y ago
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- deleted 8y ago
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- linuxlizard 8y ago
  iOS development could probably be moved web based. Would save everyone a lot of trouble.
  - copperx 8y ago
    That would be wonderful, now that I think of it. The only hard problem would be the simulator, which would probably have to run on bare metal, or as a virtual machine.
    - kitsunesoba 8y ago
      Personally I wouldn’t want to be stuck with simulators only in development. Apple’s iOS simulator is pretty good, but it has quirks not shared with real hardware and its performance isn’t representative of real hardware at all.
      - Moter8 8y ago
        Yeah, like not being able to emulate the MacBooks webcam. It's pretty dumb.
  - factotvm 8y ago
    iOS apps can become pretty complicated endeavors with all the moving pieces. It's as complicated as writing any desktop app. In fact, many are currently in the situation where you need to move from an OpenGL implementation to a Metal implementation. I don't see that happening in the browser. Though, I will say once you get that move completed, you get this: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/608/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/608/ Metal is nice, but Apple should also support OpenGL, not just WebGL.
kenrose 8y ago
I worked at Autodesk from 2007 - 2011 and on Alias / Alias-related things for a good chunk of that. I was part of the team that ported Alias to MacOS. Alias development started back in the late 80s and was written for (I think) SGI machines. Back then, the company was Alias (merged with Wavefront and ultimately acquired by Autodesk in 2006) and the software was called Studio. OpenGL formalized in the early 90s and Alias (the company) ported Studio to support this nascent API. That meant that Alias could run on any OS that supported OpenGL. This was a fantastic strategic decision because it allowed Studio to port to various flavours of Irix, HP Unix, Windows, Mac OS, and even Linux. The Linux build was/is internal. It was a little janky to use as a modeller 8 hours a day, but good enough for a development workflow. Porting to Mac OS occurred in 2008 (I think) and was a reasonably sized project. Alias renders all of its own UI in OpenGL, so in theory, it was as simple as "Get a GLContext, and render to that". Of course, there were other things to deal with: - Cocoa specifics like windows / events - Various filesystem differences - IPC (Alias launches a subprocess to open new files to insulate a bad .wire file from crashing the main process) - Performance issues caused by various aged code (e.g., still a few places using display lists). I don't have any specifics for why Autodesk invested in porting Studio to MacOS back then. Apple was on the upward trend in terms of design and market share. I can speculate Apple was demanding a Mac OS version of Alias for its own use since, as others pointed out, Apple is a pretty big Autodesk customer. I agree with the other points made here that the decision was likely made that the ROI of maintaining the Apple port wasn't worth it. Sure was fun to write though. :)
- Keyframe 8y ago
  Didn't Alias transition to Qt, like other Alias programs (Maya)?
  - kenrose 8y ago
    Not to my knowledge. Maya was porting to Qt when I worked there. Alias/Studio still used its own internal UI toolkit (Edwin) at the time.
    - 8y ago
machiavelli1024 8y ago
Engineers: we can do X and finish in two weeks, or we can take a shortcut and finish in one week, but the code will be tightly coupled to this particular quirk of OpenGL. Manager: take the shortcut :) ... repeat this for 15 years ...
- alxlaz 8y ago
  What particular quirk of OpenGL does Alias depend on?
  - caspper69 8y ago
    Well, according to Apple, existing.
draw_down 8y ago
It’s difficult to believe even Apple themselves care about Mac these days. So, difficult to blame vendors for not caring, either.
Keyframe 8y ago
TBH, the writing was on the wall since the announcement. Very reminiscent of situation with Adobe and Premiere, which spawned FCP and a decade-old grudge between the companies. I have to ask this, even though I use OSX but have no idea, can drivers provided by third parties include openGL support for MacOS? Nvidia provides drivers for their cards regularly. Does it work like on other OS'?
factotvm 8y ago
I left feedback on the page that it wasn't helpful. Saying, "Once Apple releases Mojave, no versions of VRED will run on that operating system due to the OpenGL deprecation" doesn't help their case, because it's just wrong. I do hope Autodesk is able to put pressure on Apple to continue to support OpenGL, but they have to get their facts straight.
kitsunesoba 8y ago
It’s too bad, Metal has gotten very good. Blizzard ported the Mac versions of their games over to Metal a couple years ago and has been riding up against the edge of what’s possible with Metal. As of the latest WoW update, Metal performance is ridiculously good — barely distinguishable from DX12 under Windows on the same hardware. It’s amazing, I’ve never seen any game run this well under macOS. This may have been achievable with OpenGL, but I have doubts. Should Apple have waited for Vulkan to be finished up before making their choice of modern graphics API in iOS + macOS? Maybe, but if they had, their Vulkan implementation wouldn’t have been as mature as Metal is now and the existence of MoltenVK renders the whole thing moot anyway. Which makes me wonder, why not consider porting Alias to Vulkan? I’m not sure that OpenGL has much of a future on any platform, now that most everything will be written for DX12, Vulkan, or Metal. At best, frozen-in-time support for it will remain in Windows and Linux for a few more years, but I don’t see it being developed any further... didn’t Apple just jump ahead to OpenGL’s inevitable conclusion?
- vetinari 8y ago
  OpenGL AZDO is conceptually very near to Vulkan and DX12. Few years ago, I had an impression that Nvidia wanted to go this route, instead of Vulkan, if for nothing else then just to make advantage of their investment into OpenGL. However, AZDO is unusable on macOS; the OpenGL on macOS is too limited to support it. Khronos with OpenGL 4.6 made another step towards Vulkan: SPIR-V shaders. If Apple implemented 4.6, they could go all they way and implement Vulkan too. Apple, while they released the Metal 1 first, it was quite limited and there were reasons why the release was iOS only. When they came with Metal 2, which could compete with Vulkan, Vulkan was out for a year already. So basically they rushed to come with API, that would be exclusive to their platform and lock their developers in. There's no other use for Metal today.
rleigh 8y ago
Unsurprising. This is one public announcement, but it's inevitable that there are many more products which will cease support for MacOS. OpenGL is an established industry-standard graphics API. Supported on every platform of note. Drop it, and you're going to lose developers who rely on it. A vendor-specific proprietary API isn't an improvement, it's regressive. There are many products which won't be able to justify a Metal port, including one of my own. Despite its ugliness, OpenGL worked everywhere and modern OpenGL is actually pretty decent. If Apple want to retain developers, they need to have a long, hard think about their strategy here. I'll consider supporting MacOS again, if they can cut back on proprietary stuff and support the industry-standard stuff. OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan would be a good start.
- jchb 8y ago
  an established industry-standard graphics API. Supported on every platform of note. Sorry, but this mostly wishful thinking. It is only an "industry standard" on Linux-based systems and Android. Also Nintendo Switch has support for OpenGL, but it is not the primary graphics API. On Windows, the OpenGL driver quality story is not very rosy. A good example is WebGL. On Windows, Chrome and Firefox implement WebGL using a compatibility library (ANGLE) that maps calls to the Direct3D API. Also for QT applications it is recommended to use ANGLE on Windows. Playstation 4 has its own proprietary graphics API, Xbox uses DirectX.
  - rleigh 8y ago
    I disagree. It doesn't matter a whit whether or not it's the "primary" graphics API, but rather that it's supported on a platform or not. Right now, if I use OpenGL, I can target Windows, MacOS, Linux, FreeBSD, mobile devices and others all with a single codebase. It is portable, and does work everywhere in practice. On Windows, if you're using a GPU from e.g. AMD or nVidia, be it the gaming end or the workstation end, you will also be getting a decent OpenGL implementation. If you're using software like Alias, you're not going to skimp on the GPU. Angle only exists for poor GPUs which don't have decent OpenGL Windows drivers; for software at this level, they are an irrelevance. WebGL is a red herring. This isn't anything to do with web browsers, and everything to do with killing support for decades of software development investment by third-party ISVs. WebGL is not competing with that, and won't anytime soon. Apple here is basically saying: we don't care about the serious, high-end side of things, and screw any developers who want to develop that type of software for Mac systems. If they did, they would reimplement the OpenGL API on top of Metal; it's not like they don't have the cash to pay for it. As for proprietary gaming consoles, these are also irrelevant to the concerns here. This isn't really about games, or gaming engines. (Though when Apple finally drops OpenGL, most of the back catalogue of games will cease to function…) It's about the thousands of serious software packages out there which will no longer function on a Mac. The high-end CAD and design market. Engineering. Scientific and medical imaging. Etc. That's Apple's choice. And it's my choice to drop Mac support in consequence. They are making it clear that the Mac is no longer the platform for professional software development through their woeful hardware and their poor MacOS maintenance strategy. The market will respond to that.

90 points by redial 8y ago

> Prior versions of Alias (2019.0 and earlier) can continue to run on High Sierra or earlier operating system versions. > Alias is not supported on High Sierra due to a macOS incompatibility that Apple does not currently plan to fix. Wait, so is Alias supposed to work on High Sierra (which has a non-deprecated OpenGL) or not?

KenanSulayman 8y ago
I think the "can continue to run on High Sierra" is a typo -- the last paragraph somewhat clearly states that it runs on Sierra but doesn't on High Sierra onwards.
yardie 8y ago
High Sierra 10.13.4 has changed the display API in some pretty fundamental ways. I'm down a screen because our iMacs can only drive 2 external displays now. DisplayLink, Duet and other exotic soft GPUs are broken. I regret the day I agreed to this damn update.

oneplane 8y ago

That article is pretty salty, it seems they want Apply to supply them with OpenGL "or else". Either they are using an engine that doesn't allow for other low level rendering options or they simply don't want to.

striking 8y ago
I don't blame them. If the market on macOS isn't big enough to justify a Metal rewrite, I'd do the same.
larsiusprime 8y ago
Seems rational to me. Why should a vendor continue to support an operating system with only ~6% global market share, now that continuing to reach that tiny sliver suddenly requires that they rewrite their entire rendering stack to target Apple's proprietary API's that don't work anywhere else?
- Rjevski 8y ago
  This marketshare might be much more in terms of their userbase though. Macs are dominant in the creative industries.
  - larsiusprime 8y ago
    I bet Autodesk has extremely precise information about how big their mac userbase is for these products, and I'm going to guess that it's not enough to justify an entire rewrite using a proprietary Mac rendering system. I'm certain they've done the math and are confident that it's better for them to expect users will either switch to PC's, install Windows using bootcamp, or stay on old versions of Mac OS. They say as much right in the article.
  - delfinom 8y ago
    I assure you that creative space is the arts and the high level software domain. Engineers (mechanical, low level software, firmware) are Windows and Linux predominately.
  - Spooky23 8y ago
    Remember that Apple started screwing up as Microsoft got its shit together. My guess is the defective laptop issue alone is driving a measurebale shift. The reason many folks were going Mac was the Unix tool chain, which Apple is also allowing to rot. Microsoft is basically shipping Ubuntu.
    - Rjevski 8y ago
      I’m not sure where is Microsoft getting their shit together. Last time I checked, Windows 10 is still a shit-show and completely unusable as a workstation. It’s good as a toy to play Candy Crush, sure (it even comes preinstalled!) but definitely not suitable for real work.
snarfy 8y ago
It should be salty. It's extremely arrogant to kill OpenGL and expect all app developers to rewrite their apps using Metal. The last I looked MacOS market share wasn't doing so well. And how much of that market is CAD? Maybe they did a simple ROI calculation and determined it simply was not worth the development, but might have been if Apple would meet them half way and support OpenGL.
- jchb 8y ago
  The other Autodesk products use DirectX rather than OpenGL on Windows since years back. Apparently a big reason for this was the sketchy OpenGL driver support on Windows, which caused issues with many consumer-level graphics cards. So this is not necessarily an issue with Apples deprecation of OpenGL, but could as well be Autodesk wanting to move also the Alias product to DirectX only.
- chongli 8y ago
  Total macOS marketshare is irrelevant. The vast majority of Windows home and office PCs are never going to install Alias. A better question is what's the relative marketshare in the 3D content creation and video production space? There I think you'll find Macs doing a lot better (or at least they were when Apple actually had a pro machine people wanted).
  - iainmerrick 8y ago
    So Apple gets to decide if they want to spend resources to support that market (maintaining OpenGL) and Autodesk similarly get to decide if they want to support Macs (by porting to Metal). Looks like both have signaled that high-end CAD on Macs is not big enough to be worth their time. This seems more damaging to Apple than to Autodesk. If Apple let these niche-but-lucrative markets wither away one by one, where does the Mac end up?
    - chongli 8y ago
      This seems more damaging to Apple than to Autodesk. I think that's very difficult for us to judge. Apple has access to far more data than we do. They may have decided that Autodesk's entire market is not worth their time. Apple is a very strange company. Even though they're among the largest companies in the entire world in terms of value, they don't operate like a large company. They shift their product teams around all the time which seems to cause some products to get neglected for a really long time.
blattimwind 8y ago
Apple: OpenGL is now discontinued on our OS. ISV: We're not going to do a special port to $proprietaryAPI of $singlepercentmarketshareOS of our x-million LOC each applications. Hackernews: Look how salty $ISV is.
- oneplane 8y ago
  ISV had years do to this, and when porting the first time did this for macOS-only anyway (Windows uses DirectX). Moving from OpenGL 2 to OpenGL 4 would have been just as much work as moving to Metal 2.
cesarb 8y ago
> Either they are using an engine that doesn't allow for other low level rendering options According to Wikipedia, the first version of Alias is from the 80s, and it initially ran only on IRIX. From that, I'd guess that it was initially written using IRIS GL, the predecessor of OpenGL. It probably doesn't have a separate "rendering engine"; IRIS GL and later OpenGL concepts and calls are probably strewn all over the code. Porting to anything else would probably be a significant effort.
jakobegger 8y ago
With recent releases, Apple has been breaking things every year. They remove support for Obj-C GC, 32bit apps, Open GL, they limit Apple Script, they make it hard to run unsigned code, make it harder to run certain kinds of apps, etc. Each deprecation on its own is understandable, and probably makes sense when the goal is a modern, safer OS. But when macOS is not your main target market, at some point it doesn't pay off anymore to try to keep up with the annual technology changes. If you have a big code base, those yearly modernisations are a lot of effort. And Apple doesn't make the impression that they care about things they break. I've filed a lot of bug reports with Apple for regressions, but if it's not a mainstream issue they just won't fix it. If you're lucky, you'll get a reply saying that they don't support your use case anymore. So they just break some stuff, and app developers need to find workarounds. I really understand if at some point the developer says, this isn't worth it, we'll just focus on the more profitable platform. At the price range of Autodesk, buying a new PC to run the software isn't really a big issue...
- oneplane 8y ago
  I suppose they somewhat directly contradict Microsoft's model where they try to keep supporting certain API and ABI compatibilities for over 20 years. As 'easy' as that is for the third party developer, it might not be the best way to handle an operating system. New insights are constantly gained, and older systems still have faults; the Microsoft model leaves you with a broken system that cannot be fixed until a major redesign, the Apple model leaves you with broken third party software that can be fixed by the developer but nobody else.
coldcode 8y ago
Guessing its probably a 32 bit app as well. Old crufty codebases are too hard to make radical changes to. I'm sure they rather keep shipping an ancient crappy codebase for huge piles of $$$ then rewrite it and have to spend money. Converting well written OpenGl to Metal is not all that hard. Converting a dreadful pile of crap to anything is.

tempodox 8y ago

I can understand Autodesk not wanting to bother with Mac development any more. Apple's aggressive and inconsiderate moves make it a pain to even maintain existing app projects on the Mac.

acomjean 8y ago
Plus the lack of a pro level desktop machine (excepting the imac pro. all-in-one) isn't helping apple with power users that Autodesk users presumably are. They announced new ones are coming a year ago but still no details or a real release date. Its a shame as the macos application packaging system makes makes for an easy way distribute and run applications.
- MisterOctober 8y ago
  Yep -- this kind of touches on some of the issues in the recent thread on the Mac Mini -- Apple's hardware offerings have been diminishing in utility for pro / power users for some time now -- it's like they're intentionally abandoning the pro market. Not surprising that Autodesk is discontinuing support.
- syshum 8y ago
  Apple prefers to tell you a $1,000 device every 12-18 months as opposed to a $2000 device every 3-5years... Plus they make a ton more money on Apps on from the store in mobile. It is all economics, they do not care about the pro user anymore because the pro user is not where they make money
  - scarface74 8y ago
    If that were true, they wouldn’t still be supporting the iPhone 5s that was introduced in 2012 with iOS 12 - which will be introduced this year. How many Android phones even get two years worth of updates let alone 6.
    - syshum 8y ago
      Incorrect, long term support is actually required because of the insane prices they want to charge and market saturation. Like with cars, the used market supports the selling of new devices. This is something Android manufacturers need to figure out.

joshvm 8y ago

Somewhat ironic that apparently a lot of Apple products have been designed using Alias, at least the original iMac, according to a biography of Jony Ive. https://books.google.com/books?id=CRZuAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT106&lpg=PT106&dq=autodesk+alias+apple+computer&ots=Xprx2bJZaG&sig=CPJD7j6JY8TU6Jaeg7kcFkS59G4&q=autodesk%20alias%20apple%20computer&f=false#v=snippet&q=autodesk%20alias%20apple%20computer&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=CRZuAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT106&lpg=...

Spooky23 8y ago
Perhaps we will see improvements to boot camp now.
- floatingatoll 8y ago
  Boot Camp works fine today. What improvements do you believe would be necessary to make it valuable to you?

nottorp 8y ago

Can't blame them for not wanting to port to Metal. However, I found that out from the comments on HN - because when I opened the page the article was covered by a full popup informing me that they 'care about my privacy'. And then they probably wanted me to agree to being tracked. Not sure because I instaclosed it.

tener 8y ago
Actually they make it super easy to say 'no to all tracking' which is very nice. Good for them.
- mgiannopoulos 8y ago
  Do they actually not use cookies though? Someone should look into all these consent pop ups and if they actually effect anything.
  - nottorp 8y ago
    I don't understand why I should have to go through that popup to read a public announcement anyway.
  - untog 8y ago
    If they don't they can be sued for it (at least in the EU) so I imagine a company like Autodesk does check these things.
    - nottorp 8y ago
      But... all they have to do is not track me... :)

0x0 8y ago

Mojave only deprecates OpenGL, but it doesn't remove it as far as I understand. It will continue to ship with the (somewhat outdated) OpenGL version that macOS has provided for several years, no? Did they even try running their own product on the Mojave betas? Seems strange to discontinue a working product just because an API is marked "deprecated"?

lloeki 8y ago
I've been building and running OpenGL toy applications[0] on Mojave public betas without issue just to check on that. You just get lots of deprecation warnings at compile time that you can quench by defining GL_SILENCE_DEPRECATION. Excerpt: ./nsopengl_example.h:5:5: warning: 'NSOpenGLContext' is deprecated: first deprecated in macOS 10.14 - Please use Metal or MetalKit. [-Wdeprecated-declarations] NSOpenGLContext* _openGLContext; ^ /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Headers/NSOpenGL.h:202:12: note: 'NSOpenGLContext' has been explicitly marked deprecated here @interface NSOpenGLContext : NSObject <NSLocking> ^ nsopengl_example.m:97:9: warning: 'glVertex3f' is deprecated: first deprecated in macOS 10.14 - OpenGL API deprecated. (Define GL_SILENCE_DEPRECATION to silence these warnings) [-Wdeprecated-declarations] glVertex3f( 0.0, 0.6, 0.0); ^ Nothing is gone yet. I suspect they'll proceed in a similar way as with OpenSSL, first deprecate, then remove headers, and keep the libs around for quite some time for legacy applications. In Mojave public beta /usr/lib still contains libssl.0.9.7.dylib and libssl.0.9.8.dylib, and it's been quite some time (El Capitan [1]) since you haven't been able to build against them. The trickier part with OpenGL though is the graphic drivers. I suppose at some point in the future drivers for fresh new GPUs won't include OpenGL support. Maybe they'll include a GL-to-Metal akin to MoltenGL in that case, maybe not, or a third-party will create just that to run legacy applications. Anyway I bet it's a long road ahead and won't happen overnight. [0]: https://gitlab.com/lloeki/nsopengl_example https://gitlab.com/lloeki/nsopengl_example [1]: https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build/issues/797 https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build/issues/797
untog 8y ago
Apple have announced plans to deprecate OpenGL. Whether they do it next year or in three years the writing is still on the wall, and I can't blame any company that doesn't want to invest their time and money on a platform that'll be a dead end. Even if it isn't removed yet it presumably won't be getting updates that other platforms will. (Plus, Autodesk might be trying to convince Apple to change their minds with a move like this)

iamgopal 8y ago

Mac in future will only be used for iOS development.

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linuxlizard 8y ago
iOS development could probably be moved web based. Would save everyone a lot of trouble.
- copperx 8y ago
  That would be wonderful, now that I think of it. The only hard problem would be the simulator, which would probably have to run on bare metal, or as a virtual machine.
  - kitsunesoba 8y ago
    Personally I wouldn’t want to be stuck with simulators only in development. Apple’s iOS simulator is pretty good, but it has quirks not shared with real hardware and its performance isn’t representative of real hardware at all.
    - Moter8 8y ago
      Yeah, like not being able to emulate the MacBooks webcam. It's pretty dumb.
- factotvm 8y ago
  iOS apps can become pretty complicated endeavors with all the moving pieces. It's as complicated as writing any desktop app. In fact, many are currently in the situation where you need to move from an OpenGL implementation to a Metal implementation. I don't see that happening in the browser. Though, I will say once you get that move completed, you get this: https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/608/ https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2018/608/ Metal is nice, but Apple should also support OpenGL, not just WebGL.

kenrose 8y ago

I worked at Autodesk from 2007 - 2011 and on Alias / Alias-related things for a good chunk of that. I was part of the team that ported Alias to MacOS. Alias development started back in the late 80s and was written for (I think) SGI machines. Back then, the company was Alias (merged with Wavefront and ultimately acquired by Autodesk in 2006) and the software was called Studio. OpenGL formalized in the early 90s and Alias (the company) ported Studio to support this nascent API. That meant that Alias could run on any OS that supported OpenGL. This was a fantastic strategic decision because it allowed Studio to port to various flavours of Irix, HP Unix, Windows, Mac OS, and even Linux. The Linux build was/is internal. It was a little janky to use as a modeller 8 hours a day, but good enough for a development workflow. Porting to Mac OS occurred in 2008 (I think) and was a reasonably sized project. Alias renders all of its own UI in OpenGL, so in theory, it was as simple as "Get a GLContext, and render to that". Of course, there were other things to deal with: - Cocoa specifics like windows / events - Various filesystem differences - IPC (Alias launches a subprocess to open new files to insulate a bad .wire file from crashing the main process) - Performance issues caused by various aged code (e.g., still a few places using display lists). I don't have any specifics for why Autodesk invested in porting Studio to MacOS back then. Apple was on the upward trend in terms of design and market share. I can speculate Apple was demanding a Mac OS version of Alias for its own use since, as others pointed out, Apple is a pretty big Autodesk customer. I agree with the other points made here that the decision was likely made that the ROI of maintaining the Apple port wasn't worth it. Sure was fun to write though. :)

Keyframe 8y ago
Didn't Alias transition to Qt, like other Alias programs (Maya)?
- kenrose 8y ago
  Not to my knowledge. Maya was porting to Qt when I worked there. Alias/Studio still used its own internal UI toolkit (Edwin) at the time.
  - 8y ago

machiavelli1024 8y ago

Engineers: we can do X and finish in two weeks, or we can take a shortcut and finish in one week, but the code will be tightly coupled to this particular quirk of OpenGL. Manager: take the shortcut :) ... repeat this for 15 years ...

alxlaz 8y ago
What particular quirk of OpenGL does Alias depend on?
- caspper69 8y ago
  Well, according to Apple, existing.

draw_down 8y ago

It’s difficult to believe even Apple themselves care about Mac these days. So, difficult to blame vendors for not caring, either.

Keyframe 8y ago

TBH, the writing was on the wall since the announcement. Very reminiscent of situation with Adobe and Premiere, which spawned FCP and a decade-old grudge between the companies. I have to ask this, even though I use OSX but have no idea, can drivers provided by third parties include openGL support for MacOS? Nvidia provides drivers for their cards regularly. Does it work like on other OS'?

factotvm 8y ago

I left feedback on the page that it wasn't helpful. Saying, "Once Apple releases Mojave, no versions of VRED will run on that operating system due to the OpenGL deprecation" doesn't help their case, because it's just wrong. I do hope Autodesk is able to put pressure on Apple to continue to support OpenGL, but they have to get their facts straight.

kitsunesoba 8y ago

It’s too bad, Metal has gotten very good. Blizzard ported the Mac versions of their games over to Metal a couple years ago and has been riding up against the edge of what’s possible with Metal. As of the latest WoW update, Metal performance is ridiculously good — barely distinguishable from DX12 under Windows on the same hardware. It’s amazing, I’ve never seen any game run this well under macOS. This may have been achievable with OpenGL, but I have doubts. Should Apple have waited for Vulkan to be finished up before making their choice of modern graphics API in iOS + macOS? Maybe, but if they had, their Vulkan implementation wouldn’t have been as mature as Metal is now and the existence of MoltenVK renders the whole thing moot anyway. Which makes me wonder, why not consider porting Alias to Vulkan? I’m not sure that OpenGL has much of a future on any platform, now that most everything will be written for DX12, Vulkan, or Metal. At best, frozen-in-time support for it will remain in Windows and Linux for a few more years, but I don’t see it being developed any further... didn’t Apple just jump ahead to OpenGL’s inevitable conclusion?

vetinari 8y ago
OpenGL AZDO is conceptually very near to Vulkan and DX12. Few years ago, I had an impression that Nvidia wanted to go this route, instead of Vulkan, if for nothing else then just to make advantage of their investment into OpenGL. However, AZDO is unusable on macOS; the OpenGL on macOS is too limited to support it. Khronos with OpenGL 4.6 made another step towards Vulkan: SPIR-V shaders. If Apple implemented 4.6, they could go all they way and implement Vulkan too. Apple, while they released the Metal 1 first, it was quite limited and there were reasons why the release was iOS only. When they came with Metal 2, which could compete with Vulkan, Vulkan was out for a year already. So basically they rushed to come with API, that would be exclusive to their platform and lock their developers in. There's no other use for Metal today.

rleigh 8y ago

Unsurprising. This is one public announcement, but it's inevitable that there are many more products which will cease support for MacOS. OpenGL is an established industry-standard graphics API. Supported on every platform of note. Drop it, and you're going to lose developers who rely on it. A vendor-specific proprietary API isn't an improvement, it's regressive. There are many products which won't be able to justify a Metal port, including one of my own. Despite its ugliness, OpenGL worked everywhere and modern OpenGL is actually pretty decent. If Apple want to retain developers, they need to have a long, hard think about their strategy here. I'll consider supporting MacOS again, if they can cut back on proprietary stuff and support the industry-standard stuff. OpenGL 4.6 and Vulkan would be a good start.

jchb 8y ago
an established industry-standard graphics API. Supported on every platform of note. Sorry, but this mostly wishful thinking. It is only an "industry standard" on Linux-based systems and Android. Also Nintendo Switch has support for OpenGL, but it is not the primary graphics API. On Windows, the OpenGL driver quality story is not very rosy. A good example is WebGL. On Windows, Chrome and Firefox implement WebGL using a compatibility library (ANGLE) that maps calls to the Direct3D API. Also for QT applications it is recommended to use ANGLE on Windows. Playstation 4 has its own proprietary graphics API, Xbox uses DirectX.
- rleigh 8y ago
  I disagree. It doesn't matter a whit whether or not it's the "primary" graphics API, but rather that it's supported on a platform or not. Right now, if I use OpenGL, I can target Windows, MacOS, Linux, FreeBSD, mobile devices and others all with a single codebase. It is portable, and does work everywhere in practice. On Windows, if you're using a GPU from e.g. AMD or nVidia, be it the gaming end or the workstation end, you will also be getting a decent OpenGL implementation. If you're using software like Alias, you're not going to skimp on the GPU. Angle only exists for poor GPUs which don't have decent OpenGL Windows drivers; for software at this level, they are an irrelevance. WebGL is a red herring. This isn't anything to do with web browsers, and everything to do with killing support for decades of software development investment by third-party ISVs. WebGL is not competing with that, and won't anytime soon. Apple here is basically saying: we don't care about the serious, high-end side of things, and screw any developers who want to develop that type of software for Mac systems. If they did, they would reimplement the OpenGL API on top of Metal; it's not like they don't have the cash to pay for it. As for proprietary gaming consoles, these are also irrelevant to the concerns here. This isn't really about games, or gaming engines. (Though when Apple finally drops OpenGL, most of the back catalogue of games will cease to function…) It's about the thousands of serious software packages out there which will no longer function on a Mac. The high-end CAD and design market. Engineering. Scientific and medical imaging. Etc. That's Apple's choice. And it's my choice to drop Mac support in consequence. They are making it clear that the Mac is no longer the platform for professional software development through their woeful hardware and their poor MacOS maintenance strategy. The market will respond to that.