4 ms·

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 sha

by 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.
    - iainmerrick 8y ago
      You’re right, they’re ludicrously successful so you have to figure they must know what they’re doing. It does seem like a strange strategy not to court these high-end markets, though. As a developer, it often feels like Apple is ignoring me in favour of some nebulously-defined market of “designers”. But here we have actual designers, industrial product designers, being similarly ignored.
      - oneplane 8y ago
        It is very strange indeed. Especially with the advertisements on their website listing 'developers' and 'engineers' and 'artists'. At the same time, I know just as many users that have zero issue as ones that declare they do have issues. Ironically, none of them are migrating to other systems. Some mention 'others are even worse' and a lot simply don't care enough and like the way things work.
jaxondu 8y ago
My guess why Apple kill OpenGL besides being old tech, is to reduce one more stack to support with their port of macOS to ARM. So in 2-3 years time we likely see a version of desktop iOS or macOS ARM.

by snarfy 8y ago

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.
  - iainmerrick 8y ago
    You’re right, they’re ludicrously successful so you have to figure they must know what they’re doing. It does seem like a strange strategy not to court these high-end markets, though. As a developer, it often feels like Apple is ignoring me in favour of some nebulously-defined market of “designers”. But here we have actual designers, industrial product designers, being similarly ignored.
    - oneplane 8y ago
      It is very strange indeed. Especially with the advertisements on their website listing 'developers' and 'engineers' and 'artists'. At the same time, I know just as many users that have zero issue as ones that declare they do have issues. Ironically, none of them are migrating to other systems. Some mention 'others are even worse' and a lot simply don't care enough and like the way things work.

jaxondu 8y ago

My guess why Apple kill OpenGL besides being old tech, is to reduce one more stack to support with their port of macOS to ARM. So in 2-3 years time we likely see a version of desktop iOS or macOS ARM.