4 ms·

My application, does precisely what i want in terms of graphics, and runs at 600FPS. Explain to me why my users would benefit from me spending months switching

My application, does precisely what i want in terms of graphics, and runs at 600FPS. Explain to me why my users would benefit from me spending months switching to a different API? Life is too short for that. The loosers in all this are the Mac users. The reason to support Mac is to be nice to the users, not because it makes financial sense. If apple is going to actively make it harder why bother?

DCKing 7y ago
> Explain to me why my users would benefit from me spending months switching to a different API? The idea is that leaving behind old APIs will benefit driver and system stability for the entire ecosystem, benefiting your users in other ways. You might disagree with that view, but Apple is not doing this out of spite alone. I'm not sure that switching to use a library like MoltenGL for this stuff would take months either, but you're in a better position to judge that I guess.
- quelsolaar 7y ago
  Or Apple could do it! if its possible to support usigng a wrapper, Apple should make the wraper part of the API, why push the responsibility of backwards copatibility over to developers?
  - DCKing 7y ago
    If you want to argue Apple is handling this poorly from a community perspective, you'll find no argument with me. The reason Apple is doing this in this poor way is that they seem to want to push Metal as the answer. They want incentives for developers to move to Metal by making their lives more difficult on OpenGL, because even with libraries those libraries must be maintained and included. They don't want to bear responsibility for this legacy. I'm explaining, not defending. This is the direct opposite to the Linux ecosystem, where Gallium3D not only facilitates both OpenGL and Vulkan, but has had attempted Direct3D implementations in the past. Yet another case where Linux has the "everything and the kitchen sink approach", and Apple just flat out dictates a single choice to everybody. That attitude sometimes helps Apple, but sometimes it doesn't.
    - vetinari 7y ago
      Mesa Gallium 3D is not an API intended for use by applications. It is a mechanism that allows to share functionality among drivers. Yes, it is possible to create state trackers on top of it, but that will be part of Mesa. It has no public API. Even among Mesa drivers, usage of Gallium 3D is not mandatory. If the driver team thinks it will make their job easier, they can use it. If they think it won't, they won't. Intel 965 driver (the current driver for Intel GPUs) doesn't use Gallium, for example. The new one ("Iris"), currently in the works, will. For a long time, the only driver that used Gallium 3D was only the AMD one.
- asveikau 7y ago
  You are falling into a common trap these days. There is a difference between API (remember the I stands for interface) and implementation. There is no reason a vendor can't completely change how drivers work without the application having any idea. There is nothing about the API that says it needs to push complexity onto the driver, but you are describing these implementations as inevitability.
- pier25 7y ago
  IMO the issue is not so much that Apple is leaving stuff behind, but that it makes drastic decisions and generally does not communicate its plans. For example in one of the email responses someone from Apple says that Carbon was a temporary solution but quite frankly that was never clear from the outside world. It seems there were even plans to make Carbon 64 bits that were scratched at the last minute. Same with the hardware. One day out of the blue Apple announced its new laptops without USB-A ports. Even 3 years later USB-A is still one of the most used peripheral ports in the PC world (including Mac and Windows). Even Apple does not ship peripherals with USB-C cables other than adapters. AFAIK its mice and keyboards still ship with USB-A cables for charging. These tactics are maybe ok for the consumer world but not for professionals who need reliability above all else.
  - cpuguy83 7y ago
    Sorry, I was a teenager and fairly anti-Apple even at the time. When carbon was introduced I don't see how Carbon could have ever been seen as anything other than a temporary solution. I would have to go back and watch the original introduction, but I even seem to recall that general feeling from the event. So I guess I'm just not understanding your viewpoint here. USB-A still works, you just need a compatibility layer (a dongle). OpenGL has been deprecated for years. Why are people reacting like this is a new development.
    - coldtea 7y ago
      >USB-A still works, you just need a compatibility layer (a dongle). Not even that, a cable will do. I have zero dongles, and just bought a few tens of $ USB-C to X cables...
    - whywhywhywhy 7y ago
      >USB-A still works, you just need a compatibility layer (a dongle). Assuming you work at a company willing to spend the money on official Apple dongles and not cheap flakey clones. Unfortunately few companies will do that and now all Apple I/O goes through cheap unreliable dongles.
KibbutzDalia 7y ago
When Mac stopped supporting NVIDIA the Mac users became losers. They missed out on all the AI and other GPGPU work.
- kitsunesoba 7y ago
  There’s more than meets the eyes when it comes to the Nvidia/Apple situation. From what I’ve heard a big part of Apple’s problem has to do with the quality of Nvidia’s drivers — Apple is requiring that a bar be met, and Nvidia isn’t meeting it. I can’t verify this claim, but given my personal experience it makes perfect sense. I run a 980 Ti alongside a 950 in my hackintosh tower and graphical glitches on the desktop happen pretty regularly despite both cards being perfectly healthy. The other thing is that historically, Apple has been unwilling to differentiate the drivers between consumer and workstation cards because generally speaking that concept is kind of silly. Everybody should have workstation-class stability, not just those who shell out 3-5x more cash for a workstation card. It’s obvious why Nvidia would take issue with this,
  - mcphage 7y ago
    > There’s more than meets the eyes when it comes to the Nvidia/Apple situation. From what I’ve heard a big part of Apple’s problem has to do with the quality of Nvidia’s drivers — Apple is requiring that a bet be met, and Nvidia isn’t meeting it. Then Apple needs to dig down into their pocket, maybe they’ve got some extra money there, and solve this problem.
  - pier25 7y ago
    > I run a 980 Ti alongside a 950 in my hackintosh tower and graphical glitches on the desktop happen pretty regularly despite both cards being perfectly healthy. The Nvidia web drivers are not great but there are so many factors that could be producing those glitches. I've built about a dozen hackintoshes since 2010 and while I've experienced many problems I personally haver never seen graphical glitches. I don't think it's fair to expect the same level of reliability from a frankenstein you've built yourself than a commercial product.
coldtea 7y ago
>Explain to me why my users would benefit from me spending months switching to a different API? Because as a user I don't want apps forcing extra baggage like old APIs to be supported forever in the OS. Nor I want apps that are fossilized and don't take advantage of new platform features. If I didn't care for apps being Mac-specific and taking advantage of what the platform has to offer and moving on with the platform, I'd just as well use Windows or Linux (and vice versa).
- qplex 7y ago
  If such mandatory "new platform features" dont have anything to offer for a program to make it better, updating it brings in absolutely nothing for the user but the ability to continue to use the program. I think it is pretty unreasonable to require developers to rewrite their programs periodically just because there is a some new feature in some new API. Also, software that gets updated just for the sake of it usually ends up worse than before.
- thesquib 7y ago
  I think as a user you shouldn't need to see or know anything about APIs or OS internals. Your apps should just work.
  - acdha 7y ago
    And yet there are decades of apps not supporting new UI features, being unstable or insecure because they were slow to adopt new APIs. This is a balance: Windows font rendering, color management, and resolution scaling took ages to stabilize because things working reduces pressure on the vendors to update.

DCKing 7y ago

> Explain to me why my users would benefit from me spending months switching to a different API? The idea is that leaving behind old APIs will benefit driver and system stability for the entire ecosystem, benefiting your users in other ways. You might disagree with that view, but Apple is not doing this out of spite alone. I'm not sure that switching to use a library like MoltenGL for this stuff would take months either, but you're in a better position to judge that I guess.

quelsolaar 7y ago
Or Apple could do it! if its possible to support usigng a wrapper, Apple should make the wraper part of the API, why push the responsibility of backwards copatibility over to developers?
- DCKing 7y ago
  If you want to argue Apple is handling this poorly from a community perspective, you'll find no argument with me. The reason Apple is doing this in this poor way is that they seem to want to push Metal as the answer. They want incentives for developers to move to Metal by making their lives more difficult on OpenGL, because even with libraries those libraries must be maintained and included. They don't want to bear responsibility for this legacy. I'm explaining, not defending. This is the direct opposite to the Linux ecosystem, where Gallium3D not only facilitates both OpenGL and Vulkan, but has had attempted Direct3D implementations in the past. Yet another case where Linux has the "everything and the kitchen sink approach", and Apple just flat out dictates a single choice to everybody. That attitude sometimes helps Apple, but sometimes it doesn't.
  - vetinari 7y ago
    Mesa Gallium 3D is not an API intended for use by applications. It is a mechanism that allows to share functionality among drivers. Yes, it is possible to create state trackers on top of it, but that will be part of Mesa. It has no public API. Even among Mesa drivers, usage of Gallium 3D is not mandatory. If the driver team thinks it will make their job easier, they can use it. If they think it won't, they won't. Intel 965 driver (the current driver for Intel GPUs) doesn't use Gallium, for example. The new one ("Iris"), currently in the works, will. For a long time, the only driver that used Gallium 3D was only the AMD one.
asveikau 7y ago
You are falling into a common trap these days. There is a difference between API (remember the I stands for interface) and implementation. There is no reason a vendor can't completely change how drivers work without the application having any idea. There is nothing about the API that says it needs to push complexity onto the driver, but you are describing these implementations as inevitability.
pier25 7y ago
IMO the issue is not so much that Apple is leaving stuff behind, but that it makes drastic decisions and generally does not communicate its plans. For example in one of the email responses someone from Apple says that Carbon was a temporary solution but quite frankly that was never clear from the outside world. It seems there were even plans to make Carbon 64 bits that were scratched at the last minute. Same with the hardware. One day out of the blue Apple announced its new laptops without USB-A ports. Even 3 years later USB-A is still one of the most used peripheral ports in the PC world (including Mac and Windows). Even Apple does not ship peripherals with USB-C cables other than adapters. AFAIK its mice and keyboards still ship with USB-A cables for charging. These tactics are maybe ok for the consumer world but not for professionals who need reliability above all else.
- cpuguy83 7y ago
  Sorry, I was a teenager and fairly anti-Apple even at the time. When carbon was introduced I don't see how Carbon could have ever been seen as anything other than a temporary solution. I would have to go back and watch the original introduction, but I even seem to recall that general feeling from the event. So I guess I'm just not understanding your viewpoint here. USB-A still works, you just need a compatibility layer (a dongle). OpenGL has been deprecated for years. Why are people reacting like this is a new development.
  - coldtea 7y ago
    >USB-A still works, you just need a compatibility layer (a dongle). Not even that, a cable will do. I have zero dongles, and just bought a few tens of $ USB-C to X cables...
  - whywhywhywhy 7y ago
    >USB-A still works, you just need a compatibility layer (a dongle). Assuming you work at a company willing to spend the money on official Apple dongles and not cheap flakey clones. Unfortunately few companies will do that and now all Apple I/O goes through cheap unreliable dongles.

KibbutzDalia 7y ago

When Mac stopped supporting NVIDIA the Mac users became losers. They missed out on all the AI and other GPGPU work.

kitsunesoba 7y ago
There’s more than meets the eyes when it comes to the Nvidia/Apple situation. From what I’ve heard a big part of Apple’s problem has to do with the quality of Nvidia’s drivers — Apple is requiring that a bar be met, and Nvidia isn’t meeting it. I can’t verify this claim, but given my personal experience it makes perfect sense. I run a 980 Ti alongside a 950 in my hackintosh tower and graphical glitches on the desktop happen pretty regularly despite both cards being perfectly healthy. The other thing is that historically, Apple has been unwilling to differentiate the drivers between consumer and workstation cards because generally speaking that concept is kind of silly. Everybody should have workstation-class stability, not just those who shell out 3-5x more cash for a workstation card. It’s obvious why Nvidia would take issue with this,
- mcphage 7y ago
  > There’s more than meets the eyes when it comes to the Nvidia/Apple situation. From what I’ve heard a big part of Apple’s problem has to do with the quality of Nvidia’s drivers — Apple is requiring that a bet be met, and Nvidia isn’t meeting it. Then Apple needs to dig down into their pocket, maybe they’ve got some extra money there, and solve this problem.
- pier25 7y ago
  > I run a 980 Ti alongside a 950 in my hackintosh tower and graphical glitches on the desktop happen pretty regularly despite both cards being perfectly healthy. The Nvidia web drivers are not great but there are so many factors that could be producing those glitches. I've built about a dozen hackintoshes since 2010 and while I've experienced many problems I personally haver never seen graphical glitches. I don't think it's fair to expect the same level of reliability from a frankenstein you've built yourself than a commercial product.

coldtea 7y ago

>Explain to me why my users would benefit from me spending months switching to a different API? Because as a user I don't want apps forcing extra baggage like old APIs to be supported forever in the OS. Nor I want apps that are fossilized and don't take advantage of new platform features. If I didn't care for apps being Mac-specific and taking advantage of what the platform has to offer and moving on with the platform, I'd just as well use Windows or Linux (and vice versa).

qplex 7y ago
If such mandatory "new platform features" dont have anything to offer for a program to make it better, updating it brings in absolutely nothing for the user but the ability to continue to use the program. I think it is pretty unreasonable to require developers to rewrite their programs periodically just because there is a some new feature in some new API. Also, software that gets updated just for the sake of it usually ends up worse than before.
thesquib 7y ago
I think as a user you shouldn't need to see or know anything about APIs or OS internals. Your apps should just work.
- acdha 7y ago
  And yet there are decades of apps not supporting new UI features, being unstable or insecure because they were slow to adopt new APIs. This is a balance: Windows font rendering, color management, and resolution scaling took ages to stabilize because things working reduces pressure on the vendors to update.