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> For huge monsters like MS and Apple the argument of "we already had this, so we can't join the collaborative effort" doesn't really make sense. It sounds lik

> For huge monsters like MS and Apple the argument of "we already had this, so we can't join the collaborative effort" doesn't really make sense. It sounds like there’s a misunderstanding here about what Mantle was. Mantle was not a collaborative effort that different vendors could join in on. Mantle was AMD’s pet project. AMD saying “Hey, why doesn’t everyone use Mantle?” was a non-starter, because as it was, Mantle reflected the architecture of current AMD GPUs. Nvidia or other GPUs would be at a massive disadvantage trying to implement a low-level API that just didn’t fit their architecture right. However, there was indeed a collaborative effort that Apple and Microsoft were a part of. It was the OpenGL steering committee. In 2013, the steering committee was not busy making Vulkan reality. They were instead trying to fix the problems with OpenGL. The more serious problems—the reasons why Vulkan exists—never actually got fixed. This was not a massive surprise. The issues were complicated, and most people thought that OpenGL was falling behind DirectX further each year. > Which indeed resulted in Vulkan eventually. Yeah, in 2016. By that point, developers had been using Metal for almost TWO YEARS and shipping games with it. Some of those games had shipped sequels or spinoffs. The project which eventually resulted in Vulkan, called “OpenGL Next,” hadn’t even BEGUN by the time Metal was released to developers. DirectX 12, I assume, was under heavy development at the time. The story I’ve heard was that the release of Metal was a real kick in the pants for what became the Vulkan effort. If you were to go back in time and rewrite history, and wipe Metal off the face of the planet, who knows what would happen to Vulkan? History is messy.

shmerl 5y ago
> Yeah, in 2016. Not out of the blue. AMD wanted that collaboration and got different parties interested. It took a while to get needed groups together and then develop it until it was out in 2016 (not by AMD alone at that time obviously). Where were Apple and MS when this was happening between 2013 and 2016? Your argument about non-starter is clearly incorrect, since Vulkan did result from it all. So it was possible, but took time. Khronos was already managing OpenGL so they fit the role of overseeing it. Someone else could do it too may be, but no one else stepped up (including same MS and Apple who easily could if they thought they could do better). > The story I’ve heard was that the release of Metal was a real kick in the pants for what became the Vulkan effort. Apple very well knew there is an interest in the common API. Where were they? Making their Apple only NIH of course. Collaboration takes more time, sure. Did Apple join? No. They never cared.
- klodolph 5y ago
  > Your argument about non-starter is clearly incorrect, since Vulkan did result from it all. I’m talking about what people perceived in 2013. You are welcome to judge people’s decisions, using your knowledge of future events, if that’s what you really want to do. > Where were Apple and MS when this was happening between 2013 and 2016? Apple and MS were thinking, correctly, “I bet I can deliver a working API before this committee with representatives from a dozen different companies with competing interests can get off their butts and even figure out what they’re going to name the project.” Those years were years of massive, massive growth for the App Store and the iOS ecosystem. If you could fix major problems that your customers a couple years faster, during a time when sales were growing 50% year over year, you’d want to do it yourself too. There’s only so many engineers at your company with the patience and drive to sit on committees. > Khronos was already managing OpenGL so they fit the role of overseeing it. It was called “OpenGL Next”, not Vulkan, at the time. Well, not when Metal was released, since it didn’t even exist when Metal was released.
  - shmerl 5y ago
    > You are welcome to judge people’s decisions, using your knowledge of future events If some thought it was a non starter, AMD thought it's a good idea that would benefit everyone. Who ended up being right? Not the skeptics, that was my point. The idea was correct and those who backed it helped move it forward. But Apple and MS did the opposite of helping. > Apple and MS were thinking, correctly, “I bet I can deliver a working API before this committee with representatives from a dozen different companies That was exactly my point. "Correctly" as in "let's push lock-in to hook developers on this and make life harder for them if they want to support multiple platforms". That's the approach MS and Apple were using for years. But it's not right if you care about making things better for the industry, because it's only slowing progress down. I really see no justification for using development tools like APIs for market control, it's a crooked practice.
    - klodolph 5y ago
      > But Apple and MS did the opposite of helping. I think it's pretty absurd to expect Apple and MS to suspend work on graphics APIs until the committee gets around to figure things out. Especially when the committee is already falling behind, and fixing these issues isn't even on the agenda yet. I just don't understand how someone could blame Apple and Microsoft for developing their own APIs, and then let the OpenGL committee off the hook for completely failing to fix the outstanding issues in the OpenGL API in a timely fashion. Again... and it seems people keep forgetting this part... Metal was released to developers before the project that eventually became Vulkan even started. At the time Metal was released, Vulkan DID NOT EXIST, not even by a different name. "I know, let's not work on this important project, and hand it off to an industry working group." Said no engineer, ever. When a committee fails to produce a working standard, alternatives appear. This is how WHATWG appeared. > That was exactly my point. "Correctly" as in "let's push lock-in to hook developers on this and make life harder for them if they want to support multiple platforms". That's just begging the question. If you're going to argue, at least make an argument.

shmerl 5y ago

> Yeah, in 2016. Not out of the blue. AMD wanted that collaboration and got different parties interested. It took a while to get needed groups together and then develop it until it was out in 2016 (not by AMD alone at that time obviously). Where were Apple and MS when this was happening between 2013 and 2016? Your argument about non-starter is clearly incorrect, since Vulkan did result from it all. So it was possible, but took time. Khronos was already managing OpenGL so they fit the role of overseeing it. Someone else could do it too may be, but no one else stepped up (including same MS and Apple who easily could if they thought they could do better). > The story I’ve heard was that the release of Metal was a real kick in the pants for what became the Vulkan effort. Apple very well knew there is an interest in the common API. Where were they? Making their Apple only NIH of course. Collaboration takes more time, sure. Did Apple join? No. They never cared.

klodolph 5y ago
> Your argument about non-starter is clearly incorrect, since Vulkan did result from it all. I’m talking about what people perceived in 2013. You are welcome to judge people’s decisions, using your knowledge of future events, if that’s what you really want to do. > Where were Apple and MS when this was happening between 2013 and 2016? Apple and MS were thinking, correctly, “I bet I can deliver a working API before this committee with representatives from a dozen different companies with competing interests can get off their butts and even figure out what they’re going to name the project.” Those years were years of massive, massive growth for the App Store and the iOS ecosystem. If you could fix major problems that your customers a couple years faster, during a time when sales were growing 50% year over year, you’d want to do it yourself too. There’s only so many engineers at your company with the patience and drive to sit on committees. > Khronos was already managing OpenGL so they fit the role of overseeing it. It was called “OpenGL Next”, not Vulkan, at the time. Well, not when Metal was released, since it didn’t even exist when Metal was released.
- shmerl 5y ago
  > You are welcome to judge people’s decisions, using your knowledge of future events If some thought it was a non starter, AMD thought it's a good idea that would benefit everyone. Who ended up being right? Not the skeptics, that was my point. The idea was correct and those who backed it helped move it forward. But Apple and MS did the opposite of helping. > Apple and MS were thinking, correctly, “I bet I can deliver a working API before this committee with representatives from a dozen different companies That was exactly my point. "Correctly" as in "let's push lock-in to hook developers on this and make life harder for them if they want to support multiple platforms". That's the approach MS and Apple were using for years. But it's not right if you care about making things better for the industry, because it's only slowing progress down. I really see no justification for using development tools like APIs for market control, it's a crooked practice.
  - klodolph 5y ago
    > But Apple and MS did the opposite of helping. I think it's pretty absurd to expect Apple and MS to suspend work on graphics APIs until the committee gets around to figure things out. Especially when the committee is already falling behind, and fixing these issues isn't even on the agenda yet. I just don't understand how someone could blame Apple and Microsoft for developing their own APIs, and then let the OpenGL committee off the hook for completely failing to fix the outstanding issues in the OpenGL API in a timely fashion. Again... and it seems people keep forgetting this part... Metal was released to developers before the project that eventually became Vulkan even started. At the time Metal was released, Vulkan DID NOT EXIST, not even by a different name. "I know, let's not work on this important project, and hand it off to an industry working group." Said no engineer, ever. When a committee fails to produce a working standard, alternatives appear. This is how WHATWG appeared. > That was exactly my point. "Correctly" as in "let's push lock-in to hook developers on this and make life harder for them if they want to support multiple platforms". That's just begging the question. If you're going to argue, at least make an argument.