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> Hell would freeze over before Apple conformed and contributed to an existing open standard. Better get some blankets because Apple has made significant contr

> Hell would freeze over before Apple conformed and contributed to an existing open standard. Better get some blankets because Apple has made significant contributions to many open standards - for example, USB-C. And, back in the day, OpenGL. Its a mistake to think of a large company like apple as if it were a person, with their own goals and ideas. Apple is just too big for that. I mean, they have 164,000 staff. Thats big enough that "small" business units will still have thousands of people. So each area will end up creating its own culture, and have its own way of doing things. The graphics division - these days - seems very intent on doing their own thing. But that doesn't tell us much about the rest of apple. 164 000 people is a lot of people. That's an awful lot of different opinions about open standards.

bigyabai 2y ago
I think people are (rightfully) upset at the business-oriented decisions that limit MacOS as a platform, prevent competition on iOS and demand annual tithes from their developers like they're peons tilling land for coin. These are fair criticisms, prosecuted in a few courts even, and well within the realm of reasonable change. Apple makes great things for their users when they collaborate with the industry. That's why we're concerned when they abandon standards and demand convergence on suspicious centralized cloud crap.
- troupo 2y ago
  > That's why we're concerned when they abandon standards Is DirectX a standard? Is Playstation NDK (or whatever it's called) a standard? Vulkan is not a "standard". It's a designed-by-committee API that arrived on the scene years after "non-standard" APIs.
  - kimixa 2y ago
    > It's a designed-by-committee API So a "standard"? Maybe I'm biased as I was involved with the standardization - but the whole point of a standard is something is legally possible to implement, communicates the needed information to the layer below, and general enough that it doesn't require specific hardware. All boxes are checked by Vulkan? At least that was the intention. So what if the origin of Vulkan was AMD's donation of Mantle, and the committee knocked the "hardware specific" points off - isn't that the desired result?
  - pjmlp 2y ago
    NVN on the Switch, PlayStation has two APIs, one high level and one low level one, LibGNMX and LibGNM respectively.
    - troupo 2y ago
      For some reason I can never remember those names :)
andsoitis 2y ago
> The graphics division - these days - seems very intent on doing their own thing. Apple is a top-down hierarchy with ruthless business strategy. Not a value judgment; merely a fact to keep in mind when entering a business relationship with Apple. Mike Rockwell, serves as the Vice President of the Vision Products Group. Rockwell has been instrumental in spearheading the Vision Pro project and the underlying visionOS platform. His leadership has been pivotal in advancing Apple’s spatial computing initiatives. To think he and his team have not made intentional choices to support/advance or undermine OpenXR would be naïve in my view.
- josephg 2y ago
  > To think he and his team have not made intentional choices to support/advance or undermine OpenXR would be naïve in my view. I'm sure their choices are intentional. But thats just one business unit. Apple is a huge company. And different areas have different priorities.
  - andsoitis 2y ago
    Not relevant. The VisionOS crew have decided to not support OpenXR and Apple has broadly decided not to support Vulkan, which, together with DirectX are the primary VR rendering technologies.
    - josephg 2y ago
      Not relevant to what? I think we’re talking past each other. I agree with your point - Apple clearly wants Metal & friends to be their own thing. But the comment I was replying to above commented on Apple and standards. It didn’t mention graphics at all. I replied, discussing Apple as a whole.
    - troupo 2y ago
      > The VisionOS crew have decided to not support OpenXR and Apple has broadly decided not to support Vulkan Because they already have their own graphics API called Metal. Why aren't you asking Microsoft to drop DirectX and start first-party support for Vulkan?
DecentShoes 2y ago
>Apple has made significant contributions to many open standards - for example, USB-C. And then refused to use it until the EU forced them
- latexr 2y ago
  USB-C has been in use on MacBooks for at least a decade.
  - dan_can_code 2y ago
    Thank god they brought back MagSafe charging recently.
    - lillecarl 2y ago
      I agree with you, but in practice I've never had a problem with USB-C at all and everything mobile I own has USB-C except my face trimmer, and the next one will be USB-C for sure. If you're worried about the port in a classroom environment you can use a short extension that you plug in on the device end, it will make the connection separate much easier if something unfortunate happens.
    - nmcfarl 2y ago
      I lost a Mac laptop in the pre-MagSafe days, to a bullpen environment –a sysadmin was rushing to a meeting, snagged his foot, and took the cable and the laptop off the desk at high speeds. After that, I was a big fan of MagSafe, but today’s USB-C and better batteries situation solves a lot of problems that MagSafe did in a different way. It allows for you to have multiple reasonably priced chargers, so the one on your desk can be safely placed, with a short unsnaggable cable. And you can still go to meetings and take your laptop home – because you have another cable in your bag and another at home. So these days, I barely use the MagSafe cable on my MacBook Pro.
- tpmoney 2y ago
  Come on. USB-C has been shipped on MacBooks since 2015, and most of their other systems since ~2020. Heck they caught a bunch of flack when they killed MagSafe on their MacBooks and went USB-C only (not just for the lack of mag safe, but also plenty of grief for lack of Ethernet and HDMI too). With or without the EU mandates they were clearly on a trend moving their devices to USB-C
charcircuit 2y ago
USB-C is not a Khronos standard.

bigyabai 2y ago

I think people are (rightfully) upset at the business-oriented decisions that limit MacOS as a platform, prevent competition on iOS and demand annual tithes from their developers like they're peons tilling land for coin. These are fair criticisms, prosecuted in a few courts even, and well within the realm of reasonable change. Apple makes great things for their users when they collaborate with the industry. That's why we're concerned when they abandon standards and demand convergence on suspicious centralized cloud crap.

troupo 2y ago
> That's why we're concerned when they abandon standards Is DirectX a standard? Is Playstation NDK (or whatever it's called) a standard? Vulkan is not a "standard". It's a designed-by-committee API that arrived on the scene years after "non-standard" APIs.
- kimixa 2y ago
  > It's a designed-by-committee API So a "standard"? Maybe I'm biased as I was involved with the standardization - but the whole point of a standard is something is legally possible to implement, communicates the needed information to the layer below, and general enough that it doesn't require specific hardware. All boxes are checked by Vulkan? At least that was the intention. So what if the origin of Vulkan was AMD's donation of Mantle, and the committee knocked the "hardware specific" points off - isn't that the desired result?
- pjmlp 2y ago
  NVN on the Switch, PlayStation has two APIs, one high level and one low level one, LibGNMX and LibGNM respectively.
  - troupo 2y ago
    For some reason I can never remember those names :)

andsoitis 2y ago

> The graphics division - these days - seems very intent on doing their own thing. Apple is a top-down hierarchy with ruthless business strategy. Not a value judgment; merely a fact to keep in mind when entering a business relationship with Apple. Mike Rockwell, serves as the Vice President of the Vision Products Group. Rockwell has been instrumental in spearheading the Vision Pro project and the underlying visionOS platform. His leadership has been pivotal in advancing Apple’s spatial computing initiatives. To think he and his team have not made intentional choices to support/advance or undermine OpenXR would be naïve in my view.

josephg 2y ago
> To think he and his team have not made intentional choices to support/advance or undermine OpenXR would be naïve in my view. I'm sure their choices are intentional. But thats just one business unit. Apple is a huge company. And different areas have different priorities.
- andsoitis 2y ago
  Not relevant. The VisionOS crew have decided to not support OpenXR and Apple has broadly decided not to support Vulkan, which, together with DirectX are the primary VR rendering technologies.
  - josephg 2y ago
    Not relevant to what? I think we’re talking past each other. I agree with your point - Apple clearly wants Metal & friends to be their own thing. But the comment I was replying to above commented on Apple and standards. It didn’t mention graphics at all. I replied, discussing Apple as a whole.
  - troupo 2y ago
    > The VisionOS crew have decided to not support OpenXR and Apple has broadly decided not to support Vulkan Because they already have their own graphics API called Metal. Why aren't you asking Microsoft to drop DirectX and start first-party support for Vulkan?

DecentShoes 2y ago

>Apple has made significant contributions to many open standards - for example, USB-C. And then refused to use it until the EU forced them

latexr 2y ago
USB-C has been in use on MacBooks for at least a decade.
- dan_can_code 2y ago
  Thank god they brought back MagSafe charging recently.
  - lillecarl 2y ago
    I agree with you, but in practice I've never had a problem with USB-C at all and everything mobile I own has USB-C except my face trimmer, and the next one will be USB-C for sure. If you're worried about the port in a classroom environment you can use a short extension that you plug in on the device end, it will make the connection separate much easier if something unfortunate happens.
  - nmcfarl 2y ago
    I lost a Mac laptop in the pre-MagSafe days, to a bullpen environment –a sysadmin was rushing to a meeting, snagged his foot, and took the cable and the laptop off the desk at high speeds. After that, I was a big fan of MagSafe, but today’s USB-C and better batteries situation solves a lot of problems that MagSafe did in a different way. It allows for you to have multiple reasonably priced chargers, so the one on your desk can be safely placed, with a short unsnaggable cable. And you can still go to meetings and take your laptop home – because you have another cable in your bag and another at home. So these days, I barely use the MagSafe cable on my MacBook Pro.
tpmoney 2y ago
Come on. USB-C has been shipped on MacBooks since 2015, and most of their other systems since ~2020. Heck they caught a bunch of flack when they killed MagSafe on their MacBooks and went USB-C only (not just for the lack of mag safe, but also plenty of grief for lack of Ethernet and HDMI too). With or without the EU mandates they were clearly on a trend moving their devices to USB-C

charcircuit 2y ago

USB-C is not a Khronos standard.