Thread: Mac OS X Mojave
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Old 10-01-2018, 08:34 PM   #6
feldon34
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Mojave still has OpenGL, it's just deprecated / no longer being updated. Considering how much Mac software uses OpenGL (specifically Windows CAD software that's been ported over) and will not be rewritten for Apple's new whizbang graphics engine (Metal), I think it would be suicidal for them to kill off OpenGL entirely.

Some useful quotes:

For tools such as AutoCad, Sketchup, Kicad, Eagle, Blender, GIMP etc that are natively Windows or Linux, Mac support is often a token gesture; simply a tickbox when the graphics core is OpenGL. If developers have a hard time porting to Mac because they have to use Metal, they just won't bother. It's not worth them spending disproportionate time on a minority of computer users to support an obscure graphics API, and game engines aren't any good for writing actual tools to get things done.

Apple has pretty much no clout in the desktop/laptop market. Developers want to support iOS because it's profitable, so they'll follow Apple's every whim. On Mac however, that won't happen, developers just won't bother, to the detriment yet again of Mac users.
Deprecating OpenGL will be the 'kiss of death' for many CAE and CAD programs on the Mac. CAE/CAD software has different needs to games. Typically large amount of 3D data with simple rendering - and OpenGL does just fine, thank you.
Being able to move to Metal on new projects is great. How about the thousands of scientific programs that were written for Linux that can be compiled on macOS because OpenGL is supported. Many of those types of programs are written, released and never updated again.It is interesting that at the same time Microsoft is adding Linux support within Windows, Apple is doing something that might eliminate the compatibility they've had for years.
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