Comment by NobodyNada
7 years ago
AFAIK OpenGL hasn't been removed, and isn't planned to be in the near future; it's just been deprecated. Apple isn't adopting new versions of OpenGL or Vulkan, but OpenGL code that used to run on macOS still runs on macOS.
OpenGL support has been abandoned by Apple years ago, not to mention being broken.
The fact that it is now officially deprecated is just a warning from Apple to remove it soon without bad PR.
You are moving the goalposts. You stated:
> What I am upset about is the removal of a standard that worked well
That is not correct on either count:
1) OpenGL is a terrible fit for modern GPUs so I don't agree that it "worked well" 2) OpenGL was not removed anyway
> OpenGL support has been abandoned
That is not correct. Code continues to be written and maintained to keep OpenGL working on newer GPUs, both OpenGL ES on iOS GPUs, as well as OpenGL on mac GPUs.
> The fact that it is now officially deprecated is just a warning from Apple to remove it soon without bad PR.
macOS/iOS continue to support /many/ deprecated APIs, some of which have been deprecated for over a decade. Contrary to popular opinion, things are not removed just for fun. Things are removed when there is a sound security/technical reason, or when there is a high ongoing cost either to end users or the development process.
The alternative is to be MS and never remove anything, and where any changes to observable behavior of the system (or even moving internal struct values around!) can cause breakage and so is not done or requires inserting hacks to preserve behavior. If you think that doesn't impact individual engineer's decision making process ... well I don't know what to tell you. It must be soul-crushing to know if you change an internal data structure from uint16_t to uint32_t some crappy app that depends on being able to poke around will break. Surely such policies encourage some developers to do even more such hacky things, knowing MS will take the blame and end up making sure you can keep getting away with it.
> Code continues to be written and maintained to keep OpenGL working on newer GPUs, both OpenGL ES on iOS GPUs, as well as OpenGL on mac GPUs.
Yes, but from the outside this is not necessarily obvious. Just ask the VLC developers: they’re running into breakage constantly on macOS. There were a couple of builds back in the summer where OpenGL just wouldn’t initialize at all, meaning even system components like WebGL, iTunes visualizers, and certain screensavers wouldn’t work correctly (though I did notice that there’s a new one written in Metal that wasn’t affected…)
> The alternative is to be MS and never remove anything,
They do remove stuff, all the time, the transitions just happen to be a bit more gentle, with more years to prepare for it, although not always, e.g. 16 bit, MS-DOS support, WinG, WinRT (Win 8.x variant), WDDM, WCF, Remoting.
> You are moving the goalposts.
No, I am not moving goalposts. OpenGL has been useless for all intents and purposes in macOS for years already. The deprecation is the least of concerns.
> 1) OpenGL is a terrible fit for modern GPUs so I don't agree that it "worked well"
A terrible fit? What are you even talking about? It is as featureful as the latest D3D11 which is the API most games are based on. What is useless is the OpenGL version and drivers that Apple ships.
Please don't spread FUD. There are no security nor technical reason nor significant cost on maintaining a proper OpenGL.