Mac gaming in peril as Apple depreciates OpenGL and OpenCL support

At their annual WWDC (Worldwide Developers Conference), Apple confirmed that both OpenGL and OpenCL would be depreciated in MacOS 10.14 Mojave and that the OS would be the last version of iOS to offer 32-bit app support.  

OpenCL and OpenGL are open, cross-platform standards, both of which are used heavily by gaming and rendering applications, leaving many developers concerned that depreciating these standards could have a detrimental effect on a wide range of MacOS applications. While Metal, Apple’s proprietary API, can perform most of the same tasks, the eventual loss of OpenGL/CL support will be a massive hit to backwards compatibility on the platform. 

While we agree that OpenGL is horrifically outdated, Apple has shown no interest in the Khronos Group’s replacement API, Vulkan, showcasing Apple’s desire to promote their platform-specific Metal API exclusively. 

Back in February Vulkan support was brought to Apple’s iOS and MacOS through the back door using MoltenVK, a subset of Vulkan that can translate between Vulkan and Metal API calls on the fly. MoltenVR allows Vulkan applications to function on iOS, saving the development time/money needed to create a bespoke Metal API version of every app, it is far from a perfect solution, which would be to allow Vulkan to be supported directly on MacOS. 

Apple’s desire is for developers to adopt their “closer to the metal” Metal API, the move aggravates most game developers, who do not have the resources to create Metal versions of their games and applications due to its proprietary nature and the relatively small (when compared to Windows PC) install base. 

This move also affects the developers of commonly used rendering applications on MacOS, as this move will force a transition over to Metal, which isn’t an easy process.