Apple ends OpenGL support and what does it mean ?

Apple ends OpenGL support and what does it mean ?

Apple has announced to software developers that they will deprecate OpenGL and OpenCL in Mojave and iOS 12.  The open standards of OpenGL allow to make cross-platform development easier.  Apple will be using Metal and wishes that all software developers turn to that.

However, there is another cross-platform graphics and compute API, Vulkan, which some see as OpenGL’s successor, that is up to the task. Apple has decided not to support that API for numerous reasons, not all of which will satisfy developers.

OpenGL and OpenCL

And this shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Apple has only barely supported OpenGL of late, and Metal is clearly its priority. The company told developers at the conference that “existing and soon-to-be launched apps can still use it” and “this will remain so for some time,” but nevertheless told developers that, ideally, “new projects should target Metal from their inception.”

Apple had already made leaning on Metal necessary for new frontiers like VR and AR on Apple hardware. Metal is a low-level, low-overhead hardware-accelerated 3D graphic and compute shader application programming interface (API) developed by Apple Inc., and which debuted in iOS 8. Metal combines functions similar to OpenGL and OpenCL under one API.

So this does make sense instead of staying with the older architecture and moving on to a new platform.  It will be an interesting scope of things.