macOS and OpenGL
Added 2018-07-16 20:09:49 +0000 UTCWhen I started working as an iOS developer for my day job a few years ago I bought a MacBook Air and switched from Windows to macOS as my main development operating system.
Recently, Apple announced that OpenGL will be deprecated in the next version (10.14) of macOS. Not only that, but 10.14 will be the last to run 32-bit apps.
Lots of games are 32-bit and use OpenGL. Apple essentially cast macOS users' games libraries onto a fire, and in a couple of versions of macOS many of those games will no longer run. I expect very few will get updated.
Vita3K isn't 32-bit, so it's not going to stop working as soon as 32-bit support is removed, but OpenGL is a different matter. It's hard to tell exactly how the deprecation will happen. It could be like on Windows, where MS shipped OpenGL 1.1 or similar, and left it up to driver vendors to provide updated OpenGL drivers. Or it could exist but no longer be updated, potentially rotting and getting buggy over time. Or it could be removed entirely.
Apple wants developers to adopt Metal. I understand their motivation, and Metal is a nice API, but I don't think I can justify the development effort and maintenance it would take to support it, given that most people use Windows.
Some of the Vita3K developers have discussed switching to Vulkan, and if things get really bad with macOS I would be on board, but Intel doesn't ship Vulkan drivers for my Mac's GPU. So I don't think that's an immediate option.
My current plan is to stick with OpenGL on all platforms, and look for an alternative solution if/when it stops working on Mac.
