Which is so bizarre to me. Metal isn’t cross platform and 3d is very much a cross platform technology. So then why footgun your OS for 3d?
It isn't.
Vulkan as an idea appeared a year after Metal was released.
And even today:
- Windows first-party support is DirectX
- Xbox is DirectX
- Playstation is whatever Playstation uses
- Switch has nominal Vulkan support, but you're better off using their non-Vulkan SDKs
- MacOS and iOS are Metal
- Android support Vulkan. Some versions of it, depends on phone, version, and manufacturer.
- WebGL is browser-only... and on its way to be replaced by WebGPU
Yeah. Great cross-platform story
MacOS is a joke for gaming. iOS though of course is all metal. If you wanna target that platform then that’s all you got. But translating or porting to other platforms DX12 on Windows Vulkan is the answer.
But macOS is not the go-to platform for this sort of thing, especially when it comes to games. This does seem like a strategic mistake. Maybe they just don't care, for whatever reason. I mean, it doesn't seem like Metal has been catastrophic for Apple, has it?
Then again, OpenGL is probably still good enough on macOS for most 3D apps, deprecated or not. And if Apple does decide to actually remove it, I believe there are projects that implement the OpenGL API on top of Metal (certainly with performance impact). And third-party developers certainly have the option to wait to write a Metal backend only after Apple announces OpenGL is being dropped completely.
Maybe that's the whole strategy? To provide an API which exposes what's easy to do in a well-performing way on their hardware, and let the community worry about getting the standards to work? It certainly seems to be working, and it probably means they need to spend less resources on driver development than if they tried to stay current on OpenGL and Vulkan.
All major AAA engines support Metal, even if the main target for them is iOS.
OpenGL is old, crufty and for modern standards sucks no matter how grate it once was. Most new 3D software doesn't use OpenGL, a lot of new software which does use OpenGL limits itself to OpenGL ES (which is roughly a subset of OpenGL).
Apple always had issues with a "Not Invented Here" syndrome and an obsession to control every little bit. Apple always pushed that software should be explicitly written for Apple, or if not at least with an Apple focus. New GUIs "should" be written with SwiftUI, etc.
For apple having a different API means they don't have spent time with standards outside of things they want to pus beyond their ecosystem, this means they can just further develop Metal however they want, ignoring inputs from everyone else. This can remove friction, but also will remove valuable feedback and profiting from other peoples innovation.
Lastly Vulcan, DirectX12 and Metal aren't too different hence why thinks like MoltenVK (Vulkan API/emulation on top of Metal) or VKD3D (DirectX12 API/emulation on top of Vulcan) exists. (Through no surprise all three have their own edge cases which does make such cross libraries non trivial, still they are quite viable and most important performant as they don't have to do much emulation and mostly can just map functionality.)