Mac M1 does the job
https://www.idc.com/getdoc.jsp?containerId=prUS47601721
Will the Blender Institute also do the job?
1 Like
Thankfully the Blender Institute doesnât jump on hype trains early on (unless the development is specifically funded). If they did, they would waste a hell lot of resources.
So, yes, they are doing their job.
Now, it would also help to know what their job is from your point of view, because with the new Macs, there are different ways to improve the support within Blender. Having a discussion with that sort of statement is literally impossible, unless it is only about making noise.
1 Like
Blender runs fine on all Macs so far, thatâs what I call doing your job. But it would be a very welcome bonus if the Metal library / M1(X) chips would get supported, specifically GPU rendering with Cycles.
1 Like
Ok, I think I need to be more specific: will there be some hero who will persuade Apple to do the job for the Blender Institute (as Nvidia did)?
1 Like
Support from Apple itself would definitely help a lot. I was pleasantly suprised to see Blender mentioned during the Apple Silicon introduction, so that has given me some hope.
The code they already provided would be sufficient to justify to mention Blender.
But, I wouldnât be too surprised if behind closed doors something is being done and at one point a Metal backend for Cycles pops up.
1 Like
Stop it, or Iâll cry with happiness in a moment.
1 Like
Only the users can force Apple, cos more people will buy there machines.
Not true. Apple has helped Otoy and Redshift a lot. They just knew how to communicate with Apple.
1 Like
Is the Blender Foundation doing something wrong from your point of view?
Hmm, I donât think this is fair to say. Octane and Redshift are commercial renderers, so OTOY will pay the App Store fee and the contribution needed to call yourself an official Apple developer. Blender has an open source approach, and by principle doesnât pay commercial fees. I guess Appleâs commercial and closed nature makes that they arenât particularly interested in supporting the Blender Foundation. If you look at the big corporation donors to Blender, thereâs Microsoft, Facebook, NVIDIA, AMD and more, but they all have something to gain from Blender. Facebook develops Oculus, Microsoft wants to support Windows game development, and NVIDIA and AMD GPUs are bought by many Blender Windows and Linux users. I think Apple hasnât donated yet, because Blender for macOS being only a very small world, is not very interesting to their big commercial goals. Reversely, itâs not very interesting for Blender Foundation to hire full-time developers only to fully support a very minor part of the Blender user base. It already works fine, but the additional effort needed to develop specifically for macOS Metal would be disproportional.
1 Like
OTOY will not pay any contribution to Apple because Octane X in App Store is free. Redshift probably wonât be available in the App Store at all. So it seems Apple supports these companies because wants to be present on the PRO market after all revolutions in macOS. It is great that they provided patches for Blender and M1 but it cannot compare to OTOY and Maxon support.
OTOY and Maxon were talking with Apple when the future of Macs was very hazy, and soon they enjoyed a new Macs Pro in their studios and enormous Apple development help. At this time Ton said that Macs are not suitable for 3D work and cried about old Mac which Apple took. Thatâs a difference.
OK, then at least OTOY is paying to be an official Apple-approved developer.
OK. Are you sure Apple provided those Mac Pros to OTOY and Maxon?
Well, I think itâs at least slightly sad that a multi-billion dollar company takes back an old Mac they had provided to a donation-dependent open source foundation. But Iâm sure that little incident is not the reason for the Blender Foundationâs macOS policy. There are many things being considered, and we donât know yet what the near future will bring. Letâs all hope for the best. 
1 Like
Come on. $100 per year.
And who supplied them with these Macs? After all, they werenât available for sale at the timeâŚ
OK, but itâs not the amount itâs about, itâs the principle that an open source foundation can not be expected to pay a commercial fee.
Apple did provide test hardware in advance for OTOY, as well as help them with developing metal code. Although we shouldnât look at OTOY the way we look at the Blender foundation since
- Otoy is a commercial company vs blender being an open source foundation
- OTOYâs work is focused on macOS, while blenderâs work is meant to be cross platform
1 Like
What are you talking about? They pay for office, water, energy etc. They have the income, pay the taxes, pay the developers and cleaners, etc. etc. It is a business, but one that operates on different principles. Of course they could pay that $100 for support from Apple. This is simply ridiculous.
1 Like
To be fair, the blender foundation can publish the app without a developer account, they just canât publish it to the App Store. Considering the App Store is a service provided by apple, 100$/year seems like a fair price
OTOY is absolutely not focused on macOS. What matters to them is mainly Windows/Linux because thatâs where the Nvidia cards are. If it wasnât for the support they received from Apple, they would have forgotten about macOS altogether.
Please try to tone down a little. Iâm just trying to have a friendly discussion. We all want the same: a better Blender for macOS.
1 Like