Nobody said it wasn’t on the table, I suppose if someone were to work on porting to vulkan it may very well be, but nobody is currently working on that either.
Hmm. Okay. I thought that was the plan after 2.8 (the series).
Yes and Vulkan itself has changed quite a bit since release and is still changing. Vulkan as far as I can tell won’t be like OpenGL where being able to run legacy code will be a priority they seem to be firmly looking forward and following DX. So I wouldn’t be surprised if they break compatibility at some point as they pursue they transition newer hardware. It’s one of the reasons why the OpenGL Next initiative was created in the first place. They wanted to stop vendors from adding extensions to OpenGL just to get it on par with DX. DX/MS pretty much dictates what direction the graphics industry is going to go for the most part (with input from vendors of course).
When i say ‘nobody is working on it’ i mean “at this moment in time there is no developer actively working on it” this does not exclude anyone working on it in the future.
Some posts sound as if they’d like to stick it to big bad Apple. But dropping full support for macOS will hurt ONLY artists, real people who love blender and yet prefer macOS, which is an excellent platform for many use cases.
They might be a minority compared to linux and windows together, but mac users are still part of the blender community and BF should be committed to all of them. I guess a lot of work has been put onto various other areas of blender. I appreciate all the efforts being put into features like dynamics, hair, particles, fluids, tracking and so on. I hardly use all of them (who does, really?), but that’s OK. However, support for all current platforms is just as important. Maybe even more. Because it gives artistic choice to more people. And that is the true value of Blender. Cutting off a group might be easier, but it’s the wrong choice.
My point is: Apple’s policies might not be always in the best interest of everyone, but BF’s policies should always be in the interest of it’s users.
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Its not that simple. Keep the fact that Ton’s main computer was a mac until recently. Not supporting metal affected the founder of blender directly, so not porting to metal wasn’t an arbitrary choice.
The blender foundation is a nonprofit group that has very limited resources. It can’t jump into every area of development because it feels like it. The only reason blender has as many features as it does is because of the developers who volunteer their time to implement those features for free. A group of devs from outside the foundation could appear and commit themselves to porting everything to metal tomorrow for all we know.
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I’ve been a very long time blender user. This discussion made me realize it’s time to give back more than just “love”. So I signed up for the development fund. It would be great if even more people who can afford it and (professionally) use Blender followed.
It would also be great for everyone if the BF continued it’s support for all current platforms.
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@cartoon.five, you might be interested to read this recent message about Apple, Blender and Metal, by Ton Roosendaal.
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Thanks 
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I am a HardCore-MacUser since 1994. But now i am a HardCore-BlenderUser. I don’t wait for Apple anymore. I have now 2 “normal-PCs” with Nvidia, Linux (Win) and an iMac with Mojave. But Blender don’t work on Mojave very good. Only with the Radeon PRORenderer you can work with Blender.
Apple! The Rest of Us will switching!
TC
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I think they are entering the defensive phase of the kingdom by sabotaging the standards … just like Microsoft did before understanding that he was giving himself hoes on his feet …
since there is no more Steve Jobs, they no longer innovate, keep going with the funboys until he holds … damn, I’ve seen iMac Pro for 18 thousand dollars and what have they got for innovation?
lots of ram
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I just read on CGsociety a report showing that Blender isn’t the only app. degrading on MacOS. Maya is too.
https://forums.cgsociety.org/t/is-autodesk-giving-up-on-mac/2050839
It’s also mentioned that Autodesk in recent years outright pulled MacOS support from 3DS Max. It looks like users of the platform will have to get used to seeing iOS apps. like SpaceDraw as the pinnacle of creative tech (once the planned compatibility is added).
It will likely get even worse once the Mac. has both its CPU and GPU made by Apple, it will make Linux support seem like child’s play.
What did Apple expect? Everyone to just fall in line with everything they want to do? Apple wants to exist in its own universe and they want us to live in it. Fat chance. I’ve used PCs for my entire professional graphics design career (25+ years) and have never had any issues. The availability of PC-only things that I use a lot makes Macs a boat anchor to me.
I don’t think that it will be too difficult to provide an “OpenGL ‘thunking layer’” to allow applications to continue to operate in any new environment. I fully expect that this is what both Apple and Microsoft will do. “OpenGL will continue to work as before,” even though it doesn’t actually work “as before.”
Maya and 3DS were never popular on MacOS to begin with.
Popularity plays a huge role on Windows , mac users are less likely to jump on the bandwagon of “hey this is what the industry is using you should too”.
From what I am seeing it appears at least to me that MacOS platform is dominated by Cinema 4D. It’s no coincidence. For macs users GUI always played a huge rule and has been always an issue for May, 3DS and Blender. For Cinema 4D its one of its strongest points.
There are many other Windows apps that try to dominate on MacOS for more popular than Maya and 3DS MAX and that was of course Microsoft Office which also had the backing of Apple back in the day. Pages by Apple dominated.
Audio wise also Logic , a mac only DAW so popular that was eventually purchased by Apple , dominates the mac market for decades.
The bottom line is that the mac market is far more choosy when it comes to software and there is a clear preference towards Mac only software. Makes sense because usually such software is designed to take full advantage of MacOS.
As a matter of fact this is the best time MacOS ever had, not only with its 15% market share but also abundance of software and games that used to be a big thorn a decade ago.
I think its silly to claim that Mac users will have to rely on iOS apps to do professional work. Autodesk may be waving goodbye but that does not change the fact that amount of software developed the past decade and for the foreseeable future goes up in terms of quantity and quality. We have ton of 3d apps on MacOS.
What happened with Blender on MacOS is neither the fault of Blender or Apple, OpenGL days were numbered anyway. Problem for Blender is that it lacks the manpower to move away from OGL any time soon. There are solutions though like running OGL on top of Metal. But are still experimental. Vulkan future on MacOS is secured because its actively supported by Valve for their No1 game DOTA. Deprecation is a painful process , as addon dev myself I had to face Blender’s own deprecations that rendered entire addons unworkable. But progress requires sacrifices. You cannot have the one without the other.
This discussion is pointless anyway, OpenGL has not got an update to its spec the past 2 years. Vulkan has stolen the entire focus of the graphics industry when it comes to open graphics libraries. Whether we like it or not OpenGL is nowhere near as relevant as it used to be before it was replaced by Vulkan. Blender has always being lagging behind OpenGL wise because again this is a very hard problem that needs a lot of devs. Even if Blender stopped supporting MacOS altogether tommorow it would make no difference because it will still have to move away from OpenGL to keep up with modern graphics support.
OpenCL on the other hand is a different beast because AFAIK Vulkan offers no alternative in that area. But its no secret it always had its own set of issues. OpenCL deprecation is debatable whether it was the right move from Apple judging from the fact how much they depend on AMD GPUs.
On the matter of custom hardware there is misunderstanding, no company makes chips from scratch. They still buy chips from Intel and AMD which then they may or may not customize on hardware or software level. This is not unique to Apple , its that Apple has the resources to go one step further. No Apple wont be making CPUs and GPUs any time soon and they have no reason to. Even PowerPC was not an invention of just apple but a product of alliance with Motorola and IBM.
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Indeed.
Clinging on to diesel power and gas-guzzlers (stressful, highly polluting & consuming environment) is obviously not healthy.
Did I miss something? I’ve never heard of 3ds Max being available for macOS. It has always been a hardcore Windows application. I waited years for 3ds Max to become available on macOS, then discovered Blender 2.5 and ZBrush, and left 3ds Max and Windows to cross over to macOS.
And recently I switched back to Windows, but not for 3ds Max. For our common friend Blender. 
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Interesting conversation…
Not long ago Apple announced that they’re going to stop reporting the actual number of devices sold and only report on revenue instead. This wasn’t unanticipated as I understand it because hardware sales have stagnated over the last few years. Nonetheless they have been able to increase profits primarily by increasing the price of their devices, in the case of the iPhone, or by making accessory purchases necessary, in the case of the MacBook.
Apple has reached market saturation so the only way they can continue to increase revenue is by bleeding more out of their current userbase. Unable to make significant inroads into other markets Apple’s only recourse is to laser focus on their base which seems to be primarily composed of people who aren’t particularly tech saavy, don’t really need to be, and tend to be concerned about trendiness.
Apple’s focusing on what appeals to their audience. They’re not power users, but they do want to stand out in a crowd. So rather than give them access to the most powerful software out there Apple’s moving in a direction to make their devices more distinct. Unique software with unique user experiences that you wont find anywhere else. It might not be the most powerful software, but it’ll be good enough for the needs of their audience and it’ll be different.
They don’t want Blender running on MacBooks anymore and they don’t think their target audience wants it either.
probably, since they have noticed that on the mac there is no real market for 3d … they have cut off the head of the bull trying to reinforce the wheel in their own way …
but in doing so they piss off those few who are interested in 3d and mac …
in some way, it seems to me that they are continually doing the facelift, but the truth is that it is also a company of old people … it too is a company that has its roots too strung in the 80s and 90s
I understand the economic and marketing strategies and bla bla bla
but the truth is that he is now an elephant, a cathedral … and he is heavy and fat and also a little tired
in fact they no longer risk anything really …
they throw themselves into the markets where they believe there is profit …
look at the fact that now they want to try to jump into the mass and compete with netflix
they no longer do anything for fun, they can no longer afford it …
they have too many children and families to feed.
Yes! 
Even the well-known Mac-loving 3D studio Greyscale Gorilla has abandoned the macOS ship for Windows… 
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