No worries, like always the context of text may be misunderstood but I don’t have any negative feeling towards you. 
We are all passionate about our industry.
And unfortunately my choice is being made for me at the moment and I’m having to do the majority of my Blender work on the Window’s version too.
Tim
So many hearts I want to give on this! Thanks AMD.
That’s pretty bad news for everyone who is looking for direct Metal support, as it shows the kind of financial commitment it takes to ensure prime support.
AMD supporting Vulkan migration in Blender is AWESOME news! 
Isn’t it a double edged thing? I mean Blender never really seemed that interested either. When Metal came out the BF outright said they were not interested. So Apple is not interested. The BF was a different foundation not even a year ago. Now with more companies jumping in and the proposed revamp of the whole development process maybe Apple would be more interested, though I doubt they will help financially. That has never been Apple’s MO. They either contribute code or technology, I haven’t seen them give out many grants. Maybe that’s why they took their machines back.
It was a logical decision because of the required ongoing and huge investment. It is similar with DirectX on Windows. If I remember correctly, there were times when DirectX would have been faster too. Even though the Windows user base is a lot larger, it was still never a serious topic to have a DirectX backend.
For me, it is still not a double edged thing as Apple decided to do their own thing, without giving developers the option to use other APIs like Vulkan. They closed the door for many developers with that decision and they forced many developers to either to full in on Apple platforms or leave them behind.
To me, it looks like a strategic plan from Apple to create a development ecosystem exclusively for their platforms. For them, it would be a minor investment to provide Vulkan support, but for the many small developers, it is a huge investment to support multiple platforms. If I am correct with my hypothesis, it would also explain Apple’s lack of interest for Blender.
Apple is clearly moving to ARM and their own GPUs next year starting with Laptops and maybe even low end iMacs. They want apps to work cross platform MacOS/iOS so they don’t want nor see a need in OpenGL/CL and certainly not Vulkan.
It’s very obvious that MacOS and iOS are converging, iPadOS is another step in that direction. Apple is dictating Metal because it’s best for Apple as it heads toward OS and hardware convergence.
There may be only 2 computers in Apple’s line up that use Intel CPUs in a couple of years, the iMac Pro and Mac Pro. Everything else will be running an Apple SoC.
@anon63258026 I think it was a mistake when Microsoft started doing that as well. The fact is that touch and mouse are too distinct to use the same UX, so you always have to compile another version with a different interface and experience. When developers, companies, or platforms choose to launch a mobile-targeted application onto a desktop environment, or visa versa, and don’t re-engineer it from a design standpoint, the results are almost always appaling. I hope that large platforms such as explorer.exe/GNOME/Quartz stop the trend of trying to unify very different devices. They are different by design.
I bring this up because if it were as simple as recompiling the code for ARM then all the desktop applications would have phone ports. It doesn’t save much time to unify them, because you have to remake it anyway, and thus compile a separate version with a different design (even gfx/interface) based on touch. It only reduces the end-user experience into the ground.
I really want Blender to work on all potential platforms, however in this case I will say that the ball is firmly in Apple’s court.
If Apple want the Blender developers to take on the maintenance/support burden for a single vendor technology when Blender’s current (OpenGL) and future (Vulcan) solutions are supported everywhere else (representing the VAST majority of Blender users), I think they have to fund that effort to a large capacity.
Metal is proprietary, it will never be supported outside of Apple’s ecosystem, which means for a cross platform solution like Blender, to support it means you now have doubled your support burden in terms of 3d graphics representation, which of course in a program like Blender, is core technology and touches everything.
This is a larger burden than the transitioning from OpenGL to Vulcan, since Vulcan will be unsupported while transitioning, and after Vulcan is fully working and thus fully supported, OpenGL support will in turn be deprecated.
I get what you are saying but Apple does not have a history of doing that in general. They are certainly not going to do it for Blender. Especially when Blender’s own number keep pointing to how insignificant the Mac user base thing. That’s why I said it’s bit of a chicken and egg thing.
Apple is not going to invest in something that doesn’t have the user base. They donate hardware but Blender isn’t interested because according to them Mac users don’t make up a significant portion of their user base (though what does that actually mean. Downloads does not equal usage but whatever) and use that to point to why they are not supporting Metal.
So basically we’ve run into a conundrum where people here say Apple should fund development (though they haven’t done that in the past with any project that I’m aware of unless they were actively contributing or leading the project). The BF won’t support Metal because they feel like Mac download numbers does not justify it.
Apple probably doesn’t feel like they have to donate or contribute anything, it’s not like they are hurting in the DCC space right now so to them the onus is on the BF if they want to support the Mac or not. Donating hardware was good enough for them, they didn’t see the results they wanted and took their stuff back.
What kind of results did they expect from your point of view?
Exactly. If you give someone hardware to ensure that their product continues to work on your platform and don’t specifically say “this is so you’ll implement our proprietary standard”, can you really get upset that they didn’t implement your proprietary standard?
Apple doesn’t want to support cross-platform anything, plain and simple. They want their garden, and that’s their prerogative, but users shouldn’t stand for it. If people are too blinded by shiny aluminum and high pixel densities to see that they’re being taken for a ride, that’s their problem.
Not true at all.
If you buy an Apple computer you can run any OS that you please, and not by doing some special pre-boot magic trick that Apple doesn’t allow. Apple literally has an Apple develop OS loader for other operating systems built into MacOs, called Bootcamp. They want you to be able to load what you want. Lol
Now if you want to develop for their OS you can’t be lazy and use bloated and dated standards to create your software.
Full version of MacOS = Free. Forever and doesn’t charge for upgrades.
Windows full version = $149! And don’t you have to pay for version upgrades?
If people keep repeating the same stuff they hear the media chirp then eventually it becomes true, whether it is true or not, unfortunately
Does that mean they are going to support Vulkan? It is pretty new, cross-platform and fast.
Pretty sure it’s included in price of those shiny apple logos
Not for WIn10, it’s upgrades free and users can upgrade to it for free from Win7+
Same goes for PC except there is problems installing MacOS on them and not because Windows or Linux doesn’t allow it…
I may share the same name as their CEO but I have zero knowledge of what they may or may not do. 
Man I wish they would, cause that would mean we would get to use Nvidia cards!!! But their lack of Nvidia support doesn’t necessarily mean they’re not interested in GPU technology.
Look, don’t get me wrong. I get frustrated with some of Apple’s decisions too.
But I keep finding over and over again, that when the companies that produce the software I use decided to follow Apple’s guidelines for their OS they end up producing a better product vs their Window‘s counterpart.
Even when a software company like Blender, who doesn’t necessarily take advantage of an optimized OS, is ran an Mac, it runs faster.
Except for rendering in Cycles 
Trying to render on a Mac when using Blender straight sucks!
Not for a Hackintosh build. Anyone can download the OS as long as you have an iTunes account.
True, but that wasn’t his gripe about Apple hardware.
Which is same as installing pirated windows, except windows will work for sure.
I definitely feel what you’re getting at and, yes, no, I don’t know, maybe, pirated commonly means not paying for it. I’ve never done the Hackintosh thing so I wont allude to knowing the legalities of getting one up and running. But I still feel what you mean.
Still, my reply of being able to run any OS you want on a Mac, legally, stands.
Apple is simply better, we got it!