I am not a developer/Github user but curious what these figures are trying to tell me. Could You elaborate?
@hector AMD cards will (for now at least) accelerate everything except cycles rendering. As Eevee matures we could get away with realtime rendering in some scenarios. If quality is needed that only cycles can deliver You can still use all CPU cores which isnāt the worst option 
That is what we in Silicon Valley as marketing hogwash to convince people Windows is a better solution to invest in, when every metric today shows nothing of the sort.
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Sorry guys, no metric here, just 5 years as an Apple customer and occasional developer, seeing the open source ecosystem shrink more and more on Apple while adapting more and more to standard users restrictionā¦
@cartoon.five
So, in short, itās just the way it is; developing for Windows is the standard, developing for Linux costs you 1/2, developing for Apple is 5x cost.
I think you can do the math yourself.
This works the same for Blender. So every Blender feature developed for Apple costs 5x what it costs to the standard (windows) system.
Do you think this is fair?
Iām in a similar situation to you. I use Macs (have done exclusively for 30+ years). I own a 2016 MacBook Pro and a now defunct/broken 2010 Mac Pro tower. I recently switched to Blender from C4D. I also use design software (Adobe suite and Affinity) and produce video work (FCPX). Iāve been looking for something to replace the MacPro and was considering a 5K iMac - or buying an eGPU to use with the MBP.
Iām now buying my first PC! Itās a custom build with an AMD Ryzen CPU and an RTX 2070 Super GPU. Iāve budgeted Ā£1500 (ex VAT). Iāll use it alongside the MacBook Pro. Best of both worlds. I can still do Blender work on the MPB but Iāll use the PC to do any āheavy liftingā that the MBP isnāt capable of.
I should say that I work from home and the MPB gives me the freedom to to get out of the house and still be productive - which is good for my head. Iāve taken some counsel from friends who work with both Operating Systems and, although Iām sure there will be some hiccups along the way, I donāt envisage and major problems. Iāll keep the PC pretty vanilla to start with and Iāve been advised to get the Windows 10 Pro edition.
Iāve never been interested in the Mac vs PC thing. Both platforms have their strengths. I love Macs. I also enjoy 3D. Wish me luck!
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I see. Whatās the reason for the 5x higher cost? Are mac devs just charging 5x more than their win colleagues or are there other reasons?
An opinionated view on developing for Apple ecosystem
- how much does it cost?
roughly it works like this: product cost = total development cost / user base - hardware
costs about 2x normal hardware - restricted user base
less user means less income, or a higher cost per user - lack of tools
except for Apple specific tools, all the rest is uncared / unsupported. XCode is not an option for python, used for Blender addons. Just passable for C++. Those things are first class on Linux (free), and you find a pletora of them on windows (free and paid). - lack of developers
theyāre less, and they prefer to do Iphone apps so they can break rich and have a meal. Good luck finding one for working on (what is that?) open source - developer consumption
The remaining others are increasingly tired of Apple way of doing. Apple doesnāt show any consideration. Curiously, Microsoft right now is doing the inverse (At least, apparently).
That bear for more labor cost. - developer specialization
Rebuilding an app like Blender is going to cost an eye. It takes a specialist graphical programmer, not an everyday one who does Iphone apps; it takes one who can wrestle with open gl / metal shading conversion. Gotta take someone who worked, for istance, for Unity doing their shader conversion to Metal. I guess theyāre about 100K per year. - platform locking
Continuously restricting access and locking the platform, desupporting open standardsā¦ Open GL deprecation is a fatal blow. This is going to take open source products decades back on Apple platform. Without Open GL, itās not possible to schedule a development path; shall we invest on doing a product for Mac Os right now, with the risk of having to trash it because of deprecation? Risk means higher costs - hardware locking
Metal has been created for a specific need: turning Apple devices toward lower energy consumption, system on a chip, mobile inclined graphical system. Apple path on this strategy is clear, going forward more and more to hardware streamlining. This way, their market strategy can fully unleash; Apple buys hardware components in big batches, then takes them over to different devices, one by one. This way, they achieved the best savings while maximizing hardware leverage. Thatās the reason why you see AXn chip on a Iphone generation and the the same AXn chip on the Ipad and so on. Supply chain.
And now itās time for Mac Os to converge to Ipad and viceversa. The edge is blurring more and more. Apple goals seems to be to finally ditch Intel processor, and substitute for its own solution. https://www.tomsguide.com/us/apple-hire-arm-engineer-computer-processor,news-30465.html
Metal is instrumental in this plan, giving the low power consumption device with average graphical features they need. Throw in it Appleās optimization ability, and there you are. Metal is not made for running heavy-weight, power-hungry graphical apps. All those needing a powerful graphic card. Especially with the new Blender 2.80, which is much more resources angry than past releases.
Probably, only that high end new Mac Pro will be left for the Last Apple Pro Customers, those in Hollywood high end studiosā¦ those guys can easily fetch 50K for that Marvelous Apple Machine. Those guys have no problem paying software 5xā¦
Together with Final Cut, thatās Appleās alternative to AVID et al. Very few related to 3D.
And so we are left with Ipad-like Macs and Ultra Macs. Again, diminishing user base, and more product cost. - consumer expectations
Apple customers have high expectation. Nothing bad in this; but that calls for higher quality standards, and that means higher costs
Just my 2p, of course 
But does it accelerate the viewport preview on Cycles?
Currently I am waiting for my mac to arrive, so I will just guess: no, not at the moment.
But from what I hear Eevee output got better and closer to Cycles with recent updates. And who knows, maybe the BF will soon find some dedicated Mac/Blender maintainers who can bring Blender further in this reagard
Cut and paste from my reply to another related thread a few mins agoā¦
Sorry Iām very new to Blender so I donāt know if this will work. I also use Linux rather than MacOS. So hopefully someone more experienced can validate my suggestion. Itās been said that GPU rendering isnāt supported on MacOS because Apple dropped support for OpenCL and that many users prefer using MacOS. But Iāve not seen any mention of network rendering across multiple nodes. Could those of you who prefer MacOS use it as the front end, but then have a cheap Windows (or Linux - doesnāt need an OS license) machine on the same network to perform most of the rendering?
e.g. iMac/Macbook to build your models and scenes, with a cheap generic Linux/Windows machine packed with RAM and a GPU of your choice (which presumably those with an eGPU already have). The rendering would then be handed off to the Linux/Windows machine which supports rendering via any AMD or nVidia card.
This is a good example of the reason I prefer open technologies and standards where possible, such as FOSS software (Linux, Blender, etc) along with AMDās open source drivers, OpenCL, freesync, etc. It means a proprietary company canāt just unilaterally decide to remove a feature you previously enjoyed.
I had a similar setup in mind, even if only for bigger projects. In itās simplest form, I could just log in from the Mac to the Windows box via remote desktop and manage render jobs.
All of this is pretty disappointing. Blender is a great solution for the company Iām working for right now. Being open source we can grow a 3D team from photo retouchers. The quality of cycles renders is really great, and the node system is letting me create any kind of fabric yielding photo quality samples for clients to see.
Itās great. And mass rendering is okayā¦ our image quantity is large enough the a render farm makes more sense.
Butā¦ like a lot of other companies, our creative departments have nothing but Apples. Bad enough they slowed us all down by getting rid of Nvidia support. But being tied to legacy hardware that continually makes itself less reliable is really frustrating. Blender makes it possible for companies to grow a 3D department from its labor pool. It offers opportunities for digital workers to expand their skill portfolio, and stay working. But Apple is standing right in the way.
I donāt mind Windows, itās os is a little clunky. But if you need a better interface Adobe Bridges is a great solution.
This year I had to buy a new computer andā¦ itās an Apple. Why? Most of my clients prefer it. At least the screen rocks.
I have a question, but I appreciate the place to complain. Thank you.
Iāve partitioned my drive and have Windows on my Mac (i have dive into 3Ds Max for work on occasion). I also have an eGPU. Can I just use the windows side of my Mac, and get it to work with the eGPU that way? Or is that a lot of hardware disagreeing with software ?