Versum opened this issue on Mar 07, 2025 ยท 37 posts
Carkey posted Fri, 14 March 2025 at 1:15 AM
Apple first **introduced Metal** at **WWDC 2014** as a high-performance graphics API for iOS 8. It was later expanded to **macOS** in **2017** with the release of **macOS High Sierra (10.13)**.
Apple then **deprecated OpenGL and OpenCL** at **WWDC 2018** with the release of **macOS Mojave (10.14)**, officially encouraging developers to transition to **Metal**. While OpenGL is still available on macOS, it no longer receives updates or optimizations.
Although I've just discovered that Poser is an extremely useful addition to my new 3DCoat/Unity workflow and a less expensive alternative with a shorter learning curve than MotionBuilder, Cascadeur, Daz Studio Premier or anything else with a unique focus for animation on macOS (excluding popular 3D modeling software's that offer an A-Z experience like Blender, Cheetah3D, Cinema4D or Houdini just to name a few of course) it kinda saddens me that Poser macOS Metal development was interrupted plausibly by new ownership transitions during over the years OpenGL was fazed out by Apple.
I assumed that much about Poser Mac because over that same transition timeframe Cheetah3D's solo developer just recently accomplished his ground-up translation build from OpenGL to Metal on Intel(AMD) & Apple Silicon Macs but he had to make the tough decision to drop Intel(Nvidia) Mac support as of version 8, so is "Apple moving away from supporting graphic applications?" I highly doubt it given the fact that they've spent years in development of Metal that's actively used across literally every device they're currently shipping in the market. It simply appears that some 3D app developers were able to catch the wave during Apple's transition from Intel to Apple Silicon while others could not dedicate development resources even though there's plenty of knowledge and translation layers available to port their software. We're also witnessing this affect in the Game Dev market currently whereas developers are committing their entire teams towards the larger than Mac, Windows gaming platform although there is a very visible and growing market for Macs due to its even larger iOS market share that relies upon Apple Metal. Only now are developers of iOS (a.k.a. iPhoneOS, iPadOS, VisionOS) games and 3D apps are catching on to the fact that there's a sleeping beast on the market of users on macOS that's easier to port to from their iOS development than Windows and the secret sauce to that is developers are starting to take notice that the software they've fully optimized to run on Apple Silicon Macs actually out perform their Direct3D Windows counterparts in most cases and they're just getting started. I don't blame Poser developers at all for not overcoming their challenges in transitioning from OpenGL to Apple Metal but it does give me pause that leadership clearly lost their vision and understanding of the future macOS market. I just feel their decision to dismiss further Poser macOS development is leaving money on the table IMHO. That said I started with Poser2 - Poser?? for Graphics Design (can't recall the previous version but it was a couple of years after my Beige G3 PowerMac was discontinued) then rediscovered it again recently to fill an animation niche between 3DCoat and Unity workflow pipeline. I don't regret my purchase of Poser 13 given the fact that Bondware leadership got me with their bait and switch future roadmap support marketing tactics.