This should be interesting.. Apple dropping OpenGL and pre 2012 macs :(

[Rick Thompson]

"Apple has informed developers that it will deprecate OpenGL and OpenCL in Mojave and iOS 12.

Software developers often prefer open standards like OpenGL because they make cross-platform development easier, but during its WWDC session dedicated to converting OpenGL developers to Metal, Apple rightly noted that OpenGL is woefully out of date for current needs."

"That means that other than older Mac Pros that have Metal-ready GPUs installed, no Macs released before 2012 will be supported. iOS 12 will continue to support all the same mobile devices as iOS 11, though."

The following machines will be supported by Mojave:

iMac Pro
MacBook (Early 2015 or later)
Mac Pro (2013 redesign)
Mac mini (Late 2012 or later)
iMac (Late 2012 or later)
MacBook Air (Mid 2012 or later)
MacBook Pro (Mid 2012 or later)
Mac Pro (2010 or later, provided it has a GPU that supports Metal)

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/the-end-of-opengl-support-other-updates-apple-didnt-share-at...

[Karl Ottenstein]

Had just read the same thing... Will create a challenge for Graphisoft to switch to "Metal" for future versions of ARCHICAD, I imagine.

Sounds like with Mojave, OpenGL is just 'deprecated' vs eliminated, so our old versions of AC will likely still run. (I was also glad to see that Mojave will still support 32 bit apps - although they say it will be the final version of MacOS to do so - since I have a lot of Adobe apps that are 32 bit still.)

[Erwin Edel]

I wonder if beyond mobile apps and a handful of games there are any programs fully supporting metal.

It certainly was a step up for World of Warcraft when they switched to metal for their mac client, in terms of performance, though not without its hickups along the way.

[stefan]

With the recent announcement at WWDC, Apple announced to deprecate OpenGL and OpenCL. I know that OpenGL plays a huge role in the ARCHICAD windows (3D and IIRC also in the 2D window). It's what we see every second we are using ARCHICAD.

For 10.14 it will be supported as "deprecated" technology, but this move will also force the Mac version of ARCHICAD to move to Metal.

Good or bad? Will definitely require a lot of reengineering from Graphisoft here.

[Ralph Wessel]

The deprecation of OpenGL is kind of inevitable on all platforms anyway. It's a very old standard that isn't well suited to modern computing. And the implementation on macOS was very old and barely maintained anyway – I don't think its deprecation is really a surprise to Apple developers. I expect that it will remain in the OS in its present form for about 4-5 years yet, but the need to move is now clear.

The main bone of contention is whether Apple should have supported Vulkan instead, the open source successor to OpenGL. I don't personally have an opinion on that, but I'm guessing Apple wants more control over its future hardware/software direction.

Migration doesn't necessarily have to be seriously painful. It's possible to use a cross-platform layer to simplify development. But for great performance, targeting the platform directly is the best option. A well-designed graphics pipeline will be a focussed component within an application, not spread all over the code base, and it isn't like any of these solutions are a world apart. It will take some effort to do it well, but change like this happens all the time.

[Karl Ottenstein]

Good to know. Thanks, Ralph!

[Anonymous]

I've been messing around with Mojave the last few days and Archicad isn't usable on it. Endless spinning wheels and long waits for a wall to draw or whatever.
I have no idea if it's openGL or not.

[mikas]

Well, it seems to be the same with High Sierra and 5K iMac too (High Sierra, iMac i7 4.2GHz, RX580 8GB, 64GB RAM). Constant beachball with even trivial 2D manipulations. My 2009 Mac Pro with RX570 4GB, 48GB with two WQHD monitors does not have these problems. Currently my old Mac Pro beats the new Retina iMac.

I really can't quess which one to blame for this. It could be the combinations. It could be High Sierra. It might be the OpenGL version of High Sierra. I don't know, but this is totally frustrating to watch beachball all the time. If there is something graphisoft could do to ease this behavior, please do it.

[Ralph Wessel]

Probably best to start a new post (or contact your distributor) about bugs in AC21 on supported platforms.

With respect to Mojave, I'm not remotely surprised if early testers run into problems.

[Anonymous]

I'm running High Sierra and there are fixes. I don't exactly remember now sorry! One of them was turning off save to recovery at every step.
And yes, I'm not surprised - it's the first beta. Others are experiencing the same behaviour with Adobe products so if it's a related issue there should be some will to fix it from Apple.
Certainly not worth starting a new post or contacting my Supplier for an early beta