this post was submitted on 10 Oct 2023
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Metal is incredibly successful... Just not on Mac. It's the graphics API that drives the iPhone and iPad.
It seems like they're worrying about Macs again, but when Metal was released the focus was iOS and it did bring significant performance improvements to that platform.
We can say whatever we want about mobile games, but in numbers, they're dominant and the App Store is one of Apple's biggest revenue sources.
Every 3D game on iOS is Metal.
Sure, metal offered significant improvements over opengl when it released, but now that vulkan exists apple doesn’t have any more excuses.
I don't disagree - I don't own Apple products, and I very much would prefer if all games also dropped DirectX.
But my point is that Metal didn't fail, and it's not "used in a minority of devices" and Apple isn't "crazy for thinking they would succeed with a new graphics API for games" because by all relevant metrics, dominance over mobile gaming is much more important.