Apps built using OpenGL and OpenCL will continue to run in macOS 10.14, but these legacy technologies are deprecated in macOS 10.14. Games and graphics-intensive apps that use OpenGL should now adopt Metal. Similarly, apps that use OpenCL for computational tasks should now adopt Metal and Metal Performance Shaders.
This move should not be surprising at all (I mentioned back in 2015 they were already telegraphing their move with Metal). The version of OpenGL in OS X hasn’t been kept to date with the latest standards anyway where it’s only 100% compliant up to version 4.1 which was released in 2010.
While some game developers raised concerns about the effect this will have on gaming on the Mac, it’s also not like having OpenGL on the Mac (even though outdated) contributed greatly to the development of a lot of AAA cross platform titles. Only a few major studios like Blizzard Entertainment put a great deal of effort in simultaneous releases of Mac and Windows versions with Overwatch breaking that (since they ran into that development conundrum with Apple’s outdated OpenGL implementation and Metal not being fully fleshed out around the time they were in full development). It was known that Blizzard had to code workarounds for their Mac versions of their other games because of that.
The reality is that there are just a lot of titles that are Windows only which is why I just ended up purchasing a SFF gaming system despite my lack of desire at the time to go back to a dual platform setup. That decision turned out to be the best one I’ve made in awhile since it also really opened my eyes to just how limited the selection is for the Mac when it comes to the bigger budget MMO titles which tend to rely on DirectX anyway to get the most performance as opposed to OpenGL.
Most of the cross platform games that taken advantage of OpenGL tend to be smaller niche titles as well as ones developed for mobile. Apple seems to be ok with this since someone just seems to be more fixated on the number of games (largely comprised of these smaller budget ones) but they haven’t made the Mac platform appealing as a whole for the development studios that have a larger budget when they left OpenGL to languish as long as they did before even coming up with Metal.
