[jd20]

I don't think Apple is intentionally trying to create lock-in, but I do think there is a valid fragmentation concern in the field of deep learning right now. For example, you look at CUDA vs OpenCL, and CUDA has clearly become the winner there. Anyone building a system for deep learning would be crazy not to buy nVidia hardware. And while some projects support both CUDA and OpenCL (e.g. OpenCV), you can usually count on the CUDA implementation being more tested and performant. Metal is going to just throw one more wrench into the mix :)

[pjmlp]

A common theme that both Metal and CUDA share, which OpenCL ignored, is tooling.

Both embrace modern languages instead of plain old C, have very nice visual debuggers.

Also on Android side, Google is all about Renderscript not OpenCL.

OpenCL had to become an almost irrelevant, for Khronos to step up with SPIR and SYS-C++.

Yet they did it again with Vulkan, being plain old C.