[fooey]

I don't know why Apple thinks they're going to have any sway over the people working on 3D graphics. Their hardware support for 3d graphics has been so awful for so long, I have a hard time imagining there's a very big user base they can leverage to get their way. So far as I can tell, what Apple wants here is almost completely irrelevant to the industry.

[errantspark]

I don't get it either. Apple graphics support has always been bad and it doesn't seem to have gotten better recently. Blizzard, a company that's always released their games for both Mac and PC, long before Apple even had a particularly relevant userbase was unable/unwilling to put in the effort to release their latest game (Overwatch) on Macs because they weren't able to garner satisfactory performance on Apple hardware.

Some relevant quotes:

“It was a result of not having all the technological support we needed to make the game viable on Mac systems.” says Kaplan, referring to Apple’s policies with OSX. “We have a real love and dedication for Mac players, they’ve been extremely loyal to us and we love giving them Blizzard games.

“But when dealing with the PC, the Xbox One and the PS4 - all of which are extremely welcoming to the technological needs to run a next-generation shooter - in a lot of ways we felt left behind, that we weren’t given the support we needed to make a great product on the Mac.”

[xenadu02]

Apple is proposing an open working group collaborate to agree on an open standard for low-level 3D graphics and compute workloads that all browsers can support.

What part of that is "leverage to get their way"?

The post explicitly states that they don't expect the WebKit syntax to be the accepted syntax; it is merely one implementation that can help inform the discussions.

If you want to vent your rage about 3D graphics on the mac go file a radar.

[tambourine_man]

Because iOS is incredibly relevant (many users willing to buy apps) and the A series chip actually has great graphics performance compared to the mobile competition.

[botverse]

IMHO you are underestimating the leverage that Apple has given that macs are the tool of choice for most web developers. Apple is probably aware of this and this move looks like an anticipation.

[unsoundInput]

IMHO you overestimate the use of macs as development machines, doubly so in parts of our industry that works on projects where high performance GPU APIs are actually needed (games, cad, simulations)

[vetinari]

I would be interested to know, where is such a place.

OSX support for OpenGL is several versions behind, with low performance and you definitely are not going to write AZDO OpenGL code there.

[sipos]

Macs used to be popular with developers but, this has basically changed IMHO. Perhaps they are popular with web designers still but, developers seem to be using Macs no more than the rest of the population to me now. It is Apple's complete lack of support for them that has brought this about IMHO and, I think it will be the end of Apple in the (very) long run (it will be the end of them as anything other than a phone manufacturer sooner and eventually completely I think).

[jolux]

>Macs used to be popular with developers but, this has basically changed IMHO.

Hedging almost-baseless assertions about verifiable facts by calling them opinions does little to hide the fact that you can't prove this and know you can't. IMHO, Macs are still very popular with developers, and the reason hasn't changed: a great GUI and a *nix command line. I personally would use Linux before Windows though because I hate both the Windows GUI and the Windows command line but I only hate the Linux GUI and could probably adjust to xmonad quickly and possibly even gain productivity. Granted I suppose I could use "Bash on Ubuntu on Windows" if I absolutely had to, however I think that name itself is an adequate synecdoche for my issues with the OS as a whole.

For what it's worth I feel pretty well supported as a Rust and Haskell developer in the Mac ecosystem, and Microsoft will have to do a lot better than give me bash to make me switch. It is a necessary but not sufficient condition for my computer usage ;)

[pjmlp]

I hate that being a developer requires me to be a FOSS UNIX guy from HN view on the world!

Not all developers care about it.

[abtinf]

The unstated point of leverage is iOS Safari. I would assume that at some point, they will deprecate webGL on iOS Safari.

[vbezhenar]

You are thinking about desktop AAA games. There're mobile games too and Apple produces very performant mobile devices.