Thursday, June 7, 2018

Removed in macOS 10.14 Mojave

Tim Hardwick:

When Apple released iOS 11, the company removed built-in integration with Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, and Vimeo, a feature that allowed iPhone and iPad users to store their third-party account information and access it within apps that needed to use those services.

The equivalent integration remains in macOS High Sierra, but Reddit user Marc1199 has noted that Apple appears to have removed support for third-party accounts completely in macOS 10.14 Mojave.

Paul Haddad:

Apple killed off subpixel antialiasing in 10.14 and called it a “refinement”. Not sure they know what that word means.

To be clear, having all NSViews backed by layers is a good thing. Framing loss of font smoothing as a refinement is 🙄

Mike Rundle:

It means Apple no longer cares about non-retina Macs like the MacBook Air and thinks owners of those machines won’t notice rough, jagged text when they “upgrade” to Mojave.

Mitchel Broussard (Hacker News):

Alongside the new features, Apple has confirmed that it is deprecating OpenGL (Open Graphics Library) and OpenCL (Open Computing Language) in favor of Metal.

This means that apps built using OpenGL and OpenCL will still run in Mojave, but they will no longer be updated after macOS 10.14 launches. Apple encourages games and “graphics-intensive apps” built with OpenGL to adopt Metal ahead of Mojave’s launch, and apps that use OpenCL for computational tasks “should now adopt Metal and Metal Performance Shaders.”

[…]

Although Apple’s decision to deprecate the older technology in favor of its own graphics API may not be surprising, some game developers have begun criticizing Apple for the move, particularly how it affects the future of gaming on Mac. Notably, OpenGL is an open-source, cross-platform solution that made it simple for developers to build games on both Mac and PC at the same time, providing some parity to a platform that many have agreed is lacking as a gaming hub.

Chris Messina:

⚰️ RIP Safari Extensions

“Safari Extensions installed from the Safari Extensions Gallery is deprecated with Safari 12 on macOS. Submissions to the Safari Extensions Gallery will no longer be accepted after December 2018”

Tim Hardwick:

As expected, Apple confirmed yesterday during its WWDC keynote that macOS 10.14 Mojave will be the last version of macOS to support legacy 32-bit apps.

Previously: John Carmack’s Steve Jobs Stories, macOS 10.13.4 to Warn About 32-bit Apps Starting April 12.

Update (2018-06-07): Rob Mathers:

You might want to add that developer-signed (not in the gallery) Safari Extensions are gone completely, not even deprecated.

Jeff Nadeau:

FYI the subpixel antialiasing change is unrelated to layer-backing on a technical level. We’ve had techniques for accomplishing smoothing in layer-backed text for years.

donarb:

One other unmentioned point. Xcode 10 loses support for Subversion.

Update (2018-06-08): Jeff Johnson:

On Mojave you can no longer “Use dark menu bar and Dock” in non-dark mode.

I am not amused.

Nick Lockwood:

So many bad takes about Apple deprecating OpenGL. The reality is that this does not matter.

Windows games use DirectX instead of OpenGL, this doesn’t make it any harder to port them.

Most indie games are made using high-level game engines like Unity that already support Metal.

Apple didn’t kill OpenGL, it’s been dead in the water as a cross platform standard for some time.

The future is clearly DX on Win, Metal on iOS/Mac and Vulkan everywhere else

Hopefully a good, open source SDL-like wrapper that abstracts these three APIs will emerge at some point

Update (2018-06-12): John Siracusa:

Now that the new version of Safari has killed all non-App-Store extensions, I would pay a surprising amount for a replacement for this.

Update (2018-09-07): Mark Alldritt:

Non-system scripting additions are no longer supported by Mojave, so Script Debugger will not display them in Dictionary view.

30 Comments RSS · Twitter

macOS's subpixel antialiasing algorithm has always been useless, anyway. It doesn't look significantly better than the grayscale antialiasing algorithm on any screen no matter what the resolution, and light text on dark backgrounds is made hideously too bold.

Now, the Safari extensions thing? While expected, it's an absolute travesty, and it will unfortunately keep me on Chrome for the foreseeable future.

@Lanny Yeah, personally I have always preferred the grayscale algorithm and have been annoyed at bugs where subpixel anti-aliasing was used despite the preference I’d set.

It's just a transition from Safari Extensions to Safari App Extensions. From Apple's site:

"Support for .safariextz-style Safari Extensions installed from the Safari Extensions Gallery is deprecated with Safari 12 on macOS. Submissions to the Safari Extensions Gallery will no longer be accepted after December 2018. Developers are encouraged to transition to Safari App Extensions."

Safari App Extensions can't even do as much as .safariextz extensions could. Less powerful AND less familiar. 1Password seems like a slam dunk use case for native-code browser extensions but they failed to get it to work acceptably when they tried.

(Both those links courtesy of @jeffhunterx)

[…] Things Removed in macOS 10.14 Mojave » […]

"It also sounds like Back To My Mack was removed:"

Well that's annoying. As Apple approaches $1 trillion market cap, they continue stripping useful features.

Why the hell did they ditch Subversion?

@Lanny Safari App Extension is a great illustration of the laziness of Apple when it comes to developers resources.

Last time I checked they didn't have a single sample code project that you could just download and build.

I was looking so forward to updating to Mojave for Dark Mode, but Safari Extensions being removed? Seriously? There's *no way* I'm going to browse today's tracking-ridden 'modern' Web without uBlock Origin and Ghostery.

I do know the Safari/WebKit devs are working on this with Intelligent Tracking Prevention 2.0, which is absolutely fantastic. I’m just not sure how it compares with uBlock Origin, etc. as a complete replacement to them instead of as a supplement to them.

Safari extensions aren't being removed, or blocked, or forcefully disabled. Apple is just moving their distribution to the App Store. We will still be able to install and enable whichever ones we want. At least for now.

Will Notbepublished

"The future is clearly DX on Win, Metal on iOS/Mac and Vulkan everywhere else"

The problem on the Mac is that the future (Metal) is not supported by as many models as the present (OpenGL).

^^^ actually, scratch that. To clarify: I just tested with two unsigned yet beloved safariextz's, and Mojave (as well as Safari Technology Preview in High Sierra) rejected my every installation attempt. I got an error message that says "Safari no longer supports this unsafe extension." And it directs me to the App Store instead.

Sadly I also know that these developers will not want to pay to become an Apple developer and/or put their extensions in the App Store. [Sigh]

I do, however, see a menu item called "Allow Unsigned Extensions" in the Develop menu (which is enabled under the "Advanced" preference pane.) It does not yet appear to work, or have any impact on my attempt to install these extensions. Hopefully that is merely a bug and will be fixed soon. Advanced users need a workaround for specifically trusted (yet unsigned for whatever reason) extensions,. Completely shutting them off from those would be madness.

I do, however, see a menu item called "Allow Unsigned Extensions" in the Develop menu (which is enabled under the "Advanced" preference pane.) It does not yet appear to work, or have any impact on my attempt to install these extensions. Hopefully that is merely a bug and will be fixed soon.

My money says that that menu item’s existence is the bug, and that it will disappear in a future beta.

Will Notbepublished

The problem with "Allow Unsigned Extensions" is that you need to re-enable it every time you open Safari.

Yes, the same behavior (and hopeful workaround) is in Safari Technology Preview, which runs in High Sierra.

Even still, if that WORKED, I'd consider an acceptable workaround (I rarely quit Safari anyway.) I'd just manually re-enable it as necessary. But if Mojave BREAKS my carefully curated cornucopia of old yet excellent Safari extensions, preventing me from using them at all? That's a dealbreaker :(

"Allow Unsigned Extensions" is a holdover that enabled loading *.safariextension folders for development. *.safariextz's that aren't in the gallery are developer-signed, and aren't affected by that option.

Both are dead in Mojave.

^ Totally wrong. "Allow Unsigned Extensions" refers to unsigned *App* extensions.

OpenGL isnt only used for games, where Nick's comment makes some sense. opengl is also used for scientific visualization and cad apps, and there cross platform game engines dont help. MoltenVK is maybe the best path.

as for safari... i'm giving firefox a try again after years, i encourage you all to try. having a good open source browser is vitally important to humanity, as dramatic as that sounds. ;)

Re: Safari .safariextz Extensions, Apple's announcement of Safari 12 makes abundantly clear they are permanently dead. RIP uBlock. RIP JSBlocker. Unless Intelligent Tracking Protection 2.0 includes canvas fingerprinting detection & defeat (and nothing in the announcement says as much), Safari 12 is going to be a huge step backwards for privacy for anyone who was already proactively defending themselves.

https://developer.apple.com/safari/whats-new/

"Support for developer-signed .safariextz Safari Extensions in Safari 12 on macOS has been removed. They no longer appear in Safari preferences and cannot be enabled. On first launch users will receive a warning notification and these extension will not load."

Apparently you can still install non-App-Store extensions, but it requires using the Safari Extensions Builder, and doing it manually yourself.

https://twitter.com/siracusa/status/1006602671191674880

[…] Removed in macOS 10.14 Mojave, Mavericks Font Smoothing, Layer-backed Text Rendering, Anti-Aliasing in Leopard’s Menu […]

[…] Previously: Removed in macOS 10.14 Mojave. […]

[…] hay que tener en cuenta que como cualquier nueva versión, deja atrás características desfasadas. Michael Tsai ha recopilado todas las características que macOS Mojave ya no soporta o ha […]

[…] Mojave’s New Security and Privacy Protections Face Usability Challenges, Removed in macOS 10.14 Mojave, macOS Mojave: Back to the […]

[…] Previously: Removed in macOS 10.14 Mojave. […]

[…] Previously: Removed in macOS 10.14 Mojave. […]

Leave a Comment