Discontinuation of Mac Support for Autodesk Alias and VRED
After July 13, 2018, Autodesk will no longer provide Mac versions of Alias and VRED, beginning with version 19.1.
Prior versions of Alias (2019.0 and earlier) can continue to run on High Sierra or earlier operating system versions. Once Apple releases Mojave, no versions of VRED will run on that operating system due to the OpenGL deprecation.
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If you don’t want to use either the Windows version or Boot Camp (or similar software) it is possible to remain on Sierra or earlier OS X versions and continue with your existing version of Alias (Alias 2019.0 or prior). Alias is not supported on High Sierra due to a macOS incompatibility that Apple does not currently plan to fix. If you choose this option, Autodesk can only continue to support the Mac version as long as you never upgrade past the Sierra version of macOS.
“Discontinuation of Mac Support for Autodesk Alias and VRED”; deprecating OpenGL on macOS is an extreme act of self-harm for the platform — apps and games will just drop Mac support instead of rewriting in Metal. All you’ll have left is Marzipan 😜
OpenGL was dying before Apple dropped it. You could make a case that Vulkan was the next step, but Sony and Nintendo already went Vulkan and not OpenGL. Next generation games were never going to get OpenGL versions anyway.
Just got bit yesterday - SketchUP 2017 has no viewport antialiasing on Mac, because of obsolete OpenGL / new drawing engine combo. Have to go back to 2016 (old engine), or forward to 2018. This is gong to be a cluster**** for small pro apps.
Another hot take on Mac OpenGL deprecation: You know what doesn’t support full desktop OpenGL? A lot of GPU cores used with ARM processors.
Apple’s ARM GPU cores certainly don’t have full desktop OpenGL drivers, even if the hardware could support desktop OpenGL.
Update (2018-07-31): Colin Cornaby:
Take from a few years of working on pro software: Mac professional software vendors have been looking for the door even since 2010-ish when stuff like the Mac Pro went downhill. Would Autodesk be dumping Mac products if the Mac Pro was still a popular and powerful solution?
They could deal with OpenGL -> Metal if they wanted to in a variety of different ways. But if they’re just done with the Mac market in general, OpenGL provides a nice excuse that saves face.
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This is a logical result of Appway abandoning its pro users. No good hardware -> people who need performance hardware switch to Windows -> fewer pro software users use Macs -> doesn't make sense to invest into Mac versions of pro software. It's a vicious circle.
