
Apple Turns Its Back on Customers and Nvidia with MacOS Mojave - redial
https://www.forbes.com/sites/marcochiappetta/2018/12/11/apple-turns-its-back-on-customers-and-nvidia-with-macos-mojave/
======
zimpenfish
Headline blaming Apple and then, in the 8th paragraph,

> At this point, it’s somewhat unclear exactly as to why NVIDIA GPU support
> isn’t present in Mojave

~~~
bjpbakker
Since there's nobody else responsible for releasing Apple's closed source OS,
what makes you think Apple is not to blame on this?

~~~
zimpenfish
Perhaps Nvidia are writing drivers that don't conform to the guidelines Apple
provide for approval? Maybe they're trying to pull a Logitech and include lots
of data gathering that Apple object to. Or they're ignoring things like events
from power management. Or their drivers are just shitty Mojave citizens. Or
they're trying to force a Mojave equivalent of GeForce Experience to be
installed with their drivers.

If Nvidia are being dicks in the face of reasonable requests, why would that
be Apple's fault?

~~~
bjpbakker
> If Nvidia are being dicks in the face of reasonable requests, why would that
> be Apple's fault?

Because Apple sold the hardware /with/ the software, and now they completely
broke that (<5 year old) hardware?

~~~
joshstrange
Point of clarification, the article does not mention and I have no reason to
suspect that Apple broke hardware they themselves sold. In fact the article
does seem to point out there is support for specific Nvidia cards that Apple
sold or approved. Also I find it rather impossible to believe that Nvidia
couldn't release something that would restore this ability. Would a user need
to disable some security feature temporarily to be able to install it? Maybe,
but that's the price you pay for unsupported hardware.

Apple got burned hard [0] by Nvidia and swore off them back around 2009. And
Linux Torvald also called them out back in 2013ish IIRC. Nvidia is not a
"good" company. Now people have be running things unsupported and now Apple
closes that hole and they are all up in arms?

[0] [https://gizmodo.com/5061605/apple-confirms-failing-nvidia-
gr...](https://gizmodo.com/5061605/apple-confirms-failing-nvidia-graphics-
cards-in-macbook-pros-offers-free-repairs-and-refunds)

~~~
bjpbakker
> I have no reason to suspect that Apple broke hardware they themselves sold

In fact my own 15" MBP late 2013 has a GFX750, which is no longer supported
according to Apple Support [1].

The worst for me is that this didn't withold Apple from pushing the update, so
running Mojave with an external monitor is hardly possible now.

> Nvidia is not a "good" company.

Agreed. Neither is Apple.

[1] - [https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT208898](https://support.apple.com/en-
us/HT208898)

~~~
joshstrange
> In fact my own 15" MBP late 2013 has a GFX750, which is no longer supported
> according to Apple Support [1]

That support article doesn't mention the GFX 750 and I can't find any record
of Apple selling a MBP with a GFX 750...

Edit:

I believe what you meant to say is you have a "NVIDIA GeForce GT 750M with 2GB
of GDDR5 memory and automatic graphics switching" [0] which it appears does
not support metal.

[0]
[https://support.apple.com/kb/sp690?locale=en_US](https://support.apple.com/kb/sp690?locale=en_US)

~~~
bjpbakker
You're correct about the card, sorry about that. Got confused I suppose.
Indeed I meant to say I have the GT 750.

~~~
joshstrange
I should have added this in my edit but I'll put it here:

I stand corrected. I DO think it's wrong for Apple to drop support for
something they shipped, especially since it's just over 4 years old. I thought
this issue was limited to people who had Mac Pro's or Hackintosh's and put an
unsupported card in it. I'll admit I've only used 13" MBP's for the last 10+
years until my most recent MBP and so dedicated graphic cards wasn't in my
wheelhouse. I honestly thought they stopped ALL Nvidia cards back in 2009ish.

------
rapsey
Anyone requiring special hardware for their work is a fool to use Apple
computers.

~~~
kstenerud
Ah, the sweet, sweet sound of victim blaming

~~~
ezoe
Seriously, It's Apple. They must have known.

~~~
jasonvorhe
How should anyone Jane known, based on previous experience being the exact
opposite behavior?

~~~
kevin_b_er
Apple has a strong and well known history of vendor lock-in and control.

These people are discovering, and hopefully coming to terms that they never
owned any Apple device. The device was always a slave to Apple. It follows the
orders of its master, not the foolish human who thought they owned it.

And its master has chosen not to have external nvidia devices work anymore.
The lock in will continue. The walled garden will continue to encircle.

------
mcv
I've never been at the forefront of upgrading my Macbook, and that seems like
a wise decision now. Still, increasingly poor versions of OS X present a clear
end of the line for my 2011 Macbook Pro.

Some time ago I was forced to upgrade to Sierra, because LinkedIn's website
stopped working in Chrome. (I don't use LinkedIn much because it's awful, but
a lot of clients find me there.) Turns out LinkedIn felt my version of Chrome
was too old to support. But why was Chrome too old? Doesn't it update
automatically? Yes, as long as the new version supports your OS, and
apparently Chrome had stopped supporting Lion quite some time before. So I had
to upgrade, and although I would have preferred to upgrade to Maverick, Apple
only offered the option to upgrade to the latest version: Sierra.

If Mojave is such a no-go, upgrading to the version just before Mojave may not
be possible, so I might be stuck on Sierra until my Macbook collapses, slowly
watching websites drop support.

Obviously my next machine is not going to be Apple. I'm probably going to get
a ThinkPad with some version of Linux if I can find a nice one.

~~~
bjpbakker
Owner of a late 2013 15" MBP here. I never been eager to upgrade to new mac
version too.

> Some time ago I was forced to upgrade to Sierra

Until about a month ago I ran Sierra - which worked fine and in 2 years didn't
crash my mpb once.

Then I had to compile a few ios apps for work, and since xcode was outdated on
Sierra, I had to upgrade to High Sierra. High Sierra kept crashing on me.
Several coworkers also had this experience and suggested to upgrade to Mojave.

Meanwhile Apple also kept pushing to upgrade to Mojave via an os notification
they showed a few times a day. So I sadly ran the "upgrade" to find out the
system was much less stable than before. No I see why. Sadly my GFX-750 isn't
supported.

For me this is the end of the line on macs. Newer MBPs have broken keyboard
that Apple refuses to fix, and are really expensive to the old hardware they
come with. And apparently you cannot even expect a >$3500 MBP to outlive 5
years because Apple breaks it with their software patches.

I'll have to buy a new laptop because I cannot even connect a proper external
monitor anymore. Obviously it won't apple product. I'm thinking to go
System76.

~~~
mcv
Thanks for the warning. I'll stick to Sierra as long as I can.

It sucks, though, that these crappy updates make us reluctant to keep our
system up to date. It shouldn't be like this. New versions should be better,
not worse. And it should be possible to roll back a bad upgrade.

------
nisten
New OS doesn't yet have drivers for some cards, got it.

~~~
mikenew
"some cards" meaning the vast majority of discrete cards on the market.

~~~
joshstrange
Cards that Apple never formally supported and people knew that when they
bought them. This is equivalent to hackintosh people getting worked up over
Apple not supporting their MB/RAM/HD/PCI Card/etc.

------
brian_herman
In a walled ecosystem you are a sharecropper not the owner.

~~~
scarface74
Well, as other have stated. There is nothing stopping Nvidia or anyone else
from writing their own driver.

------
saagarjha
> Apple fully controls drivers for Mac OS.

How so? Can you just not write graphics drivers for macOS?

~~~
eight_ender
It's more nuanced than that. Nvidia can write the drivers but releasing them
without the blessing of Apple blows away any chance of them getting that sweet
GPU contract back.

Nvidia doesn't have much of a real world application outside of GPUs in
enclosures to keep the drivers alive. The reason to keep drivers ready is the
potential for a very large contract from Apple.

~~~
etaioinshrdlu
Word on the street is that Nvidia didn't get much value ($) out of working
with Apple, so perhaps both parties aren't super interested.

Same story with Nvidia and gaming consoles - last few gens of consoles have
not used Nvidia chips and Nvidia doesn't see it as a big loss. The margins
must be too low.

Nvidia seems to aim for higher margin products these days with scientific
computing/data center/deep learning/hardcore gaming.

~~~
ksec
>Nvidia seems to aim for higher margin products these days with scientific
computing/data center/deep learning/hardcore gaming.

Which is a problem. No (Real) Games on Mac, No Deep Learning/ Scientific
Computing on Mac.

Mac is now left with Programming, and Video / Graphics Editing.

May be Apple's strategy for Mac is to milk it for as long as possible. They
don't see it as a platform for growth ( Despite having plenty of room ).

~~~
mcv
It seems to me like Apple has been on the road to slowly abandoning the Mac
for quite some time. Newer Macbooks are unpopular, updates to OS X have
problems, and on the whole, the platform just doesn't get much love from
Apple. They want us all on iOS.

I'll be moving to Linux instead.

~~~
scarface74
The “newer MacBooks” are unpopular is just a meme in the tech bubble. While
Apple will stop reporting unit sells next quarter, they just posted last
quarters numbers. There is no indication that they are “unpopular”.

~~~
mcv
Maybe they still sell, but I know of nobody who is enthusiastic about them.
People used to love them.

~~~
scarface74
Why should we pay more credence to the anecdotal “people you know” instead of
the reported sales volumes?

~~~
ksec
That is Sales Volume, but its 100M Active Devices, is way slower than what
most predicted. Apple took more than 2 years to add 10M Active Devices, on a
~40+M Unit sold during that time, that means 30M are either replacement or,
there are quite a high churn rate to Mac. It is possibly the only reason why
Apple suddenly come up with iMac Pro, new MacBook Retina etc. It wasn't the
sales that matters, it was user leaving its platform. By previous trend and
growth at a nearly consistent 20M unit per year, Mac should have at least 120M
Active Devices by now, if not more.

~~~
scarface74
Why does Apple care about active users for the Mac and not sales volume?

Active users for iOS devices makes sense. Apple gets recurring revenue from
iOS users. Hardly anyone uses the Mac App Store or buys iCloud storage just
for the Mac and OS upgrades are free.

~~~
ksec
You will need a user base for Software Distribution. Will you design your
software for a 10M or 100M Mac user. If you are changing to a Services product
that _only_ oriented around your products, the more user the better.

~~~
scarface74
It depends on the software...

I wouldn't care about the overall number of users, just the number of users in
the market that I'm targeting. The creative market didn't abandon Apple when
the overall Mac market was in dire straights because the market they cared
about still had a lot of Mac users.

From what I can see, the consumer market for software is basically dead. Is
anyone making serious money on non game personal computer software besides
Adobe and Microsoft?

The smaller Mac only software companies are going by the "thousand true fans"
strategy. Stay small and get a small loyal customer base.

------
elseless
I found this out the hard way a month ago when I updated my hackintosh from
10.13 to 10.14.

Never assume, even several weeks after a macOS release, that working Nvidia
drivers will be available!

~~~
joshstrange
You live on the edge... I am on a legit mac and I'm still on HS for at least
another month or two just to be safe.

------
zwaps
Why you would use an Apple computer in actual "production pipelines" that
generate revenue, need upgrading, and use external hardware, is beyond me.

In that article we get to read about entire firms using rendering pipelines
that are now useless. While that is a terrible blunder by Apple, I really
would ask how the responsible parties thought it a good idea to rely on an
ecosystem that they have zero control over and that should have been
considered "supported" only in an unofficial sense, no matter what Apple says.
Heck, the upgrade even breaks older Apple built machines.

Macs and Apple machines are only production machines "as is". And that means
they are only made to be interface/user machines. They don't scale, they don't
upgrade and they don't work with external hardware. All decisions by Apple -
walled garden, the lack of connectivity and the upgrade policy make this
ABUNDENTLY CLEAR.

If Apple technology is a node in a pipeline that isn't entirely Apple (or,
even then), and those things can not be replaced by other machines
immediately, or kept upgrade&update free, then it's your fault.

~~~
stoobs
Who the hell upgrades their entire production system to new OS releases
without thoroughly testing beforehand? Especially if you're running completely
unsupported hardware configurations.

That's just extreme ineptitude at best, grossly negligent at worst.

You just don't do that no matter the OS/hardware vendor - How many people have
run afoul of Microsoft releasing broken patches into the wild? If you have
mission-critical systems, you test everything in isolation first.

~~~
apostacy
I'm really unhappy that Homebrew twists user's arms to update to the latest
version of OSX. I'm glad that I waited a year before I updated to High Sierra,
seeing as how there were APFS file corruption bugs, and a default root login
bug!

We need to stop being so enamored with Apple, and treat them with the same
skepticism as Microsoft.

Several people in my office have been bitten by the Mojave bug and are now
regretting it. You should wait at least six months to update OSX.

~~~
PascLeRasc
I'm not sure what you're talking about. I used Homebrew quite successfully
this past summer on 10.7.5 - the only problem was that a few formulae weren't
available for it. I've since upgraded that machine to El Capitan and Homebrew
still works great and I haven't found anything that doesn't work, including
CUDA.

------
yannovitch
I bet that this is due to Nvidia pushing their agenda with CUDA, as opposed to
Apple championing either Metal or OpenCL.

------
simonCGN
OMG, I can not use a Mercedes Engine in my BMW

------
stuntkite
Apple 100% does not care about it's creative class anymore. I love my 2013
macbook air and pro. It's over though. If you need to get things done there
are plenty of linux options.

Yes, all of the trackpads suck.

EDIT: Please down vote if that expresses your feels, but if you've got a new
MBP or Mac Pro and feel supported by Apple I'd love to know why and what you
use it for. I miss being able to buy a solid computer from them that I knew
would be my workhorse for 2+ years and have a long life after.

------
throwawayhwjwge
If you are a software developer, you have no excuse not buying a Linux
compatible machine and using it as your daily driver. It really isn't that
hard. I "downgraded" from a MacBook Pro 2017 non-touchbar because I realised I
fundamentally disagree with Apple and the direction of our monoculture.
Ironically I bought a second hand Levono ThinkPad Carbon X1 gen3, which was
originally IBM, which Apple claim are 1984 dictators. How times have changed.
Im nearly completely free of Apples ecosystem, thank god.

~~~
joshstrange
> If you are a software developer, you have no excuse not buying a Linux
> compatible machine and using it as your daily driver.

False. I've tried it and it doesn't compare to OS X. Also this SOOOO rich in a
thread about Nvidia (which SUCKS on linux). You think you are in driver hell
on Mac? Oh boy, strap yourself in.

> Im nearly completely free of Apples ecosystem, thank god.

Enjoy your "freedom", I'll enjoy getting real work done without futzing with
something that "Pretty much works (tm)" but has some kind of gotcha. I'm sure
the developers here at my work who use a Linux desktop would tell you "It's
great, I love it" but somehow I'm the lone developer who doesn't have display
manager crashes, complete rebuilds needed, and graphics driver hell. Yeah, I
think I'll stick to my "imprisonment".

