
Discontinuation of Mac Support for Autodesk Alias and VRED - redial
https://knowledge.autodesk.com/support/alias-products/troubleshooting/caas/sfdcarticles/sfdcarticles/Discontinuation-of-Mac-Support-for-Autodesk-Alias-and-VRED.html
======
kenrose
I worked at Autodesk from 2007 - 2011 and on Alias / Alias-related things for
a good chunk of that. I was part of the team that ported Alias to MacOS.

Alias development started back in the late 80s and was written for (I think)
SGI machines. Back then, the company was Alias (merged with Wavefront and
ultimately acquired by Autodesk in 2006) and the software was called Studio.
OpenGL formalized in the early 90s and Alias (the company) ported Studio to
support this nascent API. That meant that Alias could run on any OS that
supported OpenGL.

This was a fantastic strategic decision because it allowed Studio to port to
various flavours of Irix, HP Unix, Windows, Mac OS, and even Linux. The Linux
build was/is internal. It was a little janky to use as a modeller 8 hours a
day, but good enough for a development workflow.

Porting to Mac OS occurred in 2008 (I think) and was a reasonably sized
project. Alias renders all of its own UI in OpenGL, so in theory, it was as
simple as "Get a GLContext, and render to that". Of course, there were other
things to deal with:

    
    
        - Cocoa specifics like windows / events
        - Various filesystem differences
        - IPC (Alias launches a subprocess to open new files to insulate a bad .wire file from crashing the main process)
        - Performance issues caused by various aged code (e.g., still a few places using display lists).
    

I don't have any specifics for _why_ Autodesk invested in porting Studio to
MacOS back then. Apple was on the upward trend in terms of design and market
share. I can speculate Apple was demanding a Mac OS version of Alias for its
own use since, as others pointed out, Apple is a pretty big Autodesk customer.

I agree with the other points made here that the decision was likely made that
the ROI of maintaining the Apple port wasn't worth it. Sure was fun to write
though. :)

~~~
Keyframe
Didn't Alias transition to Qt, like other Alias programs (Maya)?

~~~
kenrose
Not to my knowledge.

Maya was porting to Qt when I worked there. Alias/Studio still used its own
internal UI toolkit (Edwin) at the time.

~~~
Keyframe
It's amazing for how long Maya's architecture has lasted. I still remember the
transition period over from PowerAnimator (9.5 I think) and TDI|Explore to
Maya. I've used first beta and still remember how similar, yet different it
seemed. OptiFX was still better in PA, at the time (and I can't believe that
was a paid add-on, same with artisan - a daylight robbery of a price).

I always had a sweet spot for programs made on/for SGI. Something different
and magical about them. As if they were from the future.

------
tempodox
I can understand Autodesk not wanting to bother with Mac development any more.
Apple's aggressive and inconsiderate moves make it a pain to even maintain
existing app projects on the Mac.

~~~
acomjean
Plus the lack of a pro level desktop machine (excepting the imac pro. all-in-
one) isn't helping apple with power users that Autodesk users presumably are.
They announced new ones are coming a year ago but still no details or a real
release date.

Its a shame as the macos application packaging system makes makes for an easy
way distribute and run applications.

~~~
chrisseaton
> Plus the lack of a pro level desktop machine (excepting the imac pro. all-
> in-one)

The lack of a pro-level machine... except for the pro-level machine that they
do have.

~~~
scarface74
They also admitted at a round table that they designed themselves into a
“thermal corner” with the last Mac Pro and that they will be introducing
another one in 2019.

~~~
ksec
They "learned" / "understand" / "realise" that they went into a thermal corner
"FOUR" years after the product was first released.

Then they made announcement they are going to do a redesign, 4 years after it
first released, and the redesign won't be coming out til 2019, 2 years after
they made the redesign announcement.

A total of 6 years. That is the amount of care they have for "pro" users.

They then went to release an iMac Pro which many call it an interim solution.
An iMac Pro capable of having two 250W chip cooled, Something the community
has been calling for years for the iMac ( For so long everyone abandoned the
hope already ) and some said was not possible due to cooling requirement.
Turns out it wasn't a technical barrier, simply Apple won't make it.

And as rumours goes, it wasn't until a very large studio decide to abandoned
the Mac platform due to Mac Pro, and someone who had connection with Apple
SVPs and told hem about it, before they realise how much care they have given
to the pro users.

Apple forgot that while it was Steve jobs bumping put new strategies and
initiative that changed Apple in the long run. It was these pro users whom
bleed six colours that kept Apple alive in the first place.

~~~
scarface74
People have been calling for an iMac Pro type hardware “for years”? I doubt
very seriously that anyone even wanted something like the iMac Pro before it
was released.

 _And as rumours goes, it wasn 't until a very large studio decide to
abandoned the Mac platform due to Mac Pro, and someone who had connection with
Apple SVPs and told hem about it, before they realise how much care they have
given to the pro users._

I doubt very seriously that _one_ studio abandoning a product line that makes
less than 10% of thier revenue made Apple panic.

 _Apple forgot that while it was Steve jobs bumping put new strategies and
initiative that changed Apple in the long run. It was these pro users whom
bleed six colours that kept Apple alive in the first place._

Things change. The Mac is no longer at the center of Apple’s universe. As far
as what Steve thought that Apple’s direction of the Mac should be....

“If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it’s worth – and
get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a
long time ago”

[https://www.wired.com/2011/08/money-quotes-steve-jobs-
style/](https://www.wired.com/2011/08/money-quotes-steve-jobs-style/)

If you think Jobs was tied to the Mac on his return, you weren’t paying
attention.

~~~
ksec
>I doubt very seriously that anyone even wanted something like the iMac Pro
before it was released.

Not Xeon or EEC Memory, but 150W+ CPU + 150W+ GPU combination on an iMac. iMac
could have been powerful, but it never was. Not because we have invested new
cooling solution to cool the CPU and GPU, because the iMac were never
positioned as such. Steve Jobs wanted the Desktop to be completely silent. And
it is still shipping with a HDD as default.

>I doubt very seriously that one studio abandoning a __product line __that
makes less than 10% of thier revenue made Apple panic.

Not a product line, but the whole Mac Ecosystem. Try Disney telling you they
are throwing Mac Pro away from their production system. And it is not even
10%, likely 1% of their revenue.

>If you think Jobs was tied to the Mac on his return, you weren’t paying
attention.

And the quote was from... 1996? How about a more recent quote.

"Truck" PCs weren't going to go away, Jobs predicted, but "car" tablets would
find a place among a larger number of users.

"This transformation is going to make some people uneasy," Jobs said. "People
from the PC world, like you and me. It's going to make us uneasy."

If you think Jobs wasn't tied to the Mac on his return, you weren’t paying
attention.

~~~
scarface74
_Not Xeon or EEC Memory, but 150W+ CPU + 150W+ GPU combination on an iMac.
iMac could have been powerful, but it never was. Not because we have invested
new cooling solution to cool the CPU and GPU, because the iMac were never
positioned as such. Steve Jobs wanted the Desktop to be completely silent. And
it is still shipping with a HDD as default._

Before the iMac Pro, the Mac Pro was the computer for professionals. They made
a major mistake with the 2013 Mac Pro. Apple never shipped good GPUs in Macs
compared to Windows PCs.

 _Not a product line, but the whole Mac Ecosystem. Try Disney telling you they
are throwing Mac Pro away from their production system. And it is not even
10%, likely 1% of their revenue._

If Apple’s missteps were hurting Mac revenue you would see it in their
quarterly revenue where they break down the amount of revenue they make on
Macs. Looking at the numbers, it hasn’t hurt Mac revenue. I would love to see
a more compelling Mac Mini for instance, but I can’t honestly say that not
having updated it in 4 years has hurt Apple.

 _And the quote was from... 1996? How about a more recent quote._

Jobs told people what he would do with Apple and he mostly did just that.

\- He milked the Mac and used it as a cash cow

\- He gave up competing with Microsoft and made a deal with them.

\- He introduced iTunes, iPod, iPhone, and the iPad.

\- He even took “Computer” out of the name of the company.

\- He delayed the OS release that was suppose to come out in 2007 and moved
engineers to the iPhone.

\- The only slightly industry changing thing he did with the Mac after 2001
was the MacBook Air and that was overpriced and underpowered for the first two
years.

As far as being “tied” to the Mac, he didn’t even use a Mac until 2001 when OS
X was introduced. His primary computer was a Dell running Next.

------
rleigh
Unsurprising. This is one public announcement, but it's inevitable that there
are many more products which will cease support for MacOS.

OpenGL is an established industry-standard graphics API. Supported on every
platform of note. Drop it, and you're going to lose developers who rely on it.
A vendor-specific proprietary API isn't an improvement, it's regressive. There
are many products which won't be able to justify a Metal port, including one
of my own. Despite its ugliness, OpenGL worked everywhere and modern OpenGL is
actually pretty decent.

If Apple want to retain developers, they need to have a long, hard think about
their strategy here. I'll consider supporting MacOS again, if they can cut
back on proprietary stuff and support the industry-standard stuff. OpenGL 4.6
and Vulkan would be a good start.

~~~
jchb
_an established industry-standard graphics API. Supported on every platform of
note._

Sorry, but this mostly wishful thinking. It is only an "industry standard" on
Linux-based systems and Android. Also Nintendo Switch has support for OpenGL,
but it is not the primary graphics API.

On Windows, the OpenGL driver quality story is not very rosy. A good example
is WebGL. On Windows, Chrome and Firefox implement WebGL using a compatibility
library (ANGLE) that maps calls to the Direct3D API. Also for QT applications
it is recommended to use ANGLE on Windows. Playstation 4 has its own
proprietary graphics API, Xbox uses DirectX.

~~~
rleigh
I disagree. It doesn't matter a whit whether or not it's the "primary"
graphics API, but rather that it's supported on a platform or not. Right now,
if I use OpenGL, I can target Windows, MacOS, Linux, FreeBSD, mobile devices
and others all with a single codebase. It is portable, and does work
everywhere in practice.

On Windows, if you're using a GPU from e.g. AMD or nVidia, be it the gaming
end or the workstation end, you will also be getting a decent OpenGL
implementation. If you're using software like Alias, you're not going to skimp
on the GPU. Angle only exists for poor GPUs which don't have decent OpenGL
Windows drivers; for software at this level, they are an irrelevance.

WebGL is a red herring. This isn't anything to do with web browsers, and
everything to do with killing support for decades of software development
investment by third-party ISVs. WebGL is not competing with that, and won't
anytime soon. Apple here is basically saying: we don't care about the serious,
high-end side of things, and screw any developers who want to develop that
type of software for Mac systems. If they did, they would reimplement the
OpenGL API on top of Metal; it's not like they don't have the cash to pay for
it.

As for proprietary gaming consoles, these are also irrelevant to the concerns
here. This isn't really about games, or gaming engines. (Though when Apple
finally drops OpenGL, most of the back catalogue of games will cease to
function…) It's about the thousands of serious software packages out there
which will no longer function on a Mac. The high-end CAD and design market.
Engineering. Scientific and medical imaging. Etc.

That's Apple's choice. And it's my choice to drop Mac support in consequence.
They are making it clear that the Mac is no longer the platform for
professional software development through their woeful hardware and their poor
MacOS maintenance strategy. The market will respond to that.

~~~
jchb
Can you give an example of a serious software package software that uses
OpenGL and targets multiple platforms? I don't doubt you that such exist, I
just don't know what to search for.

A quick look at for example high-end CAD that you mentioned, Solidworks uses
OpenGL, but has as far as I can seen always been Windows only. Its also only
lists FirePro and Quadro as recommended graphics cards which support my
impression that only workstation-class GPUs have stable OpenGL support on
Windows.

Autocad uses DirectX 11 on Windows, OpenGL for the Mac version, so they
already use platform specific APIs.

Software with several decades old code bases, that started out with OpenGL,
and perhaps even still uses some of it intermediate mode APIs or display
lists, obviously have to continue to rely on it. But if you design a new piece
of software today, wouldn't you want it to be able to use the graphics
hardware to its full potential and use Vulcan/Metal/DirectX 12?

~~~
rleigh
My specialism is scientific imaging, so here's a few examples off the top of
my head:

VTK would be one. It's at the core of dozens of scientific and medical imaging
applications, and is being used for new specialised applications all the time.
This does sophisticated volume rendering of 3D images. Used by both open
source applications and proprietary.

Or OpenSceneGraph, again the core of many applications, also 100% OpenGL.

Or Volocity, a commercial OpenGL volume renderer which originated on the Mac,
later ported to Windows, which is all OpenGL under the hood.

There are hundreds of bespoke scientific and medical applications out there
doing analysis and rendering of images. OpenGL is the fundamental underpinning
of most of them. Scientists have been using OpenGL for decades. (The
availability of OpenGL on the Mac was why many were able to switch.) Some
vendors might use DirectX when Windows only, but these are a rarity outside
commercial acquisition software due to the ubiquity of Linux and Macs in this
domain. This is just the domain I know most about; there are undoubtedly many
more in different domains.

The workstation class GPUs have some features the gaming ones don't, but it's
often equivalent hardware with different drivers, or has some extended
capabilities. Double-precision floats, etc. If you don't use these extra
features, there's not much practical difference. The actual OpenGL
implementations are generally stable for all cases in my experience. The main
problem is vendor implementation differences in my experience, e.g. nVidia
being laxer than AMD/ATI and allowing broken code to work which others would
reject.

For new code, I'd like to say Vulkan, but the support isn't fully there yet.
For example, Qt 5.12 has Vulkan support but it's not yet universally
available, and it's disabled by default unless you compile a custom build from
source. I'm currently just starting to get to grips with it for a new project,
but it will be hard to deploy for the next year or so. The drivers are there
for Windows and Linux, and with the MoltenVk on MacOS X it might well work
well enough (I'm yet to progress far enough test this). Unless you are wanting
to write multiple rendering backends, Metal and DirectX don't look too great
for portable code. I'm hoping Vulkan will be the OpenGL replacement it's
touted to be, but we'll see!

------
joshvm
Somewhat ironic that apparently a lot of Apple products have been designed
using Alias, at least the original iMac, according to a biography of Jony Ive.

[https://books.google.com/books?id=CRZuAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT106&lpg=...](https://books.google.com/books?id=CRZuAAAAQBAJ&pg=PT106&lpg=PT106&dq=autodesk+alias+apple+computer&ots=Xprx2bJZaG&sig=CPJD7j6JY8TU6Jaeg7kcFkS59G4&q=autodesk%20alias%20apple%20computer&f=false#v=snippet&q=autodesk%20alias%20apple%20computer&f=false)

~~~
Spooky23
Perhaps we will see improvements to boot camp now.

~~~
floatingatoll
Boot Camp works fine today. What improvements do you believe would be
necessary to make it valuable to you?

------
nottorp
Can't blame them for not wanting to port to Metal.

However, I found that out from the comments on HN - because when I opened the
page the article was covered by a full popup informing me that they 'care
about my privacy'. And then they probably wanted me to agree to being tracked.
Not sure because I instaclosed it.

~~~
tener
Actually they make it super easy to say 'no to all tracking' which is very
nice. Good for them.

~~~
mgiannopoulos
Do they actually not use cookies though? Someone should look into all these
consent pop ups and if they actually effect anything.

~~~
untog
If they don't they can be sued for it (at least in the EU) so I imagine a
company like Autodesk does check these things.

~~~
nottorp
But... all they have to do is not track me... :)

------
kitsunesoba
It’s too bad, Metal has gotten very good. Blizzard ported the Mac versions of
their games over to Metal a couple years ago and has been riding up against
the edge of what’s possible with Metal. As of the latest WoW update, Metal
performance is ridiculously good — barely distinguishable from DX12 under
Windows on the same hardware. It’s amazing, I’ve never seen any game run this
well under macOS.

This may have been achievable with OpenGL, but I have doubts. Should Apple
have waited for Vulkan to be finished up before making their choice of modern
graphics API in iOS + macOS? Maybe, but if they had, their Vulkan
implementation wouldn’t have been as mature as Metal is now and the existence
of MoltenVK renders the whole thing moot anyway.

Which makes me wonder, why not consider porting Alias to Vulkan? I’m not sure
that OpenGL has much of a future on any platform, now that most everything
will be written for DX12, Vulkan, or Metal. At best, frozen-in-time support
for it will remain in Windows and Linux for a few more years, but I don’t see
it being developed any further... didn’t Apple just jump ahead to OpenGL’s
inevitable conclusion?

~~~
vetinari
OpenGL AZDO is conceptually very near to Vulkan and DX12. Few years ago, I had
an impression that Nvidia wanted to go this route, instead of Vulkan, if for
nothing else then just to make advantage of their investment into OpenGL.

However, AZDO is unusable on macOS; the OpenGL on macOS is too limited to
support it.

Khronos with OpenGL 4.6 made another step towards Vulkan: SPIR-V shaders. If
Apple implemented 4.6, they could go all they way and implement Vulkan too.

Apple, while they released the Metal 1 first, it was quite limited and there
were reasons why the release was iOS only. When they came with Metal 2, which
could compete with Vulkan, Vulkan was out for a year already.

So basically they rushed to come with API, that would be exclusive to their
platform and lock their developers in. There's no other use for Metal today.

------
iamgopal
Mac in future will only be used for iOS development.

~~~
linuxlizard
iOS development could probably be moved web based. Would save everyone a lot
of trouble.

~~~
copperx
That would be wonderful, now that I think of it. The only hard problem would
be the simulator, which would probably have to run on bare metal, or as a
virtual machine.

~~~
kitsunesoba
Personally I wouldn’t want to be stuck with simulators only in development.
Apple’s iOS simulator is pretty good, but it has quirks not shared with real
hardware and its performance isn’t representative of real hardware at all.

~~~
Moter8
Yeah, like not being able to emulate the MacBooks webcam. It's pretty dumb.

------
saagarjha
> Prior versions of Alias (2019.0 and earlier) can continue to run on High
> Sierra or earlier operating system versions.

> Alias is not supported on High Sierra due to a macOS incompatibility that
> Apple does not currently plan to fix.

Wait, so is Alias supposed to work on High Sierra (which has a non-deprecated
OpenGL) or not?

~~~
yardie
High Sierra 10.13.4 has changed the display API in some pretty fundamental
ways. I'm down a screen because our iMacs can only drive 2 external displays
now. DisplayLink, Duet and other exotic soft GPUs are broken.

I regret the day I agreed to this damn update.

------
0x0
Mojave only deprecates OpenGL, but it doesn't remove it as far as I
understand. It will continue to ship with the (somewhat outdated) OpenGL
version that macOS has provided for several years, no? Did they even try
running their own product on the Mojave betas? Seems strange to discontinue a
working product just because an API is marked "deprecated"?

~~~
lloeki
I've been building and running OpenGL toy applications[0] on Mojave public
betas without issue just to check on that. You just get lots of deprecation
warnings at compile time that you can quench by defining
_GL_SILENCE_DEPRECATION_. Excerpt:

    
    
        ./nsopengl_example.h:5:5: warning: 'NSOpenGLContext' is deprecated: first
              deprecated in macOS 10.14 - Please use Metal or MetalKit.
              [-Wdeprecated-declarations]
            NSOpenGLContext*     _openGLContext;
            ^
        /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/SDKs/MacOSX10.14.sdk/System/Library/Frameworks/AppKit.framework/Headers/NSOpenGL.h:202:12: note: 
              'NSOpenGLContext' has been explicitly marked deprecated here
        @interface NSOpenGLContext : NSObject <NSLocking>
                   ^
        nsopengl_example.m:97:9: warning: 'glVertex3f' is deprecated: first deprecated
              in macOS 10.14 - OpenGL API deprecated. (Define GL_SILENCE_DEPRECATION to
              silence these warnings) [-Wdeprecated-declarations]
                glVertex3f(  0.0,  0.6, 0.0);
                ^
    

Nothing is gone yet.

I suspect they'll proceed in a similar way as with OpenSSL, first deprecate,
then remove headers, and keep the libs around for quite some time for legacy
applications. In Mojave public beta _/ usr/lib_ still contains
_libssl.0.9.7.dylib_ and _libssl.0.9.8.dylib_ , and it's been quite some time
(El Capitan [1]) since you haven't been able to build against them.

The trickier part with OpenGL though is the graphic drivers. I suppose at some
point in the future drivers for fresh new GPUs won't include OpenGL support.
Maybe they'll include a GL-to-Metal akin to MoltenGL in that case, maybe not,
or a third-party will create just that to run legacy applications. Anyway I
bet it's a long road ahead and won't happen overnight.

[0]:
[https://gitlab.com/lloeki/nsopengl_example](https://gitlab.com/lloeki/nsopengl_example)

[1]: [https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-
build/issues/797](https://github.com/rbenv/ruby-build/issues/797)

------
oneplane
That article is pretty salty, it seems they want Apply to supply them with
OpenGL "or else". Either they are using an engine that doesn't allow for other
low level rendering options or they simply don't want to.

~~~
snarfy
It should be salty.

It's extremely arrogant to kill OpenGL and expect all app developers to
rewrite their apps using Metal. The last I looked MacOS market share wasn't
doing so well. And how much of that market is CAD?

Maybe they did a simple ROI calculation and determined it simply was not worth
the development, but might have been if Apple would meet them half way and
support OpenGL.

~~~
chongli
Total macOS marketshare is irrelevant. The vast majority of Windows home and
office PCs are never going to install Alias. A better question is what's the
relative marketshare in the 3D content creation and video production space?
There I think you'll find Macs doing a lot better (or at least they were when
Apple actually had a pro machine people wanted).

~~~
iainmerrick
So Apple gets to decide if they want to spend resources to support that market
(maintaining OpenGL) and Autodesk similarly get to decide if they want to
support Macs (by porting to Metal). Looks like both have signaled that high-
end CAD on Macs is not big enough to be worth their time.

This seems more damaging to Apple than to Autodesk. If Apple let these niche-
but-lucrative markets wither away one by one, where does the Mac end up?

~~~
chongli
_This seems more damaging to Apple than to Autodesk._

I think that's very difficult for us to judge. Apple has access to far more
data than we do. They may have decided that Autodesk's entire market is not
worth their time.

Apple is a very strange company. Even though they're among the largest
companies in the entire world in terms of value, they don't operate like a
large company. They shift their product teams around all the time which seems
to cause some products to get neglected for a really long time.

~~~
iainmerrick
You’re right, they’re ludicrously successful so you have to figure they must
know what they’re doing.

It does seem like a strange strategy not to court these high-end markets,
though.

As a developer, it often feels like Apple is ignoring me in favour of some
nebulously-defined market of “designers”. But here we have actual designers,
industrial product designers, being similarly ignored.

~~~
oneplane
It is very strange indeed. Especially with the advertisements on their website
listing 'developers' and 'engineers' and 'artists'. At the same time, I know
just as many users that have zero issue as ones that declare they do have
issues. Ironically, none of them are migrating to other systems. Some mention
'others are even worse' and a lot simply don't care enough and like the way
things work.

------
Keyframe
TBH, the writing was on the wall since the announcement. Very reminiscent of
situation with Adobe and Premiere, which spawned FCP and a decade-old grudge
between the companies.

I have to ask this, even though I use OSX but have no idea, can drivers
provided by third parties include openGL support for MacOS? Nvidia provides
drivers for their cards regularly. Does it work like on other OS'?

------
factotvm
I left feedback on the page that it wasn't helpful. Saying, "Once Apple
releases Mojave, no versions of VRED will run on that operating system due to
the OpenGL deprecation" doesn't help their case, because it's just wrong. I do
hope Autodesk is able to put pressure on Apple to continue to support OpenGL,
but they have to get their facts straight.

------
machiavelli1024
Engineers: we can do X and finish in two weeks, or we can take a shortcut and
finish in one week, but the code will be tightly coupled to this particular
quirk of OpenGL.

Manager: take the shortcut :)

... repeat this for 15 years ...

~~~
alxlaz
What particular quirk of OpenGL does Alias depend on?

~~~
caspper69
Well, according to Apple, existing.

