> As an Apple critic or at least an Apple skeptic (even though I do some development on Mac hardware), I am curious what the future of Mac as a development platform is going to be.
As an Apple fan -- albeit one who came back to the platform after years with FreeBSD, Windows 2000/XP, and BeOS (yes, full-time for over a year) and who uses Linux via ssh daily -- I am concerned what the future of the Mac as a development platform is going to be. I think your first paragraph is right on point.
I don't mind Apple going their own way with Safari to some degree, and there are things I just like about it as a browser -- it's fast, I find its minimal UI a bit more to my taste than either Chrome or Firefox, and I like that it syncs tabs and bookmarks between all my devices. (Yes, I know I could get that if I fully committed to either Firefox or Chrome.) But adapting WebExtensions support and then requiring developers to wrap those extensions in Xcode-built Mac applications that have to be published on the App Store just seems like Apple shooting themselves in the foot. It may be a handsome space gray gun milled out of a single block of aluminum, but it's still a problem.
(I'm also not sure why Apple won't at least support Vulkan in addition to Metal, but that's probably a different discussion.)
> I'm also not sure why Apple won't at least support Vulkan in addition to Metal, but that's probably a different discussion.
Likely for the same reason Microsoft doesn't support Vulkan - they want to have full control over their own graphics API.
The only commercially licensed/supported platform that requires Vulkan AFAIK is Android 10+ on 64-bit devices. However, I don't believe Google ever stepped up to standardize high performance graphics, so Vulkan was their best jump after OpenGLES started to sink.
As an Apple fan -- albeit one who came back to the platform after years with FreeBSD, Windows 2000/XP, and BeOS (yes, full-time for over a year) and who uses Linux via ssh daily -- I am concerned what the future of the Mac as a development platform is going to be. I think your first paragraph is right on point.
I don't mind Apple going their own way with Safari to some degree, and there are things I just like about it as a browser -- it's fast, I find its minimal UI a bit more to my taste than either Chrome or Firefox, and I like that it syncs tabs and bookmarks between all my devices. (Yes, I know I could get that if I fully committed to either Firefox or Chrome.) But adapting WebExtensions support and then requiring developers to wrap those extensions in Xcode-built Mac applications that have to be published on the App Store just seems like Apple shooting themselves in the foot. It may be a handsome space gray gun milled out of a single block of aluminum, but it's still a problem.
(I'm also not sure why Apple won't at least support Vulkan in addition to Metal, but that's probably a different discussion.)