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Comment by zbuttram | Hacker News Reader

What people seem to be missing here is that based on available info it seems Microsoft isn't officially supporting Vulkan either. Sure Nvidia and AMD have released drivers for Windows that have Vulkan support, but we're talking about a web standard that would need to be implemented by browser makers and if Microsoft isn't going to use Vulkan, then what do they implement as the backing for this new standard in Edge? Probably DirectX. I think the idea is to sort out an API that would be compatible between all three due to Microsoft and Apple _both_ not wanting to officially support Vulkan over their own platforms in their browsers, regardless of the support at the OS level.

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There is a difference between "not officially supporting" Vulkan and completely preventing anyone from providing a Vulkan implementation for your platform. Microsoft allows competing APIs to be integrated into their platform at the driver level. Apple does not.

Could someone not provide Vulkan driver support on the Mac or is it forbidden by Apple to do so?

On Windows, Vulkan support is provided by the IHV graphics drivers from Nvidia, AMD etc. On Mac, Apple themselves ship the drivers (incorporating some portions of IHV code, but ultimately all under Apple's control).

If you're using a newer Nvidia card, you can download and install much more up to date Mac drivers direct from Nvidia's site. Yes, Apple bundles their own drivers but there's nothing stopping hardware vendors from shipping their own Mac drivers.

That still wont change the version of OpenGL supported by the driver as far as I know. If someone has OpenGL 4.5 working on OSX I would be very interested in finding out.

Apple allows you to provide an alternative API on OSX but not on iOS.

Microsoft is exactly the same. They do not support custom APIs on Windows Mobile AFAIK.

> Apple allows you to provide an alternative API on OSX

I'll need a source for this claim considering that no driver-level Vulkan implementations are available on macOS.

No. Provide a source that Apple actively prevents it.

Developers can ask users for their admin password, sudo to root and largely do whatever they want including adding kernel extensions and drivers.

kext's must be signed now, Apple can freely revoke developer certs and block them if they so desire.

Having a technical means to make distribution of a driver awkward is quite a few steps short of forbidding it.

Signing was designed for security purposes which is the only reason where certificate revocation has been used to date. There seems to be a lot of FUD here but without any actual hard examples.

But it prevents doing what you just said above :

> Developers can ask users for their admin password, sudo to root and largely do whatever they want including adding kernel extensions and drivers.

But they only use these power to shut out malware. Not to nix software they don't like.

Windows drivers need to be signed as well, whats the problem?

But not by Microsoft, you can opt to obtain WHQL certification for your driver and have MS sign them - but it's also acceptable to get a code signing cert from any trusted CA.

Apple controls all the keys for macOS, AFAIK there's not even an option to add additional CA's for code-signing trust. To get around this you have to completely disable SIP, and it's rather stupid to tell users they must disable a well-meaning (if somewhat poorly implemented) security feature to install a kext because Apple doesn't like you (no knowledge if this has happened, but it can, and I don't care for that).

> sudo to root and largely do whatever they want

Not anymore, even being root doesn't give you total control now[1], and custom kernel extensions are among the things that are prohibited.

This «feature» bas been introduced in El Capitan for «security reason».

[1] System Integrity Protection : System Integrity Protection

It's easy to disable System Integrity Protection:

https://developer.apple.com/library/content/documentation/Se...

Let's not forget the post I was replying to :

> Developers can ask users […]

Have you ever seen anybody shipping software asking their user to do stuff like this to get their software working ?

> Boot to Recovery OS by restarting your machine and holding down the Command and R keys at startup.

Sure, and your grandma (=proxy for mainstream user) is surely going to do that.

It's simply a no-go for the mainstream market that expects things to just work.

macOS is not popular among gamers? I don't understand what the problem is.

It's a dead platform with no market-share.

Latest results of the so-called dead platform--"iPhone, Services, Mac and Apple Watch Set All-Time Records"

http://www.apple.com/newsroom/2017/01/apple-reports-record-f...

I think the parent claim is that Windows Mobile is a dead plarform, which, it pretty much is, after the nokia fiasco.

Yes. Meant Windows mobile.

FWIW, Microsoft doesn't allow that on ARM. Only where they have previous antitrust decisions holding them back (x86).

It used to be the case that 3D APIs other than Direct3D couldn't be used from whatever Metro^H Windows Store apps are called this week. Which kind of blocks it at a platform-within-a-platform level.

That may have changed, I dunno.

Why are they so hostile to Vulkan and what problems does Vulkan, which is vendor independent and open, have that adding a new API to support to the pile would not?

No good reason whatsoever.

Do you have a source for your claim?

Lack of known good reasons, and their major infamy in perpetuating lock-in in general. They have only themselves to blame for being seen in negative light in this topic by default.

That doesn't mean their isn't good reason. I guess they believe they can build a better product by having control over the graphics pipeline. Obviously I cannot say for sure what they think in that regard, but neither can you.

Not very convincing. They often used excuses of good reasons to do sinister stuff, so, they'd need to work much harder to fix their ruined reputation.

NIAA.

Not Invented At Apple.

It's not even that. They seem to have abandoned OpenCL as well, and that was invented at Apple.

It's more like "let's mess everyone else, because we can".

> Microsoft isn't officially supporting Vulkan either

It's Microsoft's lack of official support for OpenGL on Windows that leads to WebGL implementations using of ANGLE translation to Direct3D, rather than direct OpenGL, right? So I assume we'd have the same situation for a hypothetical WebVulkan. Yes, Vulkan would be available on Windows with the right drivers, but the browsers wouldn't want to use it.

I was under the impression that DX wasn't available out of the box either? That you'd need to install suitable drivers and a suitable runtime?

Starting with Windows 7, DX became a platform component.

Every time I install a game from Steam, it almost always re-installs the DX runtime for that specific game. Is there a reason for that?

Also HN seems to forget consoles a lot, which don't support OpenGL (PS3 GL was never used in production), even Nintendo with Switch actually does have another API besides Vulkan(NVN), which devs are more keen in using as it allows even more fine grained control.

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