In the previous post, our colleague Pedro Rodas already commented the introduction of Metal in OS X to improve the overall performance of all Macs When it comes to running applications, however in this article we are going to explain a little more in depth what this graphics API is about, especially aimed at A7, A8 and A8X chips, which was presented a year ago in iOS 8 and has been evolving to be a standard in this operating system and that supposedly will also be in OS X.
As most of you know, OS X and iOS are based on Open GL libraries for graphics processing and that they intend to face other solutions such as Microsoft Direct3D 12 libraries, improving GPGPU (General-purpose computing on graphics processing units) as much as possible and now with Metal, taking advantage of Compute Shaders technology. A whole step forward that will make older Macs capable of supporting OS X El Capitan run faster and smoother than OS X Yosemite.
For example, Epic Games, creator of the famous Unreal Engine widely used in console and PC For its excellent performance and more than acceptable graphics, it made a demonstration of Metal with a new title that they are developing called Fortnight and that will be available later this year for both Mac and PC. The use of Metal has allowed according to the words of Epic itself, that graphics of a much higher level can be created than would have been achieved without this API.
The Mac has historically been "ignored" by most game companies, which have prioritized Windows instead. That contrasts with iOS's position within the mobile device range, which, although it has a smaller market share than Android, is still the most lucrative platform for developers of many of the world's best mobile games.
With Metal on Mac, Apple hopes to give OS X a boost in this area and get more out of the capabilities of its desktop operating system within games. Anyway, Craig Federighi (SVP of software engineering at Apple) has already confirmed that both average users as professionals will benefit from all the possibilities of Metal.
