alt Hacker NewsBecause they don't care. They've decided that Metal is The One True Way to write 3D-accelerated apps on macOS, so they only implement the things in hardware that Metal requires.
Replies
Maybe, but we got here because I asked "is it possible that Apple doesn't want to support Vulkan (in software) because they don't want to support the features it needs (in hardware)."
If the reason they don't support it in hardware is because they don't want to support it in software, then the logic gets a bit circular.
I'm interested in which came first, or if it's a little of both.
Perhaps, but also geometry shaders are generally losing popularity and on their way out. Per google ai search result (for what it is worth):
Geometry shaders are generally considered less necessary in modern graphics pipelines due to the rise of more flexible and efficient alternatives like mesh shaders which can perform similar geometry manipulation tasks with often better performance and more streamlined workflows
There are definitely some features omitted from Apple's GPU, but fairly early in the reverse engineering process, Alyssa Rosenzweig provided several examples of hardware features present in Apple's GPU that are not exposed by Metal: https://rosenzweig.io/blog/asahi-gpu-part-4.html