It would make perfect sense if macOS was already the go-to platform for 3D apps and games. Third-party developers would then have to port to Metal in order to keep their customer base, and their OpenGL backend would be abandoned or at least a second-class citizen. That could be a competitive advantage for Apple.
But macOS is not the go-to platform for this sort of thing, especially when it comes to games. This does seem like a strategic mistake. Maybe they just don't care, for whatever reason. I mean, it doesn't seem like Metal has been catastrophic for Apple, has it?
Then again, OpenGL is probably still good enough on macOS for most 3D apps, deprecated or not. And if Apple does decide to actually remove it, I believe there are projects that implement the OpenGL API on top of Metal (certainly with performance impact). And third-party developers certainly have the option to wait to write a Metal backend only after Apple announces OpenGL is being dropped completely.
Yeah, there's ANGLE which implements OpenGL ES on top of Metal, and then there's MoltenVK which implements Vulkan on top of Metal, so you can get a program which uses the cross-platform APIs to run on macOS.
Maybe that's the whole strategy? To provide an API which exposes what's easy to do in a well-performing way on their hardware, and let the community worry about getting the standards to work? It certainly seems to be working, and it probably means they need to spend less resources on driver development than if they tried to stay current on OpenGL and Vulkan.
But macOS is not the go-to platform for this sort of thing, especially when it comes to games. This does seem like a strategic mistake. Maybe they just don't care, for whatever reason. I mean, it doesn't seem like Metal has been catastrophic for Apple, has it?
Then again, OpenGL is probably still good enough on macOS for most 3D apps, deprecated or not. And if Apple does decide to actually remove it, I believe there are projects that implement the OpenGL API on top of Metal (certainly with performance impact). And third-party developers certainly have the option to wait to write a Metal backend only after Apple announces OpenGL is being dropped completely.