Apple and Nvidia, a sad story for Apple users

[thorpyworpy]

Just wondering what everyone's thoughts are on Apple allegedly blocking Nvidia drivers from working on MacOS Mojave? It's very well discussed online at this point with Nvidia reporting and I summarise in my own words, that Apple isn't allowing Nvidia to write drivers that will allow CUDA to work with MacOS Mojave. Thus, preventing any relevant Nvidia GPU working in MacOS. I've got a MacBook Pro 2018 and a GTX 1080 Ti and whilst I only game on Windows, it would be nice to leverage the GPU on MacOS too so I don't have to always switch to Windows via BootCamp. The fact is that eGPU integration works amazingly when it's "allowed" to work on MacOS vs Windows. I hope that LMG makes a video on this at some point to help bring light to the issue and put pressure on Apple to allow the drivers to work on MacOS, if it's Apple's fault at all. We can't assume Nvidia is the righteous one here, they're just as bad as each other.

[mr moose]

There's a thread around here somewhere about it.  If I remember right it died in an unholy derailment of my brand is better than your brand argument.

 

 

 

 

[DrMacintosh]

Nvidia graphics cards have no functional place in macOS. Nvidia won’t let Apple write their own drivers. So no, it’s not Apples fault. Apple has also already rewritten macOS to run entirely on their own Metal API, so Nvidia GPUs will never work while Apple isn’t allowed to make their own drivers. 

 

If Nvidia doesn’t want to play ball, they don’t get multi million dollar contracts. You could argue that the consumer is the one being hurt by this, but really it’s Nvidia. Macs have never been focused on graphics. 

[Stefan Payne]

16 minutes ago, thorpyworpy said:

Just wondering what everyone's thoughts are on Apple allegedly blocking Nvidia drivers from working on MacOS Mojave?

Apple don't want no 3rd Party drivers in their Proprietary OS.

Its their right to choose so if they wanted to.

 

nVidia doesn't support Open Source/3rd Party Drivers at all, they sabotage it even.

So yeah, its understandable.

You remember this?

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=MTEyMTc

 

16 minutes ago, thorpyworpy said:

It's very well discussed online at this point with Nvidia reporting and I summarise in my own words, that Apple isn't allowing Nvidia to write drivers that will allow CUDA to work with MacOS Mojave.

No, its nVidia sitting on a high horse and going to war with Apple, thinking it was a good idea and treating their Customers, wich one was apple at one time, like garbage.

Now Apple has stopped supporting them and allowing to be the dicks that they are.

If you blame one, pls blame nVidia for beeing such "nice people", that treat everyone else like total garbage.

 

16 minutes ago, thorpyworpy said:

Thus, preventing any relevant Nvidia GPU working in MacOS.

yes, and?

Was something that would have happened sooner or later anyway. 

nVidia had long enough time to think about their behaviour and didn't see anything wrong with it, so Apple closed the door for them.

 

That's what happened if someone doesn't apply to the rules set by the OS Developer.

16 minutes ago, thorpyworpy said:

I've got a MacBook Pro 2018 and a GTX 1080 Ti and whilst I only game on Windows, it would be nice to leverage the GPU on MacOS too so I don't have to always switch to Windows via BootCamp.

There is a solution for that:
Sell the 1080ti and get a VEGA64. Its about as good as the 1080ti and it even works with your Macbook.

That the supoort might be closed off at one point is not something unexpected.

Until recently, Apple tolerated nVidia Drivers. Now they don't.

16 minutes ago, thorpyworpy said:

The fact is that eGPU integration works amazingly when it's "allowed" to work on MacOS vs Windows. I hope that LMG makes a video on this at some point to help bring light to the issue and put pressure on Apple to allow the drivers to work on MacOS, if it's Apple's fault at all. We can't assume Nvidia is the righteous one here, they're just as bad as each other.

Why should they do that and why should they care?!
Its not like YOU can't do anything about it, is there?!
You might even be able to get a bit money out of that, if you find someone who would exchange his Sapphire Nitro+ VEGA64 with your 1080ti.

 

But its totally wrong to only point the fingers at apple, when nVidia shipped them Chips with rather high failure rates, doesn't want to reimburse Apple one bit (same as other companys btw) and also don't allow anyone to look at their drivers.

 

That's not unexpected.

Especially since Apple hasn't shipped an nVidia System in many many years.

[Stefan Payne]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Nvidia graphics cards have no functional place in macOS. Nvidia won’t let Apple write their own drivers. So no, it’s not Apples fault. Apple has also already rewritten macOS to run entirely on their own Metal API, so Nvidia GPUs will never work while Apple isn’t allowed to make their own drivers. 

 

If Nvidia doesn’t want to play ball, they don’t get multi million dollar contracts. You could argue that the consumer is the one being hurt by this, but really it’s Nvidia. Macs have never been focused on graphics. 

Exactly!

 

Apple wants to have control over the Drivers.

AMD allows it. Intel probably as well.

nVidia doesn't.

 

Intel and AMD are supported by Apple, nVidia gets locked out, because they don't want to work with Apple on the drivers.

Its total bullshit that Apple is the one to be pressured!

 

The one to be pressured should be nVidia for their lack of Open Source/3rd Party Driver Support!

[Arika]

29 minutes ago, thorpyworpy said:

I hope that LMG makes a video on this at some point to help bring light to the issue and put pressure on Apple to allow the drivers to work on MacOS

how much pull do you think LMG has?....

 

Both companies are to blame in some way. Apple may have the "right" to do it, but it doesn't mean they are 100% innocent in their decision.

[GoldenLag]

7 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

If Nvidia doesn’t want to play ball, they don’t get multi million dollar contracts. You could argue that the consumer is the one being hurt by this, but really it’s Nvidia. Macs have never been focused on graphics.

tbf, noone likes Nvidia due to their  behavior. People like their products

 

3 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Especially since Apple hasn't shipped an nVidia System in many many years.

and AMD is a whole lot more flexible when it comes to demands companies make from them. AMD will make any penny they can, even if it means not shipping a complete package. they are fine with shipping a GPU on its own or a CPU on its own. 

 

AMD likes money, and that makes them easier to work with. 

2 minutes ago, Arika S said:

how much pull do you think LMG has?....

especially in regards to Apple. Maybe if "EverythingApplePro" rallied support with every other Apple youtuber we would have a propper reaction, but LMG is not someone Apple listens to. 

 

8 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

But its totally wrong to only point the fingers at apple, when nVidia shipped them Chips with rather high failure rates, doesn't want to reimburse Apple one bit (same as other companys btw) and also don't allow anyone to look at their drivers.

that is not the only time Nvidia has been reluctant to help in similar situations. Nvidia needs a fundamental change for Apple to work with them. otherwise RTG could in theory be kept alive with Apple cash. 

[lewdicrous]

From where things were going, it was bound to happen.

[GoldenLag]

19 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

Macs have never been focused on graphics. 

tbh you can get away with a good CPU in a Mac. no need for a powerful GPU.

[DrMacintosh]

8 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

tbh you can get away with a good CPU in a Mac. no need for a powerful GPU.

True, but having a dGPU is almost always better than not having one. 

[Blademaster91]

9 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

tbf, noone likes Nvidia due to their  behavior. People like their products

To be fair you could say the same about Apple.

9 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

and AMD is a whole lot more flexible when it comes to demands companies make from them. AMD will make any penny they can, even if it means not shipping a complete package. they are fine with shipping a GPU on its own or a CPU on its own.  

 

AMD likes money, and that makes them easier to work with.

Not just that i'd say AMD is more desperate for the cash than Nvidia is, however Apple wanting complete control over drivers isn't good for the consumer as you don't have a choice if your work needs a dedicated GPU.

9 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

especially in regards to Apple. Maybe if "EverythingApplePro" rallied support with every other Apple youtuber we would have a propper reaction, but LMG is not someone Apple listens to.

Yeah I doubt Apple would want to listen to LMG, Linus is unbiased and actually criticizes Apple products.

10 minutes ago, GoldenLag said:

that is not the only time Nvidia has been reluctant to help in similar situations. Nvidia needs a fundamental change for Apple to work with them. otherwise RTG could in theory be kept alive with Apple cash. 

Except everyone seems to miss the Radeon GPU failures in the 2011-2012 macbooks, Apple was to blame for that one too.

[GoldenLag]

5 minutes ago, Blademaster91 said:

To be fair you could say the same about Apple.

Touché

 

[NelizMastr]

1 hour ago, Arika S said:

how much pull do you think LMG has?....

Exactly, LMG has literally no power at all here.

 

1 hour ago, GoldenLag said:

tbh you can get away with a good CPU in a Mac. no need for a powerful GPU.

My Mac Mini 2018 agrees. Sometimes, I just fire up my gaming PC to play a game through Steam in-home streaming and that works well enough when I play more casual stuff.

 

53 minutes ago, DrMacintosh said:

True, but having a dGPU is almost always better than not having one. 

Except when you have devices that are stupidly thin and have inadequate cooling. The only exception so far is the 27" iMac 2019 which doesn't throttle the i9-9900K. It stays at base clock and high 80s max and handles the Vega 48 like a champ. Everything else is a small furnace at this point.

[Drak3]

5 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Nvidia graphics cards have no functional place in macOS.

That’s ignorant, arrogant, and just wrong.

 

5 hours ago, Stefan Payne said:

Sell the 1080ti and get a VEGA64. Its about as good as the 1080ti and it even works with your Macbook

It’s equivalent to a 1080 for things like gaming. If gaming in the intent, one needs to step up to the Radeon VII to match the 1080Ti.

 

4 hours ago, NelizMastr said:

Except when you have devices that are stupidly thin and have inadequate cooling. The only exception so far is the 27" iMac 2019 which doesn't throttle the i9-9900K. It stays at base clock and high 80s max and handles the Vega 48 like a champ. Everything else is a small furnace at this point.

Mac Mini doesn’t throttle. iMac Pro doesn’t throttle the with the lower end procs.

[NelizMastr]

3 minutes ago, Drak3 said:

Mac Mini doesn’t throttle. iMac Pro doesn’t throttle the with the lower end procs.

Quinn of Snazzy Labs did see throttling on the Core i3 Mac Mini, which may or may not be an outlier. My i5 model seems fine though. And the iMac Pro 8-core doesn't count to be personally now that the i9 iMac 5K exists. Paired with Vega 48 and your own RAM kit, you save quite a wad of cash to achieve almost performance parity. The 5K runs cooler too.

[Sauron]

5 hours ago, DrMacintosh said:

Nvidia graphics cards have no functional place in macOS. Nvidia won’t let Apple write their own drivers. So no, it’s not Apples fault. Apple has also already rewritten macOS to run entirely on their own Metal API, so Nvidia GPUs will never work while Apple isn’t allowed to make their own drivers. 

 

If Nvidia doesn’t want to play ball, they don’t get multi million dollar contracts. You could argue that the consumer is the one being hurt by this, but really it’s Nvidia. Macs have never been focused on graphics. 

Why isn't Apple allowed to write their own drivers? There are open source nvidia drivers for Linux for instance. I'm not aware of any law prohibiting that.

[Drak3]

Just now, NelizMastr said:

Quinn of Snazzy Labs did see throttling on the Core i3 Mac Mini, which may or may not be an outlier.

It is. They keep cool enough to maintain base clock, and the egpu.io forum has a bunch of threads about it.

 

1 minute ago, NelizMastr said:

And the iMac Pro 8-core doesn't count to be personally now that the i9 iMac 5K exists. Paired with Vega 48 and your own RAM kit, you save quite a wad of cash to achieve almost performance parity.

It really depends on what you need. If it’s ram intensive, or you need (“need”) 10GbE or 4 TB 3 ports, the Pro is the better option.

[Stefan Payne]

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

Why isn't Apple allowed to write their own drivers?

Because nVidia doesn't want to.

And why should Apple do that?
Are they paid by nVidia to do that?
Do they sell any nVidia based product??

2 minutes ago, Sauron said:

There are open source nvidia drivers for Linux for instance. I'm not aware of any law prohibiting that.

Yeah, try them. Then you know what we're talking about!

They are utter garbage compared with the Intel and AMD open Source Drivers.
Because the AMD and Intel Drivers are supported by the Manufacturer, the nVidia are not, they are more sabotaged than supported.

[PlayStation 2]

I don't really see it as Apple being controlling of what they want moreso that they want to be able to make their own drivers.

Nvidia didn't want Apple doing that, but Intel and AMD didn't seem to mind much.

There really isn't anything deep to this, it's just that Nvidia prefers to control their drivers.

[Stefan Payne]

Here some (older) Benches for nVidia Open Source vs. Proprietary (wich VIOLATES Kernel Guidelines btw!):

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=nouveau-summer-2018&num=2

 

Well, at least they somewhat seem to work...

 

For Comparisaton, here how it looks on the AMD Side of things:

https://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=article&item=rx590-linux-drivers&num=2

 

Ähm...

Yeah, the Radeon Software for Linux seems rather useless.

Or the only use it has is to get new, unsupported Chips (like Radeon 7) running. Besides that? not much it seems.

[Sauron]

20 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Yeah, try them. Then you know what we're talking about!

They are utter garbage compared with the Intel and AMD open Source Drivers.
Because the AMD and Intel Drivers are supported by the Manufacturer, the nVidia are not, they are more sabotaged than supported.

I get that, but surely Apple of all companies has the means to write a functional driver if they really wanted to... or at least let you use your own, I'm sure the hackintosh community would gladly write one.

[Stefan Payne]

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I get that, but surely Apple of all companies has the means to write a functional driver if they really wanted to...

And what do they get out of it?!

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

or at least let you use your own,

Why should they?!

That's a Security Risk.

 

4 minutes ago, Sauron said:

I'm sure the hackintosh community would gladly write one.

...wich is smaller than the Linux Community and even they aren't able to do it.

[Sauron]

35 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

And what do they get out of it?!

Their users might get something out of it, particularly the ever growing machine learning crowd.

36 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

Why should they?!

That's a Security Risk.

So what? Let adults run their own risks if they want to. It doesn't need to be officially supported behavior.

37 minutes ago, Stefan Payne said:

...which is smaller than the Linux Community and even they aren't able to do it.

If nothing else the Linux driver works. The performance isn't great and it's a bit buggy, but you can use the card. Card specific drivers could also be a bit better, whereas the Linux drivers place general compatibility above performance.

[handymanshandle]

Macs don’t support nvidia and there’s quite a bit of outrage from people who probably wouldn’t even want or need a Mac anyways. But there’s crickets for the fact that consoles only use AMD silicon baring the Nintendo switch. Apple has no obligation to support Nvidia products, Apple wanted something that would allow them to integrate finely into the OS and AMD let’s them.

How dare they /s

[Stefan Payne]

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

Their users might get something out of it, particularly the ever growing machine learning crowd.

And that translates into money how?!
Apple is a business, why the heck should they waste Money for nonsense that 95% of the Users don't care about and only a couple of peole who didn't read up on the Apple nVidia Situation...

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

So what? Let adults run their own risks if they want to. It doesn't need to be officially supported behavior.

You mean all the people that are hardly able to install a driver or a Software but deactivated Windows Update for example??

OR haven't updated their System in Years??

 

Why should they compromize this??

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

If nothing else the Linux driver works.

That is not up to apple Standards(tm) and also not acceptable for commercial software.

But then again, who of the real mac users really cares about that?!

Or are we possibly talking about Hackintosh??

"Illegal" Installations of OSX on PC Hardware??
Because that's how it seems to me.

And if you didn't plan for it, well, tough luck.

 

But maybe that was the real reason behind Apple's Decision??
To get rid of most of the potential Hackintosh Users??

So now, if you want a Hackintosh, you need an AMD GPU. HOW DARE THEY FORCE ME TO BUY AN AMD GPU!!!11

For my Illegal OSX Installation...

2 hours ago, Sauron said:

The performance isn't great and it's a bit buggy, but you can use the card. Card specific drivers could also be a bit better, whereas the Linux drivers place general compatibility above performance.

We are talking about an OS that is more often than not used by people that are not really Hard and Software stuff, they want to use their thing, browse the web, do their stuff and don't care about that.

 

That is not a level that is acceptable for them. Its better to tell them that the thing is not compatible than to let the system crash and burn.