Today I released a beta version of my app that uses Metal, to a handful of testers; the very first response I got is from a customer who couldn’t use the product. After some to-ing and fro-ing, it turns out that while the customer can run macOS 10.11 (which supports Metal); his machine doesn’t actually support Metal.
I’ve done some Googling and found that Metal may only support machines made in the last 6 years. While targeting macOS 10.11, supports machines upto 11 years old.
As OpenGL and Metal are not directly interchangeable, this adds a lot of complication if I want to use both. Targeting Mojave only (so that all customers are using some Metal compatible device) limits the potential customer to just 40% of the market. Supporting both Metal and OpenGL (and targeting MacOS 10.11) opens that up to 90% of the Mac market.
I couldn’t find any stats that show the average age of Macs accessing the internet.
So before you do what I did and rip out that OpenGL in favor of Metal (thinking it was widely adopted), you may want to consider what I know now.