Time to ditch OpenGL in favor of Metal/DX12

I know that when I researched how SU renders (on newer versions), Renderdoc (the software I use) tells me that it can’t access Sketchup because it’s using compatibility features.

That must be related.




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Fair point, but I have a question. This looks at the biggest possible picture of the total market shares of the operating system. What I would like to know is what percentage of SketchUp Pro users are windows either Mac. I mean, could there be some kind of Pareto principle happening, where MacOS they may be only about 10% of the total operating system market, but they make up half or even the majority of sketchup users? That’s probably just something Trimble could answer.

Speaking purely for myself, when I look around Youtube or these forums, I tend to see a pretty even mix of Mac and personal computer users

Same thing happens to me. I’m not an OpenGL expert, but I’m wondering if “compatibility” has to do with a lowest common denominator of the minimum version it will work with, vs. the latest version it will work with. Interesting, but in the end it doesn’t tell us mortals much!

From my experience dealing with UK and IRE SketchUp clients, it depends on the industry itself and the size of the company using it.

For example, an interior design studio with 10 users is much more likely to use Windows than a freelancer.

It’s even more pronounced in Architecture, where Revit is as ubiquitous as SketchUp, but Revit isn’t available for Mac.



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I’m sure Trimble can see the ratio based on license activations, but I highly doubt they’ll share it with the public. And I agree that the global market share of units sold (based on unknown reliability or bias source) is not equal to a fraction of SketchUp licenses.



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That’s why I asked. I have an unfounded gut feeling that SketchUp Mac’s market share is larger than the share of mainstream Mac computers.



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In the days when SketchUp (classic) licenses were tied to the operating system, the licenses sold by the Dutch distributor were almost 25% Mac.
When that changed in version 2015, it was harder to keep track of.
When I went back to Mac at the time version 8 was current, they forgot to deactivate the Windows version, so I still have an active version 8 Windows license, while the Mac version was upgraded to the latest. recent…
My reseller at the time tried to stop me from switching, but after using three laptops in a span of 2 1/2 years, I decided to go back to a less time consuming operating system.

25% is pretty hefty for something with only a 10% market share (for a single region). Overall, it seems the waters have turned a bit murky, with no shortage of us dual-wielding. Mac and microsnot to mention the browser-based version of the app (which I was running on a lousy chromebook with only 4GB of RAM) as well as the new iPad app that is only going to grow in terms of users. In any case, if Trimble are willing to invest in a browser and tablet app, optimizing it for Metal It should only be a matter of time.

I switched from Windows 10 years ago because I used 3 laptops in less than two years two of them were high end laptops but for some reason I don’t know after a few months of use the machine became extremely slow and I bought the most expensive antivirus software, and tried to disconnect from the Internet when possible. I spent a lot of money, I was hesitant about Mac, many people say they are too expensive and slower than Windows laptops, anyway, I was frustrated with Windows and bought a 2013 MacBook Pro 13″, I didn’t want to invest more money on a 15” with discrete graphics, because I wasn’t sure that switching OS was a good decision, but I don’t regret the purchase I made, I realized that MacOS is a much better and optimized operating system, I installed all the softwares i use hoping the performance will not be as bad as they told me i was so wrong the performance was much better than windows i used that machine for 8 years and the performance was the same as the first day that machine gave me saved a lot of money i dont even have to install an antivirus i got a fully updated macbook m1 max in 2021 and the performance is amazing the battery easily lasts two days before i need to charge it the p The screen is lovely it’s almost the perfect machine I say almost because it lacks GPU power compared to Nvidia in the past it wasn’t a problem for me but in recent years I’ve been working more on Archviz recently I got a pc from high end desktop, an i7 13700K, Nvidia 4070ti and 64 gigs of ram, and the performance is about the same on the cpu, the gpu is much more powerful, so I use my Mac for modeling, documentation, budget calculations, etc. . and the pc only for rendering. I wouldn’t go back to exclusively Windows unless something big changes and the performance between the two platforms is huge.



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James D. Brown
James D. Brown
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