Metal API - Higher graphics performance on iPhone and iPad

November 11, 2014

Apple has made the Metal API available to developers. This allows your applications to make better use of the hardware. Until now, Open GL was responsible for graphics on the iPhone and iPad. This mediated so that the game could use the system's resources.

Now developers have the Metal API at their disposal. This does the same job as Open GL, but much more efficiently. So the game can make better use of system resources. The Metal API reduces the time needed to manage the Hardware from the game, thus bringing the game closer to the Hardware(hence the name Metal).

The Metal API is only available on iOS 8 or later and for the following devices:

iPhone 5s or newer
iPad mini 2 or newer
iPad Air or newer

There are a few apps available on the App Store that use the Metal API. We tested Epic Zen Garden which is specifically designed to demonstrate the capabilities of the Metal API.