Standards, and Apple’s relationship to them, are funny things. Whereas Safari is something of a leader vis-a-vis the unfinished HTML5 spec and the just published 802.11ac wi-fi in the 2013 MacBook Air is fairly cutting edge, Apple is perennial follower when it comes to most system-level standards — OpenGL being a case in point.

Finally, OS X is finally adopting OpenGL 4.1 and OpenCL 1.2. That’s great.

However, the Khronos Group has just announced the release of the OpenGL 4.4 (improved portability, etc) and provisional OpenCL 2.0 (enhanced execution model, etc).

Good news for the rest of us? Assuming past as prologue, probably not, at least not for some months if not years.

Get the Bigger Picture on the OS X 10.9 Facebook Page

First of all, Khronos just published the standards and, though people in labs (somewhere out there) have implemented OpenGL 4.4 and Open 2.0, it’s going to take time for mainline hardware and software vendors to bake the updates into their products.

Also, as noted in the lede, Apple’s a laggard vis-a-vis adopting system-level standards. For example, OS X 10.8.4 uses OpenGL 3.2, which came out in 2009.

So, hurray for standards, and waiting…

What’s your take?

Related posts:
— State of the Mac 2013: OS X Share by Version and What It Means
— Can My Mac Run OS X 10.9 Mavericks
— What’s New in OS X 10.9 Mavericks
— OpenCL Mac Compatible Graphic Cards, Apps and More
— New in OS X 10.9: OpenGL 4.1, OpenCL 1.2