Show HN: VectorStyler for Mac Public Beta (opens in new tab)

This is great, I think that vector tools need much more competition. I have used most of them through the years, obviously, Illustrator has been the main package for most of it, though recently I have switched more to Affinity Designer, Inkscape and Krita, which has basic vector tools these days. Though I have to say I'm a bit disappointed that VectorStyler is Mac exclusive which rules it out for me sadly. I have nothing against proprietary and paid software, but I do try to at least get one that is multi-platform since I use Windows and Linux.

But I have a lot of co-workers who use Mac and as a fellow Finn I'm absolutely going to ping them to this.

Big fan of vector graphics. I convert every person to inkscape I can. This is Mac exclusive so I won't be able to use it, but what I'm seeing looks really nice. Great work.

You are right with the OpenCL vs Metal thing. OpenCL is supported in VectorStyler (see Preferences - Performance section). But running on a Mac (for now), requires Metal, as Apple deprecated OpenCL. OpenCL is still there, but performance on Macs is way better with Metal (this might be intentional from Apple).

OpenCL also had some Mac driver issues with some 2014 NVidia iMacs, which actually caused problems. So for now I have Metal support, and OpenCL is still there but not as good as Metal on Macs.

As for CUDA, most iMacs are with AMD at this time, and Metal still serves good both NVidia and AMD on Macs of course. Of course Metal is far from perfect, but as a small dev, Apple kind of puts you into a corner with that one.

Thinking outside of Macs (Windows and Linux), I would like OpenCL to be the choice, as it is already implemented in VectorStyler, but as I said, I don't know how much extra steps would require from the user (installing drivers, etc). CUDA is a great choice, outside of Macs, and it might be part of a Windows port.