Metal isn't new, it's older than Vulkan, and by some metrics I would consider it better.

For one, the learning curve is much smoother: you can get something up on screen quickly, but only later discover the advanced features like argument buffers, manual hazard tracking, etc.

We are talking 4 years old (3 for desktop) years old vs 2 years old, you're kidding yourself if you think either is established by virtue of being old vs new. That comparison was only fair with OpenGl.

Sure! I'm just pointing out that your earlier statement was off the mark, and it posed Metal as "something new that could be better than Vulkan".

The fact that Vulkan is a C API and requires searching for extensions even for a plain 3D Hello World, makes Metal a better option on the Mac.

Erm, not really. I have implemented a reasonably serious PBR renderer in Vulkan on Mac on top of MoltenVK, and the C API is not at all an obstacle. Swift/C interop is fairly straightforward, and Objective C is a superset of C so that is a total non-issue.

The ability to easily integrate the wealth of C libraries directly into your high-level code (as opposed to, say, the verbosity of implementing a JNI) is one of the strengths of Swift.

Why are you using graphics engines in your IT stack?

I guess because I am not using a VT 100 terminal, rather a desktop computer using a GPU to provide a nice modern user experience.

The biggest theme on Linux Security Summit 2018 was taming security exploits on Linux kernel due to C's lack of security.

I count at least 10 talks about this subject.

https://www.youtube.com/user/TheLinuxFoundation/videos

So apparently the review process, approvals and current static validation is still not enough.