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Firefox beta supports Apple silicon natively

bugzilla.mozilla.org

61–70 of 122 posts

Re: Firefox beta supports Apple silicon natively

#61
post #24

incase you are wondering how native chrome support going (which is released today): https://twitter.com/oguzbilgic/status/1328805861834117120

FYI: this build was pulled and fixed one will go live tomorrow. In the meantime one can use Intel version through Rosetta or manually give Bluetooth permission to native Chrome ( https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/83557143 ).

Why does Chrome need Bluetooth? Gross...

Re: Firefox beta supports Apple silicon natively

#62
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you tried Safari 14? I recently upgraded and they’ve finally fixed the address bar race conditions and swipe back/forward lag which drove me away in previous versions.

14 corrects most of 13’s sins but the extensions are still shit. No add blocker comes close to UBO, no Reddit Enhancement Suite, no BetterTTV. I’m honestly surprised TamperMonkey works but that’s one of a set of full-fat extensions I need.

Working on a native macOS Webkit-based browser with UBO and other extensions supported out of the box. Email me for alpha version if interested.

Re: Firefox beta supports Apple silicon natively

#63
post #8

What does this mean? M1 isn't an ARM64? Is it saying there's extra opcodes and this takes advantage of them?

It means they recompiled Firefox for macOS/ARM64.

Correct. Just installed it on my Intel Mac running Big Sur (had to put it in my home directory; I already had non-beta Firefox in /Applications):

    file ~/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin   

    ~/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin: Mach-O universal binary with 2 architectures: [x86_64:Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64] [arm64:Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64]

    ~/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin (for architecture x86_64): Mach-O 64-bit executable x86_64

    ~/Applications/Firefox.app/Contents/MacOS/firefox-bin (for architecture arm64): Mach-O 64-bit executable arm64

Re: Firefox beta supports Apple silicon natively

#65
post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, Firefox also has the eff extensions and UBO

safari and ublock feel better

There was something with UBlock or Adblock Plus in the past and if it wasn't UBO I wasn't sure if they were trust worthy. I think one went rogue and one started selling the ability to unblock ads. But, with Safari 14 being able to transform chrome extensions, I hope that some of the popular ones and EFF ones can migrate.

I ended up migrating to Better as it uses Apple's API for this(I think it's a list of things to block), is OSS, and Apple seemed to be helping them with a change of ownership publicly and that lended some trust.

Re: Firefox beta supports Apple silicon natively

#66
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It looks like you lose about 30% performance to Rosetta. That's quite a lot, and makes it slower than current x86-64 processors, e.g. Ryzen 5000 series, or even the Ryzen 3000 series. But compared to x86-64 Macs it's not that much slower, because the x86-64 Macs are using old slower Intel CPUs.

But compared to x86-64 Macs it's not that much slower, because the x86-64 Macs are using old slower Intel CPUs. Depends on the app but some of them run faster in Rosetta than they do on comparable PC hardware. Everyone keeps comparing a SoC designed for low-end (in the Apple lineup/ecosystem) to the Ryzen. As the AnandTech review noted, the M1 bests even the Ryzen on some benchmarks and Ryzen beats it in others. The…

> The point everyone conveniently seems to miss is a new SoC for mobile devices running at 10-20 watts shouldn't be in the same universe when it comes to performance with any Ryzen desktop processor—but here we are.

10-20 watts is how much desktop processors use for a single thread, so they're not claiming an unfair advantage there. It would be truly impressive if the M1 at that power level was competitive with desktop processors on multi-threaded workloads where they actually use their full TDP, but it isn't even close.

> The 16-inch MacBook Pro ($2,799.00) comes with a 2.3GHz 8‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.8GHz and for an additional $200, you can get it with a 2.4GHz 8‑core 9th‑generation Intel Core i9 processor, Turbo Boost up to 5.0GHz.

Which are old slower Intel CPUs. Intel's latest is 10th-generation and even those are slower than Ryzen, much less the older 9th-generation ones. And even those older Intel mobile CPUs defeat the M1 on multi-threaded workloads like Cinebench.

Core i9-9880H scores 8311 compared to 7833 for the M1 (native):

https://www.cpu-monkey.com/en/cpu-intel_core_i9_9880h-958

https://www.anandtech.com/show/16252/mac-mini-apple-m1-teste...

Re: Firefox beta supports Apple silicon natively

#67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI: this build was pulled and fixed one will go live tomorrow. In the meantime one can use Intel version through Rosetta or manually give Bluetooth permission to native Chrome ( https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/83557143 ).

Why does Chrome need Bluetooth? Gross...

For Google Cast most likely. Local discovery of Cast recipients. Casting to your TV etc is a popular feature

Re: Firefox beta supports Apple silicon natively

#68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

FYI: this build was pulled and fixed one will go live tomorrow. In the meantime one can use Intel version through Rosetta or manually give Bluetooth permission to native Chrome ( https://support.google.com/chrome/thread/83557143 ).

Why does Chrome need Bluetooth? Gross...

For web bluetooth, I presume. https://googlechrome.github.io/samples/web-bluetooth/

Re: Firefox beta supports Apple silicon natively

#69

What's the difference between this version of Firefox and the version of Firefox that can be installed on an iPad? I have been running Firefox on Apple silicon for some time I thought.

Unless I'm mistaken, the rendering engine on iOS would only be WebKit, and whatever else safari provides. No alternative aloud. So it's ui/features on top of, essentially, Safari not real Firefox.

Allowed

Re: Firefox beta supports Apple silicon natively

#70
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the exact opposite experience, FWIW.

Same. Safari is by far the smoothest experience for me today.

Safari is worst for drag-and-drop, for certain amount of DOM nodes, it becomes undragable.
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