Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon • Hacker News Board

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#91

Post by OnlyMortal » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 9:51 PM UTC

zerkten wrote: post #36

OnlyMortal wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple did this when transitioning from CodeWarrior to the GNU chain. Apple had to apply patches to the C++ compiler for the company I was at.

This is surprisingly common for large companies. It often isn't formalized because no one wants to dedicate engineers to going onsite with customers. Often the expert is too valuable to give up, or is a poor choice for customer engagement. If you have a consulting team, they may lack the experience needed, or reputation, that the customer wants. As soon as you send the expert onsite, you will have a challenge not sen…

It was Agfa in Antwerp. Their guy was very polite but I had to explain to him what was going wrong. I think he was more tech support than anything else.

Edit: Apple also had to change the linker for the sake of Macromedia’s monolithic applications. Another story though.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#92

Post by dilly_li » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 9:59 PM UTC

Toutouxc wrote: post #88

> It’s notable that without this last-ditch effort we would have been effectively blocked from releasing a native Apple Silicon version for an indefinite period. Effectively blocked from releasing it for the single-digit-percentage of people who run an antivirus on a Mac. Does anyone have credible numbers on this?

i.e. all the folks who are using a macbook from work -- I don't think that's a small fraction.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#93

Post by terhechte » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 10:02 PM UTC

Toutouxc wrote: post #88

> It’s notable that without this last-ditch effort we would have been effectively blocked from releasing a native Apple Silicon version for an indefinite period. Effectively blocked from releasing it for the single-digit-percentage of people who run an antivirus on a Mac. Does anyone have credible numbers on this?

The IT department at the place where I work installs antivirus on all Macs. I’d guess it is the same at most bigger corporations

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#94

Post by lern_too_spel » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 10:07 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #45

skrowl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On iOS there are no web browsers other than Safari, per the app store rules. "Chrome" / "Firefox" / etc on iOS are just basically skins on top of Webkit. See 2.5.6 here - https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ This is why you don't get any of the features / extensions / etc of Chrome or Firefox on iOS. Apple does this so that the mobile web can never replace apps that they have a monopoly on and get…

> Apple does this so that the mobile web can never replace apps that they have a monopoly on and get a % from Or you know, because they disallow dynamic code execution of arbitrary downloaded code in apps, and JIT JS compilers do just that. > If you could just visit netflix.com and have it install a Netflix SPA that worked as well as the native app, why would you ever install the native app? It's like asking "why wou…

> Or you know, because they disallow dynamic code execution of arbitrary downloaded code in apps, and JIT JS compilers do just that.

No, they explicitly disallow other implementations, whether they JIT or not. Since Apple's WebKit is missing so many features, this has the effect that GP noted.

"2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript."

https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#95

Post by glandium » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 10:08 PM UTC

r00fus wrote: post #84

glandium wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's even worse. It's uninstalled when upgrading macOS.

What does this mean, for dot releases? There's only been one release with Rosetta2 enabled.

M1 Macbooks were shipped with 11.0, they're now on 11.1. Upgrading from one to the other removed Rosetta2 on mine (as well as Command Line Tools).

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#96

Post by lern_too_spel » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 10:13 PM UTC

dhritzkiv wrote: post #49

skrowl wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

On iOS there are no web browsers other than Safari, per the app store rules. "Chrome" / "Firefox" / etc on iOS are just basically skins on top of Webkit. See 2.5.6 here - https://developer.apple.com/app-store/review/guidelines/ This is why you don't get any of the features / extensions / etc of Chrome or Firefox on iOS. Apple does this so that the mobile web can never replace apps that they have a monopoly on and get…

Is there anything stopping Netflix from working in Safari on iOS? and then being installed as a bookmark to the Home Screen? I believe it's Netflix that prefers that users use the app.

Off the top of my head, mobile Safari can't handle push notifications for new content or downloading videos to watch later. I'm sure there are other problems with it as well.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#97

Post by r00fus » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 10:18 PM UTC

glandium wrote: post #95

r00fus wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What does this mean, for dot releases? There's only been one release with Rosetta2 enabled.

M1 Macbooks were shipped with 11.0, they're now on 11.1. Upgrading from one to the other removed Rosetta2 on mine (as well as Command Line Tools).

It'll be interesting to see if this is a trend or 11.1 was a one-off.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#98

Post by jarjoura » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 10:20 PM UTC

e40 wrote: post #79

loufe wrote: post #2

We talk often on this forum of how innaccessible giants like Google and Amazon are for the little guy. I thus found this point particularly interesting: >"Attempts to contact the vendor through regular support channels were unsuccessful so we ended up searching LinkedIn and managed to find an engineer working on the core antivirus detection. They immediately understood the seriousness of the problem and took prompt a…

This really bugs me about Apple. We had the DTK (pre-release hardware for the M1). We got into trouble with an upgrade from beta2 to beta10 and the machine was bricked. Everywhere we turned, we were told to use the developer forums. We did. There were no responses there and I didn't see anyone but customer helping customers. So, since we're an Apple developer, we decided we would use one of our DTS (developer technic…

beta 10 also bricked my DTK unit as well. Total paper weight

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#99

Post by tyingq » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 10:22 PM UTC

loufe wrote: post #2

We talk often on this forum of how innaccessible giants like Google and Amazon are for the little guy. I thus found this point particularly interesting: >"Attempts to contact the vendor through regular support channels were unsuccessful so we ended up searching LinkedIn and managed to find an engineer working on the core antivirus detection. They immediately understood the seriousness of the problem and took prompt a…

Oh wow. So in this case, a foundation with roughly half a billion in revenue per year is still somewhat of a little guy, at least for the standard process. I'm curious which antivirus vendor it was. Mozilla did eject a few extensions written by antivirus vendors in 2019, probably for good reasons.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#100

Post by TwoBit » Wed, Jan 20, 2021, 10:24 PM UTC

loufe wrote: post #2

We talk often on this forum of how innaccessible giants like Google and Amazon are for the little guy. I thus found this point particularly interesting: >"Attempts to contact the vendor through regular support channels were unsuccessful so we ended up searching LinkedIn and managed to find an engineer working on the core antivirus detection. They immediately understood the seriousness of the problem and took prompt a…

AV vendors and software are cancer.