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Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

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Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#151

Post by ddingus »

noizejoy wrote: post #148
ddingus wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Precisely. And the fact is, enterprises seeing to make every support transaction a positive ROI are, in fact and in deed, penny wise and pound foolish. They will see an opportunity cost due to missed sales opportunity. They will see greater load due to people using an inferior process and poorly empowered people, repeatedly. They will see a diminished overall market perception. Their products will provide less value…

I generally agree with your arguments when the customers are medium to large businesses - and I assume that’s where your experience is. In the consumer and small business space the dynamics are very different.

Been there. They aren't. Some of the mechanics vary, but good service does not.

Right now, I am in the small business space and rock solid support is how we are killing it.

Been there, very large, small, medium, consumer, b2b...

Don't tell me it can't or should not be done when billions land in accounts free and clear.

It can. Should.

I spend with those who get that first and foremost.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#153

Post by noizejoy »

ddingus wrote: post #151
noizejoy wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree with your arguments when the customers are medium to large businesses - and I assume that’s where your experience is. In the consumer and small business space the dynamics are very different.

Been there. They aren't. Some of the mechanics vary, but good service does not. Right now, I am in the small business space and rock solid support is how we are killing it. Been there, very large, small, medium, consumer, b2b... Don't tell me it can't or should not be done when billions land in accounts free and clear. It can. Should. I spend with those who get that first and foremost.

Maybe you should quit your current career arc and help companies change their attitude and thus unearth extra billions in profits?

And I don’t mean that cynically - since if it’s as easy and guaranteed profitable as you say, why wouldn’t you be able to convince numerous CEOs to unearth all of those extra billions?

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#154

Post by dpkonofa »

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…

I'm not sure I follow. Why would an anti-virus product accidentally flagging their Universal Binary block them from releasing a native Apple Silicon version? Of all the Macs in use, I'd have to imagine that only a small percentage are using that specific anti-virus software much less any anti-virus software at all. It might cause them some headaches with specific people who are using that software but why extend that all the way to blocking the release indefinitely?

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#155

Post by dpkonofa »

terhechte wrote: post #93
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

Doesn't that assume that all these IT departments and corporations are using the anti-virus software in question? I feel like most AV software vendors were aware of the ARM transition and would know to look for the new Universal Binaries...

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#156

Post by jonny383 »

I wonder if Mozilla regrets laying off 25% of their engineering team [0] given their rapidly declining browser market share [1], and their rapidly declining performance. Not to mention their forced adoption of the new Firefox on Android which disables all add-ons except Mozilla approved ones, despite their promises to correct this [2].

Mozilla _used_ to be about open internet and security, but that's just a false pretense at this point [3][4].

I believe it's time to embrace Chromium / Blink, throw away the idea of internet freedom and just use the best performing browser of the week.

[0] https://thenextweb.com/insights/2020/08/11/mozilla-firefox-l...

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

[2] https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/09/03/firefox-update-face...

[3] https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d...

[4] https://www.theverge.com/2017/12/16/16784628/mozilla-mr-robo...

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#157

Post by gigatexal »

lambada wrote: post #101
gigatexal wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not like Mozilla is a nobody software outfit. For this to be what they had to do go get someone's attention at Apple is terrible.

It wasn't Apple they were trying to contact, it was a random anti-virus vendor who were flagging all new Universal Binaries as malware.

Doh! My bad

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#158

Post by filleduchaos »

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #77
coldtea wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

I can't speak to the mobile/desktop distinction, but comparing "watching Netflix in Firefox on my desktop" with "watching Netflix on my LG WebOS TV", there's barely any difference. If anything, the browser version wins because of the superior input devices (kbd, mouse) attached to it compared with the TV. This suggests to me that there would be little difference when comparing mobile/desktop or app/browser, other tha…

> watching Netflix on my LG WebOS TV

No offence but what do you think applications for Web OS are written with?

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#159

Post by GekkePrutser »

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…

Even working for a big multinational with a big tailored support contact, support from our major IT services vendor is abysmal. It's not just the little guys that have trouble.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#160

Post by InfiniteRand »

zerkten wrote: post #33
duxup wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was a back channel route to engineering at a company I worked for a while. A few of the engineers trusted me and a couple select customers / sales guys knew they could come to me to run a bug by me 'in theory' and if we had enough information I could unofficially run it by engineering without going through the song and dance of the typical support channels. I could get a quick ya or nay form them on some things and…

This exists in almost every company by design. Engineering teams wouldn't make any progress towards their mission if they are constantly dealing with outside interruptions, but at the same time there are things which should be qualified. Customer support is a cost center and the focus is on mitigating the cost of providing that support. If you fail to do this you can burn through a lot of cash quickly. What managemen…

In my company, there is a blurriness between support and technical sales, and while that can be a little chaotic, one benefit of that approach is support is looked at as a profit center to a degree. This is because the support people keep an eye out on upselling, maintaining subscriptions, and promoting consulting work. We're not obnoxious about it, but there's some awareness that part of the role of support is to promote the long-term growth of the customer relationship and sales.

I think if there was a stricter division between support and technical sales, there would be more of a temptation to focus on burning through support requests as quickly as possible. The flip side of this is that it is easy for us to get bogged down in a complex half-support half-sales opportunity situation and that can sometimes cause other support requests to fall through the cracks.

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