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Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

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Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#211

Post by 3395810 »

sam_goody wrote: post #189
meibo wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The antivirus industry is the biggest player of the modern adware/malware crisis. The dark patterns used in software like AVG and avast, both making every system I see them on so slow that they might as well be unusable, are all focused on getting more installs, be it to force people into getting whatever "premium" subscription or harvesting data(e.g. attaching themselves to every sent email like a virus ). There are…

> There are very few that I could actually recommend, like Malwarebytes Malwarebytes installs a program with elevated privileges that starts on boot and always runs in the background, and regularly sends data home - despite that it is an ON DEMAND scanner. I have written to the company to understand this virus-like behavior, and have gotten no response. Do you have a reason to trust them?

The free version of MBAM is an old-demand scanner but the paid version has "active" protections.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#212

Post by MrBuddyCasino »

kzrdude wrote: post #187
MrBuddyCasino wrote: post #185

> The Apple Silicon chips are one of the first desktop chips that are a heterogeneous design with distinct performance and efficiency cores. We’re revising much of our core threading and thread pooling architecture to handle the distinction better, improve efficiency, and eventually be able to schedule less performance-critical tasks on the efficiency cores. Isn't this at the wrong abstraction level? I would expect t…

the application knows the tasks better than the OS?

The OS already needs to properly schedule tasks of different load intensities and match them to the available cores, which might already be running different processes. An application has strictly less visibility into whats going on overall in the system, what else is using resources etc., so I don't see how it can decide any better? All it needs to do is set the proper priorities, so the OS scheduler knows whats more important.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#213

Post by macintux »

Steltek wrote: post #206
saagarjha wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, it's OS-version specific…

It should be expected that during this transition, everyone will have one x86 app or another. An upgrade breaking nearly 100% of users is a laughed-out-the-door bad user experience.

The point to Rosetta this misses, however, is that for the vast majority of use cases it’s silently re-installed on demand.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#214

Post by vegetablepotpie »

toyg wrote: post #114
jkaptur wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The binary distinction between "cost centers" and "profit centers" has always seemed arbitrary to me (especially since, as an engineer, I've been in both without my work being substantially different). To be frank, it seems like an organizational way to say "we don't find this work to be valuable or interesting, and we'd like to do the bare minimum of it - in fact, we'd like to unleash smart people to explore new fro…

You're missing the lack of creativity and courage in the managerial class. Support can very much be a profit center. Support personnel is relatively cheap; if their services are priced correctly, they can easily become a stream of recurring income - and everybody knows that "recurring income is best income". However, this requires efficiency and creativity at the managerial level. It's easier to see support as a burd…

I feel like this is a double edged sword. Corporations have already embraced this idea of converting cost centers into profit centers and it makes life more difficult for consumers. Every time I call support at my ISP, because my internet is down, they work on my problem and tell me that my plan is slow and that I can upgrade my package for an increase in my bill.

This sets up perverse incentives, that as far as I can tell, are theoretical, but have potential to become more prevalent. Because of the cost center as a profit center idea, my ISP can generate more revenue by providing less value to me. If failing infrastructure causes me to call support more often, and more support calls increase the likelihood of more revenue, why should the ISP invest in better infrastructure?

The key to having a successful business is to carefully align the incentives of specialities in an organization to make the most competitive offerings to the market. If there are competitors, and customers can switch to them, and the competition is more compelling, then I would go to other ISPs.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#215

Post by have_faith »

coldtea wrote: post #107
have_faith wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Still, I (and most I guess) wouldn't use it to watch Netflix over individual apps. If the experience is so much better why are Apple scared to let other browsers into the app store? Phones are general purpose computers for the majority of the world's population, exercising such authoritarian grip over what a user can do with the device is very depressing to see being defended.

> If the experience is so much better why are Apple scared to let other browsers into the app store? Well, the weasel word "scared" kind of begs the question. Who said it's "scared"? Apple spearheaded the modern browser with Safari. Chrome wasn't even a thing then (it forked off of Apple's work on Safari/Webkit later, just like v8 came after Apple's own JSC JIT work). As for Mobile Safari, it took several years for A…

>Apple spearheaded the modern browser with Safari...

>As for Mobile Safari, it took several years for Android browsers to come close...

>suggested to developers they make their own web apps in lack of a native SDK, most dissed those...

>Safari is not exactly some bad browser holding those apps back...

>do you see many people watching Netflix on Android Chrome...

Absolutely none of these points are arguments against having the option to have an alternative browser rendering engine. Not sure why you think they are.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#216

Post by bilkow »

jonny383 wrote: post #186
bilkow wrote: post #167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What rapidly declining market share? Did you even open the wikipedia page you're referring to? There are no graphs over the last few months, and if you look at the sources[0][1][2], it looks like their market share declined BEFORE the layoff (from January to August 2020). After the layoff, it seems pretty stable. As a reference, I'm going to post the values here: Source: Jan 2020 - Aug 2020 - Jan 2021 netmarketshare:…

You have to be joking right? You'd have to be blind to not see the rapid decline in Firefox marketshare. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#...

First, (as I understood) you indicated that the market share decline and the layoffs were somehow related. Given that the graph started in 2009, 1 year after Chrome was first released and only the last datapoint is after the date, I don't think they're related at all. We all know that Chrome captured the IE/Firefox market share in the whole last decade and that's what the graph's showing.

Second, your concept of rapid decline clearly differs from mine. That is an eleven year decline and I don't think it's "rapid" at all for a browser.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#217

Post by zepto »

toyg wrote: post #208
kortilla wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are parts of the business that cannot boost revenue. “Investing” in them doesn’t really make sense beyond nominal amounts because the max return they can provide is eliminating themselves. Unless you’re into fraud, “accounting” and “accounts payable” are examples of cost centers. You don’t hire a bunch of innovative people to boost it because it’s not going to ever increase your revenue. The distinction is made…

> Unless you’re into fraud, “accounting” and “accounts payable” are examples of cost centers. You don’t hire a bunch of innovative people to boost it because it’s not going to ever increase your revenue. You're so, so spectacularly wrong on this, I am honestly gasping for air. Accountants are the only people who know if your company is alive or a walking dead. How do you expect to run a company if you don't know reli…

I generally agree with you about not dismissing the value of accounting.

However this:

“Accountants are the only people who know if your company is alive or a walking dead.“

I disagree with.

A walking dead company is only walking dead until one of its initiatives pays off.

The accountants will only know this after the fact, whereas numerous other functions may know it to varying degrees of confidence before the fact.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#218

Post by coldtea »

have_faith wrote: post #215
coldtea wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If the experience is so much better why are Apple scared to let other browsers into the app store? Well, the weasel word "scared" kind of begs the question. Who said it's "scared"? Apple spearheaded the modern browser with Safari. Chrome wasn't even a thing then (it forked off of Apple's work on Safari/Webkit later, just like v8 came after Apple's own JSC JIT work). As for Mobile Safari, it took several years for A…

>Apple spearheaded the modern browser with Safari... >As for Mobile Safari, it took several years for Android browsers to come close... >suggested to developers they make their own web apps in lack of a native SDK, most dissed those... >Safari is not exactly some bad browser holding those apps back... >do you see many people watching Netflix on Android Chrome... Absolutely none of these points are arguments against h…

>Absolutely none of these points are arguments against having the option to have an alternative browser rendering engine. Not sure why you think they are.

Not sure why you think they were intended to be.

Those weren't "arguments against having the option to have an alternative browser rendering engine".

Those were arguments about "Apple not having an alternative rendering engine" is not about sabotaging some imaginary web app revolution, just about Safari having its own timeline and priorities.

Regarding that, not how there's no such web-over-native-app trend in Android either, where Chrome IS available. Most still prefer native apps.

If you think, you could also think them as "arguments not against, but as to why it's no big deal to not have an alternative browser rendering engine".

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#219

Post by have_faith »

coldtea wrote: post #218
have_faith wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Apple spearheaded the modern browser with Safari... >As for Mobile Safari, it took several years for Android browsers to come close... >suggested to developers they make their own web apps in lack of a native SDK, most dissed those... >Safari is not exactly some bad browser holding those apps back... >do you see many people watching Netflix on Android Chrome... Absolutely none of these points are arguments against h…

> Absolutely none of these points are arguments against having the option to have an alternative browser rendering engine. Not sure why you think they are. Not sure why you think they were intended to be. Those weren't "arguments against having the option to have an alternative browser rendering engine". Those were arguments about "Apple not having an alternative rendering engine" is not about sabotaging some imagina…

I don't think this conversation is going anywhere to be honest. Maybe I misinterpreted your point.

My central point was I see no reason for Apple to disallow altnernative browsers (not just shells around webkit) other than to gatekeep. Your points about safari being better or users not using a PWA for netflix don't seem to relate to this I don't think. I think Apple is only concerned about staying in control with regards to what users can install on their devices. I don't think they want other browsers to be genuine alternatives to iOS safari so they've essentially neutered the competition.

I also think you flippantly dismissed that a very large portion of the world is mobile first (not just the third world anymore) and this to me makes having the choice even more important.

Re: Porting Firefox to Apple Silicon

#220

Post by hutattedonmyarm »

chris_wot wrote: post #202

As they linked to the LibreOffice bug that we hit,[1] it might be worthwhile explaining how the cross platform architecture works in LibreOffice. The widgeting/graphics library is actually run by something called VCL (the Visual Component Library). It's a bit of a mess to be honest, but the simplified version is that there is a class called OutputDevice that the rest of the app uses, which basically acts as a fascade…

> and no, none of know why it was named "Aqua"... our codebase is old.

The macOS UI is called Aqua, and has been for quite a while!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aqua_(user_interface)

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