What M1 giveth, Electron taketh away. Sigh.
Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon
21–30 of 224 posts
Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon
#22i don't recall such support when msft was launching arm based laptops. does anyone have insight to why this is so? is it a case of apple developer relations doing an outstanding job engaging with the community?
> apple developer relations
Is there such a thing?
Honest question, not snark - I've never heard of them doing any. Where/who?
Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon
#23i don't recall such support when msft was launching arm based laptops. does anyone have insight to why this is so? is it a case of apple developer relations doing an outstanding job engaging with the community?
[deleted]
Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon
#24Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's mostly due to the fact that unlike Microsoft, Apple is doing a complete migration to ARM. The developers have to migrate to ARM because they cannot just tell users to buy x86 macs like they could do for windows
This sounds correct to my knowledge, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a substantive difference between the Microsoft and Apple ARM transitions that’s not obvious to me.
Microsoft has a tradition of backwards compatibility. It's entirely likely that ten years from now, you'll still be able to run x86 apps on your arm windows laptop. This is unlikely to be true for MacOSX - ten years ago, Macs ran PowerPC, and support for that got dropped within 2 years.
Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon
#25I hope the new M1 Macs stay cool to the touch when running electron apps still. They should now that this runs natively.
Why would Electron run anymore or less natively with this change?
Rosetta 2 is Apple's latest iteration of their Rosetta technology, which allows you to run x64 Intel applications on their new arm64 Apple Silicon hardware. Although we believe that x64 Electron apps will run under Rosetta 2, there are some important things to note (and reasons why you should ship a native arm64 binary).
* Your app's performance will be significantly degraded. Electron / V8 uses JIT compilation for JavaScript, and due to how Rosetta works, you will effectively be running JIT twice (once in V8 and once in Rosetta).
* You lose the benefit of new technology in Apple Silicon, such as the increased memory page size.
* Did we mention that the performance will be significantly degraded?
https://www.electronjs.org/blog/apple-silicon#what-about-ros...
Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon
#26i don't recall such support when msft was launching arm based laptops. does anyone have insight to why this is so? is it a case of apple developer relations doing an outstanding job engaging with the community?
It's mostly due to the fact that unlike Microsoft, Apple is doing a complete migration to ARM. The developers have to migrate to ARM because they cannot just tell users to buy x86 macs like they could do for windows
but the M1 can run x86 apps via rosseta 2.
Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon
#27Mostly I would just want Electron to disappear overnight.
Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon
#28i don't recall such support when msft was launching arm based laptops. does anyone have insight to why this is so? is it a case of apple developer relations doing an outstanding job engaging with the community?
Nobody wanted Arm-based Windows devices. The early RT devices had terrible performance and failed to compete in any meaningful way, had terrible compatibility and no (?) emulation, and since the products were mostly terrible, Microsoft never supported them well, nor pushed for a developer transition, and consequently they got abandoned quickly. The few newer devices out there, like the Surface Pro X, still don't perform competitively, cost way too much for what they are, often aren't straightforward, standard laptops, have emulation issues, and have Intel alternatives.
For a transition like this, you need good products, you need good emulation, and you double-plus-emphasis need to commit. Windows cannot do that.
Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon
#29i don't recall such support when msft was launching arm based laptops. does anyone have insight to why this is so? is it a case of apple developer relations doing an outstanding job engaging with the community?
The ARM machines launched by MS were (1) lacking in power and (2) tied to the Windows Store as a distribution mechanism. Issue 1 is not affected M1 machine, in fact they’re blowing current machine, which is in itself a reason for adopting.
On issue 2, well the Windows App store has never been an attractive platform. MS tried multiple times to shove it down users throat, which build some antagonism. Moreover, it’s actually MS’ second iteration on this principle (Arm+forced store usage), where the first one failed spectacularly (Windows RT tablets). So, it’s crazy to expect a different results when the same parameters (store locking) are used again, and no sane company or individual would bet on this.
Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's mostly due to the fact that unlike Microsoft, Apple is doing a complete migration to ARM. The developers have to migrate to ARM because they cannot just tell users to buy x86 macs like they could do for windows
This sounds correct to my knowledge, but I can’t help but wonder if there’s a substantive difference between the Microsoft and Apple ARM transitions that’s not obvious to me.
Microsoft's offering on ARM is underwhelming to say the least. Or overwhelmingly bad, depending on your perspective.
The hardware on offer currently is just as expensive as the x86 alternatives, has worse performance (unlike M1, which has excellent performance), and only offers marginal battery life benefits.
Microsoft is also not particularly committed to ARM or willing to competently execute that transition. For years they were trying to hobble their offerings (Windows RT, then later Windows 10S). In their first introduction of ARM, they didn't have optimized compilers, so performance was even worse than it should have been (Surface RT was a real disappointment).
Microsoft has also been jerking its development community around for the last 15 years in ways that make targeting Windows unpleasant. Half of Microsoft is trying to tell everyone that UWP is the future, the other half won't even bother supporting it. You might be surprised which half is bigger. The Windows group has spent a lot of time at war with the developer tools group, and it shows.
Basically it all sums up to: Apple is a serious trustworthy partner, Microsoft is not. Apple's ARM offering is actually better in several ways than the x86 alternative; Microsoft's ARM offerings offer noticeably less value. M1 is genuinely exciting, Windows on ARM is not.