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Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon

electronjs.org

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Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon

#211

Post by the_lucifer »

mixmastamyk wrote: post #122
nxc18 wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 ye…

The difference in execution is palpable, like comparing an A student to a C-/D+ slacker. I suspect MS exec politics is the problem however, not their engineers.

I’d argue that it’s an culture problem. A complete architectural transition is fundamentally at odds with what MS stands for wrt a very long term backwards compatibility. This means that their ARM -> X86 translation should not just match Rosetta but actually exceed it by a large margin to maintain their compatibility.

Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon

#212

Post by innagadadavida »

411111111111111 wrote: post #163
croes wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's a difference if I have a 50GB game with high res textures or a simple app with 100MB which as a native app would only need less than 1MB. Web technologies are more and more about developer convenience instead of user convenience.

Feel free not to use them then. It's usually more along the lines of product owners preferring features over speed though Especially if the product owner is the developer itself, as features are way more fun to produce then fighting through some native docs which sometimes don't even work anymore.

> It's usually more along the lines of product owners preferring features over speed though

It’s also about being a able to ship a v1 product quickly and capture market share quickly. You can optimize speed and memory in future releases. Definitely not the best for the users.

Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon

#213

Post by gfody »

alwillis wrote: post #207
gfody wrote: post #183

Earlier quoted context omitted.

bootcamp is explicitly not supported on m1 macs - VMs and hypervisors are beside the point. [1] https://discussions.apple.com/thread/252021896

Turns out Microsoft could have Windows running on M1 Macs if it wanted to: "Craig Federighi: Native Windows on M1 Macs is 'Really up to Microsoft'": https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/20/craig-federighi-on-wind...

Interesting. I was under the impression that M1 Macs had the OS completely locked down: http://www.rahulgaitonde.org/blog/2020/11/13/apple-m1-and-th...

Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon

#214

Post by gabereiser »

WorldMaker wrote: post #197
gabereiser wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Side hustle is spot on. They didn’t fully commit because they were afraid to cannibalize x86 market support. Unlike Microsoft, Apple made the chip. Microsoft only worked with 3rd parties and nobody would touch Intel/AMD. Well, until now...

It wasn't a side hustle when Microsoft was deep in trying to keep Windows Phone alive.

Yeah it was. They never fully committed the marketing resources and strategy to win in the mobile market. The iPhone simply destroyed them, then android handsets.

Microsoft’s balance sheet made little mention of windows phone or anything mobile/Zune/handheld. It was all enterprise sales, windows licensing, Xbox and entertainment division, services and M&A.

Contrast that with the commitment Apple made to the iPhone.

Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon

#215

Post by Can_Not »

anoncake wrote: post #210
sime2009 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I’m completely fine with having less software, if that means having better software. But it doesn't work like that. Why would you suddenly have "better" software?

The need for software doesn't go away, but bad programmers cannot fill it anymore. So the software is made by competent programmers instead.

I wouldn't say bad programmers, there's literally nobody offering me a job in rust/crystal/swift but electron and JS SPA jobs are countless.

Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon

#216

Post by anoncake »

Can_Not wrote: post #215
anoncake wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The need for software doesn't go away, but bad programmers cannot fill it anymore. So the software is made by competent programmers instead.

I wouldn't say bad programmers, there's literally nobody offering me a job in rust/crystal/swift but electron and JS SPA jobs are countless.

There are good programmers working with Electron, they're just in the minority.

Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon

#217

Post by olliej »

emteycz wrote: post #203
olliej wrote: post #201

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your complaint was about WebKit’s “refusal” to implement standards, where standards generally is whatever chrome announces and then throws onto the web with little to no thought about how the impacts users or user privacy. As a framework, webkit has a stable abi as well which means electron apps would just work with updated system webkit, rather than needing to be rebuilt. Similar for JavaScriptCore vs V8. Unfortunat…

Sure, and then you run your app and find out that the app displays differently in each engine, so not only you need portable system lib, now you also need portable UI code. That's what we avoid with bundling the web engine.

Yes, what you also get is terrible battery life, terrible performance, and terrible UI. It is immediately obvious any time you use an electron app on osx because you immediately hit non-standard UI behavior, and basic errors with hotkeys.

So by using electron you've made your life easier, but have produce an app that is much worse for the people actually using it.

Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon

#218

Post by faxfax »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #43
maxpert wrote: post #31

I am really curious why the response to Apple Silicon is so prompt vs when Microsoft did WinRT or ARM versions nobody really cared. What is the difference? Was there some problem in compilation tool-chain or what?

> Microsoft did WinRT or ARM versions nobody really cared. What is the difference? Commitment. Confidence. Customers. Apple has committed to Apple Silicon. Flagship products are switching. It isn’t an add-on or side project. That breeds confidence that Apple will stick with it. That confidence and Apple’s track record make it likely there will be demand for software on Apple Silicon. This is compounded by Apple’s cus…

All of the reasons you said are correct, but I want to point out that Windows on ARM is also a bad technical product. The Qualcomm SoCs in devices like the Surface Pro X are more efficient than Intel chips, but they are much slower for everyday tasks even on native ARM-compiled code. Emulated x86 code is even worse, as the slow cores are further held back by Microsoft's emulator implementation. Users may like better battery life, but they also despise waiting for their computer.

Apple Silicon does not make any of these tradeoffs. ARM code screams on the M1, and even emulated x86 code runs with comparable performance to the Intel Macbooks. Battery life is better across every workload. To the user, selecting the M1 over the Intel chip is a no-brainer (except for some edge cases like 32GB+ of RAM, where Apple has largely left the older products in place). This is the same playbook that made the PPC -> x86 transition successful as well.

Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon

#219

Post by yoz-y »

anoncake wrote: post #209
yoz-y wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Web technologies are more and more about developer convenience instead of user convenience. Clearly. But I wonder: If electron didn't exist, would e.g.: Slack or Discord applications be native or wouldn't exist at all. I'm quite convinced that the latter is true.

Chat applications existed long before Electron.

That wasn't my point, just examples. Chat apps did exist but Slack, Discord, VS Code, Obsidian, GitKraken and so on and so forth did not. Personally I prefer a native app. But I'd rather have an electron app with real notifications, dock icon, and isolation over a browser tab.

Re: Electron 11.0 released with support for Apple Silicon

#220

Post by yoz-y »

NullPrefix wrote: post #184
yoz-y wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Web technologies are more and more about developer convenience instead of user convenience. Clearly. But I wonder: If electron didn't exist, would e.g.: Slack or Discord applications be native or wouldn't exist at all. I'm quite convinced that the latter is true.

>Slack or Discord applications [..] wouldn't exist at all You say it like it's a bad thing.

Nobody is forced to use them, if you like having the chat in a browser fine, more power to you. People who prefer clients can install those, also good.

I'd also like to live in an alternative universe where all companies can pay more developers to develop native applications for all platforms, unfortunately that is not the case.

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