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After I read this I immediately installed Firefox for the first time in 15 years. I used to use it exclusively then moved to Chrome and others when the app was

After I read this I immediately installed Firefox for the first time in 15 years. I used to use it exclusively then moved to Chrome and others when the app was getting bloated long time ago. I thought, after reading this, now is the time to switch! I installed it and even on a 1-year-old Macbook Pro, holy cow it's acting like I'm doing machine learning training -- the computer fan goes into overdrive with every little thing I do in this browser! This is on a raw install with no browser extensions other than this FB container mentioned in the article (which comes with the installation). It appears this is a many-months-long known issue about the new Firefox. Disappointing. Back to Chrome....

labster 8y ago
Did you try changing your screen resolution? Firefox apparently has issues with certain resolutions on MacBook Pro.
- hellofunk 8y ago
  No I didn't try that, nor would I. If I have to change how I use my computer for all apps just so I can use one app, then I shouldn't use that one app.
  - lewiseason 8y ago
    Reasonable. Come back in a year I guess, see if it's better. Firefox on Linux is night and day from the last time I used it
piqalq 8y ago
Odd. I’ve used Firefox exclusively for the past 4 years and am a tab hoarder (150+) and my laptop is as quiet as the night with Firefox using very little memory when compared to Chrome
- hellofunk 8y ago
  Appears to be a common problem with FF on MBP: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7g6k9n/firefox_quantum_is_eating_your_cpu_help_us_debug/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7g6k9n/firefox_qua...
mickael-kerjean 8y ago
on Chromium and Chrome there's a nice feature to block third party cookies. For obvious reason, it's not enabled by default but it's there and doesn't affect the performances. At the end of the day whatever we do, a browser is still a browser, beeing safe from trackers would mean: 1. trick the browser fingerprinting techniques to generate different crap on every run 2. lobby browser vendors (including Firefox) not to reveal information about your laptop (cpu, screen resolution, ...). I'm trying to find a legit use case to know about how many core you have available when js can only use 1 or information on your screen when the only thing that matter is already inside the window object. 3. dynamically update your user agent (if you purelly get rid of it, services like google map won't work) 4. hiding your ip behind a VPN/proxy or rotating your ip and probably a lot of other things I have no idea about. I don't want to be the devil lawyer but as for now, Firefox isn't doing a good job at what they claim doing. Just proposing a tinny thing they haven't done: ask for user permission when a website try to access hardware related information
- reitanqild 8y ago
  > on Chromium and Chrome there's a nice feature to block third party cookies. For obvious reason, it's not enabled by default but it's there and doesn't affect the performances. In my Firefox I have an option in Preferences : Accept third-party cookies and site data: Always/From visited/Never Is this the one you are talking about in Chrome? Because in that case it very much exists in Firefox as well.
sametmax 8y ago
This is a problem that happens only on mac. Firefox on linux and windows is very fast and quiet. But it's a total pain on mac.
bhhaskin 8y ago
Strange, I run Firefox developer edition on a 2015 dual core MBP and have no issues what so ever. I think it is more responsive than chrome and uses less memory.
- hellofunk 8y ago
  Appears to be a common problem with FF on MBP: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7g6k9n/firefox_quantum_is_eating_your_cpu_help_us_debug/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7g6k9n/firefox_qua... I guess you got lucky.
- konart 8y ago
  > I think it is more responsive than chrome and uses less memory. You can compare them with numbers. Open something like youtube vid, or twitch stream, for example, whatch your cpu
themodelplumber 8y ago
I tried Google Maps in FFX on Linux the other day and it was horrendously slow. Bummer :-(
- littlestymaar 8y ago
  Idk if it's still the case, but Google used to have a user agent detection to make Firefox way slower. If you spoof a Google Chrome User-Agent, Google maps became way faster. I don't know if it's still the case. Officially it was because of compatibility problems but I've never faced problem when spoofing Chrome UA on Google Maps so Idk what to think about this excuse.
  - CorpusCalcium 8y ago
    Sadly, in general this is a case of "we made a Chrome-specific site/app years ago because it was the easiest thing to do, and despite other browsers and some of our employees working hard since then to standardize the Chrome-specific bullshit, it doesn't benefit us enough to bother fixing anything on our end. So we'll just keep maintaining our subpar now-redundant versions for non-Chrome browsers instead." But luckily this attitude might be poised to change, because the employees at Google who still care about these things have been pushing hard, and it's now threatening to become a PR issue that Google is needlessly serving inferior versions of big apps to other browsers. When other browsers are a UA spoof away from showing that you're artificially screwing with them on your base Search engine, it becomes harder to push those browsers to adopt the web standards you're trying to push to make YouTube "better".
- cpeterso 8y ago
  You might check whether you have GPU acceleration enabled in Firefox. I think it is disabled by default on Linux because of buggy GPU drivers. https://askubuntu.com/questions/491750/force-enable-hardware-acceleration-in-firefox#540382 https://askubuntu.com/questions/491750/force-enable-hardware...
zebrafish 8y ago
I've used FF every day for the last year or so on my MBP since they started making all of the usability improvements. Works as good as if not better than Chrome with tons of add-ons installed. uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc. Switched my default search engine to DDG. Really nice to see these companies like Apple, Firefox, and DDG care about their consumers.
- konart 8y ago
  >Works as good as if not better than Chrome with tons of add-ons installed Still fails to play twitch streams or youtube without eating the hell out of your CPU and embeded youtube videos still lag in many cases (when you hover over the player's control panel for example). Nothing critical, but those things are still there and in their bug reports.

labster 8y ago

Did you try changing your screen resolution? Firefox apparently has issues with certain resolutions on MacBook Pro.

hellofunk 8y ago
No I didn't try that, nor would I. If I have to change how I use my computer for all apps just so I can use one app, then I shouldn't use that one app.
- lewiseason 8y ago
  Reasonable. Come back in a year I guess, see if it's better. Firefox on Linux is night and day from the last time I used it

piqalq 8y ago

Odd. I’ve used Firefox exclusively for the past 4 years and am a tab hoarder (150+) and my laptop is as quiet as the night with Firefox using very little memory when compared to Chrome

hellofunk 8y ago
Appears to be a common problem with FF on MBP: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7g6k9n/firefox_quantum_is_eating_your_cpu_help_us_debug/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7g6k9n/firefox_qua...

mickael-kerjean 8y ago

on Chromium and Chrome there's a nice feature to block third party cookies. For obvious reason, it's not enabled by default but it's there and doesn't affect the performances. At the end of the day whatever we do, a browser is still a browser, beeing safe from trackers would mean: 1. trick the browser fingerprinting techniques to generate different crap on every run 2. lobby browser vendors (including Firefox) not to reveal information about your laptop (cpu, screen resolution, ...). I'm trying to find a legit use case to know about how many core you have available when js can only use 1 or information on your screen when the only thing that matter is already inside the window object. 3. dynamically update your user agent (if you purelly get rid of it, services like google map won't work) 4. hiding your ip behind a VPN/proxy or rotating your ip and probably a lot of other things I have no idea about. I don't want to be the devil lawyer but as for now, Firefox isn't doing a good job at what they claim doing. Just proposing a tinny thing they haven't done: ask for user permission when a website try to access hardware related information

reitanqild 8y ago
> on Chromium and Chrome there's a nice feature to block third party cookies. For obvious reason, it's not enabled by default but it's there and doesn't affect the performances. In my Firefox I have an option in Preferences : Accept third-party cookies and site data: Always/From visited/Never Is this the one you are talking about in Chrome? Because in that case it very much exists in Firefox as well.

sametmax 8y ago

This is a problem that happens only on mac. Firefox on linux and windows is very fast and quiet. But it's a total pain on mac.

bhhaskin 8y ago

Strange, I run Firefox developer edition on a 2015 dual core MBP and have no issues what so ever. I think it is more responsive than chrome and uses less memory.

hellofunk 8y ago
Appears to be a common problem with FF on MBP: https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7g6k9n/firefox_quantum_is_eating_your_cpu_help_us_debug/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/7g6k9n/firefox_qua... I guess you got lucky.
konart 8y ago
> I think it is more responsive than chrome and uses less memory. You can compare them with numbers. Open something like youtube vid, or twitch stream, for example, whatch your cpu

themodelplumber 8y ago

I tried Google Maps in FFX on Linux the other day and it was horrendously slow. Bummer :-(

littlestymaar 8y ago
Idk if it's still the case, but Google used to have a user agent detection to make Firefox way slower. If you spoof a Google Chrome User-Agent, Google maps became way faster. I don't know if it's still the case. Officially it was because of compatibility problems but I've never faced problem when spoofing Chrome UA on Google Maps so Idk what to think about this excuse.
- CorpusCalcium 8y ago
  Sadly, in general this is a case of "we made a Chrome-specific site/app years ago because it was the easiest thing to do, and despite other browsers and some of our employees working hard since then to standardize the Chrome-specific bullshit, it doesn't benefit us enough to bother fixing anything on our end. So we'll just keep maintaining our subpar now-redundant versions for non-Chrome browsers instead." But luckily this attitude might be poised to change, because the employees at Google who still care about these things have been pushing hard, and it's now threatening to become a PR issue that Google is needlessly serving inferior versions of big apps to other browsers. When other browsers are a UA spoof away from showing that you're artificially screwing with them on your base Search engine, it becomes harder to push those browsers to adopt the web standards you're trying to push to make YouTube "better".
cpeterso 8y ago
You might check whether you have GPU acceleration enabled in Firefox. I think it is disabled by default on Linux because of buggy GPU drivers. https://askubuntu.com/questions/491750/force-enable-hardware-acceleration-in-firefox#540382 https://askubuntu.com/questions/491750/force-enable-hardware...

zebrafish 8y ago

I've used FF every day for the last year or so on my MBP since they started making all of the usability improvements. Works as good as if not better than Chrome with tons of add-ons installed. uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, etc. Switched my default search engine to DDG. Really nice to see these companies like Apple, Firefox, and DDG care about their consumers.

konart 8y ago
>Works as good as if not better than Chrome with tons of add-ons installed Still fails to play twitch streams or youtube without eating the hell out of your CPU and embeded youtube videos still lag in many cases (when you hover over the player's control panel for example). Nothing critical, but those things are still there and in their bug reports.