3 ms·

Interesting that Firefox made it onto the list; one would have assumed it would have been easier to produce a patch for an open source application than to maint

Interesting that Firefox made it onto the list; one would have assumed it would have been easier to produce a patch for an open source application than to maintain a compatibility fix in your own code.

saagarjha 8y ago
Well, who would write the patch? Someone at Apple?
- adrianN 8y ago
  Yes? Or some regular contributor to Firefox that gets guidance from an Apple engineer?
  - saagarjha 8y ago
    > gets guidance from an Apple engineer You do realize that the chances of this happening is next to nil, right? This is doubly true for prerelease software.
    - threeseed 8y ago
      This happens all of the time. Very common for Apple to reach out to the popular apps. And if you aren't popular you can just goto WWDC where hundreds of engineers will quite happily talk through issues and give guidance on prerelease software.
      - saagarjha 8y ago
        > Very common for Apple to reach out to the popular apps You have to be really popular for this to happen, or be the only adopter of a technology they're trying to push. Basically, the question you have to ask yourself is "could Apple showcase us at a keynote?" Of course, such arrangements have massive NDAs around them. > if you aren't popular you can just goto WWDC where hundreds of engineers will quite happily talk through issues and give guidance on prerelease software Yes, but they aren't going to tell you what's wrong with your software…you'll need to go up to them at tell them "so and so doesn't work" and then they'll help you. I think it's unlikely that they'd just outright tell you that they made a special case for your software and you should get around to fixing it.
        scrollaway 8y ago
        This is Firefox we're talking about, so yes it's popular. And this does happen far more than you're claiming. I'm not sure why you're still trying to push your angle honestly.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        Outside of the extremely rare occasions that I mentioned above, I've never seen or heard this happen. If you have some stories to share, I'm all ears!
        tinus_hn 8y ago
        Note the term NDA.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        That's my point: Apple reaching out to third-party applications is a rare and secretive occurrence, almost always bound by NDAs. If it wasn't, we'd see more of it (which was basically the evidence I was asking for).
        tinus_hn 8y ago
        You don’t know if it’s rare because it’s secretive. Apple doesn’t communicate things that don’t help them. Making the public know they add hacks to make sure their own and third parties’ software doesn’t break doesn’t help them so they don’t talk about it. The perception they want for the public is that the software, both their own and third party software on their platform, doesn’t break.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        If this was a common occurrence, I'm sure this would be better known, NDA or not. For example, it's well known that Apple occasionally adds API to iOS exclusively to serve the needs of certain larger companies.
oculusthrift 8y ago
still doesn’t fix old releases in the wild
hsivonen 8y ago
For a long time, but not anymore, Firefox Nightly called a function called TriggerQuirks() as the first thing in main() on Mac. The function faked the bundle id as a release build bundle id in order to get the Firefox-specific Mac OpenGL behavior for nightly builds, too.

saagarjha 8y ago

Well, who would write the patch? Someone at Apple?

adrianN 8y ago
Yes? Or some regular contributor to Firefox that gets guidance from an Apple engineer?
- saagarjha 8y ago
  > gets guidance from an Apple engineer You do realize that the chances of this happening is next to nil, right? This is doubly true for prerelease software.
  - threeseed 8y ago
    This happens all of the time. Very common for Apple to reach out to the popular apps. And if you aren't popular you can just goto WWDC where hundreds of engineers will quite happily talk through issues and give guidance on prerelease software.
    - saagarjha 8y ago
      > Very common for Apple to reach out to the popular apps You have to be really popular for this to happen, or be the only adopter of a technology they're trying to push. Basically, the question you have to ask yourself is "could Apple showcase us at a keynote?" Of course, such arrangements have massive NDAs around them. > if you aren't popular you can just goto WWDC where hundreds of engineers will quite happily talk through issues and give guidance on prerelease software Yes, but they aren't going to tell you what's wrong with your software…you'll need to go up to them at tell them "so and so doesn't work" and then they'll help you. I think it's unlikely that they'd just outright tell you that they made a special case for your software and you should get around to fixing it.
      - scrollaway 8y ago
        This is Firefox we're talking about, so yes it's popular. And this does happen far more than you're claiming. I'm not sure why you're still trying to push your angle honestly.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        Outside of the extremely rare occasions that I mentioned above, I've never seen or heard this happen. If you have some stories to share, I'm all ears!
        tinus_hn 8y ago
        Note the term NDA.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        That's my point: Apple reaching out to third-party applications is a rare and secretive occurrence, almost always bound by NDAs. If it wasn't, we'd see more of it (which was basically the evidence I was asking for).
        tinus_hn 8y ago
        You don’t know if it’s rare because it’s secretive. Apple doesn’t communicate things that don’t help them. Making the public know they add hacks to make sure their own and third parties’ software doesn’t break doesn’t help them so they don’t talk about it. The perception they want for the public is that the software, both their own and third party software on their platform, doesn’t break.
        saagarjha 8y ago
        If this was a common occurrence, I'm sure this would be better known, NDA or not. For example, it's well known that Apple occasionally adds API to iOS exclusively to serve the needs of certain larger companies.

oculusthrift 8y ago

still doesn’t fix old releases in the wild

hsivonen 8y ago

For a long time, but not anymore, Firefox Nightly called a function called TriggerQuirks() as the first thing in main() on Mac. The function faked the bundle id as a release build bundle id in order to get the Firefox-specific Mac OpenGL behavior for nightly builds, too.