3 ms·

If they want to gain market-share they should prioritize Macs, since most web developers these days prefer them. The more developers who use Firefox, the more i

by _bxg1 8y ago

If they want to gain market-share they should prioritize Macs, since most web developers these days prefer them. The more developers who use Firefox, the more it'll get tested with, the better support it'll have.

kace91 8y ago
Is there any way to provide incentives to devs to prioritize mac development? Like a bug bounty of sorts? I'd happily contribute to a patreon or something if it meant increasing the chances of having a usable version of firefox on my mac at some point.
- petercooper 8y ago
  To think that Mozilla can have revenue of $500M+ per year, yet a Patreon might be needed to make their browser faster :-)
  - kace91 8y ago
    The problem in osx is not that it's slow, but the ridiculous amount of cpu (and therefore battery) it consumes. For the people who suffer the bugs ( which seems to be a majority of users that have a retina display, and specifically those who use it set on high resolution) just opening firefox will quickly lead to the macbook's fans spinning at full throttle and battery drain. There are issues opened and development supposedly in progress, but it's been like that for months if not years. At this point I would take whatever could speed up the process...
    - xfitm3 8y ago
      If Firefox is chewing through all your CPU from the moment it opens you need to reset your profile. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles#w_removing-a-profile https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... I don't think Firefox can fix all the bugs at the same pace Chromium can.
      - kace91 8y ago
        I've uninstalled and installed Firefox several times during the years, in different machines even (MacBooks between 2013 and current models). Same feeling from most developers working at my workplace (~1000 devs in the building, not one using FF on a Mac ). For some reason every time I talk about these bugs on the internet people treat it as a weird edge case I'm going through, but talking IRL with people about Firefox everyone seems to know how unusable it is in a Mac - not only in my circle of acquaintances.
        mnoorenberghe 8y ago
        Reinstalling Firefox on a Mac is not the same as doing a Firefox Refresh. The former only touches the executable while the latter cleans up cruft in your Firefox data (potentially lingering around from legacy extensions).
        kace91 8y ago
        I understand that, but I assume both of those are still "shallower" ways of resetting than actually switching computers, which I've done several times (for unrelated reasons ofc) and I've seen no improvement...
rebelwebmaster 8y ago
My understanding from reading the bug reports is that the general cause of macOS performance issues is understood, but to do anything about it with the current architecture would require pulling developers off WebRender development instead. Instead, work is being done to make things better there for when that's ready to ship on Mac.
int_19h 8y ago
Is that true outside of US?
- _bxg1 8y ago
  I'm not sure. But the benefit it provides is a Linux-ish environment that you don't have to tinker with constantly to keep it running, which is a potent combination. And web devs don't care about fine-grained hardware control/compatibility.

by _bxg1 8y ago

kace91 8y ago

Is there any way to provide incentives to devs to prioritize mac development? Like a bug bounty of sorts? I'd happily contribute to a patreon or something if it meant increasing the chances of having a usable version of firefox on my mac at some point.

petercooper 8y ago
To think that Mozilla can have revenue of $500M+ per year, yet a Patreon might be needed to make their browser faster :-)
- kace91 8y ago
  The problem in osx is not that it's slow, but the ridiculous amount of cpu (and therefore battery) it consumes. For the people who suffer the bugs ( which seems to be a majority of users that have a retina display, and specifically those who use it set on high resolution) just opening firefox will quickly lead to the macbook's fans spinning at full throttle and battery drain. There are issues opened and development supposedly in progress, but it's been like that for months if not years. At this point I would take whatever could speed up the process...
  - xfitm3 8y ago
    If Firefox is chewing through all your CPU from the moment it opens you need to reset your profile. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-and-remove-firefox-profiles#w_removing-a-profile https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-manager-create-... I don't think Firefox can fix all the bugs at the same pace Chromium can.
    - kace91 8y ago
      I've uninstalled and installed Firefox several times during the years, in different machines even (MacBooks between 2013 and current models). Same feeling from most developers working at my workplace (~1000 devs in the building, not one using FF on a Mac ). For some reason every time I talk about these bugs on the internet people treat it as a weird edge case I'm going through, but talking IRL with people about Firefox everyone seems to know how unusable it is in a Mac - not only in my circle of acquaintances.
      - mnoorenberghe 8y ago
        Reinstalling Firefox on a Mac is not the same as doing a Firefox Refresh. The former only touches the executable while the latter cleans up cruft in your Firefox data (potentially lingering around from legacy extensions).
        kace91 8y ago
        I understand that, but I assume both of those are still "shallower" ways of resetting than actually switching computers, which I've done several times (for unrelated reasons ofc) and I've seen no improvement...

rebelwebmaster 8y ago

My understanding from reading the bug reports is that the general cause of macOS performance issues is understood, but to do anything about it with the current architecture would require pulling developers off WebRender development instead. Instead, work is being done to make things better there for when that's ready to ship on Mac.

int_19h 8y ago

Is that true outside of US?

_bxg1 8y ago
I'm not sure. But the benefit it provides is a Linux-ish environment that you don't have to tinker with constantly to keep it running, which is a potent combination. And web devs don't care about fine-grained hardware control/compatibility.