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From their blog post about Apple Silicon[1] > In the future, we will release a package that allows you to "merge" your arm64 and x64 apps into a single univers

From their blog post about Apple Silicon[1] > In the future, we will release a package that allows you to "merge" your arm64 and x64 apps into a single universal binary, but it's worth noting that this binary would be huge and probably isn't ideal for shipping to users. It seems like things are going to get a bit confusing with Electron apps, and with the number of Electron apps that exist, this transition might not be as transparent as Apple might have hoped. [1] https://www.electronjs.org/blog/apple-silicon https://www.electronjs.org/blog/apple-silicon

exacube 6y ago
how much of storage on macs is actually used up by code though?
Hamuko 6y ago
>it's worth noting that this binary would be huge and probably isn't ideal for shipping to users Funny, because that's what I've always considered of Electron. I wonder where the breaking point for Electron is?
- yoz-y 6y ago
  Given that a run of the mill game weights north of 50 gigs, I don't think an additional 100 or so megs per app would be noticeable.
  - Hamuko 6y ago
    Weirdly enough I don't actually have that many 50 GB games installed on my Macs. I do have a 300 MB chat application though.
    - Chyzwar 6y ago
      Well, there is not so many games for Mac.
  - croes 6y ago
    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.
    - 411111111111111 6y ago
      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.
      - innagadadavida 6y ago
        > 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.
    - yoz-y 6y ago
      > 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.
      - NullPrefix 6y ago
        >Slack or Discord applications [..] wouldn't exist at all You say it like it's a bad thing.
        yoz-y 6y ago
        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.
eyelidlessness 6y ago
It seems to me that having a dozen redundant copies of the same core libraries isn’t the best design, and doubling that may be the breaking point where they consider separating the runtime from the app. I mean, I’d prefer more native apps but it seems like that ship has sailed for a lot of desktop use cases, but at least it could be made more efficient.
- emteycz 6y ago
  That's what your platform gets when its web engine refuses to be fully compatible with others, especially the major one.
  - olliej 6y ago
    I'm not sure how that applies to electron beyond electron bundling an entire copy of chrome in every app. Electron has plenty of non-web APIs, plenty of non-web permissions, etc. You could do exactly the same thing with webkit's APIs.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      The comment I replied to wasn't about bundling webkit instead, it was dynamic linking of what's available in the system. That's not possible because each web engine behaves differently, even if somebody reimplemented the non-web apis as a portable native library (actually, these ARE implemented like that). We're bundling whole chrome because it's a reliable abstraction that works the same on all systems.
      - olliej 6y ago
        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. Unfortunately JSC’s API isn’t nearly complete enough.
olliej 6y ago
electron apps work on the M1 Macs under rosetta. The problem appears to be purely that electron apps are incredibly bloated and this merely makes that more obvious, and they want to shift blame away from their runtime.

exacube 6y ago

how much of storage on macs is actually used up by code though?

Hamuko 6y ago

>it's worth noting that this binary would be huge and probably isn't ideal for shipping to users Funny, because that's what I've always considered of Electron. I wonder where the breaking point for Electron is?

yoz-y 6y ago
Given that a run of the mill game weights north of 50 gigs, I don't think an additional 100 or so megs per app would be noticeable.
- Hamuko 6y ago
  Weirdly enough I don't actually have that many 50 GB games installed on my Macs. I do have a 300 MB chat application though.
  - Chyzwar 6y ago
    Well, there is not so many games for Mac.
- croes 6y ago
  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.
  - 411111111111111 6y ago
    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.
    - innagadadavida 6y ago
      > 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.
  - yoz-y 6y ago
    > 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.
    - NullPrefix 6y ago
      >Slack or Discord applications [..] wouldn't exist at all You say it like it's a bad thing.
      - yoz-y 6y ago
        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.

eyelidlessness 6y ago

It seems to me that having a dozen redundant copies of the same core libraries isn’t the best design, and doubling that may be the breaking point where they consider separating the runtime from the app. I mean, I’d prefer more native apps but it seems like that ship has sailed for a lot of desktop use cases, but at least it could be made more efficient.

emteycz 6y ago
That's what your platform gets when its web engine refuses to be fully compatible with others, especially the major one.
- olliej 6y ago
  I'm not sure how that applies to electron beyond electron bundling an entire copy of chrome in every app. Electron has plenty of non-web APIs, plenty of non-web permissions, etc. You could do exactly the same thing with webkit's APIs.
  - emteycz 6y ago
    The comment I replied to wasn't about bundling webkit instead, it was dynamic linking of what's available in the system. That's not possible because each web engine behaves differently, even if somebody reimplemented the non-web apis as a portable native library (actually, these ARE implemented like that). We're bundling whole chrome because it's a reliable abstraction that works the same on all systems.
    - olliej 6y ago
      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. Unfortunately JSC’s API isn’t nearly complete enough.

olliej 6y ago

electron apps work on the M1 Macs under rosetta. The problem appears to be purely that electron apps are incredibly bloated and this merely makes that more obvious, and they want to shift blame away from their runtime.