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Firefox Ported to Mac OS X for Intel

Posted by Hemos on from the already-underway dept.

daria42 writes "Mozilla Firefox has been ported to Mac OS X for Intel, with the assistance of Apple who provided some preliminary patches. Mozilla foundation employee Josh Aas write on his blog that while the patches were out of date by the time Apple sent them to him, they were still useful. "The Apple patches were extremely valuable because they did a lot of work for us and at least pointed us right to many of the problem areas instead of us having to figure out what we need to do," he wrote."

4 of 94 comments (clear)

  1. Cynical by spectrum- · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Maybe i'm being cynical but it seems very much in Apple's interests to ensure that a vast quantity of popular software will work on their OS on the Intel platform.

    It says more about basic commerce than support for Open Source software or the Mozilla Foundation etc.

    1. Re:Cynical by Leroy_Brown242 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It says a lot about how far FireFox has come too.

      Not just a niche browser, but big enough Apple itself is lending a hand.

      Congrats, Firefox!

      --
      Pretty Pictures!
    2. Re:Cynical by sgant · · Score: 5, Insightful

      But, you say that like it's a bad thing. I see it as a good thing.

      Companies can't win. People complain all the time about how a company doesn't "support developers or even care about their platform". But when a company does something like this in "lending a hand" people say it's just them wanting more money instead of supporting Open Source etc etc. I mean, you just can't win!

      --

      "Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
  2. Re:Microsoft and Firefox .. by GaryPatterson · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I wonder about these sort of posts.

    The core of OS X is open sourced. You can download it and look through the code, if you like. If you want to know, you can.

    The hardware is hardly anything magical, despite the advertising. It's just about all standard stuff - ATA, DDR RAM, HyperTransport, PCI, PCI Express, USB, FireWire and so on. If you want to know, it's pretty simple to find out.

    But if you want to change these things, you're in the black box world. But that wasn't your complaint, and I don't see many people who care about hacking inside their computer. A few geeks maybe (and I'm one, to some degree) but most people want to sit down, turn it on and use the thing. They don't want to pull it apart, recompile the OS, overclock the CPU or any other arcane process.

    Apple's philosophy would be better put as "We're making it easier for you" rather than "You don't need to know." As we all learned in computer programming, hiding complexity is a *good thing* as it simplifies the processes that build upon it. Apple hide complexity, and don't try to appeal to all people.

    Want a truly free OS? Go Linux.
    Want an OS that covers about 90% of the market? Go Windows.
    Want an OS that looks cool and seems fairly easy to get to grips with? Go Mac OS X.

    Want an OS that is all things to all people? There is no such beast. Apple gives it a shot with Darwin, OS X, Aqua, Java, Unix development and porting, OS X development, a slew of 'big' apps and even some games. But will it appeal to everyone, from Slashdot to grandmothers?

    Never.