Firefox Ported to Mac OS X for Intel

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 Mozilla foundation employee Josh Aas write on his blog that while the patches were out of date by the time Apple sent them to him, they were still useful.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."

Comments

Cynical

[spectrum-]

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.

Re:Cynical

[Leroy_Brown242]

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!

Re:Cynical

[sgant]

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!

Re:Cynical

[cowscows]

Double interesting because Apple also makes their own browser. Safari is free as well, but still, FireFox is a direct competitor to one of Apple's own applications. Yet Apple still sees the value in helping them out.

Re:Cynical

[reallocate]

Of course, it is about commerce. No reason to be cynical. It is not immoral to work in your own best interest.

Re:Cynical

[1110110001]

I guess it's because Safari is not that important. It's just a webbrowser. The important part is webkit. It can be used for more than just a browser. I.e. Dashboard or Editors or even the history of AdiumX.

And many webdevelopers have a Mac. With Firefox and Opera you've to important cross platform browser. They know how important choice is and they know every Mac user uses webkit - the don't have to use Safari.

b4n

Re:Cynical

[bursch-X]

It was in Panther, but when I did a clean install with Tiger it was gone.

This is a Good Thing(TM), IE Mac was neat at the time (it was much more standard compliant than its Windows counterpart), but now it has grown dusty and is causing too much trouble with CSS and it's too much hassle to support anyway.

Re:Cynical

[NaugaHunter]

Double interesting because Apple also makes their own browser. Safari is free as well, but still, FireFox is a direct competitor to one of Apple's own applications. Yet Apple still sees the value in helping them out.

But, they know that Firefox is a cross-platform browser with growing support that is helping to pressure sites into being standards-compliant beyond just loading in Exploder. Since Mac I.E. hasn't been updated since OS X Beta, this is a Good Thing for all Mac users. Realistically speaking, new OS X users are going to use Safari whether there are two or two thousand other browsers, and will only need the others if sites don't work with the default browser.

If you want to be cynical, you could just say that they used Firefox because it is open source, so whomever they were demonstrating the porting to could see the before and after without seeing proprietary code, and they only sent their notes back to avoid another 'Apple uses Open Source and doesn't give back' debacle.

Re:Cynical

[PygmySurfer]

...ensure that there will native software for Mactel.

English is easier said than done.

Indeed...

Re:Cynical

[bjohnson]

No it won't. Microsoft dropped all IE development for the Mac when Safari came out.

Re:Cynical

[mr100percent]

That's not entirely true, they patched it through Puma, and EOLed it around Jaguar time I think, whenever Safari was released.

Big News:

[AkaXakA]

A large, but cross-platform program with lean (mostly) platform independant code has been ported to Yet Another Platform(tm)!

Anyway, cudos to Apple for pointing Josh into the right direction.

Re:Big News:

[MoonFog]

Well, this news is somewhat special since the creator of the proprietary operating system (who also make a competing browser (yesyes, I know they use OSS there as well)) contributed to the development process.

c'mon, submitters...!

[Anonymous Coward]

Could we please stop linking to worthless ZDNet already?

Here's the original weblog post. Much more informative. And you don't need to worry about slashdotting it either, Mozillazine is quite used to us by now, what with an average of hitting the slashdot frontpage about once a week.

Some background on Josh, btw, while I'm waiting for my timeout to be able to post again to expire: he was hired by the Mozilla Foundation specifically to work on making Firefox better for the Mac.

Dammit, how long do I have to wait to post as AC three times in a row??? 17 minutes already. Geeze... It's easier to karma-whore than to just try and post some useful things.

Firefox on Intel-Based Unix for quite some time

[hubertf]

After Firefox runs on Intel-based BSD-systems (NetBSD, ...) for quite a while, I wonder what the big obstacles were that prevented FF from working. Or was this GUI-only?

- Hubert

Re:Firefox on Intel-Based Unix for quite some time

[squiggleslash]

Mac OS X may have some BSD roots, but it resembles a BSD as much as GNU/Linux does. No, it resembles BSD less than GNU/Linux, at least for desktop apps. Desktop apps are bundled within a set of directories called a .app, the root of which is entirely relocatable, and the whole of which contains binaries for each platform (I assume, I'm guessing "Universal Binaries" are done the same way as they were for NEXTSTEP), metadata, resources, etc.

Reading between the lines, I think the issue is actually that Firefox.app isn't, apparently, compiled within Apple's Xcode framework, instead being built using the same Makefiles etc as a Unix app. This means the build scripts and Makefiles would have needed to be adapted to cross-compile for the additional platform, presumably automatically (ie both platforms, OS X/PPC and OS X/ix86, would have had to be compiled for at once.) Josh says that an Intel Fink was essential to getting the project going, which is why I'm assuming this is the case.

That kind of modification isn't trivial. It's not a matter of just grepping for any gcc line with -mpowerpc (or whatever)

Re:Firefox on Intel-Based Unix for quite some time

[minus_273]

Hmm. I am looking at the verbose text boot screen for OSX and it clearly says BSD and has the regents for University or Califronia text displayed .

Re:Firefox on Intel-Based Unix for quite some time

[byolinux]

Beneath the appealing, easy-to-use interface of Mac OS X is a rock-solid, UNIX-based foundation called Darwin that is engineered for stability, reliability, and performance. Darwin integrates a number of technologies, most importantly Mach 3.0, operating-system services based on FreeBSD 5, high-performance networking facilities, and support for multiple, integrated file systems. Because the design of Darwin is highly modular, you can dynamically add such things as device drivers, networking extensions, and new file systems.

Re:Firefox on Intel-Based Unix for quite some time

[Uncle Asad]

Most of what was posted/discussed publicly in Bugzilla and Bonsaiseemed to be some endian issues in old Mac-specific code (that evolved from the Classic-era codebase) and updating the build system to use the latest version of Xcode. Whether there were more issues not discussed publicly, I don't know.

in a nutshell

[byolinux]

Mac OS X != BSD.

Yes, it has bits of BSD under the hood, but it's not just another BSD.

Microsoft and Firefox ..

[Gopal.V]

Even Microsoft wants FireFox to run well on Longhorn . Is it any surprise that everyone wants their latest hyped product to run FireFox ?.

This is like the age old - does it play ogg yet ? check in that feature check list. Apple is really more interested in supporting what feeds the Apple is Cool vibe.

Behind all the cool design and fancy colors, Apple is still an opaque black box. Their essential motto could be termed as you don't need to know - which is very attractive to the layman user , but abhorrent to a true computer engineer.

Re:Microsoft and Firefox ..

[GaryPatterson]

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.

Re:Microsoft and Firefox ..

[mattkime]

um, actually apple has released the darwin code - its fully open source - they didn't steal, they gave back

http://developer.apple.com/darwin/

Re:Microsoft and Firefox ..

[Anonymous Coward]

The Apple open firmware is fully documented, as is the language it can execute (forth). Just do a google search. You'll even find games that you can execute and play from the OF. Try that with a IBM (clone) BIOS chip :P.

"do you have any idea how Aqua draws translucent windows or how their window manager works ?."

Why do you want to know, you can include all these effects in your app with XCode or whatever you use instead of having to write your own. Sure, it is closed source so you can't copy the code, is that your problem? And it isn't like you're limited to these effects.
It's not like "you don't want to know", no, it's "you don't need to know to do the same or more as on other platforms" which is very comfortable for users, pros and devs.

Sure, some hardware is closed, won't be easy to write drivers for another OS on that (e.g. Airport Extreme). If people still try while knowing that and then complain that isn't fair, well, then they're just idiot. Their choice, they shouldn't complain. That's way off topic though.

FireFox for MacIntel, nice. I think it will take long before I can try that one though, I'm not thinking of replacing my G4 for the coming 4 years, it's just 3 years old and still runs everything I want it to run. Hopefully they'll keep the PPC version up to date until I make the switch, they dropped OS 9 way too soon.

Re:Microsoft and Firefox ..

[moof1138]

>Depends on what you call "core". Darwin is BSD. Apple didn't open-source it - they took opensource code and used it.

Not exactly. NextStep was based on BSD, but it was based on the Mach kernel, and they diverged from the BSDs in many significant ways as the OS moved forward from NextStep through OpenStep to Mac OS X Server 1.x. With OS X as they opened Darwin they did a lot of merging with Free/Open/NetBSD after that to get up to speed with current libraries and make things more standardized. But when they Open Sourced Darwin it was very much it's own OS unlike any other in many respects and (for better and for worse) and chock-full of proprietary bits (unique kernel interfaces, device drivers, filesystem drivers, et al.)

>Tell me - do you have any idea how Aqua draws translucent windows or how their window manager works ?

Actually Apple does cover a lot of info about how the window manager works, how it composites shadowing, how the back buffering works, etc. to the degree that a developer writing code that uses the WM would need to know to write an app correctly, and the Apple devs on the mailing lists have been pretty good about helping out in the less well documented areas (in my experience). If there is something in particular you are looking for that isn't documented there are channels you can turn to, some free (lists), some not (ADC).

>Have you any idea about what partition system an apple box would use (so that you can dual boot Linux) ?
man pdisk
OF is an open standard, and setting boot params is well documented. The move to Intel makes things more mysterious, but I am sure they they are not with their implementation so that side isn't documented yet, and we can only specualate where they are headed.

>You miss my point completely. My point was that Apple has always been about proprietary magic.
I think you overstate your case. I really think Apple is a conglomerate of different engineering teams with different technical and marketing decisions dictating how open they could be. At WWDC I have talked to a number of Apple engineers working on various parts of the system who would like to open that are currently closed, and they have given various accounts as to why they haven't, some technical, some marketing driven. Also, don't forget that Apple does license some hardware and software from other parties that make it impossible for them to be totally open even if they wanted to be.

Re:where's my Mac Mini??

[GaryPatterson]

For years now, I've been asking for levitating PowerBooks and Segway-mounted towers from Apple.

And now, with the prospect of Pentium-based PowerBooks, I'll be able to have the former.

Just pop the case off and turn the unit upside down. The air blasting out of that sucker should keep a few kilograms airborne. ...

You know... after about five years, my wishes from Apple seem a little dated. Maybe I should get back onto waiting for that up-and-coming game company, Bungie, to finish Halo so I can play it on my Mac first!

Re:Patches???

[rufo]

He never said that. A few developers with extremely well-written apps have said that, but Steve Jobs pretty specifically stated that Java apps will require nothing, Cocoa apps will require a few days of work before full functionality, and most Carbon apps on Xcode will take up to a few weeks. This all assumes you're using Xcode; if you're using Codewarrior, you must migrate to Xcode before you can even start.

Re:Safari

[GaryPatterson]

It *would* be great news for Safari, if Apple hadn't already ported it, and if it wasn't based on KHTML.

I like Safari too!

Ah, gotta love ZDNet commentrary...

[R.Mo_Robert]

You'll have fresh native copies of Firefox and [competing Mozilla-based Mac browser] Camino for your shiny new Intel Macs when or soon after they come out."

I wouldn't exactly call Camino "competing," unless you'd also say the same of the suite. They're both Mozilla projects; it's not like Camino is made by some competitor. Camino would have less of a reason to exist if Firefox behaved more natively, but, while it's improved, you can still tell that it's not quite there yet (e.g., buttons and other controls on Web page forms and probably even more things that I don't realize coming from a Windows background).

Re:Safari

[Winterblink]

That 'secure browsing' feature sounds like a great potential firefox extension.

Yeah, it's definitely a handy feature when using someone else's computer, so it doesn't store webmail or banking screens in the cache, or whatever.

Looks like the idiotic moderators are hard at work on my original post too. For fuck's sake people, if you want to correct me on something then reply to the thread and correct me. Don't mod the post to oblivion.

Is it faster?!

[solios]

I have a 2.2 ghz AMD box on my desk, and a 2x2ghz G5. The AMD has a gig of ram and Win2k, the G5 has 2g ram and OS X 10.4.

Firefox HAULS ASS on the Win32 box. It's visibly slower on OS X - the UI is sluggish, and rendering isn't nearly as snappy, using current versions of both. But mostly, the UI is sluggish.

I'm no coder, but the hows and the whys of it are, I'm sure, fairly easy to explain. Here's hoping!

Re:Is it faster?!

[ciroknight]

It's a fair comparison, but at the same time it also really isn't. Lemme explain what I mean.

Mac OS X is a BSD-variant, making it technically a UNIX-compatible OS. While people argue that this makes it better for porting Apps from Linux to Mac OS X, it's not always the case.

It's especially not the case with the Mozilla toolkit. For some reason, I've found that *all* XUL toolkit-based programs run like molassas on Mac OS X. There's still a lot of work to be done in this area especially.

A more fair comparison would have been Camino to Firefox. While technically not the same code, the Windows version of Firefox has been highly tuned for Windows. The unix/Mac OS X version of Firefox seems to lack this tuning all together (probably because in the end there are seventy bajillion different ways to draw something on a UNIX, and only one in Windows). Camino at least is optimized and built from the ground up with Cocoa instead of Firefox's Carbon interface. Million little inconsitances like this, but the point remains.

Camino is functionally identical to Firefox, it's just written to be platform compatible. Give it a shot.

Re:Is it faster?!

[BenjyD]

Try downloading the firefox installer from mozilla.org and using that version. The version in Ubuntu seems to have been screwed up somehow - I think it's the GNOME integration they added or something. The mozilla.org version is much faster on my system, and has much better font rendering.

Re:Is it faster?!

[bill_mcgonigle]

Mac OS X is the red-headed stepchild of Mozilla development. They know they have to take care of it, but it sometimes seems like they don't really want to.

For instance, Mozilla still uses QuickDraw for text rendering, which isn't accelerated by Quartz Extreme. There are bugs in the tab implementation which allow plugins to draw on the wrong tabs and steal keypresses from other pages. Finder comments and other features from Netscape Navigator 4 still haven't caught up. Etc. etc. etc.

This isn't to denigrate the "patches-welcome" approach, but to point out the focus of the Mozilla community, which isn't Mac OS X.

Re:Patches???

[rufo]

True. Essentially what Apple is saying that you need to be on GCC.

Technically speaking, Metrowerks could incorporate an x86 compiler into Codewarrior... however, seeing as how they sold off all their x86 compiler IP, that seems very unlikely, and Codewarrior has been slowly transitioning from *the* way to code Mac OS apps to more of an embedded/console development platform anyway, that is, when they haven't been running the company into the ground...

This MacSlash thread goes into some rather sobering details.

Grab an optimized nightly build

[green pizza]

Firefox is simply fastest on Windows, period.

HOWEVER... the latest nightly builds (from the development branch that will eventually become Firefox 1.1) are much faster than the official 1.0.4 you are probably currently using. Also, if you have a newer G4 (PowerPC 744x/745x series... 1GHz or better "G4+") or a G5 you can grab an optimized build for even more performance.

Grab the G4 version here:
http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/

Grab the G5 version here:
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=2565 17

As of this posting, the newest version for each is the 20050704 (July 4, 2005) build. I am posting this from the July 3 G4 version, it zooms compared to Safari here on OS X 10.4.1.

Re:Patches???

[Senjutsu]

Metrowerks used to have an x86 compiler, but they sold all of the IP related to it a few months ago because they didn't think it was still a viable product.

So while Metrowerks could update their product so that devs don't have to abandon it for Xcode, it's unlikely that they will (as they'd either have to start from scratch again or rebuy their own IP, probably at a significant premium).