I use the nightly builds and I definitely do not have that problem with around 750 tabs open on my non-retina MacBook Pro. It does suck down memory though.
Which doesn't change anything since the Macbook Pro has been sold with Retina displays for what, the last 6 years?
The fact that Firefox works exclusively on ancient laptops or edge cases doesn't make anything better. All Apple devices today are sold with Retina screens and the Pro Lineup, and therefore most devs has had Retina screens for 6+ years.
Usually I expect software to perform better on newer hardware than it does on old. Are you suggesting the probles you're experiencing have to do with a retina display.
I have periodically had firefox problems in performance on all platforms including the new Mac air I bought my wife, her old Mac Pro and various Ubuntu and Windows installations. As a general rule it is because I've kept it open for several days with lots of tabs with media in them running. I mean it's irritating but not an ongoing catastrophe that means I can't use. As I said in some other thread recently I have over the past 10 years I think had two occasions where FF performance was so bad I had to leave the platform for a some time until it was fixed.
I see a lot of people in this thread claiming problems, and I see a lot of people claiming no problems, and some like me in between. So I don't know what the statistical breakdown of performance complaints about FF in comparison to all other issues (and if those complaints are actually likely to be related), but maybe it is not as great as you think it is?
Good question. As i wrote in my other comments these comments are large amounts in every FF thread on HN. Also loads of devs (including myself) are at companies where no one uses FF because of performance issues which of course is anecdata albeit a bit broader.
My guess would be most people have issues but most consumers don't know better. Some have no issues, and it seems that's the ones with older "non retina" displays.
I have a colleague whose Mac has the same issue as you (2015 MBP 15" Retina). Chrome runs awesome for him, Firefox crawls. However, I have the same model and for me Firefox is as snappy as anything.
You're right that this needs to be fixed, but its lame to assume that Firefox devs do not test on Macs. You're simply experiencing a bug that is hard to reproduce, that is all.
Firefox is snappy at the beginning, but starts getting really slow and clunky after about 8 hours, or sometimes 2-3 days of the laptop being suspended and then turned on again. I can make it fast again if I close the browser and re-open it. But it's not slow right out of the gate.
Also slow is relative. If someone hasn't had an experience with a faster browser, then "slow" just feels normal. I had that after using Firefox for ~9 months. It just felt normal, and then got a bit slow and unusable after a while. After switching back to Chrome on Mac, it was like a breath of fresh air. I forgot what a responsive UI felt like.
I have sympathy, debugging is hard! But it's weird that across hundreds of threads no one from the dev group has anything to say, or that there is not disclaimer or "ask for help" or whatever.
"Yes we are aware that a certain percentage has severe performance problems on osx, we believe this has to do with the Retina displays blah blah" - instead it seems like no one from the dev group has been following this problem when you ask them. Despite weekly threads, just like the posts here on Hackernews in every FF thread.
Possibly because complaining on hacker news and calling people incompetent on threads they have no reason to personally follow isn't an optimal strategy for receiving tech support.
I will admit it was too harshly written, the issues seems to only be on the osx platform and Firefox is great on all other platforms, but the issue has been detailed in their own tracker and subreddit for many years.
Sure, it's a mid-2012 MBP with the "high res" matte screen. A six year old machine is hardly an edge case in the context of a problem you've been seeing for at least five years. I've not had problems with FF performance on the handful of retina machines I've used for work either.
If the Mozilla devs aren't paying attention to and haven't remedied the problem you're experiencing, perhaps you're the edge case?
I just wrote that their support subreddit is filled with posts about performance on OSX, this thread in itself already has loads of posts with people complaining about it, and my post just is getting lots of upvotes - how is that an edge case?
Also all Firefox threads on Hackernews has these posts, every single one.
As i said before i have been following this for years. You having a 2012 computer is 100% the edge case - not that there is anything wrong in that, i love keeping tech for as long as possible.
> You having a 2012 computer is 100% the edge case
How so? It's the same processor (Ivy Bridge) and GPU combo (HD 4000 + GT 650M) as the first few revisions of the retina MBP models. The big difference is the display resolution (1680x1050 vs 2880x1800).
You're saying this problem goes back five years (2013). Whether or not the 2012 model is particularly common now, the guts were common in 2013 back when you claim to have seen the problem.
I've got a newer (still non-retina) iMac and have used a variety of retina machines for work and haven't seen any performance problems with FF either. Sure, if I run a bunch of flash based video players I can get the fans to go nuts but that's not a FF problem (the same thing happens if I use Chrome, flash is just an inefficient means of rendering video).
If the Mozilla devs haven't reproduced your complaint on a first class platform it's a pretty safe bet that you're doing something whacky whether or not you realize it.
So all the people in this thread are doing something "whacky" including all of the people from all of the other Firefox threads on Hackernews, and the constant stream of people in the subreddit?
We are not discussing if your computer is an edge case tech wise, but if it represents a "commonly used device" on the osx platform, ie, a device with a Retina display. In other words an edge case market wise.
Also another guy just wrote "Definitely not an edge case", about all his companys computers above me.
I don't get your point in trying to say we are "whacky" people because we say there is a problem. Once again read other FF threads on HN an these posts are in every one.
"but the handling of this problem makes me worried about the dev groups competence."
Basically you said the developers of a major browser, browser engine, programming language etc etc etc are all stupid because firefox doesn't work optimally on some subset of mac users machines. If this effects 1 in 1000 mac users this could be biting quite a few people certainly enough to inspire a lot of complaints and still effect a tiny portion of firefox users especially if firefox users are already underrepresented on macs due to historical poor showing.
If Macs are 9% of desktops/laptops and firefox users are around 10% then 0.9% of users are mac firefox users even given an even distribution of users or more realistically 0.5% of users.
If a bug effects in in 100 users its effecting then 0.005% of users. If it effects 1 in 1000 its effecting 0.0005% of users.
The prior posters statement about poor performance with scaling sounds interesting and importantly repeatable. If its the source of the challenge in question it seems like it would be great to submit a bug report.
Bugs that effect everyone are quickly fixed. Bugs that effect a small minority are more apt to slip through. This seems like a more satisfying conclusion than just assuming Mozilla hires morons for 6 figures.
It's not eleven, not by far. It's enough that I see this bug as the number one reason no one uses firefox at my job, where there are hundreds of devs - anecdotal evidence of course, but still telling.
I don't know why you're trying to deffend the idea that this bug is not a (relevant) thing. I'm not OP btw.
> I don't know why you're trying to deffend the idea that this bug is not a (relevant) thing. I'm not OP btw.
Why? Hand waving and tantrums don't mean that what OP is experiencing is representative of the state of Firefox on OSX. OP is positing that it's this ancient bug that Mozilla developers have just ignored because they're so awful/incompetent/lazy/whatever, but there's no way it would be problematic on hardware that dates back to the original problems.
It just smacks of frustrated user doing something out of the norm and falling prey to this idea that their own experiences are OBVIOUSLY representative of the norm.
Me? I'd guess that OP is doing something like running with a non-scaled display, running something else that's disabling the integrated GPU, running a poorly behaved corporate plugin or anti-virus, loading something so memory intensive the computer is swapping to disk, has a poorly behaved corporate font installed (or too many fonts), or something else along those lines. Basically something that seems normal to OP but is, in reality, not.
I've seen plenty of poor behavior from Firefox and from the Mozilla devs, but this idea that Firefox just performs poorly across the board on OSX (or some increasingly specific subset of OSX) seems very unlikely given how much focus Mozilla has been giving to performance as of late. More likely I expect there's just a very vocal minority.
This is again anecdotal, but last time I reformatted my mac I tried to install firefox first to see if the bug was still there with no other software or config installed. Literally the only thing I had done before installing was setting up the basic settings (wallpaper, resolution, keyboard language, etc). The bug was still there. It's a 2013 macbook pro with no config attached, so there's nothing quirky in the hardware department.
I'm not making a judgement on Mozilla devs and their competency or work ethics, and I don't think OP is either, but the fact remains that the bug is there and I'd guess it's decently easy to replicate given that I've encountered it in the wild a lot. If it's one tenth as usual as my personal experience suggests it should be at the top of their backlog.
> before installing was setting up the basic settings (wallpaper, resolution, keyboard language, etc)
Plenty of things there could be edge cases. In fact the very first thing I thought of was resolution. Running a non-scaled retina display could definitely cause all sorts of problems as all of a sudden the browser is rendering a much bigger canvas.
> I'm not making a judgement on Mozilla devs and their competency or work ethics, and I don't think OP is either
OP is absolutely judging Mozilla employees and if that carried through to the bug reports I'm sure OP filed, well, that could definitely color the response from Mozilla.
I just dont get it. This is a highly technical forum.
Most people here are superusers, and i personally am a dev.
Off course i have tried everything possible, clean install, new profile, HW acc off, boot to safe mode etc. To insinuate that i have installed some weird plugin and even talked directly to the FF devs without trying basic troubleshooting or have some weird anti virus plugin installed is beyond weird.
I also wrote it's the same with all of my colleagues MB's (15 people).
So how is this a tantrum and a vocal insignificant minority of it comes up again and again and the post is sitting at the top with lots of people agreeing? (i know not everyone has the problem).
Your other points i don't get. Scaling should not be an issue as it's not an issue for any other apps - disabling the GPU by accident, what? All other software works fine. You shouldn't need a discrete GPU for browsing.
That you suggest all of these hundreds of people are imbeciles with weird plugins is beyond disrespectful when so many of us has tried to help mozilla debugging to no effect and with little info in return. Most of us are devs or superusers - the issue has been detailed through many technical blog posts, and investigated by highly technical people thank you.
Definitely not an edge case, our whole company uses MacBook pros with retina display and all have the same issue. Fans spin like crazy, usability is abysmal. The moment that is fixed I'd switch. I've also reported the bug to Mozilla.
