End of support for Firefox on Amazon devices
support.mozilla.org
support.mozilla.org
I'm fine with Firefox dropping niche platforms and focusing resources on actual users. (Most stats don't even cover the Amazon devices; the only mention I could find of Silk usage was 0.02% of traffic.) But it surprises me that Amazon's devices are now far enough off from regular Android that there's a support burden. Anybody here shipping apps for Fire who can explain?
Sorry, what? I think I need to know more...
The whole Meego project (Nokia + Intel, 2009 from the top of my head) was founded with the goal of getting Intel phones. When Nokia jumped ship in February 2011, Intel still continued and hired Nokia engineers to make phones. How long they tried, I have no idea.
https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/75203/i...
But I can copy statically linked binaries from my main Linux machine, and they work. (Dynamically linked typically don't because Android userspace is so different from "proper" Linux.)
I still have a HTC Desire with the last 2.3 based MIUI, and that OS is still wonderful.
Honestly it's just really annoying. I've toyed around with Lineage and such but at some point it seems it got a lot harder to do things on a lot of models and carrier configs. It seems you need to really research exactly what phone model is open enough and has enough people graciously doing open source work to support updates and such outside of the manufacturer and carrier.
Nope. And I even stopped updating Firefox, because their move to Quantum on Android made a great browser and abysmal experience.
Once this phone dies, I'll go and buy a Fairphone, hoping that might be kept alive a bit longer with updates.
Great? Perhaps not. But much better than the phones manufacturers just dump onto the market and then forget about.
It's a sad state of software development that we so quickly drop support for older hardware, it contributes massively to e-waste, although Android manufacturers shoulder a lot of the blame for not supporting OS upgrades.
Context: Put out a (hopefully) final release for API 16 last month. It'll mean that 15,000 people can no longer update the app. From analytics, we still have users on Android 1.5 (API 3)
Not sure if that's Google Play's metrics being played with, but it's shocking that there appear to be installs on something that old (it's well before TLS 1.2 support on Android, and most of the internet will be broken)
In turn Amazon only partnered because there wasn't a YouTube app, and via Firefox they could support YouTube. But they reached a deal with YouTube (maybe using Firefox as leverage), so it didn't matter to them any longer.
(I'm saying, don't necessarily blame only the hardware)
There is a fix for the Disney+ pause issue: Got to Settings -> Display -> Sounds -> Audio -> Dolby Digital Output and turn it off. Obviously that's crap if you want Dolby Digital Output, but for some reason it fixes the issue.
I don't actually have a problem with the Firestick as a whole, seems responsive enough for the services I use, but Disney really needs to up their game, it's the only one I have an issue with.
The 4K one is much faster (irrespective of display resolution) than its predecessors. I really like it.
A ‘bias’ towards some companies exist here as there’s an understanding of the underlying business model, their disregard for data privacy and so on. Most tech companies and news outlets stand to gain nothing by educating the masses on these topics, and it will often hurt their profits as they may be a beneficiary in the overall supply chain.
The typical consumer is consuming goods and services oblivious to all of it. They care about cheap/free goods as opposed to weighing the cost it being cheap/free (they won’t know why they should care, for starters).
Those who are technically savvy and aware of what’s happening may bring attention to the underlying risks... which is what you seem to be classifying as bias.
Shouting "Alexa turn the TV off" from another part of the house when it's my daughter's bedtime is worth the entry fee! Also when my wife is in the car with her Echo Auto, she can say "announce that I'm coming home" and that message will play on the TV (and convert it to text as well). Ps. we didn't know the FireTV did this when we bought it. It's quite nice finding these features as you use other Alexa devices.
I've not experienced much in the way of lagging or unresponsiveness. Note that they just released a major update.
I really, really want someone to release a Chromecast-like device that isn't Amazon or Google, though.
The latest Chromecast with Google TV barely works without granting Google access to a whole bunch of your private data. For example, you need to enable Web & App Activity across your entire Google account to use normal Chromecast features.
I will pay good money for a device that uses the castv2 protocol and doesn't siphon my data to Google's servers just so I can watch videos on my TV.
Honestly I wouldn't have predicted better than a 50% chance that Firefox ran on those anyway.
They include everything from fitness tracking to push notifications to face/voice recognition.
I wonder which they want to use?
I tried searching, but I suspect there are a lot of subtleties to the technologies involved (with similar names and such) that I don't know how to connect whether this fills a gap.
Most webpages use it for spammy notifications of little value to most users sadly...
No browsers on iOS allow push notifications on websites. https://onesignal.com/blog/the-state-of-ios-web-push-in-2020...
Just because the API is often used for evil, it doesn't mean that the API itself is hostile. I can think of many usecases where a properly functioning web push notification API would be desirable - the unfortunate truth is that the current implementation makes it useless for most real world scenarios.
I'm sure I've also been on sports websites that allow you to receive a notification when a goal is scored in a particular match.
I also get push notifications when meetings are about to start.
I'm assuming this is slight hyperbole, as there are other plausible reasons to drop support for Amazon devices. But I'm curious to know if you have any other reason to believe that Firefox plans to use Google Play Services APIs?
Firefox only got popular because it was so much better than IE at the time.
Now Chrome and Safari are the preinstalled on most devices or are pushed on you if they are not. They are also good enough or better that users don't have enough incentive to switch, especially with ad blockers working just fine on the competition (for now...). And Google won't allow Chrome to fall behind in a meaningful way.
There is not much market opportunity to compete against the monopolistic distribution channels that Apple and Google can leverage.
Usually, when a CEO heads an explicitly sinking ship, the CEO will be removed and someone will be brought in to turn around the company.
No idea why that hasn’t happened.
What? The dominance of the mobile space by one of their competitors, who pre-installs their own browser, and who advertised said browser for free on the most visited website on the planet (google.com) for years, is absolutely relevant regardless of how old Mozilla is.
And the world isn't like HN, most people don't care that much about their browsers, and don't even know what "chromium" is.
Anyhow, the point I’m making is that I don’t agree that it is impossible to compete with trenched competition.
Firefox has some prior momentum themselves, they’re not quite an upstart.
2008-2010 John Lilly
2010-2013 Gary Kovacs
2014 Brendan Eich
2014-2019 Chris Beard
2020-now Mitchel Baker
[edit formatting]
I've attempted to use their platform on numerous devices over the last 3 years and ran into issues. I've moved on.
No amount of HN praise can override my real world experience.
Looks like Firefox would be a pretty big loss for them. I don't recognize much on the list other than Opera.
Was it something that amazon imposed(ostensibly)? If so, please share.
I would guess it just looks like a bad return on time invested.
I use the Chrome Canary channel on my Shield, and it works OK.
I understand that web browser is a complex business, but TBH, I don't want VR, Pocket, and tons of half-baked junk in my browser. Google poured millions of dollars into Mozilla (which is cheaper than battling with anti-trust commission), and yet, most of their projects failed. I think they need to rethink their management and strategy before everything goes to the ground.
Perhaps it's actually working as intended.
Is there any reading material online supporting this position? I would tend to agree but my opinion is fairly uninformed.
I have often thought that leading a shining beacon like Mozilla should and would be done by a previously successful executive who doesn't need the money and would like a challenge. Compensation would be $1/year, everlasting respect, and a true legacy to leave behind. But that's just my vision of panacea I suppose.
I respect Mitchell Baker's history at Mozilla but is it time for a change?
reference: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/leadership/
edit: changed phrasing and tone
The reason I thought she had been CEO for years is that I saw in the official bio that she was a co-founder and CEO. I didn't realize the timeline. I should probably learn a lot more prior to making statements like I had previously about change.
I also do have the baggage of an anti-administrative bloat bias/agenda which I am may be applying here inappropriately.
I was just really disapointed with some of the teams that were removed like Security. I know that money has to come from somewhere and seeing exec compensation go up at the same time was a hard pill to swallow.
The last year we have executive salaries from is 2018, while those cuts were in 2020. I suspect executive compensation also fell sharply, I know the number of executives is lower.
But all we get are police and skilled people who want to be paid what they're worth.
It's insane how much flak they get for the CEO making a million dollars more after signing a deal that got them hundreds of millions more dollars a year.
I think the derision comes from the fact that this is theoretically a non-profit org.
What if we apply that to engineering too? Marketing, operations, SREs ..
How do you think that would work out for Mozilla? Do you think we would have any impact if the place was run like that? Do you think we would have much talent on board?
I was trying to speak for general sentiment before, which was dumb of me.
Let me attempt to clarify my personal thinking: if for example there was a Patreon where I could give money to Mozilla engineering salaries directly, I would proudly pay $10/month. I would be willing to wager that many others would as well.
If orgs want good feels and a write off, sure 501c Mozilla donations, but let’s go beyond all that.
How about a Mozilla Security Patreon?
How about a Mozilla Rust Pateron?
My point is that there is so much good will and money, just on HN, for Mozilla engineering... can we come up with ways to fund engineering directly?
I realize there needs to be a CEO, etc, but there should also be a funding structure to pay you and your peers more, directly.
Edit: I am just using Patreon as an example of direct creator funding, other mechanisms may be more applicable.
What are you talking about? Hundreds of millions more per year? Their revenue [1] grew by 40m (520m to 562m) during the year they doubled their top exec salary. It fell by 90m the next year, earning them a loss for the first time.
[1] https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Finanzierun... German Wikipedia has a nice table.
This all might have something to do with it.
Mozilla tries hard and like every other startup or company out there, many ideas or products fail or turn out to not be profitable.
There is no magic here. If there was then all startups and all ideas would work.
I don't really think it's reasonable for Firefox to officially support every single proprietary platform out there, especially when it must have had a tiny number of users. I'd rather Firefox focused on improving the browser where it matters than supporting some niche proprietary environment.
Lots of projects fail. It's the nature of R&D. You should see the number of products Google has shut down.
Besides, the project that Mozilla gets the most flack for? Firefox OS. Turned out to be a great idea? Why? Because Apple and Google anti competitively bundle their own browsers with their own mobile OSes.
Yes, sadly Firefox OS failed. But the future (now, present) of web is mobile: Mozilla had to try.
Apologies for no citations, but I recall a talk from 2014 or so at Mozfest in London and not much else. I've also owned a KaiOS phone - the Nokia 8110 and can say aside from a lack of apps it is great.
The "Firefox anywhere but desktop" package nowadays is "Here's a sub-par, slower, poorly-optimized browser without an ad-blocker; you'll be happy to know we have Pocket and Ads built-in! Why even bother with those icky websites? Just click our links! Addons? I mean, we have four. We no longer allow you to use the rest of the AMO addons."
Firefox on desktop is nice, except for their most recent design update (coming in a month or two, already on Nightly), which makes compact mode massive and normal mode gigantic. But you can get around that by simply going out of your way to write CSS to eliminate tabs entirely, and replace them with an extension.
I'm still using the old version of Firefox on Android because I need the extensions I have.
Which really sucks
Might convince you to upgrade, I generally would never run an outdated browser.
But it's an unintuitive process. You need to create an add-on site account, then create a Collection, then add the extensions you want to the collection. Each add-on page has an Add to Collection option, and the collection page itself has a search option but it's a limited subset and so it's kinda useless.
Then you enable some dev mode option in the app, and (manually) copy some account and collection ids into a setting. Then the collection and the add-ons will appear and let you download and install them.
It does feel like a "placate power users while adding as much friction as is reasonably possible" approach, and Mozilla certainly seems to be heading for a greatly restricted add-on experience for all users in the future. There is an abundant feeling of "a PM wants to see the metrics say X" all over this experience, as with most modern Firefox degradations. But at least this is an option for now.
Edit: having to use nightly does suck as well, as I've seen a new different annoying bug every version or two (e.g. broken menus, tap targets not working any more, etc.) that I wouldn't have seen in the main release candidates. But you can at least try to avoid updating whenever you feel the current nightly is ok.
Instructions: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...
Firefox Nightly: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.mozilla.fe...
Fennec F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.mozilla.fennec_fdroid/
Only then finaly you can actually use an addon from AMO in your Nigtly Firefox.
Frankly sounds much more like jumping through unnecessary hoops than anything. Most users will likely give up than provide much needed feedback to extension authors about how their extensions work on Android.