Webclipper - When to expect native M1 release of Webclipper for Safari

[Fixestcat 10]

I would like to request native M1 ready Webclipper for Safari. Who is supporting this idea? This is the last piece of software on my machine that is not M1 ready.

[Lomonow 4]

Well, it could certainly load up and perform the task quicker. I find myself waiting for the web clipper to do its thing quite a bit. Considering the overall speed of the M1 and modern SSDs there's no reason why it should not be bordering on instantaneous. I am not saying the current situation is 'slow as molasses' or anything, just pointing out that going via Rosetta instead of natively does make it slower and less efficient.

[PinkElephant 8,117]

On 7/3/2022 at 2:00 PM, agsteele said:

... Are there lots of M1 broswer extensions? I suspect not but as I say, I'm no Mac expert...

Any (nearly any) x86 program will run, based on the Rosetta „translation“. It just means the code is not optimized for ARM.

Not really mission critical, but of course you take notice when among all the recoded apps there is still an emulated one.

[baronmax 3]

Quote

right now these M1 and M2 things are a very niche market.

 

Well they are currently >8.5% of all laptops shipped and probably a higher percentage of potential Evernote users.  I always get amused that on this forum there seem to be people that defend Evernote not being arsed to do something to improve the product (yes I appreciate there are competing priorities etc).  It was the same with the non-M1 optimised Evernote app which was horrendous but finally got sorted out.  The web clipper is the final element.  The fact it is loaded all the time means there is a performance overhead in having Rosetta2 always running which may or may not lead to excessive swap file use.  I for one have removed it from the browser for this reason as it was the only Intel code application left running on my Mac - everything other app has made the transition.  So to use it I have to re-enable it, *then* one mississippi two Mississippi three Mississippi etc....  not exactly a slick workflow...

[PinkElephant 8,117]

Ask EN if you expect an answer.

The forum is user2user.

[Fixestcat 10]

Thanks PinkElephant for the pointer. I rephrased the idea, see initial post above. 

[PinkElephant 8,117]

What on the current WebClipper (which is a browser extension) does not work on an M1 ?

[Fixestcat 10]

The WebClipper is not an M1 native application, meaning that it requires Rosetta to run. Functionality-wise the WebClipper works, just like Evernote did before it became a M1 native application. I would expect to see performance improvements once the WebClipper is an M1 native application as well.

[PinkElephant 8,117]

What do you mean by „performance“ ?

It clips, it pushes the data to the API (it does AFAIK not go through the local app), done. Everything else happens on the server or in the clients. 

I doubt there is a lot of performance to be found on this execution path. 

[agsteele 2,950]

I'm not an expert in this Mac stuff but is it not affected by being a browser extension rather than a native application?  For example, the Firefox extension runs in Firefox regardless of the device involved. Similarly the Chrome add-on runs in a Chrome browser independent of the device/OS. Are there lots of M1 broswer extensions? I suspect not but as I say, I'm no Mac expert...

[Lomonow 4]

@agsteele, you are raising a good point (I don't know the answer either), but here's hoping a native (Rosetta-free) extension is even possible, and forthcoming at some point!

 

[Lomonow 4]

Dear Evernote-Team, any news regarding a native webclipper? Appel Silicon is here to stay and the clipping action (just summoning the webclipper when pressing the icon in the menu bar (or using keyboard shortcut, as I do many times a day) would be a lot improved if it got speedier. I don't see why the webclipper shouldn't pop up without (almost any) delay on machines as fast as M1 and M2 Macs. 
Thanks and all the best!

[Jon/t 1,292]

1 minute ago, Lomonow said:

Dear Evernote-Team, any news regarding a native webclipper? Appel Silicon is here to stay and the clipping action (just summoning the webclipper when pressing the icon in the menu bar (or using keyboard shortcut, as I do many times a day) would be a lot improved if it got speedier. I don't see why the webclipper shouldn't pop up without (almost any) delay on machines as fast as M1 and M2 Macs. 
Thanks and all the best!

Not in the month since you last posted.

I can't imagine this happening for a while as they'd have to manage two different browser extensions. Could mean confusion when folks install the wrong one and more support costs.

To be fair the clipper doesn't have to do much, so performance isn't really an issue.

[Lomonow 4]

"To be fair the clipper doesn't have to do much, so performance isn't really an issue."

On my M1 Air with 16 gb of RAM it takes 'one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi" for the Webclipper to launch. I save about a dozen clips a day – I'm not saying the clipper is 'slow as molasses' or anything, just pointing out that it could be a lot snappier. Would also benefit Evernote as a company to make ingesting data into the database as quick and effortless as possible. 

The switch to a native codebase for the app as such was a huge improvement, for which I am thankful. I'd have ditched Evernote (reluctantly, because of the hassle of switching / migrating the database with all my tags ect.) if they had not come out with a native version at some point. If Evernote could further improve the overall speed of the 'harvesting' process, I'd appreciate it even more.
 

[PinkElephant 8,117]

The launch of the clipper is not fast on none M1 machines either. It needs to establish its own access to your account, since it works through the API, not any installed client on the device.

I doubt this code base has any significant impact. Since the share of M1 machines in relation to all computers in use is still small (probably no more than 2-3%), you should IMHO exercise some patience. Asking to get it all and now (a plague of our days) means taking dev capacity away from other tasks. Or do you believe they sit around idle, until they are allowed to work on the task you mean is the most important on earth ?

You can ask for anything - to reach EN staff use the feedback function or a support ticket.

[Jon/t 1,292]

1 hour ago, Lomonow said:

On my M1 Air with 16 gb of RAM it takes 'one Mississippi, two Mississippi, three Mississippi" for the Webclipper to launch.

It takes about three Mississippi's to open on my beaten up Windows laptop with 8GB RAM so I think this is just how it works. I doubt M1s or 2s would make any difference.

[Lomonow 4]

M1has an about 70 percent faster Single core speed than a Windows laptop (that isn't current generation Intel). So you bet it should make a difference. 
Look, I get that you are happy with the performance of the web clipper, neither am I claiming the performance is abysmal. But just *opening* the web clipper (not synchronizing, just getting the clipper window to show up) should be instantaneous. And if the clipper were native and did not have to run via Rosetta emulation, it'd sure be faster. Also, Evernote webclipper is literally the last and only app on my Mac that needs Rosetta. Everything else made the transition. 

[Jon/t 1,292]

19 hours ago, Lomonow said:

M1has an about 70 percent faster Single core speed than a Windows laptop (that isn't current generation Intel). So you bet it should make a difference. 
Look, I get that you are happy with the performance of the web clipper, neither am I claiming the performance is abysmal. But just *opening* the web clipper (not synchronizing, just getting the clipper window to show up) should be instantaneous. And if the clipper were native and did not have to run via Rosetta emulation, it'd sure be faster. Also, Evernote webclipper is literally the last and only app on my Mac that needs Rosetta. Everything else made the transition. 

Honestly, I don't think CPU speed and RAM will make any difference. From what I can tell the clipper will need to contact ENs server to check you're logged in and also retrieve a list of all your notebooks to populate the drop down box and a list of your tags. It then needs to scan the page and figure out what's going on so you can clip the page the way you want to.

I don't think 2 - 3 seconds is bad. I would image at least half of that time is spent getting info from the servers.

Right now the goal of the clipper is to clip and if it clips then the goal is met.

Maybe one day they'll support different chipsets but right now these M1 and M2 things are a very niche market.

[agsteele 2,950]

It is still worth considering the fact that the web clipper runs inside the browser. 

[PinkElephant 8,117]

This means still that from the installed desktops out there (existing and new ones), the share of M1s of that total of computers in use is probably still below 1%.

The rest is Windows, Macs with Intel and even Linux currently has a larger share of all personal computers in use.

Be happy about your new Mac - but even those who managed to get one (currently there is a supply problem ...) should accept that the world is not turning around them.

[Fixestcat 10]

On 8/15/2022 at 1:55 PM, baronmax said:

Well they are currently >8.5% of all laptops shipped and probably a higher percentage of potential Evernote users.  I always get amused that on this forum there seem to be people that defend Evernote not being arsed to do something to improve the product (yes I appreciate there are competing priorities etc).  It was the same with the non-M1 optimised Evernote app which was horrendous but finally got sorted out.  The web clipper is the final element.  The fact it is loaded all the time means there is a performance overhead in having Rosetta2 always running which may or may not lead to excessive swap file use.  I for one have removed it from the browser for this reason as it was the only Intel code application left running on my Mac - everything other app has made the transition.  So to use it I have to re-enable it, *then* one mississippi two Mississippi three Mississippi etc....  not exactly a slick workflow...

I uninstalled the WebClipper for the same reason as well.

[PinkElephant 8,117]

Which reason ?

That it takes 2-3 seconds to clip ? Since it requires a server - extension interaction (check account credentials, load standard & last clipped notebook, etc.), it will likely never be significantly less.

That EN does not make it it’s No.1 priority to serve Mx buyers, pushing all others users into limbo ? No comment on this …

So goodby, thanks for nothing.

[Lomonow 4]

Reviving this thread: so according to the information in my activity monitor the webclipper now runs natively on Apple silicon. Great! However: it runs *slower* than before. How is that even possible? Is anybody noticing this? For the life of me I cannot understand how the Evernote team can allow such a crucial aspect of the user experience to get slower. (If you want to keep paying customers on your platform, make ingesting new data easier and faster, not slower ...)

[PinkElephant 8,117]

Honestly - running "slower" ... ?!

How do you measure this ? You never get the same website twice. Even if you call the same page a few seconds later, it will be a different website (exception: 90ies style static websites - but they don't play any role in today's web). You can't measure it, except you build a pretty elaborate testing environment. I have never noticed it ran on Rosetta-conversion before, I don't notice it runs today on M-Code natively, it simply clips.

So it`s "slower", nobody can prove the opposite. Option 1: Live with it. Option 2: Contact support.

Edit: Clipping this page on an M1 Mac mini 5 seconds, clipping this page on an MBP 14" M2 Max 5 seconds. Both on the same Internet connection. Which tells the computing power plays no role at all in how long it takes to clip a page.

[s2sailor 2,204]

18 minutes ago, Lomonow said:

Is anybody noticing this?

I’m not.

[Lomonow 4]

How I measure this? Easy. For example when trying to clip an article from the NYTimes it just took more than 10 seconds and a spinning symbol (not the Mac beachball, in the clipper UI) just for my notebook categories to load in the webclipper. And that is simply wayyyy longer than it used to, and I have not made any changes to my system in the meantime. So, yeah, absolutely, it is totally possible that this is just up to very specific details of my setup only and does not replicate for others. 

But at this point, user  "PinkElephant", I don't see the usefulness in engaging with your comments any more. (Not the first time you simply cannot let it stand that others have a different user experience). I guess if I handed you book where you could only turn a page after a 10 second wait or  a desk drawer with the same delay you'd find a way to rationalize that, too. After all, you never turn the *same* page twice, don't we all know it. 

 

[PinkElephant 8,117]

I don't clip from the NYT. It is one of the known examples where a paywall is trying to stop any clipping, together with the WSJ.

Don't believe me ? Search the forum, these 2 are notorious.

But of course, your precious time is above all, you have so little of it, and less to spare, so let us stand back and wait for the white knight who will come to your rescue, as the unclipped virgin you claim you are.

There is a whisper in the trees about a gathering of the white knights in a mysterious place called support. Maybe you can send a raven there, to urge them to hurry at your salvation.

https://help.evernote.com/hc/en-us/requests/new