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I'm using Safari by default simply because Chrome is a CPU hog on my machine and I can notice my PC heating up considerably faster when running it. I considere

I'm using Safari by default simply because Chrome is a CPU hog on my machine and I can notice my PC heating up considerably faster when running it. I considered Firefox and tried to switch for a month before but the recent reorg + the stuff about their top officer pay makes it seem like it's a cushy position some people entrenched themselves in and the org is completely lost - the browser experience was inferior and I don't have sympathy towards them so why bother. Chrome has plenty of forks so I try to run those on other platforms.

mrgordon 6y ago
Yeah I’m amazed how many Mac users use Chrome when it’s such a resource hog. Safari has better privacy and battery life as well. Maybe people use Chrome syncing or something and that’s why I don’t understand but it seems like they went out of their way to get a worse experience.
- vincnetas 6y ago
  I was trying to switch my wife to use safari on chrome (because battery usage), but her argument is that "safari does not display favicons near here bookmarks" and it's big no-go for her. Makes you think about reasons of regular users when choosing browsers.
  - armagon 6y ago
    That's so interesting. I'm very computer literate, and a huge reason I couldn't stand Safari is because it didn't show it didn't show favicons in the tab bar. I typically have dozens of tabs open, and really need some way to tell them apart quickly -- such as favicons showing up. (I did find a hack to do it, but didn't love it.) You might ask her to try again. Safari 14 actually shows favicons, and that is such a welcome relief.
    - vincnetas 6y ago
      It shows favicons on tabs but not on bookmarks bar.
- xrisk 6y ago
  Chrome has such a myriad variety of extensions that using Safari is simply not feasible. 1. uBlock Origin - the content-based blockers on Safari are not nearly as good 2. Zotero connector - for my academic work 3. Session Buddy - for saving sessions 4. Proxy switcher - for selectively using my uni proxy for academic resources and so on...
  - mrgordon 6y ago
    Do you really want to allow a myriad of extensions access to your web browser data? I can understand if you have a couple you like but personally I find extensions only make Chrome slower and I don’t trust most of them because of the deep access you need to grant. I’d just as rather turn my proxy on for a minute at the OS level and not have a permanent extension running in every single Chrome tab.
    - xrisk 6y ago
      All of the extensions I use are open source (not that that counts for a lot, but I still tend to take a look at the repository before I install them).
- radicaldreamer 6y ago
  A ton of sites work better with Chrome than Safari because engineers often don’t put in the 20 min it would take to fix minor issues with Safari and build only for Chrome on the Mac.
  - treis 6y ago
    Lots of people can't test Safari because they don't have Macs.
    - boogies 6y ago
      They could test other WebKit browsers though.
  - mrgordon 6y ago
    It happens occasionally but “a ton” is probably overstating it. Any major website that doesn’t work on Safari for Mac and iOS is going to get bug reports pretty quickly unless it’s a Google product and they just don’t care
- kitsunesoba 6y ago
  I could see using Chrome on a desktop Mac maybe, but yeah it obliterates the battery on my MBPs so badly that it's impractical to use unless I'm alright with being tethered to the wall. It's kind of exasperating how low of a priority efficiency is with both Chrome and Firefox.
- eli 6y ago
  Chrome arguably is more secure with better sandboxing.
  - mrgordon 6y ago
    It goes back and forth. As of a couple years ago, Safari sandboxed the network process which Chrome did not do. Chrome also sends a significant amount of personal data and usage data to Google and potentially other parties which significantly harms the supposed security. Having an always on data feed of the users actions (to enhance your advertising business) is not good security practice.
- lern_too_spel 6y ago
  According to the article, its privacy is worse. Also, its implementation of ITP leaks more information when it is enabled (the default) than when it is disabled. https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/01/24/information-leaks-via-safaris-intelligent-tracking-prevention/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/01/24/information-leaks-via-saf...
  - mrgordon 6y ago
    Your linked article is some Google researchers reporting some bugs in Safari which were mostly patched a year ago. It seems like they disagreed about whether some were patched initially. That doesn’t mean Chrome is more secure. They literally install user tracking and tie you to your Google account so they can advertise to you and better sell things. There is nothing secure about a browser built to monetize your data and send it to the cloud for analysis and machine learning. Meanwhile they have their share of bugs as well. What do you think about this one which is more recent? https://threatpost.com/google-chrome-bug-data-theft/158217/ https://threatpost.com/google-chrome-bug-data-theft/158217/ A vulnerability in Google’s Chromium-based browsers would allow attackers to bypass the Content Security Policy (CSP) on websites, in order to steal data and execute rogue code. The bug (CVE-2020-6519) is found in Chrome, Opera and Edge, on Windows, Mac and Android – potentially affecting billions of web users
    - lern_too_spel 6y ago
      That Chromium bug has been fixed for monts. The Safari bugs in my article still haven't been fixed, causing users to leak more information in the default Safari setup than users who have disabled ITP and much more than users of other browsers, who have working tracking protection. As Justin Schuh pointed out, the changes that Apple made to Safari did nothing to address the issues discovered in the paper.
      - mrgordon 6y ago
        It’s one bug. Sure if it’s still open (the article was from January) then that’s not good but Chrome has thousands of open bugs as well and likely some that would give me pause. The fact that Google is the one giving Apple a hard time might indicate a bit of an agenda since it’s their competitor.. Google literally sends your browsing habits from pages visited to mouse movements to their servers where they link it with your other Google info like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Maps GPS tracking via your phone. Google products “leak” all the users data back to the mothership as a feature. And Chrome users tend to use a lot of random extensions which means the data usually leaks to a lot of unknown third parties as well (see DataSpii for one example which effected millions of Chrome and Firefox users) So yes let’s expect higher standards from all browser developers. But realistically Apple likely fixed the bug or has a very good reason why it’s difficult to entirely patch yet. Google has had many extended data leaks as well but they actually build tools to gather your data up in the first place which makes it that much riskier should it get stolen or misused by Google or Google employees.
rmrfrmrf 6y ago
The only thing that annoys me about Safari is that there's no way to disable or configure alternate search engines for the omnibar. Sending mistyped intranet urls directly to Google (or DuckDuckGo) search is a huge privacy hole.
boogies 6y ago
> Chrome has plenty of forks so I try to run those on other platforms. Safari’s Webkit engine has plenty of browsers using it — in fact IIRC Chromium began as a fork of at least part of it — eg. GNOME Web/Epiphany, Luakit, Surf, et. al.

mrgordon 6y ago

Yeah I’m amazed how many Mac users use Chrome when it’s such a resource hog. Safari has better privacy and battery life as well. Maybe people use Chrome syncing or something and that’s why I don’t understand but it seems like they went out of their way to get a worse experience.

vincnetas 6y ago
I was trying to switch my wife to use safari on chrome (because battery usage), but her argument is that "safari does not display favicons near here bookmarks" and it's big no-go for her. Makes you think about reasons of regular users when choosing browsers.
- armagon 6y ago
  That's so interesting. I'm very computer literate, and a huge reason I couldn't stand Safari is because it didn't show it didn't show favicons in the tab bar. I typically have dozens of tabs open, and really need some way to tell them apart quickly -- such as favicons showing up. (I did find a hack to do it, but didn't love it.) You might ask her to try again. Safari 14 actually shows favicons, and that is such a welcome relief.
  - vincnetas 6y ago
    It shows favicons on tabs but not on bookmarks bar.
xrisk 6y ago
Chrome has such a myriad variety of extensions that using Safari is simply not feasible. 1. uBlock Origin - the content-based blockers on Safari are not nearly as good 2. Zotero connector - for my academic work 3. Session Buddy - for saving sessions 4. Proxy switcher - for selectively using my uni proxy for academic resources and so on...
- mrgordon 6y ago
  Do you really want to allow a myriad of extensions access to your web browser data? I can understand if you have a couple you like but personally I find extensions only make Chrome slower and I don’t trust most of them because of the deep access you need to grant. I’d just as rather turn my proxy on for a minute at the OS level and not have a permanent extension running in every single Chrome tab.
  - xrisk 6y ago
    All of the extensions I use are open source (not that that counts for a lot, but I still tend to take a look at the repository before I install them).
radicaldreamer 6y ago
A ton of sites work better with Chrome than Safari because engineers often don’t put in the 20 min it would take to fix minor issues with Safari and build only for Chrome on the Mac.
- treis 6y ago
  Lots of people can't test Safari because they don't have Macs.
  - boogies 6y ago
    They could test other WebKit browsers though.
- mrgordon 6y ago
  It happens occasionally but “a ton” is probably overstating it. Any major website that doesn’t work on Safari for Mac and iOS is going to get bug reports pretty quickly unless it’s a Google product and they just don’t care
kitsunesoba 6y ago
I could see using Chrome on a desktop Mac maybe, but yeah it obliterates the battery on my MBPs so badly that it's impractical to use unless I'm alright with being tethered to the wall. It's kind of exasperating how low of a priority efficiency is with both Chrome and Firefox.
eli 6y ago
Chrome arguably is more secure with better sandboxing.
- mrgordon 6y ago
  It goes back and forth. As of a couple years ago, Safari sandboxed the network process which Chrome did not do. Chrome also sends a significant amount of personal data and usage data to Google and potentially other parties which significantly harms the supposed security. Having an always on data feed of the users actions (to enhance your advertising business) is not good security practice.
lern_too_spel 6y ago
According to the article, its privacy is worse. Also, its implementation of ITP leaks more information when it is enabled (the default) than when it is disabled. https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/01/24/information-leaks-via-safaris-intelligent-tracking-prevention/ https://mjtsai.com/blog/2020/01/24/information-leaks-via-saf...
- mrgordon 6y ago
  Your linked article is some Google researchers reporting some bugs in Safari which were mostly patched a year ago. It seems like they disagreed about whether some were patched initially. That doesn’t mean Chrome is more secure. They literally install user tracking and tie you to your Google account so they can advertise to you and better sell things. There is nothing secure about a browser built to monetize your data and send it to the cloud for analysis and machine learning. Meanwhile they have their share of bugs as well. What do you think about this one which is more recent? https://threatpost.com/google-chrome-bug-data-theft/158217/ https://threatpost.com/google-chrome-bug-data-theft/158217/ A vulnerability in Google’s Chromium-based browsers would allow attackers to bypass the Content Security Policy (CSP) on websites, in order to steal data and execute rogue code. The bug (CVE-2020-6519) is found in Chrome, Opera and Edge, on Windows, Mac and Android – potentially affecting billions of web users
  - lern_too_spel 6y ago
    That Chromium bug has been fixed for monts. The Safari bugs in my article still haven't been fixed, causing users to leak more information in the default Safari setup than users who have disabled ITP and much more than users of other browsers, who have working tracking protection. As Justin Schuh pointed out, the changes that Apple made to Safari did nothing to address the issues discovered in the paper.
    - mrgordon 6y ago
      It’s one bug. Sure if it’s still open (the article was from January) then that’s not good but Chrome has thousands of open bugs as well and likely some that would give me pause. The fact that Google is the one giving Apple a hard time might indicate a bit of an agenda since it’s their competitor.. Google literally sends your browsing habits from pages visited to mouse movements to their servers where they link it with your other Google info like Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Maps GPS tracking via your phone. Google products “leak” all the users data back to the mothership as a feature. And Chrome users tend to use a lot of random extensions which means the data usually leaks to a lot of unknown third parties as well (see DataSpii for one example which effected millions of Chrome and Firefox users) So yes let’s expect higher standards from all browser developers. But realistically Apple likely fixed the bug or has a very good reason why it’s difficult to entirely patch yet. Google has had many extended data leaks as well but they actually build tools to gather your data up in the first place which makes it that much riskier should it get stolen or misused by Google or Google employees.

rmrfrmrf 6y ago

The only thing that annoys me about Safari is that there's no way to disable or configure alternate search engines for the omnibar. Sending mistyped intranet urls directly to Google (or DuckDuckGo) search is a huge privacy hole.

boogies 6y ago

> Chrome has plenty of forks so I try to run those on other platforms. Safari’s Webkit engine has plenty of browsers using it — in fact IIRC Chromium began as a fork of at least part of it — eg. GNOME Web/Epiphany, Luakit, Surf, et. al.