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Ohh and you are on Windows and wan't to debug something on Safari? Forget it. Yeah, this utterly baffles me. You'd think Apple, out of sheer self-interest, wo

Ohh and you are on Windows and wan't to debug something on Safari? Forget it. Yeah, this utterly baffles me. You'd think Apple, out of sheer self-interest, would offer some sort of "Safari for Developers" that runs on Windows/Linux. Even if it's some kind of klunky suboptimally-performant thing. Just make it really obvious in terms of it's branding and theming that it's devs-only.

fragile_frogs 6y ago
I wanted to test a web app and was naive enough to buy an old iPhone 6, thinking I could test and debug my app. To my disappointment you can't update Safari through the app store and developer tools are pretty much non existent...
- Google234 6y ago
  To be fair, that’s a very old phone and IOS12 is still getting updates in 2021. I’m not sure that the issue is, safari is updated along with IOS.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Safari is not getting updates in 2021.
  - fragile_frogs 6y ago
    I should have probably looked into that before buying the phone. The issue that I have with safari being locked to a specific iOS version is that people on older model such as the iPhone 6 are being stuck with an outdated browser, even though the phone is still useable. To be fair, Apple handles updating iOS a lot better than Android, but Chrome is not tied to the OS versions, this means I can update Chrome through the Play Store which means: 1) faster update cycle and 2) old android phones can still run the latest Chrome.
jeffchien 6y ago
My hypothesis is that Apple is probably getting enough money from companies having to buy their devs Macbooks that they don't feel like releasing Safari on Windows/Linux (much less Xcode).
- pndy 6y ago
  I think it's because at some point they start to rely on features solely available in OSX and at the same time repeating somehow what Microsoft did in dominant years of IE on Windows but without all that predatory tactics. The times obviously change; today companies give their users ecosystems of software and services successfully trapping them within these; Safari is the browser for Apple ecosystem, just like Edge tries to be for Microsoft one. Safari on Windows was left alone in time Chrome was in the process of being bundled with various software installers as an additional option - which is the way how this browser become popular. I doubt it will be ever pushed forward with development, simply because Microsoft and Windows it's not Apple's subject of interest. Sure, they do offer iCloud services for Windows but it's a rather basic stuff that allows to use different platform from time to time, not on everyday basis (as in, you aren't buying just to remove OSX and install Windows). Of course, would be great to have more options but we're living in almost homogeneous web browser world - it's all about Chromium/Blink, even Microsoft abandon their engine and took Chromium. There's of course Firefox but honestly, I don't think it's gonna last long - not will all these decisions that has been made and how Mozilla treated its (power)users. We're all dependent on Chromium, its devteam and what Google decides is "best" for the whole world and the Internet. Which I believe, is certainly a bad thing.
  - JohnBooty 6y ago
    I think it's because at some point they start to rely on features solely available in OSX This is the only answer that really makes sense to me. I think it tightly couples with MacOS stuff like sandboxing, whatever codec stuff they're doing, and whatever perf stuff they're doing to make Safari "feel" so fast on the Mac. I think they feel that replicating all of that in Win32 would just be impossible/unsustainable. Still, I wish they'd just make it some kind of "developer edition" thing. It could be a bit janky, even... as long as it was clearly labeled "for developers" or whatever I don't really see it giving the company a black eye. We're all dependent on Chromium, its devteam and what Google decides is "best" for the whole world and the Internet. Which I believe, is certainly a bad thing. I agree wholeheartedly, and Apple seems to agree! That's what's so f'ing baffling to me. Clearly they feel that Safari is an extremely important project; the only thing standing between Google utterly 100% owning the web in every sense that matters. A thing that would clearly be bad for Apple. Accordingly, Safari on Mac gets a ton of investment from Apple. And clearly Apple feels Safari is so important that it's the only browser engine allowed on iOS. But, I can tell you from experience, a hell of a lot of B2B stuff and stuff cranked out by small shops is just never tested on Safari. And one reason is that a lot of small shops just don't have a Mac sitting around. And experience tells us that this is the death of a browser. Nobody wants to stick with browser XYZ once some percentage of their stuff stops working. They don't want to run multiple different browsers. It's a pain. They eventually follow the path of least resistance and just use the browser where 100% of their stuff works.
sbuk 6y ago
Epiphany uses WebKit...
kps 6y ago
Microsoft for instance offers free VM images for browser testing.

fragile_frogs 6y ago

I wanted to test a web app and was naive enough to buy an old iPhone 6, thinking I could test and debug my app. To my disappointment you can't update Safari through the app store and developer tools are pretty much non existent...

Google234 6y ago
To be fair, that’s a very old phone and IOS12 is still getting updates in 2021. I’m not sure that the issue is, safari is updated along with IOS.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Safari is not getting updates in 2021.
- fragile_frogs 6y ago
  I should have probably looked into that before buying the phone. The issue that I have with safari being locked to a specific iOS version is that people on older model such as the iPhone 6 are being stuck with an outdated browser, even though the phone is still useable. To be fair, Apple handles updating iOS a lot better than Android, but Chrome is not tied to the OS versions, this means I can update Chrome through the Play Store which means: 1) faster update cycle and 2) old android phones can still run the latest Chrome.

jeffchien 6y ago

My hypothesis is that Apple is probably getting enough money from companies having to buy their devs Macbooks that they don't feel like releasing Safari on Windows/Linux (much less Xcode).

pndy 6y ago
I think it's because at some point they start to rely on features solely available in OSX and at the same time repeating somehow what Microsoft did in dominant years of IE on Windows but without all that predatory tactics. The times obviously change; today companies give their users ecosystems of software and services successfully trapping them within these; Safari is the browser for Apple ecosystem, just like Edge tries to be for Microsoft one. Safari on Windows was left alone in time Chrome was in the process of being bundled with various software installers as an additional option - which is the way how this browser become popular. I doubt it will be ever pushed forward with development, simply because Microsoft and Windows it's not Apple's subject of interest. Sure, they do offer iCloud services for Windows but it's a rather basic stuff that allows to use different platform from time to time, not on everyday basis (as in, you aren't buying just to remove OSX and install Windows). Of course, would be great to have more options but we're living in almost homogeneous web browser world - it's all about Chromium/Blink, even Microsoft abandon their engine and took Chromium. There's of course Firefox but honestly, I don't think it's gonna last long - not will all these decisions that has been made and how Mozilla treated its (power)users. We're all dependent on Chromium, its devteam and what Google decides is "best" for the whole world and the Internet. Which I believe, is certainly a bad thing.
- JohnBooty 6y ago
  I think it's because at some point they start to rely on features solely available in OSX This is the only answer that really makes sense to me. I think it tightly couples with MacOS stuff like sandboxing, whatever codec stuff they're doing, and whatever perf stuff they're doing to make Safari "feel" so fast on the Mac. I think they feel that replicating all of that in Win32 would just be impossible/unsustainable. Still, I wish they'd just make it some kind of "developer edition" thing. It could be a bit janky, even... as long as it was clearly labeled "for developers" or whatever I don't really see it giving the company a black eye. We're all dependent on Chromium, its devteam and what Google decides is "best" for the whole world and the Internet. Which I believe, is certainly a bad thing. I agree wholeheartedly, and Apple seems to agree! That's what's so f'ing baffling to me. Clearly they feel that Safari is an extremely important project; the only thing standing between Google utterly 100% owning the web in every sense that matters. A thing that would clearly be bad for Apple. Accordingly, Safari on Mac gets a ton of investment from Apple. And clearly Apple feels Safari is so important that it's the only browser engine allowed on iOS. But, I can tell you from experience, a hell of a lot of B2B stuff and stuff cranked out by small shops is just never tested on Safari. And one reason is that a lot of small shops just don't have a Mac sitting around. And experience tells us that this is the death of a browser. Nobody wants to stick with browser XYZ once some percentage of their stuff stops working. They don't want to run multiple different browsers. It's a pain. They eventually follow the path of least resistance and just use the browser where 100% of their stuff works.

sbuk 6y ago

Epiphany uses WebKit...

kps 6y ago

Microsoft for instance offers free VM images for browser testing.