34 ms·

For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

• orionblastar 5y ago
  I used to like Safari for Windows.
  • fouc 5y ago
    It does seem like a shame there's no Safari for Windows
    • bufferoverflow 5y ago
      Nor for Linux. Very hard to debug if you're not on MacOS.
    • orionblastar 5y ago
      Not since 2012: http://www.oldversion.com/windows/safari/ http://www.oldversion.com/windows/safari/
• MattGaiser 5y ago
  People complain about Google Chrome eating the web, but it really does seem like everyone else either dislikes the web (Apple), is ambivalent (Microsoft), or plain doesn't seem to care much (Mozilla).
  • slindz 5y ago
    So true. I have this uneasy reliance on Chrome for supporting PWA's properly since Mozilla lost interest. It's a life/routine manager for people with horrible memories. Chrome stands alone in supporting web push notifications :S
    • dhosek 5y ago
      Safari supports web push notifications. I have never wanted them.
      • spartanatreyu 5y ago
        Safari doesn't support background sync, so its PWAs are barely functional. You could be getting more notifications than you need because of it.
      • slindz 5y ago
        Can you appreciate how a memory challenged/privacy conscious person might find it helpful to opt in to web push notifications?
        • falcolas 5y ago
          > Can you appreciate how a memory challenged/privacy conscious person might find it helpful to opt in to web push notifications? By relying on Chrome, the least privacy conscious web browser in existence? Not really. Just make an app. All of the benefits, fewer privacy compromises. But, it requires more work on the developer's end, so I also understand why they might not want to. Just stop trying to paint their decisions as being privacy conscious.
        • dhosek 5y ago
          I can see memory challenged, but not privacy conscious. The big problem from my perspective is in the user experience. On my first visit to a site, they ask me if I want notifications. It's my first visit, I know nothing about the site. Why would I say yes? Later, if I had changed my mind, I might want to, although in most cases, I'd rather just use an RSS feed and get updates when it's convenient for me rather than for them. I have yet to encounter the scenario where website notifications are better than old-school RSS. On the privacy front? I don't see how this helps in any way with privacy. It seems like it would be more likely to be a privacy nightmare than a privacy boon.
    • spfzero 5y ago
      The last thing I’d want is a web push notification. I don’t have a favorite browser, but if there were one which blocked pop-ups asking me to assent to notifications, it would be my new favorite.
      • slindz 5y ago
        Web push notifications would only apply to PWA's, which you have to deliberately install by seeking out the add to home screen menu item. They are not the nuisance you are making them out to be.
        • deleted 5y ago
          [deleted]
      • rand49an 5y ago
        At least in Chrome and Edge you can just disable notifications completely in the settings menu.
    • roca 5y ago
      How did Mozilla lose interest? Firefox for Android supports PWAs. Firefox supports push notifications on both Android and desktop.
      • slindz 5y ago
        A decision came down in January to drop ongoing support. This included removing previously working functionality. Here was a discussion from January: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25589177 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25589177
  • roca 5y ago
    Chrome eating the Web is something Mozilla cares very much about.
    • whywhywhywhy 5y ago
      Not sure how anyone can truly believe that from their actions over the past few years.
  • paxys 5y ago
    Follow the money. Apple makes its money from iOS & the apps ecosystem. Microsoft from business licenses. Mozilla – well they try their best but don't make much money at all. The only company to successfully monetize the open web is Google. Facebook as well to an extent but they found their success in mobile more than web, so gave up caring too much.
    • otterley 5y ago
      The majority of Mozilla’s operating funds come from Google.
• Sniffnoy 5y ago
  From how they're described here, PWAs sound like a phishing risk...?
  • dhosek 5y ago
    A lot of the APIs that Safari doesn't support end up being attack vectors and/or useful tools for user fingerprinting. Personally, I use Safari as my browser on my Mac almost 100% of the time (the small fraction is because, thanks to T-Mobile, my Netflix DVD and streaming accounts have been separated and Netflix insists on sending a notification email if I log out and then log back in to the streaming account). On rare occasions I'll open Chrome for some other task and it kills my laptop battery.
    • fnord77 5y ago
      I'd drop chrome in an instant for safari, but I cannot find a decent adblocker for safari. ublock origin discontinued support
      • LeoPanthera 5y ago
        AdGuard for Safari (available in the App Store for both macOS and iOS) is excellent and free.
      • jolux 5y ago
        Apple deprecated the extension interface that Origin uses and has no plans to implement the needed APIs even though they now support WebExtensions.
      • tedd4u 5y ago
        1Blocker is okay.
      • busymom0 5y ago
        I use AdBlock Pro (it's free) and it works very well.
• saagarjha 5y ago
  > Apple dragged their feet in adding support for PWAs in Safari, and when they finally did, limited the capabilities of a PWA so that native-like app functionality wouldn’t be possible, like notifications or a home screen icon shortcut Websites can get Home Screen shortcuts; this has been a thing since the original iPhone.
  • smoldesu 5y ago
    There's still no background sync or access to APIs that aren't purely cosmetic. That's why native implementations of an app always "feel" better.
    • diebeforei485 5y ago
      I hope the lack of background sync stays as a #wontfix, because I view it as a feature.
      • smoldesu 5y ago
        That shouldn't prevent it from being an opt-in toggle for the people (like me) who rely on it.
        • diebeforei485 5y ago
          Disagree. Things that start as "optional opt-in toggles" can eventually become quasi-mandatory, for example if you're a student, employee, or citizen, and your school, workplace, or government creates an app that needs this. In 2020, lots of universities required students to install fairly invasive stuff on their computers for remote learning, but -- thanks in large part to Apple's policies -- their phones remained pretty much untouched.
          • smoldesu 5y ago
            How do you make an app that enforces notifications? Unless such an app is running in ring 0, it has to follow the same rules as everyone else. In any case, notifications are entirely handled by the operating system, so the onus would fall on Apple to prevent this fairly simple exploit from happening (hell, Android managed to do it right). Furthermore, Proctorio and plenty of other invasive testing software has no trouble running on a Mac. Your last sentance is about as coherent as thanking Google for stopping McGraw-Hill from spying on Android users.
• lucasyvas 5y ago
  I'm at the point where, at least on the Desktop, I'd rather support a Chromium webview powered "native" app than bother supporting web browsers directly. Why should I be excited about Filesystem API and the like when we can already do that on the operating system directly? It's really easy to understand the rise of Electron in this context. I don't think Electron is the final form, however. There's nothing wrong with web technology - my favorite browser is Firefox. I love the web but, from an effort perspective, the justification for supporting all these browsers, ESPECIALLY when some of them half ass it, is just not there. It ranges from frustrating to a complete waste of time.
  • hortense 5y ago
    > Why should I be excited about Filesystem API and the like when we can already do that on the operating system directly? Because it's easier to update to a website than it is to release a ton of binaries ({windows, Linux, macos}x{x86,x64,arm64}) and have users download them. Not to mention it's safer and faster for the user.
    • kasabali 5y ago
      > safer and faster Safer, maybe. Faster? LMAO.
      • hortense 5y ago
        If you take into account the download/extraction/installation time of the user, many times yes.
  • InfiniteRand 5y ago
    The funny thing is Firefox used to be beautiful for embedding, but then they decided the future of embedding was Servo, and unfortunately they ran out of money to build that future
• kouteiheika 5y ago
  Speaking from personal experience as a developer (although YMMV) - this is totally true. And I'm not even talking about some newfangled APIs like WebUSB and such (I don't really care about those personally). Safari's handling of regular HTML + CSS is regularly broken compared to other browsers. (At least in my experience.) Open the site in Chromium. Yep it works. Open the site in Firefox. Yep it works. Open the site in Safari. Ugh... it's broken. That's something that I encounter on a regular basis. It's really inexcusable that Apple, being the richest company in the world, has a web browser that's this bad. But they don't really have any incentive to do better. Thanks to their walled garden the only available web browser on iOS is Safari, and since no developer can afford to ignore iOS as a platform they have no choice but to deal with it.
  • teruakohatu 5y ago
    History is just repeating itself. If you capture enough browser market share, there is no incentive improve handling of web content that does not materially help the bottom line. IE gave us wonderful features (XMLHTTPRequest) but as soon as MSFT found they had a monopoly, development stalled and the world got stuck with IE6, which lacked even basic features like PNG image alpha transparency. When/if a court orders Apple to allow alternative web engines on iOS, and they start losing market share to Firefox, Chrome or Edge because they are including features that Safari does not, Apple will finally put some effort into Safari.
    • halostatue 5y ago
      Apple _does_ put effort into Safari. It’s just not on the parts that you and other developers want it to be on. It’s definitely on the parts that I (as a user) want it to be on (security, privacy, and battery life in roughly that order). It is unlikely that a court will be able to force Apple to expose OS APIs that would allow for the insecurity of WebUSB or WebMIDI on iOS, even if they do force other engines. And that’s a good thing.
      • afavour 5y ago
        You’re talking as if it’s an either/or situation. For a company the size of Apple it definitely isn’t. They could fix long-standing bugs, implement web standards others have had for years and improve security, privacy and battery life. They just don’t.
• sesuximo 5y ago
  This may be true for devs, but I think safari is great for users. The main feature I love is the minimalist UI.
• robgibbons 5y ago
  "Standards aren't add-ons to the web. They are the web." -Apple's HTML5 Showcase, 2010
• LeoPanthera 5y ago
  I speak as a non-developer but as someone who makes their living with a computer: From my perspective, Apple's conservative attitude is a positive. There are all sorts of web techs that enable the possibility of increased tracking, of websites being generally malicious, of all sorts of things that I don't want. Historically Apple has been on my side and I will continue to appreciate that until demonstrated otherwise.
  • throwaway140820 5y ago
    Are you implying Mozilla Firefox cares less about the user than Apple? Why not let Mozilla have it's browser on iOS? It's not about the user, it's about having an iron chokehold on the developers and we are too cool aid drunk to call it out.
    • otterley 5y ago
      Mozilla is mostly funded by Google.
      • howinteresting 5y ago
        And that's irrelevant, Mozilla's decision-making is quite independent of Google's. Firefox on Android is an excellent browser. Firefox on iOS could be the same if Apple let go of its chokehold.
        • falcolas 5y ago
          Firefox on iOS is an excellent browser. I use it as my daily driver, and it works perfectly well.
          • howinteresting 5y ago
            It doesn't have uBlock Origin, which I consider an essential part of a good browser.
          • 5y ago
• diebeforei485 5y ago
  Yes, because we all want notifications and more things running in the background that can access to the device's ports. I take the points about not supporting CSS features and some of the other web standards, and the issues around Apple's 30% cut, and I'd add that some of Apple's censorship (eg. banning Parler for a while, asking Telegram and Tumblr to not allow access to certain content) is troubling, but I don't think the way around that is letting any cowboy with a web app send notifications and access bluetooth willy nilly.
  • Epskampie 5y ago
    Notifications can only be sent after you “install” a website as a PWA. Same for background stuff. Don’t want that? Just use it as a regular site.
    • diebeforei485 5y ago
      Thing is, it's not me I'm concerned about.
    • Jcowell 5y ago
      Is this true ? Websites as they are now already ask for notifications in browser safari
  • upbeat_general 5y ago
    The thing is sites can already do this on chrome (desktop and android) and it hasn’t caused any widespread issues to my knowledge. Why would adding it to Safari have a different effect? Plus iOS is improving on its notification suppression and its relatively trivial to suppress notifications that aren’t interacted with after some limit.
• rubyn00bie 5y ago
  > Because IE was seriously outdated, lacking support for cutting-edge web APIs and technologies enabling the modern websites and web apps we use today. This is just false, or at best only half of the story to make a false equivalence. IE was cutting edge until Firefox. The biggest problem with IE was all the insanely weird shit it did, not missing features. It would “fix” missing tags, that would then be broken on every standards compliant browser, had active x, and had an absolutely insane amount of security bugs. Mobile safari ain’t the IE of the modern day. It’s just fucking not. I’m sorry. Chrome is closer to IE than Safari because of market share AND developers developing exclusively for it forgetting anything and everything else. Does mobile safari still suck? Sure. But we don’t need to call it IE or constantly drone on with comparisons to IE. Let something suck in its own unique and shitty way, please.
  • andrewmcwatters 5y ago
    Thank you. I have no idea what these people are talking about. They obviously didn't actually do development back then. > Apple took years to finally add WebRTC support to Safari, far enough behind Chrome and Firefox that it practically became a running joke among developers and even industry observers. Really? Because no one I know uses WebRTC and would rather use ffmpeg and sockets to do serious work like that over a desktop application. > But at the same time, the lack of support for key web technologies and APIs has been both perplexing and annoying at the same time. Yeah, what we all need is Web Bluetooth.
    • roca 5y ago
      Lots of sites use WebRTC for video and audio calls. Google Meet, Discord, Slack for example. On desktop it's far more secure to use those in-browser than via desktop apps.
      • andrewmcwatters 5y ago
        Yeah, and those all suck up my RAM. Color me nonplussed that WebKit doesn't follow in Chromium's footsteps.
• vorador 5y ago
  If you look at the features that Apple lags on adding support for, usually it's either because: 1. they can be abused (PWAs) 2. are complex to implement (WebRTC – for the longest time the recommendation in the WebRTC community if you wanted to build a C++ app was to bundle a good chunk of Chrome's libraries) 3. or could be bad for battery (web workers) So yeah, it makes some developers' jobs harder but generally there's a good reason for punting features.
  • amiga-workbench 5y ago
    Okay, sure. But can I please have input type="number" and have the css gap property work with flex like it does in every other browser?
  • slivanes 5y ago
    Actually, pretty sure it's only one reason, money. If they made Safari on iOS actually good (re: PWA notification support), it would burn into their App store profits.
    • foxes 5y ago
      It can be both. Caring about the user experience is obviously going to increase their profit. But then they can also try to push people towards their store.
    • diebeforei485 5y ago
      What sort of apps are in the intersection of being performant enough to be written in JavaScript and also generate lots of in-app purchase revenue (which is typically recurring revenue)? Certainly not most games, which are the biggest money-spinners, and also not pro camera apps or video editing apps. Video streaming apps (eg. Netflix / YouTube Premium) come to mind, but they don't rely too much on in app purchase I think. That leaves news apps like the New York Times which need notifications to deliver breaking stories, and perhaps dating apps with messaging/photo features. Thing is, for every New York Times, there are tons of "news" clickbait content farm websites out there, and I certainly don't need to elaborate on the risks of "free-for-all" dating apps with no enforced guidelines. I'd much rather Apple end the anti-steering rules where apps are not being allowed to tell people that they can subscribe on the website. Congress is working on this[1]. 1. https://stratechery.com/2021/the-cicilline-salvo/ https://stratechery.com/2021/the-cicilline-salvo/
• Normille 5y ago
  >Why did developers and software engineers hate IE so much? Because IE was seriously outdated, lacking support for cutting-edge web APIs and technologies enabling the modern websites and web apps we use today. Nonsense. The almost universal contempt for Internet Exploder amongst web developers had nothing to do with lack of support for cutting edgw APIs. It was because Internet Exploder refused to follow basic web standards and was stuffed it full of proprietary and non-standard rendering quirks. This meant you could guarantee that any website you designed and that you ensured followed web standards and rendered perfectly on every browser known to man would either break or display completely differently on IE. So you had to then pollute your lovely clean code with countless ugly hacks and conditionals just to ensure your site rendered the same on IE as it did everywhere else. That was why every web developer not working in a Microsoft bubble loathed that browser.
  • Dma54rhs 5y ago
    Safari doesn't even work on other platforms, my office doesn't test or fix their specific bugs anyway. Good riddance.
  • alserio 5y ago
    I still have to support IE11 and the fact that it doesn't support modern API its one of the reasons I hate it with passion. Something like not supporting css variables is seriously limiting. As second place I'll put the unusable dev tools. Spec compliance is more of a problem for css than js. I concede that with previous IE iteration the problem was much more worse.
    • G3rn0ti 5y ago
      At least it has dev tools. IE6 didn’t. So every time JS failed I had to alert myself into the heart of the problem…
      • alserio 5y ago
        I'm grateful to the previous generation of web dev, and their suffering to avoid us younger generations their pain.
• jolux 5y ago
  Apple has its own opinions about what web standards it should implement. It’s as simple as that. Google has been extremely successful in convincing developers that browsers that don’t behave like Chrome are behaving wrong. Don’t get me wrong, I wish Safari had more features, fewer bugs, and an evergreen release cycle. It’s clear Apple do not see themselves as competing with Chrome, largely because of iOS, and I do want them to take it more seriously. But the people who write Chrome explicitly do not care about other browsers, and think that the world would be a better place if Chrome were the only one. Between that behavior and the whole AMP fiasco, I’m surprised so much of the blame gets thrown at Apple for destroying the web. Am I supposed to be writing PWAs now, or AMP pages? If Reddit can’t figure it out, how the fuck am I supposed to?
  • robbedpeter 5y ago
    Reddit is a pretty low bar. I don't think they care much about the site except to make it objectively worse than the app at every convenient opportunity.
    • tmpz22 5y ago
      > Reddit is a pretty low bar Reddit is a multi billion dollar product and one of the most trafficked sites on the internet.
      • foxes 5y ago
        Why do they continue to degrade the mobile/desktop default web experience? Promoting the app is one thing, but then actively harming the user experience? Do most people not care? Insane either way. The day old.reddit dies Ill blacklist the site permanently.
        • kevin_thibedeau 5y ago
          Gordon Geckos are running the show.
        • theturtletalks 5y ago
• busymom0 5y ago
  A bigger issue which this site forgets to mention is the 7 day cap for local storage data after which the data is deleted unless the site haas been added to the Home Screen shortcut (the option for which has also been hidden in menus now without any API to present this easily): > Apple in its Full Third-Party Cookie Blocking and More blog post announced changes to WebKit that erases all local storage data for a given site if the site is not used for seven days. Basically, you go on a vacation and the data is lost. This means that apps must necessarily keep the data on a server, or they risk losing it all because Apple thinks this equates to privacy. What it does is cripple not only client-side-only PWAs but all PWAs as a big appeal of such technology is for it to be an offline-first and you can’t really go offline-first if you don’t have offline data anymore. Apple is crippling the Web because all it cares about is their native app store and it doesn’t matter how they spin this shit in terms of privacy and security, all they are doing is hurting the web for profit. Related discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22686602 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22686602 EDIT: What's up with the downvotes?
  • wwarek 5y ago
    > What's up with the downvotes? This whole thread seems to be full of Apple fans, you shouldn't point to any logically correct criticisms of Apple
    • dang 5y ago
      Please don't break the site guidelines like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  • dang 5y ago
    Please don't break the site guidelines by going on about downvotes. It takes threads off topic in a particularly tedious way. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
• rvz 5y ago
  Even so, Chrome is what the web developers will use to force users to run its APIs, experimental features and leave all other browsers partially working. Chromium is used on the web, desktop and alternative browsers. For users there is no escape, Unless you want to use a browser that is has a suboptimal browsing experience (Firefox) > Did you know that it’s possible today to create something for your browser that works like a native app on your device? Nope. Not at all ready yet and good luck on iOS. > We’ll see what happens. Nothing is going to happen, Even after the anti-trust hearings. Apple’s lawyers always find a way. As for the web in general, well it just switched from one giant to another. To Downvoters: So Chromium is NOT used on the web, desktop and on alternative browsers nor it is the most used browser and it is NOT the best supported browser? Are you sure?
• northerdome 5y ago
  This is magnified by the fact that Apple won't allow competing rendering engines on the iPhone. If you could install Chrome or Firefox (the actual browsers, not just re-skinned Safari) they would be forced to keep up.
• marticode 5y ago
  I remember when I was coding form verification and couldn't rely on the HTML5 form validation because Safari, and only Safari, had no user UI to signal errors. (weirdly enough they had the JavaScript API for it... they just couldn't be bothered to show anything to the user)
• perryizgr8 5y ago
  > Progressive web apps I don't want PWAs. Apparently Google is their biggest promoter and Chrome has the best PWA support but the apps still stuck. I prefer to leave them open in a Chrome tab than have it pop out and pretend to be a native app. So good on Safari to not support it properly, it does not provide any benefit at all. > Lagging support for WebRTC and other features Again, I don't care. Just write a native app if you want to do video/audio calls, or send/receive files. The worst native app for these purposes is better than the best WebRTC implementation. > Bug and infrequent updates All software has bugs. When Chrome has one, webdevs are forced to hack up a workaround. When Safari has one, they complain. Please leave safari alone. It is very good as it is. We don't need any more newfangled web "standards" which are mostly pushed by Google so that they can justify not writing native apps for any of their products. Enough is enough Google, just write apps for the platforms you want to sell on.
  • wbobeirne 5y ago
    > Again, I don't care. Just write a native app if you want to do video/audio calls, or send/receive files. The worst native app for these purposes is better than the best WebRTC implementation. Google Meet and Jitsi are fantastic, in my opinion. Zoom however has had a constant parade of vulnerabilities over the last year.
    • perryizgr8 5y ago
      Google meet doesn't have 10% of the features Zoom has. Meet is completely unusable for me because of that. I haven't tried Jitsi though.
• samtheprogram 5y ago
  Aside: If you have a Mac and complain about your computer overheating or fans spinning up constantly / “while doing light browsing”: start using Safari for anything video/audio encoding/decoding related, like streaming music and video, or just in general, especially for longer battery life. It helps immensely with no noticeable loss in performance. My fans no longer spin up watching a video on YouTube or DRM protected content from a streaming service, and the computer isn’t hot to the touch either.
  • rudian 5y ago
    Safari is great for some thing but its performance in others is lacking to say the least. Open a GitHub PR with 30 files to see what I’m talking about, the browser freezes for seconds (but you can scroll a partially-painted page so, yay?)
    • mmis1000 5y ago
      And the `partially-painted page` is going to be reported as bug and send to some unfortunate developer... Obviously it can't be fixed because it is just not loaded yet. Safari is doing so much things that will be treated as a bug by QA and designer (While it is actually completely intentional)
• streptomycin 5y ago
  https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/16/apple_safari_indexeddb_bug/ https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/16/apple_safari_indexedd... this bug is still not fixed, which is kind of nuts. Well, they said they fixed it in dev but have not actually deployed the fix yet and won't comment on when that might happen.
  • dwaite 5y ago
    Was this not fixed in the release a few days ago?
    • streptomycin 5y ago
      My bad if that's true, I may have missed it! I don't actually have any Apple devices, just get bug reports from my users lol
• mushufasa 5y ago
  > Don’t get me wrong, Safari is very good web browser, delivering fast performance and solid privacy features. OP indicates Safari prioritizes speed and privacy. Speed and privacy are often in conflict with the proliferation of features and web APIs that you see in chrome (web MIDI fingerprinting anyone?). I'm not sure it's fair to equate this difference in focus to 'the new internet explorer'
• echelon 5y ago
  Apple is telling developers to make an app, because then Apple gets to steal the customer relationship and take 30%. They prevent other browser engines and run times to yield total platform control. They shut down any attempt to gain a foothold or alternative. Let me tell you an anecdote from history, Microsoft attempted to control the entire web platform. They embedded their browser into Windows, rapidly introduced non-standard features, had authorship tools (FrontPage), publishing (IIS), and were trying to force ActiveX and other tendrils to gain a complete dominance. They might not get in on every customer interaction or payment (who would have dared to dream?), but they would own 90% of the platform and exercise their control to profit massively. But they were distracted, shut down by the DOJ, and ultimately failed. Today we celebrate this. Apple dreamed a different dream. Instead of getting every smart phone customer, they'd enforce total commercial control of their platform and then gradually increase the size of their pie. Apps, subscriptions, movies, music, Apple Pay, Apple login, no outside payment, no runtimes, no alternative distribution... It worked like a charm. Apple has an ecosystem that plays well together, services that are compelling, and people love it. Half of Americans use an iPhone, and many use it as their only device. The unfortunate problem is that by growing their pie so big, Apple crowds out the entire computing industry that gave rise to their capabilities. Half of everything we do now has an Apple tax. Apple was crafty and played nice just long enough to build a wall around their customers. And now you'll never reach them without being taxed. And they have so many customers... Apple customers. The most locked in of all, and Zuckerberg is steaming with jealousy. Apple owns computing. Half of it, anyway. And they won't dare let it out of the box. The DOJ breaking this regime is our only hope. That, or a new tech cycle that might (but probably won't) upset the incumbents.
• endisneigh 5y ago
  With regards to PWAs, I’m curious: Say I’m FunCorp and have two apps, FunTrack and FunRate. FunCorp doesn’t believe in native apps, or App Store at all. Could FunCorp submit a single dummy app, FunStuff in the App Store that allow FunTrack and FunRate native functionality without the App Store? E.g if you install FunStuff it’ll have some dumb functionality like be a calculator but also send you native notifications of FunTrack and FunRate which are web apps. I imagine not but if so I’m surprised it’s not done more
• chrizel 5y ago
  Speaking about Safari bugs I got concerned with lately: you cannot use Content-Security-Policy if you use web sockets with Safari: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201591 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=201591 I don’t understand why this doesn’t get more attention. It is just infuriating if you can’t use a security feature, just because some browser doesn’t follow the specs correctly. Oh well, time repeats itself just like with IE. And just for a moment we thought we are behind all of this.
  • dwaite 5y ago
    you cannot use connect-src self. You can use CSP just fine if you are more explicit.
    • chrizel 5y ago
      Checked it again. You are right about this - if I define it as 'connect-src 'self' wss://<domain>' it works - not without the 'wss://', which I tried last week. Thanks for the nudge. At least we have a workaround.
      • merrywhether 5y ago
        Protocol is part of a FQDN, so this isn’t entirely surprising.
• userbinator 5y ago
  The general hatred of stability speaks volumes about the attitude of web developers (or perhaps the strength of Google's propaganda) --- what in $deity's name is wrong with software not changing? Look at something like a C64, which has remained basically unchanged for a few decades and the original is long out of production; and yet people are still writing new software for it. Bugs and limitations become features to be exploited for new avenues of creativity and awe. Then you have the Google-ified vision of the web, also known as the "modern[1] web", where it churns the "standards" and its browser frequently (often to the detriment of user control), new frameworks spring up by the dozens every week, and websites become overly bloated and stop working in anything but the latest version of Chrome because some trendchasing hipster decided to use $trendy_new_framework that executes a bunch of totally unnecessary code and crashes on attempting to use some new feature, nevermind the fact that the site itself doesn't even require it and could've been written in simple HTML to be perfectly functional down to IE5 or even Lynx. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25915313 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=25915313 I'm not an Apple fan, but in this case I'm on their side in attempting to hold back the insanity the "modern web" has become: "an enemy of an enemy is a friend". [1] I increasingly find the presence of that adjective to be a reliable indicator of a bad experience.
  • deergomoo 5y ago
    I agree with your general sentiment, and I despair at the slow tide of inefficient, ill-behaved applications built with web technologies swallowing up every category of software. However, I think the main complaint here is that Safari is missing support for some pretty low-hanging fruit. Take notifications for example: there's a whole wealth of web-based systems where the user might want to receive notifications, but where building and distributing native applications is completely infeasible. Do we need the ability for websites to send notifications? Of course not. Does it suck that out of every modern browser (including desktop Safari), only mobile Safari doesn't support it? I think so, personally.
    • falcolas 5y ago
      Web developers (and/or the companies who hold their reins) have proven that they can not be trusted with access to notifications. I personally don't care how useful they may be for the 0.001% of applications when the remaining 99.999% are spammers. There's not one site that's allowed to spam me with notifications on the desktop, and I'm thrilled beyond belief that they can't do it on my iPhone.
• jasonlfunk 5y ago
  I thought this might have been about Safari’s devtools. While they have been slowly getting better, it’s still painful to use them compared to Chrome’s.
• SimeVidas 5y ago
  > Further contributing to the frustration is the fact that unlike Chrome or Firefox, Safari updates are not automatic on regular basis. They’re only shipped together with the infrequent updates to the entire OS. I wouldn’t say twice a year is infrequent.
  • halostatue 5y ago
    It’s more often than twice a year, at that. It would be nice if Safari and Safari WebView were updated more frequently like Chrome and other browsers, but the pace that exists is not as slow as people like to pretend.
    • SimeVidas 5y ago
      OS updates happen more often, but Safari’s browser engine (WebKit) gets updated with bug fixes and new features exactly twice per year (in March and September), AFAIK.
      • dwaite 5y ago
        New features typically land in March and September, because they are often supported by the underlying OS. For instance, HTTP/3 support should land in iOS 15 and macOS 12 because it is being added to the operating system frameworks. Bug fixes can arrive even in maintenance releases, but this is more often seen for security-related fixed (such as remote exploits or side channel attacks) Safari itself is shipped outside of the read-only container on macOS so that it can be updated independently.
  • Leherenn 5y ago
    The bigger issue for me is how coupled the OS and Safari updates are. Apple is great at keeping their phone updated, but once it stops, everything stops. My iPhone 6 is on iOS 12, which means Safari 12 and no way to get the latest updates. Android support is dreadful, but at least you can run the latest Chrome on Android 4.
    • 5y ago
• throwaway140820 5y ago
  Looks like almost everybody would be worse off if Firefox went away and looks like nobody gives a shit if it's going away in part due to uncompetitive behaviour on iOS and largely because they don't seem to have a handle on the situation, investing left and right and not focusing on the browser. Here's a thought, Mozilla does a lot of political campaigning, how about campaigning for open app stores and death to no other browser engine? Why not do this which seems like a do or die situation for them?
  • sjkorvin 5y ago
    Have you seen the Coalition for App Fairness? As someone who's had trouble with his parents, seeing Qustodio on there made me cringe. Mozilla is not a member. I totally understand your point, but I've been following Linux to some capacity for a little over a decade and this entire time, Mozilla has been the "friend" of the Linux community that it can't decide if it wants around or not. There have been so many Mozilla "controversies" that have gotten the Linux community up in arms that I've seen people think that Mozilla operates by building up goodwill and then, doing things to create negative attention. Apparently, there's a name for that.
• bfrog 5y ago
  Safari is perfectly fine. Chrome being a dominant web browser engine is the new issue at hand. Firefox and safari are seemingly second class at best now. It doesn’t help that google themselves only seem to test with chrome. Meets on Linux is broken in Firefox with the latest update as per usual with google.
  • dep_b 5y ago
    Yup. People complain about WebRTC support on Safari then continue to break products using it on Firefox all the time.
• tommek4077 5y ago
  Regarding PWA support, I often read you can use PWAs offline. I can not imagine a Website that I would want offline. Can someone please give me an useful example of such an offline Website?
  • pacifika 5y ago
    Any website you might access whilst on a train or in other situations with spotty connectivity
    • tommek4077 5y ago
      I don't understand. Where is the data coming from? When it is open, I have it open, if I click anywhere, what should be displayed? Is it for some kind of ebook and fetching the coming pages beforehand?
  • upbeat_general 5y ago
    I think the idea is not necessarily to make fully offline websites (though some people will), but to provide a more consistent interface akin to native apps. Most apps you use require network access but you can still interact with them on very slow/broken connection. Meanwhile you try to load a website and it’s a much different experience. But as for offline apps, I could imagine music/podcast players (where you can save offline media), offline maps, etc.
    • tommek4077 5y ago
      But all those examples are already working without PWAs. In the past we called those programs or applications. Why using the browser as runtime?
  • SquareWheel 5y ago
    DevDocs.io is a very useful offline app. Download your desired documentation in advance, and continue coding when your net is out. Apps I'd like to see are Pixlr and RegExr. Any utility like that makes a good PWA candidate.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• diragon 5y ago
  I've been on the fence, but this article and discussion convinced me that I will certainly buy the iphone 13 mini when it comes out. Thanks for that.
• rajasimon 5y ago
  I am seeing completely opposite. When comes to web application development I always prefer Chrome but recent M1 changes a lot. Now that safari feels like butter I prefer Safari over Chrome for development.
• fouc 5y ago
  I highly recommend for developers on Macs to use Safari as their primary browser, and especially for developing. That way everything will just work. Then once you fix any bugs for firefox, it should work just fine on all browsers.
• wernercd 5y ago
  Of course its crap and outdate... it's the bait to say "we have a browser so you can use that instead of the app store" while knowing that it's a dated, subpar, slow garbage option. If they cared about having an alternative browser or a good experience, they'd let Chrome run without being hamstrung by webkit.
• jchw 5y ago
  It's not just difficult things that are missing. For no apparent reason, Safari (stable, at least) does not support streaming WebAssembly at all. Apple will literally support Vorbis but only allow it in a proprietary container format. This is stupid as hell to the point where IIRC Wikimedia projects just have an ogg demuxer/vorbis decoder in JS to avoid having to special case Apple. If Apple's goal isn't to stifle App Store competition, then its goal is most likely to ensure that all web developers have to own and use Apple products. In that regard, they're basically succeeding: you can't rent macOS VMs for short periods now, emulating iOS outside the simulator on Apple hardware is very limited and mostly only done by security researchers, Safari has not been available outside of Apple hardware for a long time, and Hackintosh has been beaten down for a long time. The most reasonable option, basically OSX-KVM, still won't get you GPU acceleration, and is a clear EULA violation on non-Apple hardware. Their strategy becomes especially self-evident when you look at WebM support. Suddenly, Apple is supporting WebM in Safari... only on macOS, where they have no choice but to compete with other browser engines. I'm so fucking sick of this shit. It's time to stop defending Apple simply because there's a perception that they're being a prick to Google. They're being pricks to us. If we needed a savior, I can tell you for sure that savior isn't Apple. Doubt it if you want, but salvation hasn't come and it is not coming. I'm not defending Google because they definitely earned their reputation, but this attitude of blind acceptance of shit Apple does because everyone wants retribution against Google is stupid. When Apple throws a shit fit over web standards (cough WGSL cough) the party that loses isn't Google, it's us. Apple is a behemoth company that has an inordinate amount of control over the web and web standards considering how much it doesn't seem to have the best interests of the web at heart. This rant is brought to you by every single time my code written and tested in Firefox worked totally fine in Chrome and Edge, but not Safari. It feels like this is almost every single time I do anything non-trivial anymore. I'd like to reiterate that I am not saying Safari should implement dumb crap like WebMIDI or WebBluetooth, nor am I saying that I have any problem with their privacy or security features. All of that is fine, but it's not any more heroic than Firefox which, for all its flaws, also does a lot of the same stuff.
• coldtea 5y ago
  Nope, Apple's Safari is the last stand (given it's market share, FF is miniscule) from the web standards becoming whatever Google likes... It's not Safari which is outdated, it's standards that move too fast and come ad-hoc to Google's tastes. And it's not even about the web anymore, it's all kinds of crap to make the browser a slower, duplicate of native functionality, app platform.
  • SquareWheel 5y ago
    Apple is just as likely to test new features in the wild, or introduce new features without going through the standards process. prefers-color-scheme sure came out of nowhere. And I'm sure you remember their original proposal with WebGPU. Meanwhile Apple are strangling PWAs to hold onto their app store monopoly, and extremely slow to implement features that other vendors adopted long ago. jQueryUI had its life artificially extended by years simply because Apple refused to add a date picker input type. IndexedDB has been nigh-useless without wrappers because of Safari. They've earned their moniker of the new IE.
    • deergomoo 5y ago
      > jQueryUI had its life artificially extended by years simply because Apple refused to add a date picker input type The weirdest thing about this is that MobileSafari has supported <input type="date"> for years. Desktop Safari only got support in May.
    • marcellus23 5y ago
      > Apple are strangling PWAs Strangling is a funny word to use. They never implemented PWA features in the first place. They're under no obligation to do so, either. You can argue whether PWAs are good or not, but I don't think such an argument can be made objectively. I.E., there's a prevailing view in this thread that web browsers are evolving in one direction, and Safari is slower than everyone else at getting there. IMO this is wrong. A better way to look at it is that web standards are a big blob of shit, and each browser is implementing the subset of that blob that they think is useful. This is how it's always been. Mozilla has been neutering PWA recently too. Maybe it's just not a good set of technologies?
• thysultan 5y ago
  Safari is un-intuitively an anti-monopoly browser, and as long as it exists to that end, it will be a force for good in the browser space.
• brabel 5y ago
  > Don’t get me wrong, Safari is very good web browser, delivering fast performance and solid privacy features. > But at the same time, the lack of support for key web technologies and APIs has been both perplexing and annoying at the same time. Funny that the author thinks that the two things are not connected. Lack of support for key web APIs (meaning WebRTC basically) is perhaps what's keeping Safari users' privacy. Keeping up with the crazy pace of Web API evolution in a safe way and without introducing vulnerabilities is probably impossible even for the browsers pushing for all the craziness that's turning browsers into Operating Systems.
• ayoisaiah 5y ago
  I've always despised the fact that there's no simple way to test on Safari without owning Apple Hardware. It doesn't make any sense. Thankfully, I don't do much front end work anymore, so it's less of a concern for me now.
• Sophistifunk 5y ago
  As a developer, I like shiny toys. As a user, I don't want any of that shit in my web sites.
• jerryzh 5y ago
  It is quite a coincidence that I received the beta test invitation of Safari email right when I see this thread. I stopped using safari when the new kernel of Firefox is released in stable version. (And surprisingly found out Safari is the slowest browser to open iCloud on a MacBook).
• kkruglov 5y ago
  I really like current safari UI but as a user I have to use other browsers because safari has issues with both popular sites or services and internal work sites at times. Public example: Context menu - copy message link to clipboard - on discord doesn’t work in safari. I created a bug for their bugzilla, turned out that bug is fixed some time ago. BUT NOONE CAN TELL ME WHEN ILL SEE IT FIXED on my device. If I open 15-20 Freshdesk tickets in a row each in new tab, safari slows down as hell. If I use the same page on Confluence for 30 minutes editing it without refreshing, at some point safari will start saying that THIS PAGE eats too much power it might need refreshing. I as a user do not care. Ah one more, safari 14 after initial release had a bug with scrolling on Mac and it took them 7 months to push this fix from nightly version to stable. SEVEN.
  • bouke 5y ago
    Those websites you mention are written by the same people coming here to complain about Safari does not support $some_new_chrome_feature and that they’ve stopped caring for Safari (web interoperability).
• kellengreen 5y ago
  The indexDB fiasco is a good example of negative developer sentiment towards Safari. Firefox shipped support in 2011, with Chrome following suite a year later. It's mid 2021, and the Safari implementation is still critically broken. EDIT: It looks like the bug has been patched in developer preview, so hey progress +1.
• simion314 5y ago
  What I also dislike is I can't install Safari on my OS to test and debug Safari only issues. I will not buy Apple hardware so I am sorry Apple users, I will have to tell you to use Firefox or Chrome because that is the only stuff I can test.
• sgt 5y ago
  I think PWA is a good concept and interesting, but I don't really use them myself. I also noticed that very few people use PWA's - especially in cases where you have to pay for the apps, which makes me think that developers like them because they are cool, but because they make business sense.
  • heavyset_go 5y ago
    There's little incentive to develop PWAs when 60% of your customers in the US can't use them.
    • sgt 5y ago
      Even many places in Europe, the iPhone users are so prevalent among those willing to pay for an app is more like 90%. iPhone is like a Tesla. Most Android phones are like an old beat up Volkswagon from 1973. I love the fact that both exist.
• yourenotsmart 5y ago
  The problem isn't Safari as much, which pioneered HTML5, and is the most power-efficient browser on any platform I've seen. The problem is web devs. Web developers have increasingly the attitude of "I don't want to learn how to make apps, I want to use HTML/CSS/JS for all apps I make", and this plays directly into Google's interests, which benefits from everything being web, because it has its tentacles all over the web (through search, analytics, ads, dns, hosting and so on). So Google keeps adding questionable features to Chrome and pushing them as standards, including bizarre things like Bluetooth and USB access from web apps, and consistently trying to paint Safari as crap and outdated, and Firefox as stale and out of touch. And unfortunately, it's clearly working. I'm a developer, and among other platforms I also target the web, and let's be honest, web devs are among the least educated, least sophisticated, most entitled and most whiny bunch there is. I'll get the downvotes for saying this, because many of them are right here on this site, but it needs to be said. It's increasingly rare to see even a decent web site these days that isn't some horror show cobbled together from megabytes (literally) of JS frameworks and JSON, if you wanna know why, here's why. We've created a monster and that monster now wants to eat all platforms, so everything everywhere including on your desktop, laptop, tablet and phone, is just tons of React/Angular spaghetti and you better like it.
  • jlnthws 5y ago
    This is the best answer. Web devs blindly following edgy Chrome trends which are nothing more than a way to slow down Apple's revenue (which is fair game). App Store revenue was over $70B last year, with a 20% increase every year. Let me put it into words for you: seventy billion dollars. This is more than the total revenue of Intel, HP, Walt Disney, Unilever, FedEx or Pfizer, from the App Store alone. Most of that revenue comes from iOS apps. There is no way Apple would implement every new web standards mandated by its main competitor just to lose some of that revenue. Web devs should stop whining and come back to earth.
    • norman784 5y ago
      Isn't all about revenue, I hope one day we will have native apps again, now also desktop apps are Chrome (electron), IHMO in this case I think Apple is right, push more for native apps (not wallet gardens), The web browsers for sure are the most battle tested apps out there, but they use a huge amount of resources (ram) in order to show your app, if you push for native apps then your possibilities are endless, you don't need to wait till the browser vendor implement some feature, also notifications are the worst thing, there's a lot of naive people that accepted those and cannot find how to disable them, even I struggled a bit to find that the notifications that someone got in his computer came from the browser, windows doesn't tell that in the notification center.
• bryanrasmussen 5y ago
  I use FF, I just filed a bug because aria-expanded does not work correctly with a button when reading with voiceover. It works correctly in Safari. Safari's current beta has support for the lab and lch functions. What I'm saying is not that Safari isn't a hindrance in a lot of ways but there are still standards that it supports better than other browsers and I can run into them on a weekly basis.
• hdjjhhvvhga 5y ago
  For me the issue is simple. Does the mobile browser support the reader mode, allowing me to actually read an article instead of dealing with popups, ads and nags covering half of the screen etc.? Safari does. Chrome on iOS does not - at least the last time I checked. End of story.
• qwerty456127 5y ago
  > Internet Explorer is now a thing of the past, replaced by the far-better Microsoft Edge. Not really. There still are IE-only webapps ran by some government agencies.
• xet7 5y ago
  That article has false info. It is still possible to use Mobile Safari to add App Icon: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/PWA#ios-safari https://github.com/wekan/wekan/wiki/PWA#ios-safari And that app icon does open PWA app full screen. I'm maintainer of Wekan https://wekan.github.io https://wekan.github.io , Wekan also works as PWA app. For best mobile experience, enable drag handles: https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/3755 https://github.com/wekan/wekan/issues/3755 There has been fixes to HTML/CSS/JS so Wekan also works well on Safari. Apple M1 with Safari has fastest Javascript execution. Safari works well enough for me.
• arastuq 5y ago
  Safari is the new IE
• T3RMINATED 5y ago
  webkit is dead
• peterkelly 5y ago
  > Progressive web apps are really cool, because they can give you the following capabilities that you would normally expect with a native app: > - Run full-screen (no visible browser UI) > - OS-level notifications and alerts > - Ability to use the app when the device is offline > - Local data storage and retrieval > - Install an app icon on your smartphone’s home screen > - Access to hardware functions such as the camera, microphone, USB port, etc. None of this functionality belongs in a web browser.
  • collaborative 5y ago
    Says who? You are free to not use PWAs. Just let people choose for themselves
    • pertymcpert 5y ago
      Use an Android then.
  • sccxy 5y ago
    PWAs are free and good enough for 90% apps. Apple is just protecting their app store revenue by not improving ios safari. If "UX expert" haven't heard about PWAs then...
• collaborative 5y ago
  I don't need permission from Apple to publish a website, and only a judge can order it to be shut down, not them We need devices where the owner decides what is allowed and what isn't, not a tech giant making $64 billion per year in App Store monopoly revenue
• omgitsabird 5y ago
  To be fair, it is a lot better than it was a couple of years ago. Safari iOS: https://caniuse.com/?compare=ios_saf+14.5-14.7&compareCats=all#:~:text=Partial-,No%20support,-Accelerometer https://caniuse.com/?compare=ios_saf+14.5-14.7&compareCats=a... Safari TP: https://caniuse.com/?compare=safari+TP&compareCats=all#:~:text=Partial-,No%20support,-Accelerometer https://caniuse.com/?compare=safari+TP&compareCats=all#:~:te... Firefox: https://caniuse.com/?compare=firefox+92&compareCats=all#:~:text=Partial-,No%20support,-Accelerometer https://caniuse.com/?compare=firefox+92&compareCats=all#:~:t... Chrome: https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+95&compareCats=all#:~:text=Partial-,No%20support,-Ambient%20Light%20Sensor https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+95&compareCats=all#:~:te...
• cebert 5y ago
  I wish Safari better adopted standards that make progressive web applications (PWAs) possible. Chromium-based browsers are much more progressive in this area. The skeptic in me wonders if Apple is intentionally dragging their feet so there is no viable alternative to downloading apps from their App Store.
• darthrupert 5y ago
  Or perhaps our industry should stop putting everything into the web browser, for fuck's sake. It's a browser, not an operating system.
• whywhywhywhy 5y ago
  Been a Safari user since the original Beta. Getting more and more disappointed every year as their decisions on what web technologies to implement and which to not are just blatantly obvious more about building a moat between the web and the App Store than anything else. In my day job we've been building physical devices and rather than building say an iOS app and an Android app that would have to be updated and cost a huge amount of money we went the webUSB/webBT route (hang on hear me out) which is actually an amazing technology, allowing us to do things like transfer data to the device all through the browser, we even plan to open the API so users can build upon it. Complete breath of fresh air compared to having to write custom apps for each platform and I'm happy we're able to do things that if our company goes under our devices wont become paperweights because the tech is all open and runs in the browser. Of course this all falls apart as soon as you hit iOS, so eventually we'll have to hire in an iOS developer to write some wrapper for the website and connective tissue between the missing APIs. Apple's sandboxing and permission models are so aggressive that them pretending for a second that they can't implement webUSB and webBT without good security is absurd, it's simply to ensure only Apps can do "grown up" things like connectivity and full hardware acceleration. Becomes even more absurd when every modern app on their store demands my contacts to even use the app, where was your care for my security when designing and normalizing that permission flow. [1] [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27939815 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27939815
  • mikl 5y ago
    Thanks to all the creepy adtech and malware on the net, webUSB/webBT would be a terrible thing to add to the browser. I understand that it would enable many good things, but the world’s just too full of assholes to trust random web applications with such power. The amount of security exploits and spyware they would enable is just too great. Putting them behind additional permission-prompts is not a solution. The amount of such prompts is already too high, and too many users can be tricked into saying yes.
    • whywhywhywhy 5y ago
      There isn't a "Yes allow" prompt, it pops up a list and you have to select something specific. Do you have an example of how these technologies have been used for ad tracking? I hear this as justification for Apples actions a lot but haven't seen it myself anywhere.
• karimmaassen 5y ago
  The only thing I hate about Safari is that it won't let me go full PWA. Besides that, I'm fine with it.
• victor106 5y ago
  Safari might be crap but the fact of the matter is most of my top paying customers all use it and I have to support it. Good or bad “Low volume high profit” is very common in the Apple ecosystem and we devs have to just live with it
• sebyx07 5y ago
  safari is worse than ie. Mobile chrome and mozilla are wrappers around it. (safari)+ (chrome ui)= (ios 'chrome')
• mikl 5y ago
  For readers, this blog post is crap and clickbaity sentationalism. As the article itself admits in the end, Safari is a great browser. It just falls short in a few key areas that really upsets the author. I’ve been a web developer for neigh on two decades. Safari has easily been the browser that gave me the _least_ headaches. Apple might not be the fastest to implement the newest standards, it’s pretty good at implementing them properly.
• timw4mail 5y ago
  As a developer, nope, don't really think so.
• Dah00n 5y ago
  Apple is for everyday users and designers, not developers (not any more).
• agys 5y ago
  There is a bug in Safari’s inspector where the line number is omitted if the error is generated inside an ES6 module... For me it’s basically impossible to develop and debug on Safari. I submitted this to WebKit months ago. https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218275 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=218275
• masswerk 5y ago
  Hm, just a few notes: Progressive Web Apps are a Chrome-only thing by now, since Firefox has practically stripped support. (This was a somewhat experimental thing, anyways, and there are strong arguments, why users should be able to discern installed programs from external websites. You may argue that this makes much sense for Google, but isn't that desirable from an OS point of view.) WebRTC: While it's true that Safari was lagging significantly regarding WebRTC Data, a basic implementation (for media) isn't exactly new. Then, there is actually some leeway in the definition of some standards (e.g., storage) and it's not automatically clear that the way, Chrome does it, is the right one. (By the same argument, you may propose that typed arrays must be slower than normal ones, since this is how it had been in Chrome for several years.) What's rather annoying for developers, on the other hand, is that Safari is following some common trends as propagated by Chrome. E.g., Safari has stripped its comprehensive list view of loaded sources, which had been quite a selling point. Finally, yes, Safari has a much slower release cycle. However, if you care for compatibility and do not assume that everyone is driving the latest release of an evergreen browser, this shouldn't be much of an issue.
  • no_way 5y ago
    Safari regularly breaks features that were stable for years: localstorage and indexedDB the most recent ones. So I am not sure how you can talk about "compatibility".
    • masswerk 5y ago
      Hm, Safari has done it its own way right from the beginning. (Meaning, Chrome and Safari had never the same implementation.) Edit: As I recall it, Safari was an early adapter of the standard (even before its release), which comes with its own caveats. And it's actually because of not breaking things that there are these Safari idiosyncrasies. (The alternative would have been some kind of rolling prerelease standard, as it had been with Web Sockets. Which means, the API remains somewhat obscure and fragile, even, when it is eventually frozen, and developers have become accustomed to using some wrapper, anyways.) And it isn't so that Chrome wouldn't do it, as well. E.g., a few years ago, Chrome had a major rewrite of the Web Audio framework. With this, any newly created source node would point to a null buffer and any calls to the `play()` method were triggered immediately, referring to this null buffer (instead of automatically pointing to the processed buffer source, as soon as this becomes available, and postponing the call in the meantime). This meant in effect that you could practically play a sound from its decoding callback only (which is somewhat optional and only seldom used). At this point, the Web Audio API had been around for several years and this was breaking about every use of the Web Audio API, there was (including Chrome's previous implementation). Turned out, the standard wasn't exact on this – and it took Chrome several revisions to fix this issue (in the meantime, you could work around this issue by user-agent sniffing only). The standard was eventually updated to define the specific behavior. (This is probably also why most developers ignore the Web Audio API for the most and use some wrapper instead. Which is much like using jquery to work around IE idiosyncrasies.) Also, what would it have cost Chrome to implement KeyboardEvent.keyIdentifier to provide a somewhat compatible API?
• SketchySeaBeast 5y ago
  Everyone is discussing the technical issues - I hate that I can't test my web app on Safari without either buying an apple machine of some variety or using an online service.
• allgoodner 5y ago
  As a developer, there's a lot to be made in Chrome compared to other desktop browsers. As Chrome owns a large percentage of extension supports, it also the leading browser in terms of usage shares.
• city41 5y ago
  What bothers me is the only way I can support Safari is by buying a recent Mac. I have users who complain about Safari issues. But my 2012 Mac will only run Safari 12. It's unreasonable to expect me to pay $700 just so I can debug a crappy browser for a side project. So I tell Safari users sorry, please use a different browser. At least Microsoft offered VM based solutions to debugging IE.
• shadowfaxRodeo 5y ago
  What do you think about supporting KaiOs, feature phones, older browsers, or 2g connections? Build your websites with progressive enhancement in mind, and you'll never have a problem with safari again. Safari is great.
• layoutIfNeeded 5y ago
  Oh no! Safari refuses to support some "standards" that were unilaterally fast-tracked so that some PM at Google could put it in their promotion case. This is unacceptable!
• cmsj 5y ago
  I say this every time a post like this comes up... Google is the web. Chrome is the web. It shouldn't be true, but it is.... almost. Safari, or more specifically Apple's requirement that all web rendering on iOS be done using WebKit, is THE ONLY thing standing in the way of Chrome's market share being functionally 100%. If you care about the web, and one would presume that web developers would care deeply about the web, Safari ought to be your best friend, regardless of which of Google's "standards" it doesn't implement.
  • amelius 5y ago
    Firefox is my best friend ... If Apple cared as much as they say about privacy, they should install Firefox as a default not because Safari has privacy issues but because then Firefox's market share can grow, which is good for privacy.
    • chalst 5y ago
      Google has Mozilla on a leash.
  • jchw 5y ago
    As far as not-Google browsers go, Firefox is far, far better than Safari.
    • sf_rob 5y ago
      I just got an M1 Mac after years on Ubuntu, and decided to give Safari a go. I literally could not figure out how to search for an extension (the extension menu's search box searches the app store). I'm probably missing something obvious, but I'm quick to reject unintuitive consumer software so I'm typing this from Firefox. I know Firefox will inevitably decline one day, but honestly it's still a great browser and the compat complaints are over-blown. Apple's hardware and integration is incredible, but I don't understand why people like their software on its own.
      • Jcowell 5y ago
• JKCalhoun 5y ago
  > The reason for Apple’s self-imposed limitations on PWA-related web APIs? They’ll tell you they’re for user privacy reasons, which may be valid in certain cases. > But most of us know the dominant reason is because fully-capable PWAs would compete against the iOS App Store – robbing Apple of 30% cut in revenue it rakes in when an app is purchased, or an in-app purchase is executed. The rest of us don't know this. Maybe the author can enlighten. Honestly, my sense is that app stores have become mechanisms for delivering free content. Few pay for software anymore. I don't imagine Apple is really standing to lose much if a few apps went PWA.
  • heavyset_go 5y ago
    25% of Apple's profits come from the App Store.
• 0x000000001 5y ago
  Every nonsense Chrome feature Safari refuses to implement is a generally rooted in security and privacy concerns and I applaud Apple for taking the stance.
• markdog12 5y ago
  An excellent, in-depth overview of Webkit/Safari issue: https://infrequently.org/2021/04/progress-delayed/ https://infrequently.org/2021/04/progress-delayed/ Previous HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27019077 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27019077
• efields 5y ago
  Sure. For the overwhelming majority of users, life on iOS is peachy.
• poletopole 5y ago
  The day my ex-boss said to me we didn’t need to test releases in safari anymore, I added some metrics to determine how many safari users would be affected. As it turns out, not only were safari users not using our product, practically no one was. At the time I had no choice but to carry on, but now that Flutter supports desktop, I don’t see my self doing web apps, progressive or not, in the future. I’ve been a web dev for well over a decade, but let’s face the writing on the wall—the web was never intended for apps. But HTTP will live on and that’s what matters. Open protocols is and always was and will always be what makes the web, and I feel it’s time we as developers should be able to and focus on developing protocols once we are provided the tools to do so—but using open web standards like SPARQL and WASM to name two I have in mind—but still semantically HTTP. The best analogy I can think of was what docket did for dev ops. I honestly feel like the web as we know it today is a lost cause. Not even Google can make sense of all the SEO collusion. It’s all so inhospitable and seedy now and just another marketing channel. But I’m confident something better is on the horizon and I bet many of us here are working on it.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• joedoejr 5y ago
  Thank you Apple for caring about customers and protect us from all that security and performance nightmare that “standards” forced by google and microsoft intentionally brings in their controlled and spyware infested browsers. I don’t want any WPAs or webRTC or whatever only made to be cheap and poorly imitation of real software. It is great to have apple laptops that lasts long and have privacy protection without compromise!
• fserb 5y ago
  "Safari/WebKit is the best browser for users" "If other browser engines were allowed in iOS, Chrome/Blink would take over the web browser market" Pick one, folks. Either Safari is the best, in which case the WebKit monopoly is unnecessary; OR the iOS monopoly is the only thing preventing users from switching to a better browser. It doesn't matter if you like PWAs or WebUSB. Or what you think about new web standards. The best browser is the browser regular users choose to use. Good web standards are standards that enable sites/apps that users want to use. Right now, we don't know any of that because the lowest common denominator for the web is not what users want, but what Apple allows users to have. Claiming that those two things are the same sounds a bit weird to me. It's surprising that people think that Chrome pushing web standards forward means that "everyone has to do what Google wants", while the only true gatekeeper between users and developers these days is Apple's iOS policies. If you think that's not true, please answer: if a user in any configuration (device+os) WANTS to access your app and you WANT to develop for them, what set of device+os are mediated and by whom? Whose policies you MUST follow to have access to a (major) set of users? (disclaimer: I'm a Chrome blink engineer involved in web standards)