21 ms·

A critique of Safari's influence on the web

199 points by pimterry 5y ago

woxko 5y ago
Yeah yeah you keep the constant notification prompts, thanks.
- pimterry 5y ago
  The article is specifically talking about how this argument doesn't hold water, and ways that Safari can better engage with progress on the web so that we don't all have to use Chrome (complete with notification prompts aplenty) for everything in 5 years from now. It's not arguing that Safari should add notification prompts.
smoldesu 5y ago
Frankly, I wouldn't care half as much about how bad Safari was if it wasn't my only option on many Apple devices. I had to use an iPad for school for a few years, and Safari is yet unmatched for "frustratingly pointless incompatibilities" in the browser sector, even compared against the dumpster-fire options like Edge and Explorer.
masterof0 5y ago
They (Apple) implement the features they believe to be the most useful to the users, saying that a browser is killing the web, because for any reason they don't want to play catch up with another company's browser, is a little bit over the top. You can either develop apps with disregard of Safari compatibility, or just use APIs that are compatible with Safari. Safari performs better than Chrome in MacOs and consumes less energy. Regular MacOs users don't care about Safari supporting some CSS property , most websites people use, load just fine. As a dev, I agree with you, Apple should have Safari in a different place, and the API compatibility should be way better, but, saying that is "killing the web", dunno about that, this article seems like a hate piece.
- pimterry 5y ago
  I certainly don't mean it to come off as a hate piece - I would really like Safari to do well, and I'm definitely not a fan of Chrome's approach. My concern is that the approach you describe - if Chrome goes further & further forwards and Safari refuses to keep up or engage whatsoever and more sites start to use those features - eventually leads to a world where everybody _must_ to use Chromium to use the web. If we get there, the whole browser ecosystem collapses, and the open web is in very serious trouble. I would rather a world where Safari actively leads web standards, and ensures that they are designed from the start with a concern for privacy and battery life.
  - softfalcon 5y ago
    Except that we're seeing a world where folks are sometimes deciding to leave Chrome for Safari (or others). Even in my non-web-dev circles of average folks, they're saying "I hate Chrome" and going somewhere else for their browser. Even if Chrome "goes further and further forwards" it won't matter if it becomes the de-facto hated browser over time. Safari is banking on the fact that security and stability are more important than "some new flashy CSS" and it is possible they might succeed by following this strategy.
    - pimterry 5y ago
      Right now, it's the top browser engine by a long long way, and its market share is either stable (on desktop) or slowly increasing (on mobile). I don't think either of our circles are representative of the wider world unfortunately.
    - raydev 5y ago
      Yet Apple gave up on Safari on Windows and isn't present on Android phones. Unless Macs and iOS devices take over the world (which may happen years from now), Safari will continue to be outnumbered and pushed aside.
      - pjmlp 5y ago
realityking 5y ago
I was nodding along with this article until this point: > There is no plausible option where other vendors stop these features coming to the web entirely. In many cases, they're already there. There's only a world in which they stop them reaching beyond Chrome's 65% market share (~70%, including all Chromium-based browsers, or ~80% for desktop). If 2 out of 3 browser engines decide not to implement a feature out of principle than arguably it isn‘t part of the Web and if Google was serious about being a good web citizen they‘d disable features (or make them only available to ChromeOS) where they can‘t convince one other browser engine to implement it.
- pimterry 5y ago
  Yes, it is bad behaviour, but yes, they're absolutely doing it anyway. I wouldn't necessarily describe this as malicious, merely impatient (perhaps too generous) - they've been doing controlled origin trials and similar for web bluetooth for example since 2015, but the other browsers haven't engaged. I do think if Firefox/Safari had serious counter-proposals today that would work for everybody and limit the standards to mitigate the concerns, the Chrome team would happily compromise in return for wider compatibility.
  - realityking 5y ago
    > I do think if Firefox/Safari had serious counter-proposals today that would work for everybody and limit the standards to mitigate the concerns, the Chrome team would happily compromise in return for wider compatibility. I believe you‘re right but that leaves no room to say “we fundamentally believe this feature should not be part of the web”. Something I consider quite reasonable with regards to Web USB and Web Bluetooth.
- coliveira 5y ago
  Google is using a similar strategy to what Microsoft used in the late 90s. The difference is that MS implemented new tags and features in IE without any standard. Google is taking care of manipulating the standard, and then singlehandedly implementing these new features in the standard even if nobody else cares about it. Then it manipulates their services to require those features, so Chrome is the only option. This is behavior typical of large corporations and monopolies, because they have the resources to throw at the creation of more and more features, at the expense of smaller competitors.
the_solenoid 5y ago
Apple nuked Flash from orbit. Their balance sheet of naughty and nice web wise will be hard to put into naughty for quite some time.
sg47 5y ago
As a user, I love Safari for privacy and its reader mode which means I don't need to see ads. I switched to an iPhone due to privacy concerns with Android and haven't bothered installing Chrome on the new phone.
MushyRoom 5y ago
<img loading=lazy> is still not enabled by default iirc.
kunagi7 5y ago
Lately, it feels like more and more news publicly attacking Safari appear in Hacker News. Safari either isn't attacking, protecting or killing the web. It has a different purpose. Apple's main objective is to sell services and devices. iPhones, iPads and their accessories. Also, Mac laptops/desktops. As most of us know, they use their Apple Store, with a 30% cut for every transaction to sell their services. If a company doesn't like that they end up in court (Epic vs Apple) or getting special conditions under the table. Safari is another piece of the iOS/macOS ecosystem to browse the web. They don't have any hurry to implement fancy features like Midi, Bluetooth, Notifications, proper PWA support, CSS rules, JavaScript. After all, you should have access to those things if you submit your app to their Store and accept their cut. They implement the features they find interesting or important and that's all. Even the release circle is slower than other browser implementations. Obviously, allowing other engines can hurt their services division and that's why the alternatives use the provided WebKit on iOS as enforced by the ToS. As a user Safari is a bliss, but as a web developer is sometimes a pain. Maybe we should stop supporting Safari on web applications which require non existing APIs with an encouraging message to try Chrome or protest to Apple if you're on iOS.
- masterof0 5y ago
  This is a good take , instead of "attacking" Safari with clickbaity titles, maybe we can take action and do actual stuff(when possible) like the ones you mention.
- vishnugupta 5y ago
  > As a user Safari is a bliss Having switched exclusively to safari over last 1 year, I couldn’t agree more. They have nifty features like sms OTP auto fill that make transactions super smooth.
  - cromwellian 5y ago
    Chrome on Android has this as well as far as I can tell.
- jonas21 5y ago
  With a few small tweaks, this comment could have been about Internet Explorer and Microsoft a couple decades ago.
blacktriangle 5y ago
Did it every occur to anybody that a breakneck race to turn the browser into an app runtime so complicated only the established players (ie Apple and Google, not even MS could keep up) are the only game in down might be killing the web (globally connected hypermedia library)?
- Jyaif 5y ago
  Any of the big players could keep up if they wanted to, it's just that none of them have an incentive too. * MS cares a little bit about the web because they have a few web apps that are pushing the envelope, but they really don't benefit from a powerful browser as much as Google does (at least yet). The #1 reason they have a browser is to push Bing. * Amazon's websites (twitch, Amazon Prime Video..) could probably run on IE6. * Apple's revenue stream would get hurt by people moving to the web. * Facebook... well it's complicated. For now they've been doing a good job with their VR browser, but in the long term they will likely pull an Apple and make it not possible for VR website to be as good as the VR apps purchased through the oculus store. (I don't know enough about all the big Chinese players)
bluescrn 5y ago
Safari isn't killing the mobile web, 'app nags' are
oxymoran 5y ago
I don’t understand why safari gets so much hate. Personally, I prefer it over all of the other browsers I have tried:chrome, ie, edge, Firefox, brave, opera, etc
- blacktriangle 5y ago
  Because Google astroturfers are trying to cover up the fact that Chrome is 100% executing an embrace/extend/extinguish strategy to take over the web.
  - dang 5y ago
    Please don't break the site guidelines like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - blink32_naif 5y ago
      I count 30 items in the guidelines for comments. How can I learn to avoid such on a comment you flagged
      - dang 5y ago
        Sorry, but I don't understand the question. Can you rephrase?
      - blacktriangle 5y ago
        https://youtu.be/aLpKopSXLwo?t=193 https://youtu.be/aLpKopSXLwo?t=193
- mannerheim 5y ago
  There are a lot of bugs that only show up on Safari, and there's no way to test them without a Mac or a service like BrowserStack.
- feross 5y ago
  Supporting Safari takes up a huge amount of my time as a developer. That's why you see these articles.
the_duke 5y ago
Many web developers I know constantly complain about Safari. While nowhere close yet, it's slowly inching towards the annoyance levels of IE. It seems like the WebKit team was relying a lot on Google contributions, and the Blink fork (in 2013) was the starting point for a slow but steady decline. Apple is swimming in money, yet they apparently can't staff their Safari team enough to keep up with Firefox, which notoriously lags behind Chrome. Not just feature wise but with stability and polish. Eg the flexbox implementation was extremely buggy for years. I do believe part of it might be strategic to prevent webapps from becoming too useful on mobile, but that can't be the whole story.
robgibbons 5y ago
"Standards aren't add-ons to the web. They are the web." -Apple's HTML5 Showcase, 2010 Apple had it right back in 2010, when they showed the world what was possible with the web as a platform. They took a principled stance, and made the web as a whole better because of it. If you ship a browser (especially if you don't let users install competing engines) then you need to support web standards. You don't get to pick and choose. Standards are not optional add-ons. Apple's own words!
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Except when standards happen to be ChromeOS features in disguise.
- sbuk 5y ago
  So Editors Drafts are 'Standards' now?
sirn 5y ago
I got a little curious on the statuses of these standards and went on a bit of searching. - CSS contain (CSS Containment Module Level 2) - Editor's Draft[1]. First published in 2019. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - CSS offset-path (Motion Path Module Level 1) - Editor's Draft[2]. First published in 2015. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - CSS overflow-anchor (CSS Scroll Anchoring Module Level 1) - Editor's Draft[3]. First published in 2020. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - Resolution media queries (dppx) - W3C Recommendation since 2012[4]. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - :focus-visible (Selectors Level 4) - Editor's Draft[5]. First published in 2011. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - Touch Events - W3C Recommendation since 2013[6]. Supported by Safari/WebKit since 2010 (iOS 3.2). I assume the author meant Pointer Events[7] which became W3C recommendation since 2019, and supported since 2019 (iOS 13.2). - BroadcastChannel - WHATWG Living Standard[8]. Blocked by privacy concern on WebKit side since 2020[9]. Initial support landed on WebKit trunk as of 2021-07[10]. - beforeprint/afterprint - WHATWG Living Standard[11]. Supported by Safari/WebKit since 2019 (iOS 13). - Regex Lookbehind - ECMAScript 2018[12]. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - scrollIntoView (CSSOM View Module) - Editor's Draft[13]. First introduced as an update to CSSOM View Module in 2011. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - Screen Orientation API - W3C Working Draft[14]. First committed in wc3/screen-orientation in 2012. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - Date and time input types - WHATWG Living Standard[15], partial support by Safari/WebKit since 2012 (iOS 5) but no week/min/max. - Service Workers - W3C Candidate Recommendation since 2019[16]. Supported by Safari/WebKit since 2018 (iOS 14.5). - AbortSignal - WHATWG Living Standard[17]. Supported by Safari/WebKit since 2018 (iOS 11.3) - Intersection Observer - W3C Working Draft[18]. First published in 2017. Supported by Safari/WebKit since 2019 (iOS 12.2). - Client-side form validation - WHATWG Living Standard[19]. Supported by Safari/WebKit since 2017 (iOS 10.3). [1]: https://drafts.csswg.org/css-contain/#contain-property https://drafts.csswg.org/css-contain/#contain-property [2]: https://drafts.fxtf.org/motion/#offset-path-property https://drafts.fxtf.org/motion/#offset-path-property [3]: https://drafts.csswg.org/css-scroll-anchoring/#exclusion-api https://drafts.csswg.org/css-scroll-anchoring/#exclusion-api [4]: https://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/#resolution https://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/#resolution [5]: https://drafts.csswg.org/selectors-4/#the-focus-visible-pseudo https://drafts.csswg.org/selectors-4/#the-focus-visible-pseu... [6]: https://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/ https://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/ [7]: https://www.w3.org/TR/pointerevents/ https://www.w3.org/TR/pointerevents/ [8]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/web-messaging.html#broadcasting-to-other-browsing-contexts https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/web-messaging.html#br... [9]: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5803 https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5803 [10]: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=227924 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=227924 [11]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/timers-and-user-prompts.html#printing https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/timers-and-user-promp... [12]: https://262.ecma-international.org/9.0/ https://262.ecma-international.org/9.0/ [13]: https://drafts.csswg.org/cssom-view/#dom-element-scrollintoview https://drafts.csswg.org/cssom-view/#dom-element-scrollintov... [14]: https://www.w3.org/TR/screen-orientation/ https://www.w3.org/TR/screen-orientation/ [15]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/input.html#date-state-(type%3Ddate) https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/input.html#date-state... [16]: https://www.w3.org/TR/service-workers/ https://www.w3.org/TR/service-workers/ [17]: https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/#abortsignal https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/#abortsignal [18]: https://www.w3.org/TR/intersection-observer/ https://www.w3.org/TR/intersection-observer/ [19]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/forms.html#client-side-form-validation https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/forms.html#client-sid...
syrusakbary 5y ago
I disagree with the premise. I'll do a quick analysis on why. Google Chrome is Google's master plan to remove responsibility from the Operating System and put it into their full control. Of course, they have operating power to move forward 300 APIs at the same time. However, they do it with the main propose of governing the ecosystem where those APIs are pushed (the web). The only way to be up to date with all those changes is power (operating money). Firefox is barely able to catch up with all the updates to the standards... there is obviously a burden on what is needed to be implemented for a browser in 2020 vs what was necessary 10 years ago. However, Apple argument is not about delivering value to their users via a browser, since that's an ecosystem they don't control. They deliver value through their macOS/iOS SDKs, which are ecosystems they fully own. Apple moves Safari as minimal as possible (regarding new APIs added) to make sure people can still browse, but while still incentivizing their own routes. This kind of API strategies are everywhere the software touches. From Apple moving Metal forward instead of Vulkan, Microsoft with Directx12. Google with Flutter (towards cross-platform API UI dominance) and so on. I don't think is a question of what the companies want, but what do their users use. As long as Safari is the dominant browser in Apple's ecosystem, they will make sure you can max out the value received through other ways that align more with their vision and proprietary APIs. So, if you consider "Web" what Google is pushing on now, it's clear Safari is not pushing forward in that ecosystem. But none of them do it for the sake of their users, but their ecosystems
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Those that embrace Chrome have literally helped Google with their masterplan to turn the Web into ChromeOS. Safari, regardles of Apple's selfish reasons, is the last man standing.
  - whatever_dude 5y ago
    So your point is that the web sound be less capable, and Safari is the last browser trying to cap the web's knees. That seems to me like the point of all these recent articles.
    - 5y ago
thereddaikon 5y ago
Safari isn't killing the web, trying to turn the browser into the defacto computing platform is.
- feross 5y ago
  The web is already the defacto computing platform.
HabitUnaware 5y ago
The reason I use safari is because it is the closest to a 'web browser', it doesn't have service workers, it doesn't support PWAs. The amount I have to turn off before it is usable is just less.
- feross 5y ago
  Safari has ServiceWorkers. https://caniuse.com/mdn-api_serviceworker https://caniuse.com/mdn-api_serviceworker
coldtea 5y ago
>Safari isn't protecting the web, it's killing it Saving the web means killing the modern WPA-related feature-creep, and Google's mono-control. Safari helps with both.
- pjmlp 5y ago
  Although Web development belongs to my activities, it should have stayed as it was in HTML 4. Native apps with APIs are the best approach.
  - cromwellian 5y ago
    Except they don’t span multiple platforms and are locked behind app stores with 30% tax. There’s also no “view source” or “inspect” readily available for native so a substantial pathway for transfer of education, analysis, etc of apps disappears or is made opaque.
    - pjmlp 5y ago
      There were no web apps when I started into computing. Reverse engineering minified JavaScript isn't the only path to learning.
      - cromwellian 5y ago
        Sure, but it's a much better path than disassembling memory by rom dump which is how I got into computing 35 years ago. I also had the benefit of controlling 100% of my own computer, from $0000 to $FFFF, without App Store DRM systems and non-repairable sealed and glued cases making it difficult for me to get under the hood of the silicon I bought and paid for. Monopoly app stores with no opt-out for a device you paid $1000 should be straight up illegal.
        coldtea 5y ago
        >Sure, but it's a much better path than disassembling memory by rom dump Better is arguable. It is, however, easier. Which method produces better developers though?
garyclarke27 5y ago
Lets hope that the anti-trust judiciary has enough technical understanding to realise how restrictive and damaging to competition - Apple’s policy of not allowing alternative web browser engines on IOS is. They should force Apple to allow alternative engines to Webkit, thus enabling much stronger competition to Safari and to native Apps on Apple mobile devices.
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  > They should force Apple to allow alternative engines to Webkit I would be A-OK with that if the alternative engines provided the same privacy and security guarantees to me that Mobile Safari does (with penalties for breaching those guarantees.)
  - makeitdouble 5y ago
    Those guarantees are currently provided by Apple and you seem to trust them. What would stop you from chosing alternative browsers from other companies you trust to provide the same guarantees ?
    - sbuk 5y ago
      Google and Mozilla's track record? https://www.csoonline.com/article/3243284/firefox-users-are-ticked-after-mozilla-secretly-installed-mr-robot-add-on.html https://www.csoonline.com/article/3243284/firefox-users-are-... https://www.pcmag.com/archive/google-accused-of-tracking-safari-usage-without-permission-294281 https://www.pcmag.com/archive/google-accused-of-tracking-saf...
      - makeitdouble 5y ago
        Apple were heavily relying on Google and Yahoo from maps, integrated web search, to weather data for a long time. At no point they asked you if you wanted to give your location to Yahoo. Would you give a pass to Apple for how they handled privacy in the past and not to Mozilla who comparatively had only a few hiccups ?
kiryin 5y ago
I'm sure everyone here has heard more than enough of this, but Chrome is the one actively killing the web, and more importantly turning it into a rube goldberg monstrosity before it's eventual inevitable abandonment by every sensible human being. Safari/webkit, as far as I can see, is merely trying to help. Perhaps not proactively, but by showcasing slight conservatism regarding which kind of bullshit bells and whistles get implemented. They're no knight in shining armor, and I shudder as I compliment Apple on anything at all, but they're doing what they can while still keeping their users satisfied. If you care about the web and want to see it survive, build to Safari's standards. It's the least YOU can do.
- Spivak 5y ago
  Also everyone complaining about mobile Safari is leaving out the parts where it excels — speed and battery life. Safari is the best browser looking at actual websites. Safari is the reason I bought an iPhone because using Chrome on a flagship Android phone compared to Safari was night and day. Pages would load in milliseconds not seconds and scrolling and zooming didn’t stutter. I really don’t want Apple to lose this fight and live in a world where you can’t use non-chrome browsers without dealing with broken websites.
  - mmis1000 5y ago
    About the broken websites. Firefox handles most of the site perfectly `without special treatments`. It you develop a website against it, it will about 98% work on chrome, and the reverse also hold. The safari... on the other hand is a terrible s*t. If you try to develop against other browser. Your site will break on it about 4 in 5 even only use old feature that ie11 supports. Its web standard support is a total joke in my opinion. It isn't really a excuse to ship a browser that is so broken. Given the small mozilla handles mostly fine with it. How on the earth a such giant company can't?
    - Terretta 5y ago
      Google took WebKit and diverged. Why should Apple have to run after it? Just because they’re big? Devs mostly failed to realize both were WebKit, targeted chromium and not WebKit, allowing breakage and letting Google get away with it. Devs is more giant than Apple. What’s devs excuse?
dash2 5y ago
Definitely putting on my fireproof suit here, but consider it possible that (a) The web is a failure and (b) Chrome monopoly is the best outcome for the web. OK, obviously the web is great, I'm using it right now, and it hosts millions of useful websites, so why is it a failure? Consider the simple act of buying something. To make a purchase on the web, I have to type in a 16 digit credit card number, 3 digit CRC number, expiry date, name and address. Every single time. After 30 years of the web, nobody has figured out a way to make this securer or simpler. Well, no, I'm sure many have figured out a way, but nobody has implemented it. By contrast, on my phone, I can buy with a simple fingerprint check. Apple provides that service, I find it valuable, and the firms in Apple's walled garden of apps find it valuable too. Why is payment easy on iPhone? Because Apple, as monopoly provider of that walled garden, makes a profit from making it easy. Why is payment hard on the web? Because there is nobody to make a profit from making it easy. In short, the web's infrastructure is a massive public good, and like many public goods, in the absence of government coercion it is underprovided. Web payment is just one example, and I'm sure there are others, but it's an important one. The lack of a decent payment infrastructure leads to pathologies. When paying for content is a hassle, people give away free content and use alternative monetization strategies like advertising - so we get Facebook, "you are the product" and manipulation by algorithms. When paying for items is a hassle, it's easier to just use Amazon who have stored your credit card already - so we get a huge ecommerce monopoly. If Google effectively owned the web, change would happen faster; users would be more satisfied; web development would get easier instead of being a mass of horrible hacks around 30 years of legacy standards. There'd still be competition. Apple, Google and Facebook would compete as platforms. That's an oligopoly, but platforms are natural oligopolies - nobody wants 1000 different platforms. Conclusion: Chrome's dominance is probably efficient.
- jefftk 5y ago
  > To make a purchase on the web, I have to type in a 16 digit credit card number, 3 digit CRC number, expiry date, name and address. Every single time. When I make a purchase in my browser, either: * I select a card from the autofill drop-down and validate with CVC or fingerprint * I'm already logged in, and the site remembers previous cards Is it possible you have a bad experience here because you've asked your browser not to remember credit cards?
michelb 5y ago
Funny how Brave keeps popping up in these articles, while peddling full page ads for risky financial assets.
shadowfaxRodeo 5y ago
It sounds like safari is "destroying the web" because some devs would like features that would annoy users, or turn their websites into apps. AV1 support would be nice though. Everyone should push for that.
yourenotsmart 5y ago
So in a nutshell, the author's argument is that Safari is "killing the web" because apps written specifically for Chrome, may not run on Safari. I find it cringeworthy to even have to explain the problem here. "The web" is not an app written for one browser. By the same logic, Firefox is also "killing the web" because it can't run Chrome-only apps. The web is all mainstream browsers, and the web standards. Do you want to know what's really killing the web? Google subverting the standards process and unilaterally adding all kinds of random "standards" (like connecting to USB and Bluetooth devices, for some reason) as part of the web, then guilting other browsers into not following along. Instead of critiquing Google for acting as if they singlehandedly own the web, web developers are parroting their line and enabling them. Fucking embarrassing.
- anhner 5y ago
  But: 1) you can decide to use other browsers besides Firefox if some sites don't work on it, but on iOS you can't use anything else (every browser still uses safari under the hood) 2) you can still use "chrome apis" even if you don't use chrome. More and more browsers use chrome's engine (see: Opera, Edge, Vivaldi etc.) and while I am not happy with that, it is becoming more and more commonplace.
  - yourenotsmart 5y ago
    What web developers think: - User: "This site is broken. Fuck Safari, I want Chrome on my iPhone!" What users actually think: - User: "This site is broken. Fuck it, I'll go to another site." Safari isn't THAT BAD that sites can't work on it. It's mostly minor differences, and lack of some "nice-to-haves" that are not crucial to UX (or in fact, their lack improves UX). No one cares about your site that much to go to another browser just to browse it ON A PHONE. This is why I said, outside the web dev echo chamber, no one cares. I've been around for IE6, and comparing Safari with IE6 is honestly absolutely ignorant and laughable. But I did also make my sites work fine with IE6 back in the time. That's our job. Safari will move at its own pace. The only thing I care about it, is that it's secure, power efficient, fast and user friendly. I speak also as an iPhone user, because users matter more than developers and their endless whining about features.
ubavic 5y ago
By the way, from 2008 Safari has MathMl support, while Chrome still hasn’t (almost 10 years passed after Google removed it). I often wonder how many bytes of data and seconds of rendering time would be saved in the last decade if the most popular browser supported MathMl?
mark_l_watson 5y ago
Interesting article, and well researched. I have to disagree with the view point of the article however. I view technology as serving users. The author makes a great argument that Safari makes life more difficult for developers. I believe that Safari makes life easier for users. The latest privacy features and reporting are great. I love my Linux laptops where I run Firefox and Chrome, but for day to day work, writing, and consuming books and digital content, I rely on the limited ecosystem of MacBook, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. If companies or web developers really want to use features not in Safari, please do show me a message that warns me to not use your web site. The digital world is a big place, and we all get to make our own decisions.
- throwaddzuzxd 5y ago
  > I believe that Safari makes life easier for users Except when it doesn't. I use Safari iOS (because there's basically no choice since only their engine is allowed) and I regularly come across webms that don't load or that decode atrociously. It would not be that bad if only they would allow other browsers to ship their own engine.
  - zimpenfish 5y ago
    > webms that don't load or that decode atrociously But why are you blaming Safari for that instead of the site choosing to serve up that particular format rather than something more well supported?
    - woojoo666 5y ago
      because [WebM is a web standard](https://www.w3.org/TR/mse-byte-stream-format-webm/ https://www.w3.org/TR/mse-byte-stream-format-webm/) so it's natural for developers to expect browsers to support it. If Apple didn't like it they could have pushed back before it was standardized. If people don't like Google dictating so much of web standards, they should be asking Apple to step up and be a bigger player in deciding those standards. It benefits everybody for there to be some amount of cooperation among these big players
fouc 5y ago
> I do want to recognize that the Safari/WebKit team are working hard, and I do desperately want them to succeed! Chromium's domination is bad for everybody I'm mainly a Safari supporter precisely because Chromium's domination is bad for everybody. I'm glad the author of this recognized that.
jimmont 5y ago
Excellent article--thanks for it. California has the initiative process. I don't know how specifically to frame the issues, this issue. However I regard the web browser as pivotal in history as the invention of paper and the printing press. I also know large ride-hailing companies directly used the initiative process to undermine fair competition in California of all places. If you frame the issue properly it could have an impact. I recall seeing initiatives around caged chickens, which if passed hurt protein sources for single moms and poor families. And force feeding geese grain (which most animals regard like humans do heroin). So if you frame the issue properly you'd like get some results.
fouc 5y ago
I'm super happy to see so many responses from people that realize Chrome is not a good thing anymore.
rezmason 5y ago
A lot of the sneering in these comments focuses on a strawman web developer, making bloated sites with looming frameworks that expect every browser to behave like Chrome and are too lazy to write native code for every platform under the sun. I've had enough of these junk takes. Let's talk about a real world scenario. I've been writing a simple web app in vanilla JS, that relies on some well established browser standards to accomplish the following goals that I think we can all get behind: 1. How do I make the UI look nice? 2. How do I make it usable and accessible, especially to people who rely on browser focus to use a website? 3. How do I make it behave consistently across Safari/Firefox/Chrome? 4. How do I make it run as fast as possible? I've worked hard to reach these goals in tandem, and for the most part, things are working (you can see for yourself at https://rezmason.github.io/wireworld-player/ https://rezmason.github.io/wireworld-player/ ). The UI is built from standard form elements, there's no buttons made of <div/>s; screenshots taken in the different browsers very closely match; it runs very fast, though that's a WIP; and most importantly, every browser properly handled element focus. Or so I thought. Last week I realized non-Safari browsers set the focus on whatever element is clicked. Combined with Safari's lack of support for focus-visible, this causes the same user interactions in and out of Safari to result in completely different browser focus states, while still having identical display states. In my opinion this is a worst case scenario for accessibility and usability. I hope we can all agree that any GUI ambiguity that can hide a bug for two weeks can equally derail the experience of a site visitor. But this ambiguity is the default, and I don't think it can be resolved without a workaround written in JavaScript. As the article above points out, these Safari quirks are long-standing open issues. But my main point is this: by developing and testing my app in Safari first, I wound up making a worse user experience for my visitors. My choice of browser was an obstacle to half of my goals. I'm not shooting for the moon, here— my project is pretty barebones. It's just DOM and 2D canvas drawing in a single thread, for Pete's sake. (For now, anyway.) But it would be better executed if I'd primarily tested it in Firefox and Chrome, or if Safari was better stewarded.
ksec 5y ago
I thought the most important part of the article wasn't about the missing API. ( Many of them are draft status ) It was the buggy implementation of a feature that go unfix for years [0]. It say it is supported only to find out it really doesn't. Or those one-offs, I think [1] is a much better take on the problem. And as a Web page browser. I dont have much complain. But in terms of Web Apps.... there is where the fuss is all about. [0]https://github.com/adobe/react-spectrum/wiki/Tracker-for-External-Browser-Bugs,-Library-Bugs,-and-Features https://github.com/adobe/react-spectrum/wiki/Tracker-for-Ext... [1] https://daverupert.com/2021/07/safari-one-offs/ https://daverupert.com/2021/07/safari-one-offs/
- zachguo 5y ago
  100% spot on.
marmada 5y ago
Modern web apps are good. I prefer to - edit my files in Google Docs (seamless sync) - play games w/o ever downloading them - do design in Figma - swipe on Tinder w/o ever having to install or uninstall it - browse code on GitHub I want as much stuff as possible to be on the web. I dislike having to install applications locally. On a less self-centered level, the web helps small businesses succeed. Do startups have the time to develop 3 different applications? I don't think so. The power of the web allows people who don't need to be developing native apps to avoid duplicating their work. The web seems extremely important to small business innovation. As for "large" / "bloated" sites. Features like new CSS properties seem unlikely to add more bloat or degrade accessibility. If we left the web as hypermedia / documents only we would have killed its potential (figma / repl.it / so many others wouldn't have existed).
zenexer 5y ago
Try to load this in Safari, then try to load it on any other browser: https://netops.is/safari-push-bug/ https://netops.is/safari-push-bug/ That bug has been present for at least two major iOS version. I’ve reported it to Apple, but they’ve never bothered to fix it. On the plus side, it does load eventually now without crashing the browser, but the underlying bug is clearly still present, and it takes a long time to load. Note: To test it in something other than Safari, you will need to use something other than iOS, because all browsers on iOS are wrappers around Safari.

199 points by pimterry 5y ago

woxko 5y ago

Yeah yeah you keep the constant notification prompts, thanks.

pimterry 5y ago
The article is specifically talking about how this argument doesn't hold water, and ways that Safari can better engage with progress on the web so that we don't all have to use Chrome (complete with notification prompts aplenty) for everything in 5 years from now. It's not arguing that Safari should add notification prompts.

smoldesu 5y ago

Frankly, I wouldn't care half as much about how bad Safari was if it wasn't my only option on many Apple devices. I had to use an iPad for school for a few years, and Safari is yet unmatched for "frustratingly pointless incompatibilities" in the browser sector, even compared against the dumpster-fire options like Edge and Explorer.

masterof0 5y ago

They (Apple) implement the features they believe to be the most useful to the users, saying that a browser is killing the web, because for any reason they don't want to play catch up with another company's browser, is a little bit over the top. You can either develop apps with disregard of Safari compatibility, or just use APIs that are compatible with Safari. Safari performs better than Chrome in MacOs and consumes less energy. Regular MacOs users don't care about Safari supporting some CSS property , most websites people use, load just fine. As a dev, I agree with you, Apple should have Safari in a different place, and the API compatibility should be way better, but, saying that is "killing the web", dunno about that, this article seems like a hate piece.

pimterry 5y ago
I certainly don't mean it to come off as a hate piece - I would really like Safari to do well, and I'm definitely not a fan of Chrome's approach. My concern is that the approach you describe - if Chrome goes further & further forwards and Safari refuses to keep up or engage whatsoever and more sites start to use those features - eventually leads to a world where everybody _must_ to use Chromium to use the web. If we get there, the whole browser ecosystem collapses, and the open web is in very serious trouble. I would rather a world where Safari actively leads web standards, and ensures that they are designed from the start with a concern for privacy and battery life.
- softfalcon 5y ago
  Except that we're seeing a world where folks are sometimes deciding to leave Chrome for Safari (or others). Even in my non-web-dev circles of average folks, they're saying "I hate Chrome" and going somewhere else for their browser. Even if Chrome "goes further and further forwards" it won't matter if it becomes the de-facto hated browser over time. Safari is banking on the fact that security and stability are more important than "some new flashy CSS" and it is possible they might succeed by following this strategy.
  - pimterry 5y ago
    Right now, it's the top browser engine by a long long way, and its market share is either stable (on desktop) or slowly increasing (on mobile). I don't think either of our circles are representative of the wider world unfortunately.
  - raydev 5y ago
    Yet Apple gave up on Safari on Windows and isn't present on Android phones. Unless Macs and iOS devices take over the world (which may happen years from now), Safari will continue to be outnumbered and pushed aside.
    - pjmlp 5y ago

realityking 5y ago

I was nodding along with this article until this point: > There is no plausible option where other vendors stop these features coming to the web entirely. In many cases, they're already there. There's only a world in which they stop them reaching beyond Chrome's 65% market share (~70%, including all Chromium-based browsers, or ~80% for desktop). If 2 out of 3 browser engines decide not to implement a feature out of principle than arguably it isn‘t part of the Web and if Google was serious about being a good web citizen they‘d disable features (or make them only available to ChromeOS) where they can‘t convince one other browser engine to implement it.

pimterry 5y ago
Yes, it is bad behaviour, but yes, they're absolutely doing it anyway. I wouldn't necessarily describe this as malicious, merely impatient (perhaps too generous) - they've been doing controlled origin trials and similar for web bluetooth for example since 2015, but the other browsers haven't engaged. I do think if Firefox/Safari had serious counter-proposals today that would work for everybody and limit the standards to mitigate the concerns, the Chrome team would happily compromise in return for wider compatibility.
- realityking 5y ago
  > I do think if Firefox/Safari had serious counter-proposals today that would work for everybody and limit the standards to mitigate the concerns, the Chrome team would happily compromise in return for wider compatibility. I believe you‘re right but that leaves no room to say “we fundamentally believe this feature should not be part of the web”. Something I consider quite reasonable with regards to Web USB and Web Bluetooth.
coliveira 5y ago
Google is using a similar strategy to what Microsoft used in the late 90s. The difference is that MS implemented new tags and features in IE without any standard. Google is taking care of manipulating the standard, and then singlehandedly implementing these new features in the standard even if nobody else cares about it. Then it manipulates their services to require those features, so Chrome is the only option. This is behavior typical of large corporations and monopolies, because they have the resources to throw at the creation of more and more features, at the expense of smaller competitors.

the_solenoid 5y ago

Apple nuked Flash from orbit. Their balance sheet of naughty and nice web wise will be hard to put into naughty for quite some time.

sg47 5y ago

As a user, I love Safari for privacy and its reader mode which means I don't need to see ads. I switched to an iPhone due to privacy concerns with Android and haven't bothered installing Chrome on the new phone.

MushyRoom 5y ago

<img loading=lazy> is still not enabled by default iirc.

kunagi7 5y ago

Lately, it feels like more and more news publicly attacking Safari appear in Hacker News. Safari either isn't attacking, protecting or killing the web. It has a different purpose. Apple's main objective is to sell services and devices. iPhones, iPads and their accessories. Also, Mac laptops/desktops. As most of us know, they use their Apple Store, with a 30% cut for every transaction to sell their services. If a company doesn't like that they end up in court (Epic vs Apple) or getting special conditions under the table. Safari is another piece of the iOS/macOS ecosystem to browse the web. They don't have any hurry to implement fancy features like Midi, Bluetooth, Notifications, proper PWA support, CSS rules, JavaScript. After all, you should have access to those things if you submit your app to their Store and accept their cut. They implement the features they find interesting or important and that's all. Even the release circle is slower than other browser implementations. Obviously, allowing other engines can hurt their services division and that's why the alternatives use the provided WebKit on iOS as enforced by the ToS. As a user Safari is a bliss, but as a web developer is sometimes a pain. Maybe we should stop supporting Safari on web applications which require non existing APIs with an encouraging message to try Chrome or protest to Apple if you're on iOS.

masterof0 5y ago
This is a good take , instead of "attacking" Safari with clickbaity titles, maybe we can take action and do actual stuff(when possible) like the ones you mention.
vishnugupta 5y ago
> As a user Safari is a bliss Having switched exclusively to safari over last 1 year, I couldn’t agree more. They have nifty features like sms OTP auto fill that make transactions super smooth.
- cromwellian 5y ago
  Chrome on Android has this as well as far as I can tell.
jonas21 5y ago
With a few small tweaks, this comment could have been about Internet Explorer and Microsoft a couple decades ago.

blacktriangle 5y ago

Did it every occur to anybody that a breakneck race to turn the browser into an app runtime so complicated only the established players (ie Apple and Google, not even MS could keep up) are the only game in down might be killing the web (globally connected hypermedia library)?

Jyaif 5y ago
Any of the big players could keep up if they wanted to, it's just that none of them have an incentive too. * MS cares a little bit about the web because they have a few web apps that are pushing the envelope, but they really don't benefit from a powerful browser as much as Google does (at least yet). The #1 reason they have a browser is to push Bing. * Amazon's websites (twitch, Amazon Prime Video..) could probably run on IE6. * Apple's revenue stream would get hurt by people moving to the web. * Facebook... well it's complicated. For now they've been doing a good job with their VR browser, but in the long term they will likely pull an Apple and make it not possible for VR website to be as good as the VR apps purchased through the oculus store. (I don't know enough about all the big Chinese players)

bluescrn 5y ago

Safari isn't killing the mobile web, 'app nags' are

oxymoran 5y ago

I don’t understand why safari gets so much hate. Personally, I prefer it over all of the other browsers I have tried:chrome, ie, edge, Firefox, brave, opera, etc

blacktriangle 5y ago
Because Google astroturfers are trying to cover up the fact that Chrome is 100% executing an embrace/extend/extinguish strategy to take over the web.
- dang 5y ago
  Please don't break the site guidelines like this. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - blink32_naif 5y ago
    I count 30 items in the guidelines for comments. How can I learn to avoid such on a comment you flagged
    - dang 5y ago
      Sorry, but I don't understand the question. Can you rephrase?
    - blacktriangle 5y ago
      https://youtu.be/aLpKopSXLwo?t=193 https://youtu.be/aLpKopSXLwo?t=193
mannerheim 5y ago
There are a lot of bugs that only show up on Safari, and there's no way to test them without a Mac or a service like BrowserStack.
feross 5y ago
Supporting Safari takes up a huge amount of my time as a developer. That's why you see these articles.

the_duke 5y ago

Many web developers I know constantly complain about Safari. While nowhere close yet, it's slowly inching towards the annoyance levels of IE. It seems like the WebKit team was relying a lot on Google contributions, and the Blink fork (in 2013) was the starting point for a slow but steady decline. Apple is swimming in money, yet they apparently can't staff their Safari team enough to keep up with Firefox, which notoriously lags behind Chrome. Not just feature wise but with stability and polish. Eg the flexbox implementation was extremely buggy for years. I do believe part of it might be strategic to prevent webapps from becoming too useful on mobile, but that can't be the whole story.

robgibbons 5y ago

"Standards aren't add-ons to the web. They are the web." -Apple's HTML5 Showcase, 2010 Apple had it right back in 2010, when they showed the world what was possible with the web as a platform. They took a principled stance, and made the web as a whole better because of it. If you ship a browser (especially if you don't let users install competing engines) then you need to support web standards. You don't get to pick and choose. Standards are not optional add-ons. Apple's own words!

pjmlp 5y ago
Except when standards happen to be ChromeOS features in disguise.
sbuk 5y ago
So Editors Drafts are 'Standards' now?

sirn 5y ago

I got a little curious on the statuses of these standards and went on a bit of searching. - CSS contain (CSS Containment Module Level 2) - Editor's Draft[1]. First published in 2019. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - CSS offset-path (Motion Path Module Level 1) - Editor's Draft[2]. First published in 2015. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - CSS overflow-anchor (CSS Scroll Anchoring Module Level 1) - Editor's Draft[3]. First published in 2020. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - Resolution media queries (dppx) - W3C Recommendation since 2012[4]. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - :focus-visible (Selectors Level 4) - Editor's Draft[5]. First published in 2011. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - Touch Events - W3C Recommendation since 2013[6]. Supported by Safari/WebKit since 2010 (iOS 3.2). I assume the author meant Pointer Events[7] which became W3C recommendation since 2019, and supported since 2019 (iOS 13.2). - BroadcastChannel - WHATWG Living Standard[8]. Blocked by privacy concern on WebKit side since 2020[9]. Initial support landed on WebKit trunk as of 2021-07[10]. - beforeprint/afterprint - WHATWG Living Standard[11]. Supported by Safari/WebKit since 2019 (iOS 13). - Regex Lookbehind - ECMAScript 2018[12]. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - scrollIntoView (CSSOM View Module) - Editor's Draft[13]. First introduced as an update to CSSOM View Module in 2011. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - Screen Orientation API - W3C Working Draft[14]. First committed in wc3/screen-orientation in 2012. Not supported by Safari/WebKit. - Date and time input types - WHATWG Living Standard[15], partial support by Safari/WebKit since 2012 (iOS 5) but no week/min/max. - Service Workers - W3C Candidate Recommendation since 2019[16]. Supported by Safari/WebKit since 2018 (iOS 14.5). - AbortSignal - WHATWG Living Standard[17]. Supported by Safari/WebKit since 2018 (iOS 11.3) - Intersection Observer - W3C Working Draft[18]. First published in 2017. Supported by Safari/WebKit since 2019 (iOS 12.2). - Client-side form validation - WHATWG Living Standard[19]. Supported by Safari/WebKit since 2017 (iOS 10.3). [1]: https://drafts.csswg.org/css-contain/#contain-property https://drafts.csswg.org/css-contain/#contain-property [2]: https://drafts.fxtf.org/motion/#offset-path-property https://drafts.fxtf.org/motion/#offset-path-property [3]: https://drafts.csswg.org/css-scroll-anchoring/#exclusion-api https://drafts.csswg.org/css-scroll-anchoring/#exclusion-api [4]: https://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/#resolution https://www.w3.org/TR/css3-mediaqueries/#resolution [5]: https://drafts.csswg.org/selectors-4/#the-focus-visible-pseudo https://drafts.csswg.org/selectors-4/#the-focus-visible-pseu... [6]: https://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/ https://www.w3.org/TR/touch-events/ [7]: https://www.w3.org/TR/pointerevents/ https://www.w3.org/TR/pointerevents/ [8]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/web-messaging.html#broadcasting-to-other-browsing-contexts https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/web-messaging.html#br... [9]: https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5803 https://github.com/whatwg/html/issues/5803 [10]: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=227924 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=227924 [11]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/timers-and-user-prompts.html#printing https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/timers-and-user-promp... [12]: https://262.ecma-international.org/9.0/ https://262.ecma-international.org/9.0/ [13]: https://drafts.csswg.org/cssom-view/#dom-element-scrollintoview https://drafts.csswg.org/cssom-view/#dom-element-scrollintov... [14]: https://www.w3.org/TR/screen-orientation/ https://www.w3.org/TR/screen-orientation/ [15]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/input.html#date-state-(type%3Ddate) https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/input.html#date-state... [16]: https://www.w3.org/TR/service-workers/ https://www.w3.org/TR/service-workers/ [17]: https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/#abortsignal https://dom.spec.whatwg.org/#abortsignal [18]: https://www.w3.org/TR/intersection-observer/ https://www.w3.org/TR/intersection-observer/ [19]: https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/forms.html#client-side-form-validation https://html.spec.whatwg.org/multipage/forms.html#client-sid...

syrusakbary 5y ago

I disagree with the premise. I'll do a quick analysis on why. Google Chrome is Google's master plan to remove responsibility from the Operating System and put it into their full control. Of course, they have operating power to move forward 300 APIs at the same time. However, they do it with the main propose of governing the ecosystem where those APIs are pushed (the web). The only way to be up to date with all those changes is power (operating money). Firefox is barely able to catch up with all the updates to the standards... there is obviously a burden on what is needed to be implemented for a browser in 2020 vs what was necessary 10 years ago. However, Apple argument is not about delivering value to their users via a browser, since that's an ecosystem they don't control. They deliver value through their macOS/iOS SDKs, which are ecosystems they fully own. Apple moves Safari as minimal as possible (regarding new APIs added) to make sure people can still browse, but while still incentivizing their own routes. This kind of API strategies are everywhere the software touches. From Apple moving Metal forward instead of Vulkan, Microsoft with Directx12. Google with Flutter (towards cross-platform API UI dominance) and so on. I don't think is a question of what the companies want, but what do their users use. As long as Safari is the dominant browser in Apple's ecosystem, they will make sure you can max out the value received through other ways that align more with their vision and proprietary APIs. So, if you consider "Web" what Google is pushing on now, it's clear Safari is not pushing forward in that ecosystem. But none of them do it for the sake of their users, but their ecosystems

pjmlp 5y ago
Those that embrace Chrome have literally helped Google with their masterplan to turn the Web into ChromeOS. Safari, regardles of Apple's selfish reasons, is the last man standing.
- whatever_dude 5y ago
  So your point is that the web sound be less capable, and Safari is the last browser trying to cap the web's knees. That seems to me like the point of all these recent articles.
  - 5y ago

thereddaikon 5y ago

Safari isn't killing the web, trying to turn the browser into the defacto computing platform is.

feross 5y ago
The web is already the defacto computing platform.

HabitUnaware 5y ago

The reason I use safari is because it is the closest to a 'web browser', it doesn't have service workers, it doesn't support PWAs. The amount I have to turn off before it is usable is just less.

feross 5y ago
Safari has ServiceWorkers. https://caniuse.com/mdn-api_serviceworker https://caniuse.com/mdn-api_serviceworker

coldtea 5y ago

>Safari isn't protecting the web, it's killing it Saving the web means killing the modern WPA-related feature-creep, and Google's mono-control. Safari helps with both.

pjmlp 5y ago
Although Web development belongs to my activities, it should have stayed as it was in HTML 4. Native apps with APIs are the best approach.
- cromwellian 5y ago
  Except they don’t span multiple platforms and are locked behind app stores with 30% tax. There’s also no “view source” or “inspect” readily available for native so a substantial pathway for transfer of education, analysis, etc of apps disappears or is made opaque.
  - pjmlp 5y ago
    There were no web apps when I started into computing. Reverse engineering minified JavaScript isn't the only path to learning.
    - cromwellian 5y ago
      Sure, but it's a much better path than disassembling memory by rom dump which is how I got into computing 35 years ago. I also had the benefit of controlling 100% of my own computer, from $0000 to $FFFF, without App Store DRM systems and non-repairable sealed and glued cases making it difficult for me to get under the hood of the silicon I bought and paid for. Monopoly app stores with no opt-out for a device you paid $1000 should be straight up illegal.
      - coldtea 5y ago
        >Sure, but it's a much better path than disassembling memory by rom dump Better is arguable. It is, however, easier. Which method produces better developers though?

garyclarke27 5y ago

Lets hope that the anti-trust judiciary has enough technical understanding to realise how restrictive and damaging to competition - Apple’s policy of not allowing alternative web browser engines on IOS is. They should force Apple to allow alternative engines to Webkit, thus enabling much stronger competition to Safari and to native Apps on Apple mobile devices.

zimpenfish 5y ago
> They should force Apple to allow alternative engines to Webkit I would be A-OK with that if the alternative engines provided the same privacy and security guarantees to me that Mobile Safari does (with penalties for breaching those guarantees.)
- makeitdouble 5y ago
  Those guarantees are currently provided by Apple and you seem to trust them. What would stop you from chosing alternative browsers from other companies you trust to provide the same guarantees ?
  - sbuk 5y ago
    Google and Mozilla's track record? https://www.csoonline.com/article/3243284/firefox-users-are-ticked-after-mozilla-secretly-installed-mr-robot-add-on.html https://www.csoonline.com/article/3243284/firefox-users-are-... https://www.pcmag.com/archive/google-accused-of-tracking-safari-usage-without-permission-294281 https://www.pcmag.com/archive/google-accused-of-tracking-saf...
    - makeitdouble 5y ago
      Apple were heavily relying on Google and Yahoo from maps, integrated web search, to weather data for a long time. At no point they asked you if you wanted to give your location to Yahoo. Would you give a pass to Apple for how they handled privacy in the past and not to Mozilla who comparatively had only a few hiccups ?

kiryin 5y ago

I'm sure everyone here has heard more than enough of this, but Chrome is the one actively killing the web, and more importantly turning it into a rube goldberg monstrosity before it's eventual inevitable abandonment by every sensible human being. Safari/webkit, as far as I can see, is merely trying to help. Perhaps not proactively, but by showcasing slight conservatism regarding which kind of bullshit bells and whistles get implemented. They're no knight in shining armor, and I shudder as I compliment Apple on anything at all, but they're doing what they can while still keeping their users satisfied. If you care about the web and want to see it survive, build to Safari's standards. It's the least YOU can do.

Spivak 5y ago
Also everyone complaining about mobile Safari is leaving out the parts where it excels — speed and battery life. Safari is the best browser looking at actual websites. Safari is the reason I bought an iPhone because using Chrome on a flagship Android phone compared to Safari was night and day. Pages would load in milliseconds not seconds and scrolling and zooming didn’t stutter. I really don’t want Apple to lose this fight and live in a world where you can’t use non-chrome browsers without dealing with broken websites.
- mmis1000 5y ago
  About the broken websites. Firefox handles most of the site perfectly `without special treatments`. It you develop a website against it, it will about 98% work on chrome, and the reverse also hold. The safari... on the other hand is a terrible s*t. If you try to develop against other browser. Your site will break on it about 4 in 5 even only use old feature that ie11 supports. Its web standard support is a total joke in my opinion. It isn't really a excuse to ship a browser that is so broken. Given the small mozilla handles mostly fine with it. How on the earth a such giant company can't?
  - Terretta 5y ago
    Google took WebKit and diverged. Why should Apple have to run after it? Just because they’re big? Devs mostly failed to realize both were WebKit, targeted chromium and not WebKit, allowing breakage and letting Google get away with it. Devs is more giant than Apple. What’s devs excuse?

dash2 5y ago

Definitely putting on my fireproof suit here, but consider it possible that (a) The web is a failure and (b) Chrome monopoly is the best outcome for the web. OK, obviously the web is great, I'm using it right now, and it hosts millions of useful websites, so why is it a failure? Consider the simple act of buying something. To make a purchase on the web, I have to type in a 16 digit credit card number, 3 digit CRC number, expiry date, name and address. Every single time. After 30 years of the web, nobody has figured out a way to make this securer or simpler. Well, no, I'm sure many have figured out a way, but nobody has implemented it. By contrast, on my phone, I can buy with a simple fingerprint check. Apple provides that service, I find it valuable, and the firms in Apple's walled garden of apps find it valuable too. Why is payment easy on iPhone? Because Apple, as monopoly provider of that walled garden, makes a profit from making it easy. Why is payment hard on the web? Because there is nobody to make a profit from making it easy. In short, the web's infrastructure is a massive public good, and like many public goods, in the absence of government coercion it is underprovided. Web payment is just one example, and I'm sure there are others, but it's an important one. The lack of a decent payment infrastructure leads to pathologies. When paying for content is a hassle, people give away free content and use alternative monetization strategies like advertising - so we get Facebook, "you are the product" and manipulation by algorithms. When paying for items is a hassle, it's easier to just use Amazon who have stored your credit card already - so we get a huge ecommerce monopoly. If Google effectively owned the web, change would happen faster; users would be more satisfied; web development would get easier instead of being a mass of horrible hacks around 30 years of legacy standards. There'd still be competition. Apple, Google and Facebook would compete as platforms. That's an oligopoly, but platforms are natural oligopolies - nobody wants 1000 different platforms. Conclusion: Chrome's dominance is probably efficient.

jefftk 5y ago
> To make a purchase on the web, I have to type in a 16 digit credit card number, 3 digit CRC number, expiry date, name and address. Every single time. When I make a purchase in my browser, either: * I select a card from the autofill drop-down and validate with CVC or fingerprint * I'm already logged in, and the site remembers previous cards Is it possible you have a bad experience here because you've asked your browser not to remember credit cards?

michelb 5y ago

Funny how Brave keeps popping up in these articles, while peddling full page ads for risky financial assets.

shadowfaxRodeo 5y ago

It sounds like safari is "destroying the web" because some devs would like features that would annoy users, or turn their websites into apps. AV1 support would be nice though. Everyone should push for that.

yourenotsmart 5y ago

So in a nutshell, the author's argument is that Safari is "killing the web" because apps written specifically for Chrome, may not run on Safari. I find it cringeworthy to even have to explain the problem here. "The web" is not an app written for one browser. By the same logic, Firefox is also "killing the web" because it can't run Chrome-only apps. The web is all mainstream browsers, and the web standards. Do you want to know what's really killing the web? Google subverting the standards process and unilaterally adding all kinds of random "standards" (like connecting to USB and Bluetooth devices, for some reason) as part of the web, then guilting other browsers into not following along. Instead of critiquing Google for acting as if they singlehandedly own the web, web developers are parroting their line and enabling them. Fucking embarrassing.

anhner 5y ago
But: 1) you can decide to use other browsers besides Firefox if some sites don't work on it, but on iOS you can't use anything else (every browser still uses safari under the hood) 2) you can still use "chrome apis" even if you don't use chrome. More and more browsers use chrome's engine (see: Opera, Edge, Vivaldi etc.) and while I am not happy with that, it is becoming more and more commonplace.
- yourenotsmart 5y ago
  What web developers think: - User: "This site is broken. Fuck Safari, I want Chrome on my iPhone!" What users actually think: - User: "This site is broken. Fuck it, I'll go to another site." Safari isn't THAT BAD that sites can't work on it. It's mostly minor differences, and lack of some "nice-to-haves" that are not crucial to UX (or in fact, their lack improves UX). No one cares about your site that much to go to another browser just to browse it ON A PHONE. This is why I said, outside the web dev echo chamber, no one cares. I've been around for IE6, and comparing Safari with IE6 is honestly absolutely ignorant and laughable. But I did also make my sites work fine with IE6 back in the time. That's our job. Safari will move at its own pace. The only thing I care about it, is that it's secure, power efficient, fast and user friendly. I speak also as an iPhone user, because users matter more than developers and their endless whining about features.

ubavic 5y ago

By the way, from 2008 Safari has MathMl support, while Chrome still hasn’t (almost 10 years passed after Google removed it). I often wonder how many bytes of data and seconds of rendering time would be saved in the last decade if the most popular browser supported MathMl?

mark_l_watson 5y ago

Interesting article, and well researched. I have to disagree with the view point of the article however. I view technology as serving users. The author makes a great argument that Safari makes life more difficult for developers. I believe that Safari makes life easier for users. The latest privacy features and reporting are great. I love my Linux laptops where I run Firefox and Chrome, but for day to day work, writing, and consuming books and digital content, I rely on the limited ecosystem of MacBook, iPad, iPhone, and Apple Watch. If companies or web developers really want to use features not in Safari, please do show me a message that warns me to not use your web site. The digital world is a big place, and we all get to make our own decisions.

throwaddzuzxd 5y ago
> I believe that Safari makes life easier for users Except when it doesn't. I use Safari iOS (because there's basically no choice since only their engine is allowed) and I regularly come across webms that don't load or that decode atrociously. It would not be that bad if only they would allow other browsers to ship their own engine.
- zimpenfish 5y ago
  > webms that don't load or that decode atrociously But why are you blaming Safari for that instead of the site choosing to serve up that particular format rather than something more well supported?
  - woojoo666 5y ago
    because [WebM is a web standard](https://www.w3.org/TR/mse-byte-stream-format-webm/ https://www.w3.org/TR/mse-byte-stream-format-webm/) so it's natural for developers to expect browsers to support it. If Apple didn't like it they could have pushed back before it was standardized. If people don't like Google dictating so much of web standards, they should be asking Apple to step up and be a bigger player in deciding those standards. It benefits everybody for there to be some amount of cooperation among these big players

fouc 5y ago

> I do want to recognize that the Safari/WebKit team are working hard, and I do desperately want them to succeed! Chromium's domination is bad for everybody I'm mainly a Safari supporter precisely because Chromium's domination is bad for everybody. I'm glad the author of this recognized that.

jimmont 5y ago

Excellent article--thanks for it. California has the initiative process. I don't know how specifically to frame the issues, this issue. However I regard the web browser as pivotal in history as the invention of paper and the printing press. I also know large ride-hailing companies directly used the initiative process to undermine fair competition in California of all places. If you frame the issue properly it could have an impact. I recall seeing initiatives around caged chickens, which if passed hurt protein sources for single moms and poor families. And force feeding geese grain (which most animals regard like humans do heroin). So if you frame the issue properly you'd like get some results.

fouc 5y ago

I'm super happy to see so many responses from people that realize Chrome is not a good thing anymore.

rezmason 5y ago

A lot of the sneering in these comments focuses on a strawman web developer, making bloated sites with looming frameworks that expect every browser to behave like Chrome and are too lazy to write native code for every platform under the sun. I've had enough of these junk takes. Let's talk about a real world scenario. I've been writing a simple web app in vanilla JS, that relies on some well established browser standards to accomplish the following goals that I think we can all get behind: 1. How do I make the UI look nice? 2. How do I make it usable and accessible, especially to people who rely on browser focus to use a website? 3. How do I make it behave consistently across Safari/Firefox/Chrome? 4. How do I make it run as fast as possible? I've worked hard to reach these goals in tandem, and for the most part, things are working (you can see for yourself at https://rezmason.github.io/wireworld-player/ https://rezmason.github.io/wireworld-player/ ). The UI is built from standard form elements, there's no buttons made of <div/>s; screenshots taken in the different browsers very closely match; it runs very fast, though that's a WIP; and most importantly, every browser properly handled element focus. Or so I thought. Last week I realized non-Safari browsers set the focus on whatever element is clicked. Combined with Safari's lack of support for focus-visible, this causes the same user interactions in and out of Safari to result in completely different browser focus states, while still having identical display states. In my opinion this is a worst case scenario for accessibility and usability. I hope we can all agree that any GUI ambiguity that can hide a bug for two weeks can equally derail the experience of a site visitor. But this ambiguity is the default, and I don't think it can be resolved without a workaround written in JavaScript. As the article above points out, these Safari quirks are long-standing open issues. But my main point is this: by developing and testing my app in Safari first, I wound up making a worse user experience for my visitors. My choice of browser was an obstacle to half of my goals. I'm not shooting for the moon, here— my project is pretty barebones. It's just DOM and 2D canvas drawing in a single thread, for Pete's sake. (For now, anyway.) But it would be better executed if I'd primarily tested it in Firefox and Chrome, or if Safari was better stewarded.

ksec 5y ago

I thought the most important part of the article wasn't about the missing API. ( Many of them are draft status ) It was the buggy implementation of a feature that go unfix for years [0]. It say it is supported only to find out it really doesn't. Or those one-offs, I think [1] is a much better take on the problem. And as a Web page browser. I dont have much complain. But in terms of Web Apps.... there is where the fuss is all about. [0]https://github.com/adobe/react-spectrum/wiki/Tracker-for-External-Browser-Bugs,-Library-Bugs,-and-Features https://github.com/adobe/react-spectrum/wiki/Tracker-for-Ext... [1] https://daverupert.com/2021/07/safari-one-offs/ https://daverupert.com/2021/07/safari-one-offs/

zachguo 5y ago
100% spot on.

marmada 5y ago

Modern web apps are good. I prefer to - edit my files in Google Docs (seamless sync) - play games w/o ever downloading them - do design in Figma - swipe on Tinder w/o ever having to install or uninstall it - browse code on GitHub I want as much stuff as possible to be on the web. I dislike having to install applications locally. On a less self-centered level, the web helps small businesses succeed. Do startups have the time to develop 3 different applications? I don't think so. The power of the web allows people who don't need to be developing native apps to avoid duplicating their work. The web seems extremely important to small business innovation. As for "large" / "bloated" sites. Features like new CSS properties seem unlikely to add more bloat or degrade accessibility. If we left the web as hypermedia / documents only we would have killed its potential (figma / repl.it / so many others wouldn't have existed).

zenexer 5y ago

Try to load this in Safari, then try to load it on any other browser: https://netops.is/safari-push-bug/ https://netops.is/safari-push-bug/ That bug has been present for at least two major iOS version. I’ve reported it to Apple, but they’ve never bothered to fix it. On the plus side, it does load eventually now without crashing the browser, but the underlying bug is clearly still present, and it takes a long time to load. Note: To test it in something other than Safari, you will need to use something other than iOS, because all browsers on iOS are wrappers around Safari.