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Safari / WebKit used to be the engine driving the web forward. Apple had no problem rushing things when they were at the brink of death and had to compete with

by kjksf 4y ago

Safari / WebKit used to be the engine driving the web forward. Apple had no problem rushing things when they were at the brink of death and had to compete with IE and Mozilla by making a better browser. Only when they could kill the competition by simply saying so they switched to a leisurely mode of development. Not to mention they are also very leisurely about fixing bugs. Spin that one to make it look good for Apple, please. The only consistent position that Apple has is: what's good for our business. When they had to compete, they were forced to compete. Now that they don't have to, they don't and instead pay a few PR people to spin it as good for customers for this or that reason. With a generous free help from folks like you, also telling us how Safari is really superior browser. All we ask Apple is to put that theory to test: let Chrome and Mozilla compete and we'll see what actual users prefer.

jacobolus 4y ago
Personally I find Chrome to be utterly unusable for my browsing habits (hundreds of browser tabs open at once). It glitches, spins up my laptop’s fans like there’s no tomorrow and burns through battery, eats all the RAM it can find, and easily crashes. And that’s without even getting to the privacy discussion. The existence of a Chrome-based iOS browser would quickly lead web developers to drop Safari and Firefox support (“just install Chrome bro!”) so I for one am thankful that Apple is not budging here. Their browser is, for me, strictly superior. And their political decisions are the last defense of a multi-browser web.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
- patrec 4y ago
  > The existence of a Chrome-based iOS browser would quickly lead web developers to drop Safari and Firefox support (“just install Chrome bro!”) Yeah, that would totally happen because websites that force people to install some massively resource hungry and sluggish browser first will obviously out-compete those that don't.
  - jacobolus 4y ago
    Joe Random web developer doesn’t necessarily care whether the browser he personally develops against is disrespectful of someone else’s client-side resources. He just wants to make his website with as little busywork as possible, and testing every website feature for cross-browser compatibility is busywork. If he can avoid the trouble by telling visitors to switch browsers, he will be happy to do so. This is not hypothetical: developers have been putting up “this site works best (or only works) in X browser” warnings for decades by now.
    - depressedpanda 4y ago
      No, what would happen is that Apple would actually have to spend resources on competing with other browser engines, instead of holding the web back via monopoly. They certainly have the money to do so.
- rejhgadellaa 4y ago
alexvoda 4y ago
Actually, if Apple wanted to compete in the browser space, they could do that without allowing other browsers on iOS. Bring Safari to Windows, Linux and Android. Safari for Windows did exist many years ago and I did like it. Apple really gave up on browsers a long time ago and Safari is the new IE. And yet their monopolist behaviour is the only thing countering Google's monopolist behaviour with Chrome. I fear witnessing the incoming manifest v3 apocalypse, when Google will nerf adblockers and plenty of other extensions. And all Chromium based browsers will most probably also be affected. So no capable adblockers in Edge/Vivaldi/Opera/etc. either, probably.

by kjksf 4y ago

jacobolus 4y ago

Personally I find Chrome to be utterly unusable for my browsing habits (hundreds of browser tabs open at once). It glitches, spins up my laptop’s fans like there’s no tomorrow and burns through battery, eats all the RAM it can find, and easily crashes. And that’s without even getting to the privacy discussion. The existence of a Chrome-based iOS browser would quickly lead web developers to drop Safari and Firefox support (“just install Chrome bro!”) so I for one am thankful that Apple is not budging here. Their browser is, for me, strictly superior. And their political decisions are the last defense of a multi-browser web.

deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
patrec 4y ago
> The existence of a Chrome-based iOS browser would quickly lead web developers to drop Safari and Firefox support (“just install Chrome bro!”) Yeah, that would totally happen because websites that force people to install some massively resource hungry and sluggish browser first will obviously out-compete those that don't.
- jacobolus 4y ago
  Joe Random web developer doesn’t necessarily care whether the browser he personally develops against is disrespectful of someone else’s client-side resources. He just wants to make his website with as little busywork as possible, and testing every website feature for cross-browser compatibility is busywork. If he can avoid the trouble by telling visitors to switch browsers, he will be happy to do so. This is not hypothetical: developers have been putting up “this site works best (or only works) in X browser” warnings for decades by now.
  - depressedpanda 4y ago
    No, what would happen is that Apple would actually have to spend resources on competing with other browser engines, instead of holding the web back via monopoly. They certainly have the money to do so.
rejhgadellaa 4y ago

alexvoda 4y ago

Actually, if Apple wanted to compete in the browser space, they could do that without allowing other browsers on iOS. Bring Safari to Windows, Linux and Android. Safari for Windows did exist many years ago and I did like it. Apple really gave up on browsers a long time ago and Safari is the new IE. And yet their monopolist behaviour is the only thing countering Google's monopolist behaviour with Chrome. I fear witnessing the incoming manifest v3 apocalypse, when Google will nerf adblockers and plenty of other extensions. And all Chromium based browsers will most probably also be affected. So no capable adblockers in Edge/Vivaldi/Opera/etc. either, probably.