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The size of macOS market is not relevant for the point being made here. What matters is that macOS is very similar to iOS in that it is owned by Apple, Safari i

by agust 4y ago

The size of macOS market is not relevant for the point being made here. What matters is that macOS is very similar to iOS in that it is owned by Apple, Safari is available on it, and comes pre-installed. The only difference is that on macOS browser competition is not banned by Apple. Yet, Safari still has around 60% market share on macOS. So there is a good chance that even if competition where allowed on iOS, Safari, which currently has more than 90% market share, would at the very least not fall down below 60%, preventing Chrome from becoming dominant. It is even more likely because most users on iOS actually believe they can install the real Chrome, so nothing will change in their eyes.

AlexandrB 4y ago
> The size of macOS market is not relevant for the point being made here. I disagree. There are already plenty of sites that are broken on macOS Safari because it's a niche platform. The only saving grace is that websites still have to support iOS Safari. If vendors were able to say "we only support Chrome" on iOS as well, I think that 60% macOS Safari marketshare would drop rapidly due to necessity.
- innocenat 4y ago
  If you want website to not be broken on Safari, the solution is to give developer without a Mac the ability to test on Safari. I wouldn't be able to fix my site if it's broken on Mac Safari if I don't have a Mac.
  - AlexandrB 4y ago
    That's a good point and probably a major strategic error on Apple's part. However in the IE era, even though Netscape/Firefox was free for everyone to test on, many large companies made their sites for "IE Only" because it's easier and cheaper. What I worry about is that, even if Safari kept up with web standards and was mostly compatible in terms of the basics, sites would start requiring APIs that only Chrome wants to support (e.g. FLoC). This would give Google a lot of leverage to push its own technologies on users (Amp also comes to mind).
  - danShumway 4y ago
    Can't upvote this enough. I support an Open web, I test my websites on Firefox and Chrome, I even occasionally do Edge testing, and I develop my websites often primarily in Firefox. But I'm not buying an iPhone or a laptop just to test websites, so I don't test in Safari. Every other browser has a way to emulate in Linux, I can even download free VMs from Microsoft to test IE11 in Windows (and Edge now runs in Linux). If Apple isn't willing to make its operating system available to me to test on then I don't see why I should feel obligated to test on it. And given that there is some Mac-specific behavior for Safari/Firefox that I've run into (differences in how blur works), and I generally can't assume that all of my stuff is going to work perfectly, I'm either going to fall back on progressive enhancement or (in the case of a complicated webapp) I'm going to tell users that Safari is unsupported and they're continuing at their own risk. I'd love to support Safari. All Apple has to do is give me a way to.
    - TheTon 4y ago
      Do you test in Epiphany? That’s what the WebKit project recommends you do.
      - depressedpanda 4y ago
        I test in Epiphany, and have resolved some Safari bugs that way. Unfortunately that's not enough, for two reasons: 1. Safari is the only browser that is still tied to OS release versions, the WebKit version used by Epiphany is rarely the same, so results will likely differ 2. Epiphany has no mobile emulation mode. (E.g., I had to work around around an annoying input zoom bug in Safari/iOS by blindly applying the least stupid solution I found searching the net)
    - MatthiasPortzel 4y ago
      Apple provides Linux builds of WebKit. => https://WebKit.org/downloads https://WebKit.org/downloads

by agust 4y ago

AlexandrB 4y ago

> The size of macOS market is not relevant for the point being made here. I disagree. There are already plenty of sites that are broken on macOS Safari because it's a niche platform. The only saving grace is that websites still have to support iOS Safari. If vendors were able to say "we only support Chrome" on iOS as well, I think that 60% macOS Safari marketshare would drop rapidly due to necessity.

innocenat 4y ago
If you want website to not be broken on Safari, the solution is to give developer without a Mac the ability to test on Safari. I wouldn't be able to fix my site if it's broken on Mac Safari if I don't have a Mac.
- AlexandrB 4y ago
  That's a good point and probably a major strategic error on Apple's part. However in the IE era, even though Netscape/Firefox was free for everyone to test on, many large companies made their sites for "IE Only" because it's easier and cheaper. What I worry about is that, even if Safari kept up with web standards and was mostly compatible in terms of the basics, sites would start requiring APIs that only Chrome wants to support (e.g. FLoC). This would give Google a lot of leverage to push its own technologies on users (Amp also comes to mind).
- danShumway 4y ago
  Can't upvote this enough. I support an Open web, I test my websites on Firefox and Chrome, I even occasionally do Edge testing, and I develop my websites often primarily in Firefox. But I'm not buying an iPhone or a laptop just to test websites, so I don't test in Safari. Every other browser has a way to emulate in Linux, I can even download free VMs from Microsoft to test IE11 in Windows (and Edge now runs in Linux). If Apple isn't willing to make its operating system available to me to test on then I don't see why I should feel obligated to test on it. And given that there is some Mac-specific behavior for Safari/Firefox that I've run into (differences in how blur works), and I generally can't assume that all of my stuff is going to work perfectly, I'm either going to fall back on progressive enhancement or (in the case of a complicated webapp) I'm going to tell users that Safari is unsupported and they're continuing at their own risk. I'd love to support Safari. All Apple has to do is give me a way to.
  - TheTon 4y ago
    Do you test in Epiphany? That’s what the WebKit project recommends you do.
    - depressedpanda 4y ago
      I test in Epiphany, and have resolved some Safari bugs that way. Unfortunately that's not enough, for two reasons: 1. Safari is the only browser that is still tied to OS release versions, the WebKit version used by Epiphany is rarely the same, so results will likely differ 2. Epiphany has no mobile emulation mode. (E.g., I had to work around around an annoying input zoom bug in Safari/iOS by blindly applying the least stupid solution I found searching the net)
  - MatthiasPortzel 4y ago
    Apple provides Linux builds of WebKit. => https://WebKit.org/downloads https://WebKit.org/downloads