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It's hard to speak for Apple why Safari is where it is. Pro: battery life Con: lagging behind on some features

sanxiyn 4y ago
Indeed, battery life shows Apple's goal is being superb, not adequate. For features, that's what focusing on currently existing web is about, instead of future possible web.
- culi 4y ago
  The Safari team has been killing it in interop-2022.[0] They've not only improved the most (and are currently leading) but was also way ahead on certain features like the new color spaces. [0] https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022 https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022
- dmitriid 4y ago
  > For features, that's what focusing on currently existing web is about, instead of future possible web. The reality is, of course, much more complex. For example, once upon a time Apple wanted web components to be declarative: https://twitter.com/rniwa_dev/status/1352322006448947203 https://twitter.com/rniwa_dev/status/1352322006448947203 And yet Google was "move fast and break things" and here we are 10 years later with Declarative Shadow DOM struggling to become a thing. However, this aggressive push did surely help Google to sabotage Mozilla when they kept the abysmally slow polyfill for the deprecated v0 of Custom Components spec on Youtube for ages. This also applies for the many, many, many features of the "future possible web" that both Apple and Mozilla increasingly object to (anything from hardware APIs to web-component-related bullcrap Chrome churns out every day it seems).
izacus 4y ago
The fact that lack of Safari features drives people through taxed AppStore is just an accidental Apple side effect right? ;) Google is utterly evil for driving people towards web Ads for profit, while Apple drives people into their 30% tax AppStore by pure altruistic battery concerns?
- mike_hearn 4y ago
  It seems more like a difference of vision. Apple has a popular desktop and mobile OS. It's fundamental to what the company is. For Google they have Android on mobile, but ChromeOS didn't take off in a big way on the desktop, so Chrome has become their desktop "OS" in effect. From Apple's perspective a lot of stuff being added to Chrome is just duplication. They have a competent desktop OS already and it's not cheap to build, so why would they get talked into building what amounts to a second competing OS just because it suits Google? It's maybe like asking why Google doesn't build super slick native Mac app equivalents for everything they offer. Why isn't there a native Google Maps app on macOS for example? Of course from Google's perspective that sounds unreasonable - they've got their own platform and would rather use it, why would they invest so much into Apple's? It's sort of the same thing but in reverse.
  - sanxiyn 4y ago
    Google did build Google Earth for macOS. I am not sure whether this supports or opposes your points. Probably supports.
    - mike_hearn 4y ago
      Google Earth was an acquisition and long pre-dates Chrome. They later phased it out in favor of a web app which, IIRC, at first only ran in Chrome.
- password4321 4y ago
  I tried to avoid speculating. I believe we agree: control is a strong ulterior motive with both pros (prioritizing privacy; Flash is dead) and cons (native app required for important functionality).

Indeed, battery life shows Apple's goal is being superb, not adequate. For features, that's what focusing on currently existing web is about, instead of future possible web.

culi 4y ago
The Safari team has been killing it in interop-2022.[0] They've not only improved the most (and are currently leading) but was also way ahead on certain features like the new color spaces. [0] https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022 https://wpt.fyi/interop-2022
dmitriid 4y ago
> For features, that's what focusing on currently existing web is about, instead of future possible web. The reality is, of course, much more complex. For example, once upon a time Apple wanted web components to be declarative: https://twitter.com/rniwa_dev/status/1352322006448947203 https://twitter.com/rniwa_dev/status/1352322006448947203 And yet Google was "move fast and break things" and here we are 10 years later with Declarative Shadow DOM struggling to become a thing. However, this aggressive push did surely help Google to sabotage Mozilla when they kept the abysmally slow polyfill for the deprecated v0 of Custom Components spec on Youtube for ages. This also applies for the many, many, many features of the "future possible web" that both Apple and Mozilla increasingly object to (anything from hardware APIs to web-component-related bullcrap Chrome churns out every day it seems).

izacus 4y ago

The fact that lack of Safari features drives people through taxed AppStore is just an accidental Apple side effect right? ;) Google is utterly evil for driving people towards web Ads for profit, while Apple drives people into their 30% tax AppStore by pure altruistic battery concerns?

mike_hearn 4y ago
It seems more like a difference of vision. Apple has a popular desktop and mobile OS. It's fundamental to what the company is. For Google they have Android on mobile, but ChromeOS didn't take off in a big way on the desktop, so Chrome has become their desktop "OS" in effect. From Apple's perspective a lot of stuff being added to Chrome is just duplication. They have a competent desktop OS already and it's not cheap to build, so why would they get talked into building what amounts to a second competing OS just because it suits Google? It's maybe like asking why Google doesn't build super slick native Mac app equivalents for everything they offer. Why isn't there a native Google Maps app on macOS for example? Of course from Google's perspective that sounds unreasonable - they've got their own platform and would rather use it, why would they invest so much into Apple's? It's sort of the same thing but in reverse.
- sanxiyn 4y ago
  Google did build Google Earth for macOS. I am not sure whether this supports or opposes your points. Probably supports.
  - mike_hearn 4y ago
    Google Earth was an acquisition and long pre-dates Chrome. They later phased it out in favor of a web app which, IIRC, at first only ran in Chrome.
password4321 4y ago
I tried to avoid speculating. I believe we agree: control is a strong ulterior motive with both pros (prioritizing privacy; Flash is dead) and cons (native app required for important functionality).