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Safari is pretty much the worst browser in existence. Basic technology like webrtc is absolutely riddled with bugs. It's so bad that most video chat services

Safari is pretty much the worst browser in existence. Basic technology like webrtc is absolutely riddled with bugs. It's so bad that most video chat services don't even support it.

blowski 4y ago
> It's [Safari] so bad that most video chat services don't even support it. Which ones? I've used Zoom, Meet, Teams, and Whereby in Safari with no problems. I've never encountered a video service _not_ work in it.
lotsofpulp 4y ago
I was just on Teams and Webex video calls using Safari.
- kitsunesoba 4y ago
  Google Meet works fine in Safari too. Better even, since there it uses hardware accelerated video encoding unlike in Chrome.
selykg 4y ago
On Mac, Safari is the only browser to respect battery drain and preserve power in any real meaningful way. I'll take some bugs for that win. I use Chrome or Firefox and my battery noticeably dies faster.
acdha 4y ago
> It's so bad that most video chat services don't even support it. All of the major services support it and the only one which I’ve ever had problems with is Google’s, which shockingly had issues with every browser other than Chrome. Do you have links to bug reports? I switched to Safari primarily a while back because it used the least battery and memory (Safari & Firefox were close, Chrome is a distant gluttonous third place). I’ve noticed very, very few cases where a compatibility issue forced me to switch browsers. As a web developer I use all three, of course, and using Chrome doesn’t feel notably better so halving my energy usage is an easy trade.
- a4isms 4y ago
  I find Chrome indispensable on OS X. Whenever I begin to wonder if my Macbook Air has fans or not, I start up Chrome and whoosh, it’s like a Hawker Harrier performing a vertical take-off. At one point I was doing a lot of coding in a coffee shop. When testing my work in Safari, I could sit down and run on my Mac’s batteries until I got tired of the coffee shop and headed home. With Chrome, I had to plug in immediately. I believe people who tell me Chrome has better bling and is faster, but Safari is fast enough for my purposes, and battery life is a far bigger factor for my browser choice than raw performance.
- VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
  Yeah you can find all the bugs here https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&content=webrtc&no_redirect=1&order=Importance&product=WebKit&query_format=specific https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&cont...
  - acdha 4y ago
    Which specific ones have you personally verified as preventing use? That's a public tracker where anyone on the internet can report something — in many cases issues are duplicates, unreproducible, or specific to certain edge cases. I ask because that returns 351 issues but if you do the same search for Chrome you'll find 414. I would assume that you would agree that the correct interpretation of that is not that Chrome doesn't support WebRTC? https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=component%3ABlink%3EWebRTC&can=2 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=component... Since all of the major services work without issue in all mainstream browsers, I would argue that to a first approximation this is not an effective proxy metric.
vehemenz 4y ago
So you think poor support for an optional technology is sufficient to call Safari the worst browser "in existence"? Let's work on that argument a bit more before posting hyperbole.
tinus_hn 4y ago
Sorry, trying to insinuate that WebRTC is basic technology just disqualifies your opinion. It has an enormous specification describing a privacy and security snakepit and definitely is not basic technology.

Safari is pretty much the worst browser in existence. Basic technology like webrtc is absolutely riddled with bugs. It's so bad that most video chat services don't even support it.

blowski 4y ago

> It's [Safari] so bad that most video chat services don't even support it. Which ones? I've used Zoom, Meet, Teams, and Whereby in Safari with no problems. I've never encountered a video service _not_ work in it.

lotsofpulp 4y ago

I was just on Teams and Webex video calls using Safari.

kitsunesoba 4y ago
Google Meet works fine in Safari too. Better even, since there it uses hardware accelerated video encoding unlike in Chrome.

selykg 4y ago

On Mac, Safari is the only browser to respect battery drain and preserve power in any real meaningful way. I'll take some bugs for that win. I use Chrome or Firefox and my battery noticeably dies faster.

acdha 4y ago

> It's so bad that most video chat services don't even support it. All of the major services support it and the only one which I’ve ever had problems with is Google’s, which shockingly had issues with every browser other than Chrome. Do you have links to bug reports? I switched to Safari primarily a while back because it used the least battery and memory (Safari & Firefox were close, Chrome is a distant gluttonous third place). I’ve noticed very, very few cases where a compatibility issue forced me to switch browsers. As a web developer I use all three, of course, and using Chrome doesn’t feel notably better so halving my energy usage is an easy trade.

a4isms 4y ago
I find Chrome indispensable on OS X. Whenever I begin to wonder if my Macbook Air has fans or not, I start up Chrome and whoosh, it’s like a Hawker Harrier performing a vertical take-off. At one point I was doing a lot of coding in a coffee shop. When testing my work in Safari, I could sit down and run on my Mac’s batteries until I got tired of the coffee shop and headed home. With Chrome, I had to plug in immediately. I believe people who tell me Chrome has better bling and is faster, but Safari is fast enough for my purposes, and battery life is a far bigger factor for my browser choice than raw performance.
VWWHFSfQ 4y ago
Yeah you can find all the bugs here https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&content=webrtc&no_redirect=1&order=Importance&product=WebKit&query_format=specific https://bugs.webkit.org/buglist.cgi?bug_status=__open__&cont...
- acdha 4y ago
  Which specific ones have you personally verified as preventing use? That's a public tracker where anyone on the internet can report something — in many cases issues are duplicates, unreproducible, or specific to certain edge cases. I ask because that returns 351 issues but if you do the same search for Chrome you'll find 414. I would assume that you would agree that the correct interpretation of that is not that Chrome doesn't support WebRTC? https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=component%3ABlink%3EWebRTC&can=2 https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/list?q=component... Since all of the major services work without issue in all mainstream browsers, I would argue that to a first approximation this is not an effective proxy metric.

vehemenz 4y ago

So you think poor support for an optional technology is sufficient to call Safari the worst browser "in existence"? Let's work on that argument a bit more before posting hyperbole.

tinus_hn 4y ago

Sorry, trying to insinuate that WebRTC is basic technology just disqualifies your opinion. It has an enormous specification describing a privacy and security snakepit and definitely is not basic technology.