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Safari is to browsers today what IE once was: dread by those that have to support them. I am yet to meet competent developers who have ever given two hoots abo

Safari is to browsers today what IE once was: dread by those that have to support them. I am yet to meet competent developers who have ever given two hoots about “super fastest browser #1!!” blog posts over feature completed-ness / spec-compliance. I hope the C-level exec at Apple sees this and realises why more devs are going to go with Edge (lol) / Firefox support: the sales guys are running Apple now.

manuelmoreale 4y ago
> Safari is to browsers today what IE once was: dread by those that have to support them. I mean, I don't think it's even close to beign modern day IE. Perfect? Far from it but definitely not as much of a pain as IE
- ihateyouall123 4y ago
  I think so
- squaresmile 4y ago
  I think one thing that makes it IE-like is updates being tied to the OS. Asking the users to update an app is an easier sell than updating their OS.
  - kergonath 4y ago
    This is so far down the list of issues related to IE 6… If it’s the worst aspect of mobile Safari, then there’s not much to complain about.
Grieverheart 4y ago
Nothing beats Safari in terms of battery usage, and there are features like the reading list that work really well (for me). For development, yes, I always have Chrome installed in case I needed it.
- brnewd 4y ago
  I don't think this is still the case with Chrome 110 and higher that sleeps/suspends inactive tabs.
  - PutinPoopin 4y ago
    [dead]
Y-bar 4y ago
For me, a Firefox user, I don't share your point of view. I see a lot more "optimized for Chrome" or "run this in Chrome because that is the only browser we decided to support" because Google decided on implementing some feature of their own making. Never have I been hindered in my web browsing by something tailored to Safari.
- masklinn 4y ago
  Yeah the kids don’t remember the bad days. It was not just that IE was broken in all sort of very odd ways, or that it was incompatible with the rest (and standard), or that it was essentially a monopoly. It was all three. So a site built for IE would not work at all in other browsers if it used anything remotely advanced (and advanced back then was users events), you had to support IE to live (on anything but demo site), and doing so was hell on earth because the bugs went from top to bottom (the browser’s memory management had to be worked around, and there were no memory profiler, hell the debuggers only worked half the time). Not that it’s any fun encountering a buggy browser, even less so when a feature is so broken you’d be better off if it were not supported and just did nothing or used a fallback and you now have to coerce it into that, and it does seem to be a recurring issue of safari. But it’s no IE, at this point you’d need malice aforethought to get there.
- masswerk 4y ago
  Also, typed arrays being slower than normal arrays for years on Chrome (and therefor pretty useless), Chrome breaking audio buffer playback for several major iterations, etc. This "whatever Chrome does is the standard" attitude reminds somewhat of the days of IE6 devs.
NovemberWhiskey 4y ago
Nah. It's more like "Chrome is the new IE 6": it's the default target for everyone and you'd better be bug-for-bug compatible or else.
- philistine 4y ago
  It’s exactly what the article describes. Because Safari was correctly implementing something and not reproducing a Chrome bug, the dev is asking Apple to change their release structure to reduce their stress. This is the endgame of a monopoly. Other people start demanding others stop fairly competing with you.
  - kingboss 4y ago
    They are begging for their collars.
mason55 4y ago
> I am yet to meet competent developers who have ever given two hoots about “super fastest browser #1!!” blog posts over feature completed-ness / spec-compliance. I'd like to think I'm a competent dev. I use Safari as my daily driver because the difference in performance/battery life on Apple silicon is worth whatever small incompatibilities I run into. It just doesn't ever impact me on a day-to-day basis in the way that performance and battery life do. Good engineering is all about trade-offs and this is one that doesn't even require a second thought for me.
- myspy 4y ago
  I use Safari as my main browser too. The features that link it between Mac and iPhone are very nice and easy to use. What also is cool in Safari is to zoom into a page so that everything gets bigger which makes it easier to read text or view pictures (not sure if this is the normal zoom a site has, or something on top OS wise). But a lot of sites are breaking that behaviour now, which results in either not being able to zoom or elements overlapping in weird ways, text not staying where it should. I wonder what CSS stuff is used there.
jojobas 4y ago
Why would they care what devs do? They are an infinitesimal minority. Their product are status/convenience for "normal" people, and they will use whatever browser Apple ships and if something breaks it's anybody else's fault. "If your Mac can't run it you don't need it".
ezfe 4y ago
raises hand I think I'm a competent developer and I use Safari primarily. The number of times I've tried to build something and found out that Firefox or Chrome got halfway through the spec and then stopped working on it isn't 0 either. It goes both ways.
robertoandred 4y ago
No real developer thinks Safari is comparable to IE, that's just something Google fans say.

manuelmoreale 4y ago

> Safari is to browsers today what IE once was: dread by those that have to support them. I mean, I don't think it's even close to beign modern day IE. Perfect? Far from it but definitely not as much of a pain as IE

ihateyouall123 4y ago
I think so
squaresmile 4y ago
I think one thing that makes it IE-like is updates being tied to the OS. Asking the users to update an app is an easier sell than updating their OS.
- kergonath 4y ago
  This is so far down the list of issues related to IE 6… If it’s the worst aspect of mobile Safari, then there’s not much to complain about.

Grieverheart 4y ago

Nothing beats Safari in terms of battery usage, and there are features like the reading list that work really well (for me). For development, yes, I always have Chrome installed in case I needed it.

brnewd 4y ago
I don't think this is still the case with Chrome 110 and higher that sleeps/suspends inactive tabs.
- PutinPoopin 4y ago
  [dead]

Y-bar 4y ago

For me, a Firefox user, I don't share your point of view. I see a lot more "optimized for Chrome" or "run this in Chrome because that is the only browser we decided to support" because Google decided on implementing some feature of their own making. Never have I been hindered in my web browsing by something tailored to Safari.

masklinn 4y ago
Yeah the kids don’t remember the bad days. It was not just that IE was broken in all sort of very odd ways, or that it was incompatible with the rest (and standard), or that it was essentially a monopoly. It was all three. So a site built for IE would not work at all in other browsers if it used anything remotely advanced (and advanced back then was users events), you had to support IE to live (on anything but demo site), and doing so was hell on earth because the bugs went from top to bottom (the browser’s memory management had to be worked around, and there were no memory profiler, hell the debuggers only worked half the time). Not that it’s any fun encountering a buggy browser, even less so when a feature is so broken you’d be better off if it were not supported and just did nothing or used a fallback and you now have to coerce it into that, and it does seem to be a recurring issue of safari. But it’s no IE, at this point you’d need malice aforethought to get there.
masswerk 4y ago
Also, typed arrays being slower than normal arrays for years on Chrome (and therefor pretty useless), Chrome breaking audio buffer playback for several major iterations, etc. This "whatever Chrome does is the standard" attitude reminds somewhat of the days of IE6 devs.

NovemberWhiskey 4y ago

Nah. It's more like "Chrome is the new IE 6": it's the default target for everyone and you'd better be bug-for-bug compatible or else.

philistine 4y ago
It’s exactly what the article describes. Because Safari was correctly implementing something and not reproducing a Chrome bug, the dev is asking Apple to change their release structure to reduce their stress. This is the endgame of a monopoly. Other people start demanding others stop fairly competing with you.
- kingboss 4y ago
  They are begging for their collars.

mason55 4y ago

> I am yet to meet competent developers who have ever given two hoots about “super fastest browser #1!!” blog posts over feature completed-ness / spec-compliance. I'd like to think I'm a competent dev. I use Safari as my daily driver because the difference in performance/battery life on Apple silicon is worth whatever small incompatibilities I run into. It just doesn't ever impact me on a day-to-day basis in the way that performance and battery life do. Good engineering is all about trade-offs and this is one that doesn't even require a second thought for me.

myspy 4y ago
I use Safari as my main browser too. The features that link it between Mac and iPhone are very nice and easy to use. What also is cool in Safari is to zoom into a page so that everything gets bigger which makes it easier to read text or view pictures (not sure if this is the normal zoom a site has, or something on top OS wise). But a lot of sites are breaking that behaviour now, which results in either not being able to zoom or elements overlapping in weird ways, text not staying where it should. I wonder what CSS stuff is used there.

jojobas 4y ago

Why would they care what devs do? They are an infinitesimal minority. Their product are status/convenience for "normal" people, and they will use whatever browser Apple ships and if something breaks it's anybody else's fault. "If your Mac can't run it you don't need it".

ezfe 4y ago

raises hand I think I'm a competent developer and I use Safari primarily. The number of times I've tried to build something and found out that Firefox or Chrome got halfway through the spec and then stopped working on it isn't 0 either. It goes both ways.

robertoandred 4y ago

No real developer thinks Safari is comparable to IE, that's just something Google fans say.