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> Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE It wasn't because they had poor feature adopti

> Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE It wasn't because they had poor feature adoption. It was because they'd tend to adopt features in a way that's incompatible with other browsers (of the top of my head, handling of localStorage in private browsing). It was a bit of a "fuck you" to devs since you often had to do browser detection for Safari (much like you used to have to do for IE) and have special branches or polyfills for Safari. > What made IE the IE everyone hates was its departure from standards(?) and enforcing its own vision of the web Apple is just as guilty of this. They crippled and bastardised a bunch of features just to push for a more native adoption (depends on how cynical you are, but some say it's for more control over device usage patterns, and some say it's for longer battery life) It's gotten better and more aligned with other browsers now, though. But alas, I know most are just chromium clones these days

mrtksn 3y ago
Apple probably have similar motives to MS when it comes to crippling the browser and enforcing its own rendering engine in iOS and that is to protects its app market. However, Apple did not attempt to divide the web then use its dominant position to make all the content only compatible with their stuff. With the IE situation, you couldn't just download Firefox and live happy thereafter because every website was made to work in IE and any other browser would simply fail to display the webpages properly either due to the way HTML/CSS is handled or due to some proprietary technology. Apple hasn't done that, maybe only because its tiny marketshare compared to the alternatives but that's how it is. Unfortunately, due to the marketshare of Google Chrome, they can pull an IE and there are signs of it. The hate towards Safari comes from the Web devs who are angry that they can't send push notifications and have to pay 99$ to Apple to embed their webpage into a WebView to pass as an app. There's no much hate towards Safari in its userbase, it's by far the most convenient Web browser in Apple's ecosystem, by far the most battery efficient and the performance is top notch too. Completely different situation with the tragedy of IE.
- lesuorac 3y ago
  > However, Apple did not attempt to divide the web then use it's dominant position to make all the content only compatible with their stuff. Flash would like a word with you.
  - mrtksn 3y ago
    Flash died due to its own sins. Apple never had a dominant marketshare to do that, Apple simply did not let that crap on its mobile platform which had %0 marketshare when that happened. Then the open web standards that can do most of the stuff that Flash was used for took over. Google tried to support Flash, even it was listed as Android's "strength" over iOS but the tech that came to handle the most use cases of Flash was much superior and it killed Flash on desktop too.
  - brookst 3y ago
    Flash was a web standard?
- hbn 3y ago
  It could also be argued that right now Google's domination of the web allows them to throw their weight around and introduce bad "standards" just so everything can be moved to the web, which again, they basically own. For example the "standard" implementation of web push is straight up bad. I don't think websites should be able to throw popups asking users with enable notifications, because users are so used to accepting TOS agreements and cookie prompts that they just click "ok" and "accept" on everything, and now your grandma has gambling app ads in her notifications because she accepted notifications from some sketchy site she was linked to on Facebook. Apple made the right move by requiring you to add a website to your home screen before it's allowed to send you push notifications.
  - nurple 3y ago
    I love how sites are now taking the mobile strategy of checking first and then showing a sugary popup explaining that they’re about to pop the native prompt for perms, and why. It brings me joy to click affirmative on those so I can permablock by clicking no on the native prompt.
mattferderer 3y ago
IE was super strict on the standards it seemed. Can't remember the specifics anymore but it seemed something would work in CSS or JS on Chrome but not IE. Then I would look up & IE was correct but Chrome was adding features that made sense & made life easier. When TypeScript came out the type support was what made me become a very early & passionate adopter even though it was very bleeding edge & a pain to use with other libraries. The cuts were worth it because they always saved much greater pain later. It was also an easier sell than something like Elm.

mrtksn 3y ago

Apple probably have similar motives to MS when it comes to crippling the browser and enforcing its own rendering engine in iOS and that is to protects its app market. However, Apple did not attempt to divide the web then use its dominant position to make all the content only compatible with their stuff. With the IE situation, you couldn't just download Firefox and live happy thereafter because every website was made to work in IE and any other browser would simply fail to display the webpages properly either due to the way HTML/CSS is handled or due to some proprietary technology. Apple hasn't done that, maybe only because its tiny marketshare compared to the alternatives but that's how it is. Unfortunately, due to the marketshare of Google Chrome, they can pull an IE and there are signs of it. The hate towards Safari comes from the Web devs who are angry that they can't send push notifications and have to pay 99$ to Apple to embed their webpage into a WebView to pass as an app. There's no much hate towards Safari in its userbase, it's by far the most convenient Web browser in Apple's ecosystem, by far the most battery efficient and the performance is top notch too. Completely different situation with the tragedy of IE.

lesuorac 3y ago
> However, Apple did not attempt to divide the web then use it's dominant position to make all the content only compatible with their stuff. Flash would like a word with you.
- mrtksn 3y ago
  Flash died due to its own sins. Apple never had a dominant marketshare to do that, Apple simply did not let that crap on its mobile platform which had %0 marketshare when that happened. Then the open web standards that can do most of the stuff that Flash was used for took over. Google tried to support Flash, even it was listed as Android's "strength" over iOS but the tech that came to handle the most use cases of Flash was much superior and it killed Flash on desktop too.
- brookst 3y ago
  Flash was a web standard?
hbn 3y ago
It could also be argued that right now Google's domination of the web allows them to throw their weight around and introduce bad "standards" just so everything can be moved to the web, which again, they basically own. For example the "standard" implementation of web push is straight up bad. I don't think websites should be able to throw popups asking users with enable notifications, because users are so used to accepting TOS agreements and cookie prompts that they just click "ok" and "accept" on everything, and now your grandma has gambling app ads in her notifications because she accepted notifications from some sketchy site she was linked to on Facebook. Apple made the right move by requiring you to add a website to your home screen before it's allowed to send you push notifications.
- nurple 3y ago
  I love how sites are now taking the mobile strategy of checking first and then showing a sugary popup explaining that they’re about to pop the native prompt for perms, and why. It brings me joy to click affirmative on those so I can permablock by clicking no on the native prompt.

mattferderer 3y ago

IE was super strict on the standards it seemed. Can't remember the specifics anymore but it seemed something would work in CSS or JS on Chrome but not IE. Then I would look up & IE was correct but Chrome was adding features that made sense & made life easier. When TypeScript came out the type support was what made me become a very early & passionate adopter even though it was very bleeding edge & a pain to use with other libraries. The cuts were worth it because they always saved much greater pain later. It was also an easier sell than something like Elm.