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If Safari only is a viable browser because of Apple literally being anti-competitive to it's users in other ways, I'd argue it's hardly viable at all. The real

If Safari only is a viable browser because of Apple literally being anti-competitive to it's users in other ways, I'd argue it's hardly viable at all. The reality is that we're most likely in a monoculture already when it comes to browsers (just on the whole); Firefox gets funded by Google as and Safari only is propped up because Apple does it's own anti-competitive practices in other areas (read: their gatekeeping of the App Store) rather than being a common choice because it's a good browser. There's also the fact that a lot of this is a tough thing to claim when by all accounts from webdevs... Safari is an unviable browser without Apple's anti-competitive behavior because Safari fucking sucks. It's the modern Internet Explorer of browsers; a lot of modern web APIs that both Firefox and Chrome use just... don't work on Safari because the system has bugs or weird design decisions that don't follow spec, which means they're not widely used because Safari is still there and holding back everyone else.

llm_nerd 3y ago
"Safari fucking sucks. It's the modern Internet Explorer of browsers; a lot of modern web APIs that both Firefox and Chrome use just... don't work on Safari because the system has bugs or weird design decisions that don't follow spec" Absolute nonsense. The web developers who go off about Safaris are overwhelming terrible webdevs who want to stick a "Made for Chrome" button on their website and be done with having to bother dealing with other browsers. It's actually a bit hilarious when Safari is called Internet Explorer -- there was a time when Internet Explorer offered all sorts of crazy new stuff (just like Chrome today) which threatened the user's privacy and security, but webdevs wanted it so they stuck "Made for Internet Explorer" and dropped a bunch of ActiveX controls on their page. If anything Chrome is the Internet Explorer of the day. I'm pretty passionate about this because not only is it going to be incredibly damaging for the web when Safari is crushed (Firefox will be crushed simultaneously), it means whatever half-baked nonsense Google pushes out is going to be the norm.
- noirscape 3y ago
  Honestly, I could link you a lot of articles, but... just look at the page on caniuse and see what Firefox and Chrome implement, yet Safari just doesn't bother with. https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+118,safari+17.0,firefox+118&compareCats=HTML5,JS,JS%20API,Other,Security,SVG https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+118,safari+17.0,firefox+... The main ones of note here really are the AV1 support, OGG Video and WebCodecs though. These aren't "new" technologies; most of them just are objectively good pieces of tech that have been battletested for years now. They just barely see any use because Apple doesn't want to implement them and the iOS browser market can't just be handwaved away. That's Apple refusing to implement certain technologies that make the ecosystem worse for everyone else. That's why I say Safari sucks. I didn't include CSS in that list but if you enable it, you'll see a similar thing; Firefox and Chrome are both more or less up-to-date (with Chrome running away with certain APIs which is yeah, an issue), while Apple just doesn't support large chunks of it. Similarly, while not listed on caniuse, their IndexedDB implementation is an infamously buggy mess that often introduces regressions with each update (and back when Web SQL was a thing, their implementation was once again implemented in a way that made it useless; they'd wipe it entirely after a week, meaning nobody ended up using Web SQL). That one is also compounded by the fact that the Safari release cycle is infamously just... too slow, since Apple insists on tying it to entire OS updates (which means you aren't just supporting the most recent version of iOS but probably the ones from 5 versions ago as well because not everyone can run the latest version of iOS). This isn't "bad webdevs"; it's Apple being a bad actor and using an external method of leverage (the App Store) to force webdevs to not be able to use actually good technologies.
  - llm_nerd 3y ago
    >The main ones of note here really are the AV1 support Apple devices -- in fact, most devices -- don't have AV1 hardware support. Meaning playing AV1 content will have a greater impact on battery life or provide a worse experience. That's why Apple doesn't support it. Any reasonable technology stack is going to sniff what the client supports and serve up AV1 to so equipped clients (which hopefully have hardware support), h265, whatever. That falls in the realm of "complete and utter non-issue". Google doesn't care about your experience (this has been shown time and time again). They'll toss whatever corpse of a solution they want over the wall and let it bake in the sun of exposure. Further, notably your comparison includes loads of partials and nones for Firefox as well. Do you also hold that Firefox sucks? Because again, Chrome is Internet Explorer. Google sticks anything and everything in Chrome because it serves Google. >they'd wipe it entirely after a week This is actually a telling comment. At the time vendors discovered that they could circumvent cookie blocking/clearing by just stuffing everything into WebSQL. Again, Google just tossed it over the wall and loads of "bad webdevs" exploited it and went wailing and gnashing that Safari did this or Safari did that, why can't they just circumvent your privacy controls like they could on Chrome.
mcphage 3y ago
> a lot of modern web APIs that both Firefox and Chrome use just... don't work on Safari because the system has bugs or weird design decisions that don't follow spec, which means they're not widely used because Safari is still there and holding back everyone else Are these Standards, or are these "standards", ie, Chrome implemented something and now Google is complaining that Apple didn't also implement the thing that Google just came up with?

llm_nerd 3y ago

"Safari fucking sucks. It's the modern Internet Explorer of browsers; a lot of modern web APIs that both Firefox and Chrome use just... don't work on Safari because the system has bugs or weird design decisions that don't follow spec" Absolute nonsense. The web developers who go off about Safaris are overwhelming terrible webdevs who want to stick a "Made for Chrome" button on their website and be done with having to bother dealing with other browsers. It's actually a bit hilarious when Safari is called Internet Explorer -- there was a time when Internet Explorer offered all sorts of crazy new stuff (just like Chrome today) which threatened the user's privacy and security, but webdevs wanted it so they stuck "Made for Internet Explorer" and dropped a bunch of ActiveX controls on their page. If anything Chrome is the Internet Explorer of the day. I'm pretty passionate about this because not only is it going to be incredibly damaging for the web when Safari is crushed (Firefox will be crushed simultaneously), it means whatever half-baked nonsense Google pushes out is going to be the norm.

noirscape 3y ago
Honestly, I could link you a lot of articles, but... just look at the page on caniuse and see what Firefox and Chrome implement, yet Safari just doesn't bother with. https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+118,safari+17.0,firefox+118&compareCats=HTML5,JS,JS%20API,Other,Security,SVG https://caniuse.com/?compare=chrome+118,safari+17.0,firefox+... The main ones of note here really are the AV1 support, OGG Video and WebCodecs though. These aren't "new" technologies; most of them just are objectively good pieces of tech that have been battletested for years now. They just barely see any use because Apple doesn't want to implement them and the iOS browser market can't just be handwaved away. That's Apple refusing to implement certain technologies that make the ecosystem worse for everyone else. That's why I say Safari sucks. I didn't include CSS in that list but if you enable it, you'll see a similar thing; Firefox and Chrome are both more or less up-to-date (with Chrome running away with certain APIs which is yeah, an issue), while Apple just doesn't support large chunks of it. Similarly, while not listed on caniuse, their IndexedDB implementation is an infamously buggy mess that often introduces regressions with each update (and back when Web SQL was a thing, their implementation was once again implemented in a way that made it useless; they'd wipe it entirely after a week, meaning nobody ended up using Web SQL). That one is also compounded by the fact that the Safari release cycle is infamously just... too slow, since Apple insists on tying it to entire OS updates (which means you aren't just supporting the most recent version of iOS but probably the ones from 5 versions ago as well because not everyone can run the latest version of iOS). This isn't "bad webdevs"; it's Apple being a bad actor and using an external method of leverage (the App Store) to force webdevs to not be able to use actually good technologies.
- llm_nerd 3y ago
  >The main ones of note here really are the AV1 support Apple devices -- in fact, most devices -- don't have AV1 hardware support. Meaning playing AV1 content will have a greater impact on battery life or provide a worse experience. That's why Apple doesn't support it. Any reasonable technology stack is going to sniff what the client supports and serve up AV1 to so equipped clients (which hopefully have hardware support), h265, whatever. That falls in the realm of "complete and utter non-issue". Google doesn't care about your experience (this has been shown time and time again). They'll toss whatever corpse of a solution they want over the wall and let it bake in the sun of exposure. Further, notably your comparison includes loads of partials and nones for Firefox as well. Do you also hold that Firefox sucks? Because again, Chrome is Internet Explorer. Google sticks anything and everything in Chrome because it serves Google. >they'd wipe it entirely after a week This is actually a telling comment. At the time vendors discovered that they could circumvent cookie blocking/clearing by just stuffing everything into WebSQL. Again, Google just tossed it over the wall and loads of "bad webdevs" exploited it and went wailing and gnashing that Safari did this or Safari did that, why can't they just circumvent your privacy controls like they could on Chrome.

mcphage 3y ago

> a lot of modern web APIs that both Firefox and Chrome use just... don't work on Safari because the system has bugs or weird design decisions that don't follow spec, which means they're not widely used because Safari is still there and holding back everyone else Are these Standards, or are these "standards", ie, Chrome implemented something and now Google is complaining that Apple didn't also implement the thing that Google just came up with?