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Cool stuff they're working on tends to take a very long time to reach customers' hands compared to other browsers. Just compare the "stable" and "experimental"

by concinds 10mo ago

Cool stuff they're working on tends to take a very long time to reach customers' hands compared to other browsers. Just compare the "stable" and "experimental" graphs on wpt.fyi for Safari. I can't think of a single good reason why they don't adopt an "evergreen" 4/6-week update model except Not Invented Here syndrome or "it's not Apple-like, we prefer the OS team (and therefore Marketing) dictating our release schedule, users be damned". It's an own-goal for no reason.

simondotau 10mo ago
The web platform doesn’t need to move this fast. Google is, often unilaterally, pushing new features and declaring them standards. In my opinion, the web should not be changing so fast that a truly open source community project couldn’t keep up. I don’t like how the web has become reliant on the largesse of billion dollar corporations. I recognise that this is a controversial take, but in my opinion what Google is doing is a variant of “embrace and extend”. Traditionally, this meant proprietary extensions (e.g. VBScript) but I think this a subtle variant with similar consequences.
- runlaszlorun 10mo ago
  VBScript is a word I hadn't heard in quite a while! Brings back memories of editing 5k line .asp files to find an if statement and then a 1000 lines of html and such. Sadly, I dont' think web development is actual better 20+ years later, just different...
- concinds 10mo ago
  I know it's fashionable to forcefully shove the same pet peeves about Chromium into any topic even loosely related, but here I'm talking about Safari webcompat fixes, bug fixes, and improvements having very long delays between being written and landing in customers' hands. I would make the same argument if Chrome never existed. Thank you for presenting the 10,001st reissue of this "controversial take".
  - simondotau 10mo ago
    The behaviour of entities that WebKit is ostensibly told to be compatible with isn't a "loosely related" topic, it's precisely on-point. It's certainly no less on-point than nebulous criticisms of Apple for assumed NIH syndrome or marketing priorities. You criticise Apple for not having a rapid release schedule; I am criticising the very notion of rapid release schedules (other than security patches). The web platform doesn't need to move so fast.
    - hu3 10mo ago
      How can you defend Safari rendering broken sites for long periods due to lack of frequent updates as a good thing? The ever current adage of distortion field applies here. Just like Safari not having webgpu was touted as a feature and now that it has support, webgpu suddenly turned into a feature. Apple can do no wrong to some. Whatever they do is a feature. And if they don't do, it's a feature too.
      - simondotau 10mo ago
        I agree that numerous companies inspire occasional weird reflexive defences from their most enthusiastic supporters. Thankfully, bad arguments have no transitive value. Implying otherwise is itself a bad argument. It is true that Safari sometimes lagged in ways that are legitimately open to criticism. There are instances where Safari had incomplete or broken feature implementations. But many claims of “broken sites” are really just evidence of lazy developers failing to test beyond Chrome or to implement graceful fallback. Relying on bleeding-edge Chromium features before they've been broadly adopted by browsers is, IMHO, a infatuation with novelty over durability. It's also, IMHO, a callous disregard for the open web platform in favour of The Chrome Platform. Web developers are free to do whatever they like, but it's misleading to blame browsers for the bad choices and/or laziness of some web developers.
        saagarjha 10mo ago
        Why do you keep conflating bug fixes with new platform features?
- kyle-rb 10mo ago
  The web platform on your device needs to be locked to a specific version because the OS stopped being updated. Once the OS stops being updated, you're supposed to buy a new device. You shouldn't be allowed to use an old device with an updated browser, especially not a browser from a 3rd party, because that doesn't help Apple sell more iPads.
- troupo 10mo ago
  "Google learned from Microsoft’s mistakes and follows a novel embrace, extend, and extinguish strategy by breaking the web and stomping on the bits. Who cares if it breaks as long as we go forward." https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_the_we.html https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th...
  - simondotau 10mo ago
    That's a good article. Thanks for surfacing.
alwillis 10mo ago
> I can't think of a single good reason why they don't adopt an "evergreen" 4/6-week update model except Not Invented Here syndrome or "it's not Apple-like, we prefer the OS team (and therefore Marketing) dictating our release schedule, users be damned". There's a new version of Safari Technology Preview [1] for macOS every two weeks. There's a new version of Safari released every September for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. This has been the schedule for several years. Since Safari 26 shipped on September 15, 2025, there have been two updates for these platforms: Safari 26.1 on November 3rd and 26.2 on December 12th. The Safari team shipped 7 releases this year, averaging 7½ weeks between releases; not a significant difference from 4–6 weeks. Each major release of Safari for macOS runs on the current macOS version (Tahoe) and the two preceding ones—Sequoia and Sonoma. BTW, there were 9 Safari releases in 2024, averaging 5.8 weeks apart. It's not the first time Safari shipped a significant new feature before other browsers; :has(), Display P3 color support, JPEG-XL come to mind. At the end of the day, there's no NIH or Marketing team dictating the release schedule. [1]: https://webkit.org/downloads/ https://webkit.org/downloads/
- concinds 10mo ago
  The Safari/WebKit people are doing good work, yes. I use Safari as my default, and like every Firefox/Safari user I still get some bugs that don't occur in Chrome (not talking about WebMIDI obviously), so watching that 30 point gap between stable Safari and bleeding-edge WebKit (longer than 7½ weeks) on wpt.fyi was quite frustrating. The average Safari user would have a better browsing experience with a shorter fix delay, that's just the truth. Having to wait for macOS updates holds back the browser, unnecessarily.
  - alwillis 10mo ago
    > Having to wait for macOS updates holds back the browser, unnecessarily. Safari is an operating system component, which lots of people don't seem to understand; hundreds of thousands of 3rd party apps rely on Safari's WebKit engine. I've never heard a normie Safari user complain that Safari updates aren't being released quickly enough; that's something web and app developers care about… which is why Safari Technical Preview is released every two weeks. Even the release versions of Safari on iOS, iPadOS and macOS allow you to enable web features that are still in development.

simondotau 10mo ago

The web platform doesn’t need to move this fast. Google is, often unilaterally, pushing new features and declaring them standards. In my opinion, the web should not be changing so fast that a truly open source community project couldn’t keep up. I don’t like how the web has become reliant on the largesse of billion dollar corporations. I recognise that this is a controversial take, but in my opinion what Google is doing is a variant of “embrace and extend”. Traditionally, this meant proprietary extensions (e.g. VBScript) but I think this a subtle variant with similar consequences.

runlaszlorun 10mo ago
VBScript is a word I hadn't heard in quite a while! Brings back memories of editing 5k line .asp files to find an if statement and then a 1000 lines of html and such. Sadly, I dont' think web development is actual better 20+ years later, just different...
concinds 10mo ago
I know it's fashionable to forcefully shove the same pet peeves about Chromium into any topic even loosely related, but here I'm talking about Safari webcompat fixes, bug fixes, and improvements having very long delays between being written and landing in customers' hands. I would make the same argument if Chrome never existed. Thank you for presenting the 10,001st reissue of this "controversial take".
- simondotau 10mo ago
  The behaviour of entities that WebKit is ostensibly told to be compatible with isn't a "loosely related" topic, it's precisely on-point. It's certainly no less on-point than nebulous criticisms of Apple for assumed NIH syndrome or marketing priorities. You criticise Apple for not having a rapid release schedule; I am criticising the very notion of rapid release schedules (other than security patches). The web platform doesn't need to move so fast.
  - hu3 10mo ago
    How can you defend Safari rendering broken sites for long periods due to lack of frequent updates as a good thing? The ever current adage of distortion field applies here. Just like Safari not having webgpu was touted as a feature and now that it has support, webgpu suddenly turned into a feature. Apple can do no wrong to some. Whatever they do is a feature. And if they don't do, it's a feature too.
    - simondotau 10mo ago
      I agree that numerous companies inspire occasional weird reflexive defences from their most enthusiastic supporters. Thankfully, bad arguments have no transitive value. Implying otherwise is itself a bad argument. It is true that Safari sometimes lagged in ways that are legitimately open to criticism. There are instances where Safari had incomplete or broken feature implementations. But many claims of “broken sites” are really just evidence of lazy developers failing to test beyond Chrome or to implement graceful fallback. Relying on bleeding-edge Chromium features before they've been broadly adopted by browsers is, IMHO, a infatuation with novelty over durability. It's also, IMHO, a callous disregard for the open web platform in favour of The Chrome Platform. Web developers are free to do whatever they like, but it's misleading to blame browsers for the bad choices and/or laziness of some web developers.
      - saagarjha 10mo ago
        Why do you keep conflating bug fixes with new platform features?
kyle-rb 10mo ago
The web platform on your device needs to be locked to a specific version because the OS stopped being updated. Once the OS stops being updated, you're supposed to buy a new device. You shouldn't be allowed to use an old device with an updated browser, especially not a browser from a 3rd party, because that doesn't help Apple sell more iPads.
troupo 10mo ago
"Google learned from Microsoft’s mistakes and follows a novel embrace, extend, and extinguish strategy by breaking the web and stomping on the bits. Who cares if it breaks as long as we go forward." https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_the_we.html https://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2021/08/breaking_th...
- simondotau 10mo ago
  That's a good article. Thanks for surfacing.

alwillis 10mo ago

> I can't think of a single good reason why they don't adopt an "evergreen" 4/6-week update model except Not Invented Here syndrome or "it's not Apple-like, we prefer the OS team (and therefore Marketing) dictating our release schedule, users be damned". There's a new version of Safari Technology Preview [1] for macOS every two weeks. There's a new version of Safari released every September for macOS, iOS, iPadOS, and visionOS. This has been the schedule for several years. Since Safari 26 shipped on September 15, 2025, there have been two updates for these platforms: Safari 26.1 on November 3rd and 26.2 on December 12th. The Safari team shipped 7 releases this year, averaging 7½ weeks between releases; not a significant difference from 4–6 weeks. Each major release of Safari for macOS runs on the current macOS version (Tahoe) and the two preceding ones—Sequoia and Sonoma. BTW, there were 9 Safari releases in 2024, averaging 5.8 weeks apart. It's not the first time Safari shipped a significant new feature before other browsers; :has(), Display P3 color support, JPEG-XL come to mind. At the end of the day, there's no NIH or Marketing team dictating the release schedule. [1]: https://webkit.org/downloads/ https://webkit.org/downloads/

concinds 10mo ago
The Safari/WebKit people are doing good work, yes. I use Safari as my default, and like every Firefox/Safari user I still get some bugs that don't occur in Chrome (not talking about WebMIDI obviously), so watching that 30 point gap between stable Safari and bleeding-edge WebKit (longer than 7½ weeks) on wpt.fyi was quite frustrating. The average Safari user would have a better browsing experience with a shorter fix delay, that's just the truth. Having to wait for macOS updates holds back the browser, unnecessarily.
- alwillis 10mo ago
  > Having to wait for macOS updates holds back the browser, unnecessarily. Safari is an operating system component, which lots of people don't seem to understand; hundreds of thousands of 3rd party apps rely on Safari's WebKit engine. I've never heard a normie Safari user complain that Safari updates aren't being released quickly enough; that's something web and app developers care about… which is why Safari Technical Preview is released every two weeks. Even the release versions of Safari on iOS, iPadOS and macOS allow you to enable web features that are still in development.