[russelg]

Very disingenuous of you. IE was a trashfire because it refused to do anything in a standard way, meaning it had to be specially catered for. Safari is slow to follow the standards but at least its compliant. A engine that isn't Chrome is very essential for keeping the web open, especially since Firefox user share keeps going down.

[schwartzworld]

Safari has absolutely ignored standards when it suits apple. That's why, for example, you can't rely on PWAs on Apple products.

[manigandham]

IE actually created many of the standards we take for granted like XMLHttpRequest. [1] It was the innovator for a long time until priorities changed and the IE team was disbanded leading to the stagnation.

Microsoft definitely takes the blame in keeping it poor for so long but this situation is nothing like Safari which has refused to implement standards that already exist, as well as messing with others in unintuitive ways.

1. https://schepp.dev/posts/today-the-trident-era-ends/

[fenomas]

A browser engine that's primarily used on platforms where it's mandatory, and cannot be uninstalled or replaced, is "very essential for keeping the web open"?

[asddubs]

ie was also a trashfire because of the release/update model, holding the entire web back because it was so far behind standards (ie6 was actually ahead of its time on release, but then didn't get updated for ages). safari, especially on ios where you can't even get any other browser engines, and the safari version is tied to the operating system version, follows that same model with the same consequences. not as painful these days, since the web has come a long way already, but you can definitely see the parallels

[keeganpoppen]

unsure what part of this is cause for downvoting-- it is absolutely correct. it's not even invalidating other peoples' observations. people are weird (or ignorant (or both))...

edit: oh and i guess now that i upvoted it it's not grey anymore xD

[realusername]

Safari has a lot of issues outside of just being behind the standards. I've encountered background and z-index jank, form issues, SVG issues and even mouse event issues. If you are a web developer, there's a good chance your codebase has Safari bugfixes.

[SiVal]

slow to follow the standards

Safari is not only slow to follow the standards, it is slow to advance the standards. I'd be more likely to believe the spin that Apple just wants to make sure things are done well on the web if it appeared that they were trying as hard to add good, new capabilities to the web platform as they are to add good, new capabilities to iOS.

A engine that isn't Chrome is very essential for keeping the web open

Also essential is for the open web to be competitive with closed alternatives, or the fact that it's open will matter less and less. Apple is quite willing to provide competition for Chrome. It does it with iOS.

[greggman3]

Apple is only able to do this because of the monopoly of browser engines for 1.5 billion iOS devices. If they allowed (or were forced to allow) other browser engines then likely a large number of users would switch to another browser, forcing Apple to compete for features.

[manigandham]

What's that say about the quality of Safari then?

[rimliu]

How quickly people forget who brought canvas, CSS animations, etc.