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by meibo 1879 days ago
Recently getting into web development, getting things to look right on Safari has been such a pain... they really just work on Firefox and Chrome, but every time we deploy a new version, the one coworker with a Mac will message us about some arcane difference in behavior for certain CSS we're using on Safari.

I wish we could drop it, but our Analytics disagree, sadly.
3 comments
maxwell 1879 days ago
Yeah, it's a clear abuse of market power and is holding back the web. They have the resources to fix these issues, and seemingly choose not to, effectively taxing developers, who pass the costs on the consumers. So even well within the current bullshit "consumer welfare" standard: options go down, costs go up, with Apple's apparent "embrace / hold up / extinguish" strategy.

I'd love it if you could write up your experiences, ideally with those figures on Safari usage and citations to any relevant WebKit bugs, and send them over to Rep. Cicilline's office in Rhode Island.

I thought his office did a good job putting together these questions on anticompetitive behavior by Apple (who has since actually been fixing the protectionist issues that they gave obviously flimsy answers on):

https://docs.house.gov/meetings/JU/JU05/20190716/109793/HHRG...

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015a 1879 days ago
What's worse, Apple will insist that the "open web" is the alternative the app store on iOS. Apple controls the portal to that open web too! And either through intention or incompetence, its a non-starter for developers! Even alternate browsers on iOS are forced to use the Safari/WebKit engine; its not even close to "open".
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realusername 1879 days ago
People almost only talk about the missing features on Safari and while that's true that they are blockers in some areas (like PWA for instance, that's not a coincidence...), the main issue for me is that Safari is a very buggy browser engine. It's hard to emphasis how a massive amount of small details aren't right at all, you will encounter Safari bugs even on a basic website.

Safari feels like it's in "maintenance mode" at best.

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realusername 1879 days ago
I hear you... I'm almost to the point of creating a second simplified version for legacy browsers (similar to Gmail's HTML view) and put a banner on the top to upgrade to some more modern browser. I just cannot guarantee that everything will work on their browser anyways.
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