A recommendation predicated with "Get a Mac first for development work"?
Last I checked Safari unlike Firefox and Chrome is not cross platform.
Small aside:
Webkit browsers used to have problems with CSS (especially things involving 3d) when hardware acceleration is unavailable. Spent so many hours back in the day debugging why certain CSS effects did not work. Switched to Firefox and worked like a charm... Only really understood the problem when I eventually switched to a system with HW acceleration support.
Safari itself is not open source so it's unclear how much/little they have modified WebKit and the JavaScript engine. Given that this bug involves JS (events not firing), and MacOS doing its own thing with JS, it's entirely possible that this is a Safari only bug that resides in the proprietary parts of the codebase...
Well, you can't, but it'd be the same story as if you only had a Mac in 2006 and wanted to test IE6. Consumers have a choice for the devices they use, so it might make business sense to test changes with hardware your customers use at the same frequency or more often than you do on your own preferred hardware.
As dumb as it was, IE was providing free VMs preloaded with IE versions for developers. Apple is horribly developer hostile.
My company refuses to test and run around with Safari bugs, the advice is to install a better browser.
Then I won’t be a customer. Is the best quality browser for me. Not perfect, but better than the alternatives. I’m happy to walk away from the tiny number of sites that break in Safari. And that’s just on desktop where I could use something besides Safari if I wanted to.
Whereas you’re literally saying you’re happy to walk away from over 35% of mobile users, while telling them to do something they can’t do without replacing their device. That’s… one way to run a business.
Depends on the context of course but this generally rings true.
The amount of business we would be losing by ignoring mobile safari users is staggering. For whatever reason it's also the majority browser, I dont think its safe to assume that the users of your site using safari are equal to the percentage of the market share even.
Ignoring it is a very unusual stance unless your site/app is basically exclusively desktop.
As other have said, the problem is that Safari is only available on Mac OS.
Say what you will about IE, at least Microsoft make an attempt to make it available to everyone (via free Windows VM preloaded with specific IE version).
A more reasonable approach is to code to standards then do these things:
1. Tell customers it will cost x more money to fix bugs on Safari (likely zero will pay this premium)
2. Put a notice or banner for Safari users that they are using a non standards compliant browser and they may see minor or major issues and maybe should use Firefox or Chrome.
3. Educate customers on standards and show them alternatives so they can do the same for their customers.
4. Record actual brower useage data and demonstrate the low count of actual Safari visitors and star back at #1 above with this newly applied info.
Last I checked Safari unlike Firefox and Chrome is not cross platform.
Small aside: Webkit browsers used to have problems with CSS (especially things involving 3d) when hardware acceleration is unavailable. Spent so many hours back in the day debugging why certain CSS effects did not work. Switched to Firefox and worked like a charm... Only really understood the problem when I eventually switched to a system with HW acceleration support.