It's the only reason you don't see a lot more broken websites on Firefox, which would drive its market share even lower.
Lots and lots of Web development projects target Chrome, then make sure it works on Safari. In that second step, they accidentally fix a lot of bugs that'd show up on Firefox, too.
Not a lot of them are bothering to check Firefox directly these days. Hell, a decade ago it wasn't making the test list in tons of cases.
Apple is the only thing keeping web standards in place. Many vendors we work with only support Chrome, including Chrome... on iOS. Which means because on iOS that's just Safari, the website has to meet web standards. So we know thanks to Apple, it'll work on Firefox!
Soon as this happens, Chrome is the web. The OWA knows this, it's their goal, it's an astroturf outfit.
Can you please elaborate on what your point is here? Previously you've made comments in support of opening up the Apple ecosystem, but now it seems that you're no longer in support of the idea after a sudden realization that opening up the platform to everyone means that it's also opened up to Google?
Very specifically: Safari is a critical lynchpin for Google's control of the web and we need to be extremely careful how we address it. A more open Apple ecosystem would be wonderful, I'm strongly in favor of sideloading and third party app stores. Both companies need to be heavily regulated, but the "Open Web Advocacy" idiots are just trying to push a Chrome monoculture, and it's important we do not accidentally make one monopoly worse while addressing another.
Ideally, Google will be broken up and forced to divest Chrome (this is in progress, but at the speed of the US federal government, so could be a decade if it succeeds), and then we can require Apple to remove their browser ban. Doing this out of order will destroy the web as we know it.
Chrome is the IE of today: It's the single platform developers are developing for instead of web standards. The fact developers have to support Safari, a least common denominator, is the only thing protecting the web.
I disagree. Safari is safer to use than Chrome, because Chrome implements antifeatures at a breakneck pace which introduce tracking and security vulnerabilities. Choosing not to implement a feature is as important or more than implementing one.
I'm not a Mac user, but I wish I had Safari on desktop as an option today.
> I'm not a Mac user, but I wish I had Safari on desktop as an option today.
Webkit browsers do exist on other platforms. They're far and away the best-performing sorts of actually-usable (in terms of supported Web features and ability to render real pages in the wild—sure, lynx works, but...) browsers on low-end machines, should you have to use one, to the point that they may be viable on a machine that's otherwise basically incapable of using the modern Web at all (which confirms for me that there's some fundamental, deep-down plumbing reasons behind why Safari's so much better on battery life than Firefox or Chrome-based browsers)
None of them are Safari and I can't vouch for how they are as daily drivers long-term, but it's nice to have one semi-up-to-date engine around that still kinda works on bad hardware (and by "bad" I mean still several times stronger than my workhorse many-tabs-browsing multi-tasking machine circa 2003—you'd be amazed how strong a machine has to be these days before trying to use the Web at-all normally in Chrome or Firefox is anything but terribly painful).
Lots and lots of Web development projects target Chrome, then make sure it works on Safari. In that second step, they accidentally fix a lot of bugs that'd show up on Firefox, too.
Not a lot of them are bothering to check Firefox directly these days. Hell, a decade ago it wasn't making the test list in tons of cases.