[meibo]

Safari is not a good browser, by design, because it's in Apple's interest to cripple the Web as a platform. If they want their browser to be actually competitive instead of forcing people to use it, they should make a good browser. That is markets working as they are supposed to.

[radiofreeeuropa]

Counterpoint: Safari is by far the best mainstream browser, because it's got the only engine that gives half a shit about battery life, and because they push back on shitty features Google wants to make "standard" so they can trash my UX and the computing ecosystem even more.

[kelthuzad]

Counterpoint: Your whole narrative is just Apple PR talk in disguise.

If Safari were even remotely close to being "the best mainstream browser" as you claimed, it would manifest itself in Safari capturing a dominant market share i.e. people would naturally gravitate towards Safari without Apple forcing it upon users. Apple would also invest much more into Web technology, but they don't have any interest in doing that since it would threaten their App Store business model.

"Pushing back on features" translates directly to "preventing web apps from becoming a viable threat" and none of this is about UX, which is just one of the convenient pretexts to make Apple's devious and self-serving behavior more palatable. No matter how often Apple shills try to rephrase and euphemize it, anyone who has recognized Apple's conflict of interest in this regard will see through it.

[tristan957]

FWIW, Mozilla seems to share the same sentiments about many of the standards that Google has been pushing for. They may have different incentives, but Apple does not sit alone on every one of their views.

[kelthuzad]

Mozilla doesn't have a multi-billion dollar App Store creating a direct conflict of interest. Their motives aren't comparable. A few overlapping concerns don't refute the primary evidence of Apple's self-serving behavior. The key decisions that hobble web apps and protect the App Store moat are specific to Apple's conflict of interest.

[radiofreeeuropa]

Of course there's conflict of interest. I'd prefer we address all the things their actions motivated by that conflict of interest are shielding me from before we smack them down, though. After that, yeah, I'll take up a pitchfork, too.

For now, they're my AnCap-approved optional private enforcement regime against a bunch of the antisocial and market-capturing behavior of the rest of tech, since public regulators are asleep at the wheel. I'd much prefer real, very aggressive (by modern standards, if not historical) enforcement of meaningful consumer protection, standards mandates, and trust-busting across the board, but this is the only option I've got (aside from "just use less tech, and far less-usefully")

All hurting them now does is hand more control of the tech ecosystem to Google.

Meanwhile: yes they in fact have the best mainstream browser, and it's not even close.

[leptons]

>Meanwhile: yes they in fact have the best mainstream browser, and it's not even close.

You have lost all credibility. I mean, you had very little to begin with using a 5-day old Apple-shill account, but now you have zero.

Safari is the absolute worst browser, by far, approaching Internet Explorer levels of wtf. On iOS it implements touch gestures completely differently than other browsers, because Apple does what Apple wants - forcing developers to buy a real iPhone just to debug their shitty browser. Their lack of webAPIs is absolutely to push developers to their App store - and I know this first hand because I have a web app that works on every other browser but Safari due to its lack of APIs. So if I want to support apple, I have to pay them for the privilege to develop said app, as well as pay them to buy their hardware to develop and test the app. Fuck all of that. I don't have to do that for any other browser or platform.

[kelthuzad]

My initial suspicion of you being a bad faith actor who is just regurgitating "Apple PR talk" has been proven true.

1) Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44813704 you regurgitate the classic Apple propaganda of "web apps are akshually not 'real' apps" - what makes apps 'real' for Apple propagandists is clearly when everybody is forced to pay Apple 30% tax.

2) The hallmark of the irrational Apple shill is also how increasingly bizarre and contradictory the apologia in defense of the trillion dollar company's anti-competitive business practices becomes, as you've just proven: "private enforcement regime against a bunch of the antisocial and market-capturing behavior of the rest of tech" - what kind of absurd logic is that?

Apple should be allowed to break the law according to you, so they can pretend to oppose something they are also guilty of themselves!? Then you disingenuously claim that "I'd much prefer real, very aggressive enforcement of meaningful consumer protection, standards mandates, and trust-busting across the board, but this is the only option I've got", but that's clearly not the "only option you've got" ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Google_LLC_(2... ) since you are literally opposing the other option by fighting regulators through spreading of disingenuous talking points in defense of Apple's unlawful business practices.

[radiofreeeuropa]

You've got some serious biases sending you some weird places in evaluating my posts.

> 1) Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44813704 you regurgitate the classic Apple propaganda of "web apps are akshually not 'real' apps" - what makes apps 'real' for Apple propagandists is clearly when everybody is forced to pay Apple 30% tax.

Yeah, that's my opinion on every platform, including back when I used Android. It's my opinion on Void Linux. It's my opinion everywhere, whether or not Apple's getting a cut (why would I possibly care that they make more money? Hell I'd love for them to have actual competition in their specific niches, to put downward pressure on their profitability, as far as their actual products they sell go). I've come to it through extensive engagement with the Web and various native ecosystems over decades, as both a user and developer. Webtech is a steaming pile of ass. It's so bad it makes the prior standard-setters for "steaming pile of ass" in its field look good. If I were somehow made Dictator of Technology for the World by a wish-granting genie, I would ban web apps, flat out (and do a lot of other things that would make market-distorting massive tech companies, including Apple, very sad)

> Then you disingenuously claim

Frankly, fuck off. You're being a dick for absolutely no reason. That's the flat-out truth. I could wrap that in HN-friendly passive-aggression, but screw that, you need to chill the fuck out, to be blunt.

[hu3]

Accounts like these have me wondering if Apple marketing has some guerrilla marketing branch to spam the internet.

[kelthuzad]

>You've got some serious biases sending you some weird places in evaluating my posts.

You are talking about a "serious bias" after spamming the same debunked Apple propaganda, with a 5 days old account? lol.

>> 1) Here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44813704 you regurgitate the classic Apple propaganda of "web apps are akshually not 'real' apps" - what makes apps 'real' for Apple propagandists is clearly when everybody is forced to pay Apple 30% tax.

>Yeah, that's my opinion on every platform, including back when I used Android. It's my opinion on Void Linux. It's my opinion everywhere, whether or not Apple's getting a cut (why would I possibly care that they make more money? Hell I'd love for them to have actual competition in their specific niches, to put downward pressure on their profitability, as far as their actual products they sell go). I've come to it through extensive engagement with the Web and various native ecosystems over decades, as both a user and developer. Webtech is a steaming pile of ass. It's so bad it makes the prior standard-setters for "steaming pile of ass" in its field look good.

Well your opinion is biased nonsense and conveniently regurgitates propaganda designed to defend anti-competitive business practices. Web Apps do an excellent job despite being actively sabotaged and you clearly have no idea what you're talking about since your rhetoric is drenched in misinformation.

>Frankly, fuck off. You're being a dick for absolutely no reason. That's the flat-out truth. I could wrap that in HN-friendly passive-aggression, but screw that, you need to chill the fuck out, to be blunt.

I get that you're not used to getting called out on your dishonest and manipulative rhetoric, but you should have anticipated that before spamming the same debunked Apple propaganda for the 1000th time with a fresh account, because you know that it's bullshit propaganda.

[mvdtnz]

Oh stop this fake incredulity. You're shilling for Apple and did such a bad job of it that you were found out while your account is still green. Take it on the chin instead of lashing out. Better luck with your next shill account.

[skinnymuch]

Humans aren’t perfectly logical. The free market and the best options rising to the top is made up liberal hegemony propaganda.

[pornel]

There's a grain of truth to it — Apple has learned from Microsoft's history that making the whole browser shitty is too obvious and annoys users. Apple was smart enough to keep user-visible parts of the browser in a good shape, while also dragging their feet on all the Web platform features that could endanger the App Store cash cow.

[radiofreeeuropa]

I don't want web apps on my phone (or, in an ideal world, anywhere else) so that's also a good thing. If they're not viable, it forces developers to make real apps or else just make a web page instead of whatever awful-UX nonsense they were planning.

[const_cast]

90% of real apps are 95% web views. Let go ahead and be for real. Even on desktop most apps are Electron these days.

[kelthuzad]

>I don't want web apps on my phone (or, in an ideal world, anywhere else) so that's also a good thing. If they're not viable, it forces developers to make real apps or else just make a web page instead of whatever awful-UX nonsense they were planning.

Well what you personally want is irrelevant to the law and what regulators judge to be unlawful, so that's the real good thing.

>If they're not viable, it forces developers to make real apps or else just make a web page instead of whatever awful-UX nonsense they were planning.

They are perfectly viable and it has nothing to do with UX, but you have already exposed your bias and made clear that you are arguing in bad faith by spreading misinformation in your other comments.

[rrrrrrrrrrrryan]

I remember there was a time years back when there were "light" variants of apps, usually intended for underpowered or older Android phones, but that also came in handy if you were in a situation where you had shitty cell service, or if you needed to preserve your battery. You could run the Opera Mini browser on a trash phone and it was blazing fast without wrecking your battery. Maybe 5% of sites would have a rendering issue, but you could always switch back to your main browser if you needed to use it.

Nowadays, I think the trend is more toward putting a battery-saver or data-saver mode inside an existing app, rather than creating an entirely new app, and I don't see any reason why Apple couldn't do something like this in Safari if they wanted to.

[lern_too_spel]

Counterpoint: Safari uses more battery than Chrome while providing less functionality: https://birchtree.me/blog/everyone-says-chrome-devastates-ma...

[perfectviking]

What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser?

Using market forces to encourage more consolidation into a single engine is *bad*.

[pton_xd]

> What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser?

https://ios404.com/

Safari is missing many performance and device-related features that would allow you to create a compelling web application and bypass the App store.

I tried once, you run into the most unexpected roadblocks and come to the conclusion "I have to release this as an App." Well... guess why.

[alistairSH]

About a quarter of that list is stuff I don't want a browser futzing with... volume control, autofocus, background sync (assuming this has huge battery implications), WebUSB, WebNotifications, and a few others.

That said, about half the list appears to be stuff I don't care about one way or the other. At least not without spending way more time researching those CSS elements than I care to invest.

And I'd be totally fine with an "Allow Alternate Browser Features: Y/N" setting or similar, as long as it defaulted to the current behavior (locked down Safari only).

[cosmic_cheese]

> About a quarter of that list is stuff I don't want a browser futzing with... volume control, autofocus, background sync (assuming this has huge battery implications), WebUSB, WebNotifications, and a few others.

Yeah, looks like a nice checklist of things to turn off to me…

[AlexandrB]

About half that list is marketing for why I use Safari instead of something else on my laptop.

[BeFlatXIII]

Half those are genuine missing features; the other half are the things I'm glad Apple doesn't implement because websites would use them (or I'd be spammed with permissions dialogs).

[youngtaff]

Several of the 'missing' features listed on that site are contentious e.g. WebUSB

[overfeed]

> What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser?

Safari is often the hold-out on implementing features[1] that would be useful to users - presumably because it would make web apps viable on iOS, and compete with App store apps where Apple takes a 30% cut

> Using market forces to encourage more consolidation into a single engine is bad.

Competition on a level playing-field is not bad, even if you dislike the superior product (as determined by the free hand of the market.)

1. If memory serves: various APIs useful for PWAs were delayed or kneecapped on Safari

[fsflover]

> What is your argument that Safari is not a good browser?

It doesn't support Ublock Origin.

[rstupek]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44795825 ?

[fsflover]

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44796762

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44804921

[nness]

Safari is often regarded as the "new Internet Explorer" by front-end developers because of how much is unsupported or has to be worked-around...

[tempodox]

> markets working as they are supposed to.

Where Apple is doing everything they can to make that “market” work in their interests instead of as it is supposed to from a user perspective. And when you don't have a choice, it's not really a market either.

[atommclain]

It's funny, I prefer to use Safari on iOS instead of native apps because I have more control over shaping my experience (through user scripts and custom css) and Apple's focus on user privacy which may be all lip service, but at least it's part of their talking points; something I don't see with Chrome.

I'm sure Safari sucks to support for web developers and is missing a lot of cool apis, but I'm willing to take those tradeoffs for the increased privacy I get as a result.

That being said, I do think Apple should allow third party browser engines.