Apple: Switch to Safari (from Chrome)
29 points by classichasclass
29 points by classichasclass
WebKitGTK is now officially maintained in a lockstep with Safari. Epiphany is therefore quite similar to Safari, notably for rendering and JS (through JavaScriptCore, also part of the project). This is nice to be able to test on "Safari" without having an Apple machine.
I used GNOME Web as my main desktop browser for a few months a while back, and it worked for everything except for lacking WebRTC. I think the only sites that outright refused to work were Outlook (worked after spoofing a Safari UA string) and Chase (they simply refused even with another UA string). Nothing didn't work because of the browser itself (except for anything requiring the aforementioned WebRTC).
I'm getting weird feelings about this.
Apple, having steadfastedly refused to allow 'real' alternative browsers on iOS. Apple, the same one giving Safari special APIs on MacOS to make it so fast and battery 'sipper'. Apple, one of the world's most valuable and powerful company. The one very well known for making and shaping their users' experience and expectations is.... losing.
To me, this is the admission that despite all of the above, Apple has failed to keep the exodus of Safari users towards Chrome.
I dislike Apple, and I hate Google even more in just how ridiculously powerful they have gotten.
For completeness: Apple was forced to allow browsers without webkit on European and Japanese versions of their operating systems.
While technically true the requirements Apple imposes are so ridiculous that even Google haven’t tried to ship proper Chrome. Even Safari itself doesn’t clear all the requirements but keeps enjoying the position of the default browser/engine.
I seem to remember a certain browser anti-trust case that feels eerily similar...
For completeness, part 2: Apple maintaining the Safari lockdown on iOS is the sole reason why Google isn’t the only entity deciding over web standards yet. As much as I also dislike the current situation, I’d dislike that scenario even more.
Safari seems to be the only non-Chrome with a significant share, especially on mobile (26% last month). While I don't like platforms pushing their own browser isn't great (especially if it's to the amount that Windows does), it's good to see that Apple wants to invest in their own browser w.r.t. web standards
I don’t feel that’s true. Apple often drags its feet on Safari in terms of standards support. Its power efficiency is greatly overstated. It seems Apple maintains Safari only to divert monopoly claims on iOS/iPadOS (when it comes to App Store). Apple’s unwillingness to allow alternate web engines shows its colour.
Apple often drags its feet on Safari in terms of standards support.
I used to think so too, but they've gotten a lot better since they decoupled the release cycle from the OS.
(Also worth noting that a lot of things that Google implements are "standards" that they alone have written, with objections from the other browsers and clear signals that they will never implement them as written. That's a whole different issue.)
There are many other facets that people could care about. Every comparison frames it with a subset that makes the author’s browser look good.
Just note that this one doesn’t talk about extensibility or cross-platform support.
(Footnote: I am biased. I work on Firefox. Of course I need to mention things Safari is doing differently :)))
Quicker JavaScript performance on advanced web apps
Since when did Apple start caring about web apps. They always had the worst support for PWAs… to that point that things like the Notification API prevent a lot of would-be web apps were forced into iOS-specific apps or very ugly workarounds. Not saying a native app isn’t better, but it’s less work & more compatible to just rely on the browser (cross platform, even outside of the mainstream OSs) & its sandbox. With proprietary services, I pretty much always prefer keeping that experience in the browser’s sandbox (where I have easier access to ad/tracker blocking too). Ironic that Apple was the first to go after Adobe’s Flash (RIP Macromedia) for open web standards.
Seems that one of the bigger pushes here is integration with “Apple Intelligence” to win back users into going deeper into the walled gardens—which is why comparisons to Firefox are missing despite it hitting most of the points but won’t beat Apple at all metrics on their home turf (such as battery).
Everyone complained when apple said web apps were the way to make apps for the iPhone, and now we have the App Store.
Everyone complained because Apple said that in 2007 when JS wasn’t particularly fast even on grown up computers and even less so on iPhone’s tiny CPU and RAM. There was no feature parity between native and web apps. There still isn’t. And on top of that it was a red herring, Apple wasn’t serious about that. App Store was the plan all along, they just weren’t ready to release it.
Generic reply: I fail to see a reason to use Chrome on Mac for daily usage, but I still vastly prefer Zen/Firefox to Safari, for the wide variety of customisation offered.
If they want to be taken seriously then they could at least provide something like Microsoft's old modern.ie VM images.
The whole reason the modern.ie images were a big deal was because Windows isn't free to download/use, and you couldn't (then at least, no clue now) get past the installer without a valid licence key.
There's nothing stopping anyone with a compatible machine downloading the installer for any version of macOS back to about Lion (10.7, Safari 5.1) from 15 years ago, and running it inside a VM.
..no? There are reverse-engineered third-party tools for downloading ISOs (like macrecovery), but Apple doesn't support officially support downloading macOS outside of their custom macOS-only tools. They do offer regular browser-based downloads up to macOS 15... but only in .dmg (again, back to either the catch 22 of need-macos-to-unpack-macos or time to use the hackintosh toys).
And once you do have the installer, macOS still won't let you get past it either unless you have the right license key hardware dongle (motherboard).
And yes, there's OSX-KVM to help you fake that for a VM, but it still spits on the EULA that dictates that you must only use macOS on official Apple hardware. By that claim, Windows is free because there's hardware out there that comes bundled with OEM licenses!
But even that won't help you now that macOS 27 doesn't even run on any of your x86 CPUs anymore anyway.
All of this is completely unserious for a trillion dollar corporation that is asking you to do them a favour for free.
Love this for them... if nothing else nice to see them focusing on the basics like the built in browser. I typically don't bother installing chrome on Macs. I'll maybe install Orion or Firefox, but mostly use Safari. It's pretty much fine. Firefox gives you more direct control over some stuff, Orion has Kagi baked in and webextension support, but Safari works fine.
It'd be interesting if Apple added Windows and Linux support for Safari. Until they do its hard to take it seriously in the browser wars.