Safari no longer supported by Spotify | Hacker News Reader

Safari no longer supported by Spotify

community.spotify.com

170 pointsdiegolo148 comments

Here's my guess as to what happened.

A couple months ago, Spotify switched their web player from using Flash to using HTML5 + DRM (the "standardized" web DRM).

At least, that was the case for Chrome and Firefox, which I noticed because I exclusively use the Spotify web player.

But I guess Safari doesn't support web DRM via the Widevine CDM. So they must have kept the Flash based web player around for Safari.

And, indeed, Flash would only be needed for Safari. Chrome and Firefox support web DRM on Windows, Linux, and AFAIK MacOS too.

Now, supporting both a Flash based web player and an HTML5 based web player is a lot of engineering. I'll bet at some point they decided they didn't want to do that. The only reason they still had the Flash player was to support Safari and Safari only has 2% market share. On top of that, I'll bet most of their customers use the desktop app. So of the 2% of Safari users, how many are using the Spotify web player?

So they dropped their Flash based player, and thus had to also drop support for Safari.

I think it's a fairly reasonable move. Flash is dying; they couldn't keep their player on it, so they _had_ to move to HTML5. Since they have to use DRM at the behest of the RIAA, web DRM thus becomes their only choice.

I doubt the story is much better for alternatives. Even if any of the other music subscription platforms are still using Flash, that's unlikely to continue for long.

I don't blame Safari for not implementing web DRM. That leaves only one party left to point the finger at; the RIAA. If you need someone to blame, blame them.

So if I get it correct, Apple stated years ago that Flash wouldn't be support anymore on their products (then others followed).

So Spotify, due to the end of Flash player moved to HTML5 player.

And then the only browser which need a flash player is Apple Safari ?

Oh, the irony :-)

It doesn't need a Flash player. Spotify needs to drop its DRM.

They definitely don't get a choice in that matter. The music labels wouldn't cave there

How do other services like Amazon Music or Qobuz (only mentioning the ones I've tried first hand, there's probably others) manage to have web players that work on Safari without Flash then?

https://developer.apple.com/streaming/fps/

The only reason they did that was because Flash portals were competing with their app store.

I must be misreading you. It sounds like you’re saying that Apple’s reasoning for not supporting Flash on the iPhone was because “Flash portals” were competing with the iPhone App Store. Is that right?

The iPhone was released in the summer of 2007, didn’t support Flash, and wasn’t intended to run third-party apps[0]. After Jobs caved on releasing an SDK, they finally opened the App Store the following autumn. There was never an opportunity for “Flash portals” to compete with the App Store, let alone to influence the decision to support Flash in the first place.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOS_SDK#History

Hey man, don't act so condescending. I was professionally writing games in 2003 for mobile devices (started with PocketPC), and we had the nr 1 best selling game on that platform, so I know my stuff.

And if you really want to know, read this article from Wired on the topic: https://www.wired.com/2008/11/adobe-flash-on/

Sad that I get downvoted for this, but I already accepted that on hacker news, don't go against all the Apple and Google fanboys.

Sorry if I came across as condescending, that wasn’t my aim. It sounds like perhaps I misread your comment above and that maybe our respective arguments weren’t actually about the same thing. It’s easy to make too many assumptions about what people mean (especially in text-only conversations!) so I’d like to walk you through my thought process in interpreting your words in order to minimize ambiguity.

When I was reading “the only reason they did that was because …”, I mentally substituted the pronouns to read “the only reason Apple didn’t support Flash on the original iPhone was because …”. And then I was left with “The only reason Apple didn’t support Flash on the original iPhone was because Flash portals were competing with their app store”. So that’s the idea that I was confronting. If that’s not the sentiment you were advancing, then the first thing we should do is settle it.

Flash games were a serious threat to their app store, that is why they banned Flash. Read the article for more insight.

But since I'm defending Flash, and saying something negative about Apple, let the downvotes begin.

But the blocking of Flash was a business decision, not a technical one, or even a "support the open web" one.

And so yes, if they allowed Flash, then portals were indeed a direct competitor to their app store. That is why they kept them out.

First up, was I correct in my interpretation of your initial comment? Nothing else makes sense if we're not talking about the same thing.

Second, I'm not suggesting that the threat posed by Flash wasn't ever a factor in any decision Apple ever made about supporting Flash on iOS (then iPhone OS). But you said "the only reason they did that ...", which suggests that there were no other reasons ever. But if the first iPhone was never intended to run 3rd party apps, then there was nothing to compete with at first. If there was nothing to compete with, then the initial decision not to support Flash could not have been motivated by the threat to the then-not-even-planned-to-exist App Store.

No, that’s not why they didn’t support Flash.

Before the App Store (and still today), iPhone had support for third party apps and an open (non-Apple App Store) app ecosystem, HTML5 apps installable to home screen with offline mode. At the time, you could install games like PacMac that worked fine.

Apple avoided support for Flash because it was absolute crap on mobile, from hardware issues affecting battery life to UX issues such as presumption of a cursor and hover states.

I wish developers and media streamers had let go of Flash sooner and moved to HTML5+JS, before the native App Store captured all the mindshare. Apple’s biggest mistake here was misunderstanding the lasting power of Adobe’s simpler tool ecosystem for “creators”.

iPhone didn’t need Flash. It did need better tools.

// Source: Owned a video CDN throughout the player wars, with ongoing first person conversations with folks from the companies in question, and their key media and publishing clients were our clients.

The issue is that flash was a complete runtime, capable of running the equivalent of any app. If flash were allowed to survive, ios could very likely have ended up nothing more than a dumb vm upon which flash apps are run. I remember wondering at the time why flash didn't make a flash phone that did exactly this. They had momentum, tools, and developers, and unlike on the web, there are no downsides relative to native apps.

Flash was an inefficient, non-touch optimized, full-of-security-holes competitor's runtime...why would they want it on the iPhone again? when a version for it finally arrived, years later on Andriod, it was so awful that even Adobe realized it wasn't worth murdering everyone's battery life only to have flash web-ads visible.

There is nothing inherent to flash that requires it to have security flaws and no touch. The flash vm operates in the same space as the Android and iOS VMs. If it were iterated and improved, and allowed to flourish it could have been a direct competition to native, possibly eventually leading to a flash OS and flash phone, all the pieces are there.

Everything can be anything given enough work and time, even JavaScript. The truth is nobody wanted to do all the work required, not even Adobe. Flash's demise is not on Apple, or Google, or Macromedia. It is entirely on Adobe for failing to adapt and modernize it to make it competitive.

It seems we agree on all points. If Adobe was good, flash could have been the mobile platform. That's too large a risk for Apple to take.

I guess it’s ironic if you ignore the DRM part. Apple took two hardline positions on web tech and not everyone is playing by both of these rules. It kinda looks like a temporary lapse on the part of Spotify while they go through a transition, though. The other major players (Netflix, Amazon, Hulu, Pandora, etc.) all seem to have abandoned Flash without abandoning Safari.

> Apple took two hardline positions on web tech and not everyone is playing by both of these rules.

Which ones? Desktop Safari still supports Flash and it has DRM available in the form of FairPlay. It's the latter which those other platforms are presumably using.

Netflix stopped working for me with Safari about a year ago, when I have an external monitor plugged in. It complains about some display drm nonsense, I guess because my external monitor could be a recording device? Either way, keep chrome around and up to date just for watching netflix and it does not make me happy.

Netflix HTML5 player refuses to run on older CPUs in Safari. I have a 2009 Mac Pro with a copy of Firefox installed just so I can watch Netflix.

Apple has FairPlay available for Safari. I've implemented it in the past, it wasn't that difficult, so I'm not sure why Spotify hasn't gone that route. Maybe it's a licensing issue...

Spotify could have easily made their site work in Safari using FairPlay Streaming for DRM. It’s a mystery to me why they didn’t. Netflix and Amazon Prime Video are both using it successfully.

They could have possibly done it. I don't know if it would have been easy. They may have looked at the size of their Safari user base and decided it wasn't worth it.

As someone who has maintained a Flash, HTML 5 and a Web GL component before, I support them in this.

It was absolutely awful maintaining them.

> Safari only has 2% market share

Well worldwide.....maybe? But if you're in the game for paying customers you're looking at 10-20% easily, with desktop users. Mobile users even more.

> On top of that, I'll bet most of their customers use the desktop app

That's true. Staring at that green icon in my dock right now!

It looks like Widevine is the new Flash Player.

Big site's will support all the CDMs because they have the resources but everyone else will standardize on the one with the largest installed base (Widevine).

We'll see if that changes, I thought the idea behind EME was that every browser could use all DRM modules...

If I understand the MDN page correctly, all browser support EME ("web DRM"), they just ship with different decryption modules: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/API/Encrypted_M...

Is this an engineering error or an intentional move from Spotify as a company?

I use Safari as my day-to-day browser (I switched from Chrome 2 years back) and I'm a satisfied user. I'd be less happy if companies started dropping Safari support.

It seems it's neither - Spotify is thanking you for giving them money by applying Widevine DRM, which Safari doesn't support (because Apple refuses to support DRM library from Google).

You as a user are now just collateral damage from a pissing contest between two corporations and DRM :)

How's this bad again? Mac users can just install Firefox/Chrome/Spotify app. Sure, it's one more window, but that's about it in terms of inconvenience goes.

I refuse to use any other browser on a Mac. The energy consumption of Chrome, for example, is non-negligible.

Firefox is really pretty decent nowadays.

Desktop Safari usage is ~2%[1], so I'd imagine this is an attempt by Spotify to flex some muscle. Since usage is so small, Spotify has the power. For a browser like Chrome, the situation would probably be reversed.

1. https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpr...

~2% Safari for Mac usage is global. Spotify is doing business in 60 countries. Most of the markets are developed (no China, India or Russia) and tend to have more Mac/Safari users.

It's still not very high though. I work on a product that supports Safari and we have like 4% usage. However, last time we introduced a bug that broke it completely (by accident), no one said anything for like, 2 months (it's a SaaS, but we still have hundreds of thousands of daily users).

Turns out not only do we have very few Safari users, people are so used to Safari breaking on shit (not just ours!) they just switch to Chrome for specific tasks out of habit instead of filing issues.

Safari is the somewhat inconvenient but built in browser Mac users use to save their battery life and not much else.

Oddly enough I went back to using Safari on MacOS. Battery life was big reason. The other was safari has been the only browser I can get to successfully stop playing video ads.

I don't find Safari inconvenient at all. Its UI is lean, the default key bindings are nice, and with sVim it's even better.

People are not used to Safari breaking regularly, that's absurd. But it's probably easier for them to run a second browser to work around broken sites than it is to figure out how to complain to the site. And having your site be broken reflects badly on you, not on Safari.

Safari's JS support is pretty good, but CSS is wonky and various other things (like how cookies are handled) are different than all the other major browsers. So it will break on shit devs may not expect. Obviously that's the fault of the devs (IE10/11 are worse, but we make stuff work there too!), no argument there.

But it is becoming a pretty niche browser, and yes, it DOES break a lot of stuff. No, it's not broken on Facebook or your favorite news site, but every time I bring it out for a test drive I find a couple of broken things in various smaller web apps that work everywhere else.

So while I don't think it should be that way, it tends to be a pretty brittle experience.

I work on desktop and switched to Safari because Chrome is bloated and slow. Also Safari's tabs UX is much better.

Opening Chrome once a week because some site works only in Chrome is really easier than bothering to file tickets.

When we say 2%, are we talking about 200 million users world wide and 15 million in the U.S alone? It's worth putting an engineer to fix the codec, IMO. I think it's more of a strategic move over a technical choice in the view of Safari new ad control.

Yes, but how many of those users use Spotify in the browser instead of using the app?

2% of what makes 200millions? Am I missing anything?

>Desktop Safari usage is ~2%[1], so I'd imagine this is an attempt by Spotify to flex some muscle. Since usage is so small, Spotify has the power.

What if Apple also "flexed some muscle" and dropped the iOS Spotify app from the App Store?

It would only result in bad PR for both companies, considering it's a service used by 140M people, with 60M paying for it (https://press.spotify.com/us/about/)

Also, since the app doesn't violate any ToS, I'm not sure if there's any ground for removal (I doubt they can just pull it for no reason without risking a lawsuit)

The ToS is vague enough that they could. Besides it compete's with Apple's own Apple Music, and duplicate core functionality has been a reason to oust apps in the past.

As a web developer, I am sorry to tell you but Safari (and old Android browsers) are becoming the new Internet Explorer. Unsupported new features for long time and buggy behaviour makes developer's life harder, so it's normal those are the first ones to be dropped.

position:relative and percentage values in top combined, for example, are broken - and the devtools are massively behind Chrome. Not to mention the UX that it does not show you the full URL in the address bar.

Guess the only thing keeping people on Safari is that it is deeply integrated into OS X and has battery life advantages over Chrome/FF.

What keeps me on Safari is that it is by far the most resource efficient browser. It keeps CPU and memory usage way way below all other browsers available on the Mac.

In a couple of days Safari will start blocking autoplay videos, which is yet another reason for me to use it as my main browser.

Showing the full URL is a checkbox away in the preferences. It's listed under "Advanced" as "Show full website address".

Thanks I didn't even realize I could change this. And I would add that most people outside of developers (of any kind) probably don't care.

> And I would add that most people outside of developers (of any kind) probably don't care.

Showing the full URL can save you from phishing attempts, though - when you see cryptic crap, <script> or similar stuff in a page URL, you know something is fishy.

>Not to mention the UX that it does not show you the full URL in the address bar

That's something that Chrome has been experimenting with in beta versions on and off for ages, and will use by default at some point.

For me, Safari's engine level blocking is huge. Safari ad blockers aren't just a mile long list of CSS rules (which can bog things down as much or more than add), they're JSON rule files that are compiled to byte code via LLVM and then applied to the list of resources that are allowed to be loaded BEFORE the page has loaded. Result: blocked elements aren't even requested and blocking has a near-zero performance impact. These extensions, being nothing but JSON, also can't track anyone or do anything malicious, giving you a 100% guarantee that it can't be highjacked and updated to do something malicious.

Aside from that, Apple's design decisions tend towards giving the user more control over their experience while Google seems mostly interested in wooing developers, regardless of cost (who cares about resource consumption or what the user wants?). Apple's approach aligns with me better.

> Aside from that, Apple's design decisions tend towards giving the user more control over their experience

What? Users in control at Apple? No. Apple tries to keep users out of control and inside their walled garden. Only reason I have a Mac is because even with Chrome its battery life is way better than any Windows laptop I ever had, and because it offers a proper Unix shell with actual Unix behavior (e.g. select stuff with the mouse and it ends up in clipboard).

I couldn't disagree with this any stronger.

I think you're misunderstanding how much of a difference there was between the rest of the browsers and IE.

Besides, your claim the 'wins' Safari has had - first browser to implement ES6 in its entirety a year or so back. Chrome still doesn't support features users/clients actually ask for, like CSS Scroll snap points for making carousels http://caniuse.com/#search=scroll-snap-type

Sure, a few years ago the difference between browsers was really quite large. But we're in 2017 and most of the most used browsers are mostly in line with the supported features and expected behaviour of them.

But... safari is now the one that has weird behaviour that does not occur in Firefox, chrome and edge. Just because historically there was a massive split in behaviour doesn't mean that Safari gets off free. It's the one browser I hate testing because there are usually edge case and unexpected behaviour.

Again, I'm not seeing this.

I look at Firefox and some of it's inconsistent behaviours around flexbox compared to other browsers (mind you, some of these are due to the spec). Just today I had an irritating render bug in Chrome.

I know, this all comes down to hearsay and individual experiences. But I still strongly believe that 'Safari is the new IE' is nothing but baseless FUD.

How have you not noticed any of them? Most obvious is local storage throws out of space exceptions if Safari is in private mode. I'm not even a web developer.

Because private mode is for porn? Who'd try normal apps there?

(only kidding, but it's not the most obvious thing to check and optimize for if you're a web dev. If that's what Safari's problems are, it's pretty solid.)

Honestly, not really. The only one I can think of is your localStorage example.

Regardless, that's not the point. I'm not saying that Safari is perfect, I'm just saying that while it might have some implementation differences and bugs, so do other browsers.

No service workers, web rtc, Stream API or any other feature that can make web apps a viable replacement to app store installed native apps.

As of iOS 11 and macOS 10.13 Safari does support WebRTC and streaming API. And I don't see them supporting service workers any time soon because that's a stupid fucking idea.

Clients ask me to develop carousels much more than I'm asked to make a P2P video conferencing app.

Can you provide examples of "weird behaviour"?

Im also a Safari user, and in the majority of cases the reason it is not supported is because the page/app uses some custom Chrome-only, non-standard feature. Like this one.

Widevine is not a "Chrome-only" feature. Firefox, Edge and even Opera have Widevine support.

Is it a standard? Did it originate from Google?

"Widevine, a Google company" sounds neither standard nor very open to me: http://www.widevine.com/

Sure. This one https://s.codepen.io/joshhunt/debug/ZKyYNz. It differs to IE, Safari and Chrome in the way it treats height:0 padding-top: 100% on a flex child. In Safari, the grey box expands properly to contain all divs. In Firefox, it doesn't.

Granted, this is more of a flexbox spec issue (last time I checked this behaviour is intentionally undefined), but it's still an annoying case of one browser doing something all the others don't.

Safari has annoyances, but it is the best performing browser on OSX. I use Chrome for the devtools, but Safari performs better for normal user tasks like video conferencing and web browsing.

Apple also tries to implement some privacy features:

https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-rejects-ad-industry-complain...

Couldn't agree more. These days, I simply tell my clients I won't bother supporting Safari.

I burnt my finger once with Service Workers[1]. "Oh, but I use Safari as my primary browser" doesn't hold anymore, because, you're not the majority. Sorry. [2]

I second it. Safari is the new IE.

[1] http://caniuse.com/#feat=serviceworkers

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m...

Does this include iOS Safari?

If you go to that link, it lists both Safari and iOS Safari versions - it looks like neither of the next versions (v11) will have service worker support yet

Oops I didn't notice that would be so unclear, I was referring to the parent's "I won't bother supporting Safari". I'd be surprised if no iOS support is generally considered acceptable for websites.

>"Oh, but I use Safari as my primary browser" doesn't hold anymore, because, you're not the majority. Sorry. I second it. Safari is the new IE.

How IE became IE-the-problem, is because users rushed to support IE-only features, not caring for browsers that were "not the majority".

Those that don't know history are doomed to repeat it.

In this case Apple hasn't implemented a user-hostile feature championed by a rival.

And I guess it's Spotify that made the call to pull the rug out from under their Safari users.

It seems hard to blame Apple here. Should the web standard really just be "whatever Google says?"

That is simpler for web developers, but I think would be terrible for the web as a platform and bad for users.

At some point you have to decide who the web is for, the users or the advertisers and content distributors? Apple is going one way and Google is going another, and I, for one, am happy there isn't universal acceptance of Google's direction, despite the inconvenience to web developers.

Apple _has_ implemented this user-hostile feature. It's just that they only support Apple's own FairPlay DRM.

So assuming Spotify is contractually required to provide DRM for its music (by the music suppliers), Spotify has the choice of licensing Apple's DRM so it can work with Safari or not working with Safari. Which choice is right depends on the licensing terms, which I have not been able to locate in a quick search.

> Apple is going one way and Google is going another

Not on this topic they're not. Apple has been very firmly in the web media DRM camp all along.

As a web developer I am sorry to tell you that Chrome is the new Internet Explorer But this time developers are to be blamed for the situation, focusing on Chrome more and more.

Developers were to blame last time too, IE6 was better than everything else and had all the market share so developers didn't target anything else.

It kind of feels we've gone around in the full circle now.

Why on earth we can't learn from the mistakes made last time I don't know. It wasn't that long ago. It saddens me when I hear "but it's different this time" because, no, it really isn't.

Keep with web standards (real web standards, not pseudo-standards from a large corporation) and make sure your stuff works in at least a basic way in all browsers that your users may need (seriously, not everyone can update to even a browser 2 years old, never mind the nightly bleeding edge build, due to company policies, so stop coding for that please).

Because there's no dynamic to keep things in check. It's natural that one browser has more market share for one reason or another, which results in webpage owners looking out more for things functioning in that browser properly, which in turn leads to more users using that browser.

Same reason why the operating system market and the processor architecture market have virtually no competition and an objectively terrible product in a leading position.

As a web developer, some won't even get to the question 'in what sense does Safari differ?' because you can't even use it outside of macOS.

Firefox, Chrome and Edge/IE can all be installed in one way or another on any of the 3 major platforms (if you include 3rd party tools). For free even.

In what way can IE be installed on any of the 3 platforms that Safari cannot? macOS is just as capable of running inside a VM than Windows, if that's what you mean.

You have to buy macOS, and you can't legally run macOS in a VM on non-Apple hardware. Microsoft on the other hand provides VM images with various IEs and Edge for free, regardless of you being a customer or not.

macOS/OS X has been free for quite some time. And it's not illegal, it just violates the EULA - there is a distinction.

I don't understand your point. Is it sarcasm?

I would really like to know where Apple offers a way to install/use Safari (desktop) on Linux. It would be great for tests.

I indeed meant they all offer an installation method on the 3 major platforms themselves.

As far as I know, Apple doesn't provide a desktop macOS/Safari environment which you can install/use on Windows or Linux. As I understand, OS X Server could be considered in that light, but it differs and isn't free.

As another web developer, I would say that browser support is driven by what browsers people use that actually visit your site, and is decoupled from the what the developer wants/chooses. I have several sites that get 100k+ visits a month from Safari users, so I won't be dropping support for them anytime soon.

As a web developer, invoking "as a web developer" is a poor way to make an argument. This goes for just about anything, yet it's pretty much a Reddit meme at this point.

>As a web developer, I am sorry to tell you but Safari (and old Android browsers) are becoming the new Internet Explorer.

You got it backwards. Internet Explorer 6 was the one who supported some stuff first and in its own way -- like Chrome today, and who careless developers, like those who swear by Chrome today, dependent upon, and did their sites "IE-only".

That's how we got in the mess with legacy IE support.

So-called "web standards" are dominated by Google so Google is flexing their muscle here as well. A standard is not "what Chrome does", but what is widely supported. Not Safari, but Chrome is the new IE. In any case, dropping support for iOS Safari isn't a clever thing to do.

Safari also has the disadvantage of requiring expensive special hardware to support since it only runs on macOS and macOS requires Apple hardware (unless you go the complex route of a hackintosh).

This is the result of Apple not implementing Googles DRM solution in their browser. Since DRM is an upstream requirement from the record labels, Spotify is in a tough spot. They could conceivably offer the parts of the library that are not under DRM requirements to users though.

I don't know that there is a DRM-free part of the library. I know I didn't get an option to add or opt out of DRM when uploading through DistroKid. All I have for comparison is Draft2Digital for eBook distribution, and it does have a DRM toggle.

Though for Spotify and other streaming sites, I would want a DRM option because I provide a way for people to buy the music DRM-free in any format they want with a reasonable license.

... or implement Fairplay DRM like NetFlix and others...

Apple is not exactly incentivized to support a competiting music service.

I'm not suggesting the lack of support is intentional on either side, but completion sometimes affects user experience.

Spotify reported most recently $300mil in annual advertising revenue.

In 2011 they were caught using 'supercookies' that can be persisted even when the user clears their cookies in the browser.

It is entirely possible they're refusing to support Safari because of the privacy changes Apple made, changes that specifically defeat the kind of tracking Spotify has previously been known to use.

Personally it would take a lot to get me to stop using Spotify. I really like their desktop app and they're pretty open to modifications like Statusfy [1], Shpotify [2], and RES embedded playing. Their UI is so much easier on the eyes and mind than Google Play Music or Apple Music, and I'm very thankful that they do Linux builds when others like Google Drive can't be bothered.

[1] https://github.com/paulyoung/Statusfy [2] https://github.com/hnarayanan/shpotify

This 100%. My primary interface for navigating Spotify is via Alfred [1] and the macOS Notification Center [2].

[1] https://github.com/citelao/Spotify-for-Alfred [2] https://spotify-notifications.citruspi.io/

Not just Spotify--Facebook (Business) too.

My primary browser is Chrome, but I decided I wanted to no longer be logged in on Facebook in Chrome and having my usage tracked. So I used Facebook only in Safari.

Unfortunately if you visit business.facebook.com in Safari, it tells you it's an unsupported browser. You can't set up Facebook ad campaigns or even check your business messages in Safari at all. :(

If anyone from Facebook is reading this, the iOS Facebook Pages app is also broken. Notifications of new messages to your page don't work after you put a page in Business Manager in Facebook. It's hugely frustrating.

Why not just use an extension like Disconnect to prevent Facebook tracking?

Have you tried user agent spoofing in Safari for "Chrome only" sites? I do that and more often than not, these sites are fully functional under Safari.

I don't understand how people are discounting Safari as unused when probably about half of all web traffic comes from iphone/iPad these days, which only allows the WebKit rendering engine.

> I don't understand how people are discounting Safari as unused when probably about half of all web traffic comes from iphone/iPad these days, which only allows the WebKit rendering engine.

This is referring specifically to desktop Safari. Spotify already has an iOS app.

They also have a desktop app, so same reasoning applies.

Not really, mobile users tend to use apps more so than a browser for "things." Whereas a desktop user is the complete opposite and would most likely favor just opening a tab versus downloading an entire app.

From what I gather, it's not the same case here.

Safari is now unsupported because Spotify deprecated their Flash website in favour of HTML5 + Widevine. Safari doesn't support Widevine, so can't use the new player. However, Safari on iOS never supported Flash so the old version of the Spotify player wouldn't have worked either.

> I don't understand how people are discounting Safari as unused when probably about half of all web traffic comes from iphone/iPad these days, which only allows the WebKit rendering engine.

In the US. In the EU, iOS has a marketshare between 15 and 20% at best, which is closer to Windows Phone’s best times than to any other mobile OS.

Closer to 30%, but still significantly less than the US [1].

If you filter out a lot of Eastern Europe and focus on the wealthier Western countries that are more akin to the US you're back in the near 50% range.

1: http://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/europe

Wow, these stats don’t match sale statistics and statistics of carriers at all. Those show iOS as below 15% in Germany.

just to clarify stats counter offer Mobile browsing market share http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology

. Actual device sales and install stats are different.

What is a good Spotify alternative if I don't want to deal with DRM at all?

I don't care if it has a gazillion bands and trillions of songs. Or if the big stars with million dollar marketing budget are on it.

Check out http://magnatune.com.

Thanks, checking it out... Is this project still maintained? The site is not responsive. So it's pretty painful to use on my phone. But at least the songs keep playing when I turn off the screen. That already makes it better then Youtube.

Bandcamp is very good if you don't mind managing media yourself. Nicer for the artists too.

Nice, thanks! As for managing: I don't want to manage anything. I just want to click around and listen to music.

Not sure if it's an alternative, but SoundCloud uses HTML5 but not DRM. It works in Chromium on *BSD.

Later on in the comments a user says "Also Firefox ESR v.45.8 (extended support release) is no longer supported."

I switched to Google Play a long time ago and never looked back.

* 50,000 of your own tracks can be uploaded to their cloud and listened to on all your devices.

* Casting

* Essentially all the same artists as on Spotify.

* Use with your all powerful google account.

And dropped at any time when Google is bored with it.

And no DRM; the files are regular MP3s from a CDN with timebombed URLs. I've written a few tools for my own use with the unofficial API and it's just MP3s in and out.

I'm honestly still bitter about the fact that Spotify is not supported in Jamaica. Thank God for Deezer.

From web dev perspective Safari is becoming new IE6. CSS3 written to spec, working fine on anything else including IE11 tends to fail on Safari. I'm sure I will get a lot of hate from Apple fun boys and girls, but that has been my and my colleagues' experience recently.

There are edge cases with every browser, but the current situation with non-Chrome browsers is nothing compared to what it was like supporting IE6.

In other words, Safari users have no choice but to switch browsers or use the desktop app.

I understand that/why OP is unhappy but that is a pretty decent choice they offer here.

Safari is the new ie

Safari is a horrible browser, no reason to use it. I hope all sites break on it.

Good riddance. I got so tired of my Spotify account being hacked that this last time recently I just said enough and moved to Apple Music. I liked spotify's interface better but their security sucks and they can't seem to stop user accounts getting hacked. I think their decision to break support with Safari is a bad move for them, but better for the user. Move to another service.

Browsers are becoming too complex; this causes problems not only with compatibility but also with security. We should strip down the functionality of the browser to the bare essentials, e.g. something like WASM. Everything else can be implemented in the browser's user-space.

I hear the "Safari is the new IE" catchphrase a lot these days. But serious answers only please, does anyone know WHY Apple has let its browser go stagnant?

Is this a deliberate strategic decision (i.e. to drive Apple users toward native apps?). Or pure Hanlon's razor?

It's "good enough" that it doesn't hinder the sale of Macs. The engineers can be used on different tasks.

Mozilla is generally a safe option.

Safari is not stagnant by any means. See https://webkit.org/blog/ for instance.

What makes you think Safari has gone stagnant?

Apple, Microsoft, and Google all have different approaches to the consumer software that they put out. Microsoft values backwards-compatibility above all else, and Google values the bleeding edge and experimentation. Apple values predictability and ease of use. For example, Google created and deployed SPDY because they thought they had a better way to do HTTP. Eventually this turned into HTTP/2, but in the meantime Google is now faced with supporting both SPDY and HTTP/2, or deprecating and removing SPDY from Chrome. Apple, on the other hand, waited for the HTTP/2 standard to be debated and ratified before implementing and distributing it to end users.

Safari is released infrequently, but when it is it only contains (mostly) solid features. However, if you value the bleeding edge and are willing to tolerate some amount of breakage, you can always install the Safari Technology Preview, which releases much more frequently.

> does anyone know WHY Apple has let its browser go stagnant?

First, prove Apple has let it stagnate. Safari continues to improve with every release. The latest tech preview scores a 459 on the html5 test. The last released version scored a 419. It's still behind the other major browsers, but stagnating implies not improving which is clearly not the case.

It might be a better question to ask why hasn't Safari implemented whatever certain feature you want to use, i.e. service workers.

I just got a 409 on Safari 10.1.2 (12603.3.8)

same here

Parent does say "The latest tech preview", notice?

Parent does say "the last released version," notice?

That's for 10.2 (the next release version, which is not, er, released yet) as opposed to the Tech Preview. They list it here:

https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html

526 on Chrome 61.0.3163.91

478 on Firefox 55.0.3

and here's the kicker, tested on an ancient pc from 2004 with Pentium 4

464 for Safari Tech Preview R39.

That said this is the weakest score of the top 4 browsers:

519 Chrome 57

518 Opera 45

474 Firefox 53

473 Edge 15

https://html5test.com/results/desktop.html

Funny. "Safari is the new IE", but on the other hand, "<<Best viewed with Google Chrome>> is the new <<Best viewed with IE>>". At least there isn't an obvious monopoly here...

I think they are both right.

Safari is like when MS let IE sit at v6 for ages while Mozilla et al ran ahead.

Chrome is IE from back around the first browser war between MS and Netscape, by introducing new stuff before it has been properly ratified.

That said i have the impression that the stewardship of Webkit was what forced Google's hand in all this, by taking forever to accept patches etc.

It's not necessarily as competitive as Firefox and Chrome are, but it's not particularly behind either. Definitely not far enough to justify dropping support for it, if you don't have additional motives like Spotify here. That is, Safari does not support the DRM that they want, and that makes a disproportionally big difference in their revenue.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com