“Safari's buggy” is valid criticism, “Safari's behind Chrome in features” is not

A critique of Safari's influence on the web - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27985783 - July 2021 (184 comments)

> "I want web sites to do everything a native app can do" is a suicidal mistake.

If you think you're ceding a lot of power to Google and Apple when it comes to browsers, I fail to see how "That webapp you're building can't use Javascript so build it in Objective-C/Swift for iOS instead" would cede less power to Apple.

At least I don't need Apple's approval to build my website...

Yes an independent small-time developer cannot create a browser engine from scratch today, but Apple does not fall into that category. Their choices with Safari are not born out of lack of resources or expertise but deliberate planning.

Yes large companies have seized control over the web from W3C. Apple is one of those large companies. They refuse to follow standards that they themselves dictate for others.

Yes pushing more features to the web is going to result in loss of privacy. But Apple doesn't want vanilla websites, they want developers to make iOS apps (gated behind their store) which are worse in every way.

Plus it doesn't address the biggest argument, which is that even if you say Apple can do whatever it wants with Safari, what is their rationale for blocking other browsers on iOS? It sure isn't because Apple loves the open web.

Imagine the much more common case of a small company (or individual) trying to make a useful app that is available to everyone. If they can make it in a browser, it's possible, if they have to make it for every proprietary platform (iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux...).... often impossible.

I'm happy that web browsers can do a lot. Many of the "security nightmare" arguments don't make sense. It wouldn't be a security nightmare if, for instance, Safari could allow a MIDI keyboard to talk to the web browser as it does in Chrome (ignoring Sysex support, which is the security excuse for holding it back.... there is very little need for that in a browser). God forbid I want to do a piano learning app. This is just one of many examples that may not affect you, but affects some subset of apps. (there are tons more, that one happens to affect my app) People are quick to say "I don't need that in a web browser", but you could say that about just about anything, for instance camera support.

I do look forward to a day when most apps run in a browser rather than having to be platform specific, or require giant teams of developers to be cross platform.

I don't really care whether an iOS developer considers this "invalid". My apps support platforms that I can afford to test on, and those that are compatible.

It can't even be 1% of websites out there embracing this stuff. I'm guessing the biggest consumer for most of the new features in Chrome is probably Google web developers. There's quite a lot of things that only end up half implemented, too.

Although the RFC these days seems to just be a design spec doc for Google, I suspect you could carve it down to less than half of what it is and render 99.9% of websites out there just fine.

I don’t expect small developers to be able to make a top-notch browser engine any more than I expect them to make software equivalent to Photoshop or Final Fantasy XIV. Standards are there to guide compatibility between products of large players and content producers. Apple is not a small company compared to Google or anyone; they’re merely not trying very hard. Mozilla is somehow doing a decent job despite not having $300 billion in cash stashed away.

I do believe that browsers doing what native apps can do is reasonable and useful. The arguments about security are not particularly persuasive. The biggest threats to mobile security currently seem to be apps in official app stores.

As a user, the constant misuse of dark patterns and the glut of careless unoptimized and insecure code and coders is nightmare fuel. Consider I grew up coding, trying to explain modern websites and web applications my folks is simply painful because quite often it just doesn't make sense. A lot of UX never actually asked a user how they want it to work, or disregarded their input.

The best websites for me are still those which adhere to pre web 2.0 design patterns. I find them easier to navigate and use, ie old reddit vs new - the new design doesn't bring anything useful other than nagware to register and install the app - reading a thread and click outside the main area by mistake, it navigates you back in history and you wait 10 seconds for all the ajax to finish popping into place. My old online banking interface was a simple list of my accounts and balances with links to common functions. The "new" app-inspired interface hides everything under animated menus and ugly graphs I don't need to want, while constant monte-carlo simulations mean basic features always move; my wife and I often have completely different UX, it's just another annoying half-baked web app with ajax popping in and out all over the place.

There's good stuff and well design applications of course. Shadertoy is amazing. For music there's fully-fledged DAW's in the browser - fantastic! Collaborative document editing in real time, brilliant!

But I think I am down with the concept of a different engine or mode for "web surfing" vs "web application execution" - it's a completely arbitrary distinction I know, but as a user I've got a completely different set of wants and needs when I'm just surfing, vs when I need an "application."

The situation is similar for Chrome with regard to APIs that dovetail with Google's business interests (e.g. Manifest v3 extension APIs and content blocking).

> Why did someone post my tweet on Hacker News?

> It's not news! It's not an announcement of anything. It doesn't contain any novel information.

> If anyone on HN is reading this tweet, post a link telling people to stop discussing my other tweet please. :-)

[1]: https://twitter.com/lapcatsoftware/status/142125132814429798...

--- start quote ---

He’s absolutely right. Implementing a browser engine from scratch was a lot of work in 1999/2000, it’s close to impossible today.

--- end quote ---

[1] https://twitter.com/LarsKnoll/status/1421121639845187585

Google and Apple are both anti-competitive in different ways.

A distinction needs to be made in regards to the anti competitive nature of controlling a large walled garden, and network effect stickiness.

Anti-trust laws will catch up and lead to regulation of big tech.

Though, we may actually see something soon with Apple depending on how the Epic case resolves.

I was already hesitant at the idea of somebody on Twitter telling me which criticisms are “valid”, but that premise threw me entirely.

This is also because the web has a firing problem.

APIs and features barely get deprecated, even when they are obviously superceded. When they do its years and years after the fact. We also just except whacky quirks instead of fixing them and moving on.

A very clear example: we do not need CSS float anymore. It can be removed with zero impact on the development of new websites.

There's a new proposal for date-time features that replace the Date class. Except it won't, they will coexist and you have to support the Date class and all its bullshit indefinitely.

Do we really need anything other than template literals for strings?

I'm not sure what the solution is to these but an ever-growing spec seems like a big part of the problem to me.

Apple strategy is NativeApps with AppStore.

Microsoft strategy is half-half.

...

Google workers complain Safari bad. That's their job. So, business as usual

Tencent do has one pretty much spec compliance browser engine (X5) for their own use. (Obviously not a small company either)

It is also a mobile only browser used mostly in China (so you are unlikely to test it during dev)

And I only got a few incompatibility reports from it (like 2 or 3?).

Compares to the nightmare on safari (dozens of bugs), it actually works surprisingly good.

PrinceXML seems to be doing reasonably well. Yeah, they're never going to catch up to Chrome, but they've been adding one or two new browser features every day for the last several years. And they have less than a dozen developers.

Surely if I believe that browsers should have many features, then criticising Safari for being behind is valid criticism.

Apple: "extinguish"

Google strongly depends on the web. Apple wants everybody to move to native Apps instead.

If you want to know which company to trust, look at their incentives.

Lets distinguish between browser frameworks (Chromium, Firefox) and web rendering engines (WebKit, Blink, Gecko).

Three rendering engines is more than enough. It is the lack of diversity in browsers that is problematic.

Most browsers use Chromium browser framework (which includes Blink rendering engine). Several use Firefox (Gecko).

We are using WebKit and building our own browser from scratch. When I say from scratch that means literally every little feature, menu item, setting, interaction like a toolbar button etc.

5 years later, everyone hated IE 6. It was the new browser to hate. It was a buggy non-compliant mess, much as Safari is now. And again a new browser shook up the scene: Phoenix (which would later become Firefox).

Later, Chrome entered the market. It’s the superior browser now.

Browsers come and go.

Apple has too much control over the web, we should build native apps, and nobody can compete with Google Chrome - including Apple.

I do agree that Safari is not actually lacking in features too much though, it has features the other browsers don't have. Features that Apple felt were important to develop for Safari.

This would solve the problem very quickly either by users migrating to another browser or by Apple feeling enough pressure to actually care.

Remind me, can I write a new browser engine for iOS if I wanted?

This is absolutely a colossal anti-trust violation, doing colossal harm to society at large, keeping the web from being viable again and again, with it taking years to support WebRTC, years to supoprt ServiceWorkers, years to support every single thing, and the gap seemingly growing. This is a huge abuse of colossal market position, restricting the internet itself from competing with a closed platform, purely because it benefits Apple not to allow the situation to be fixed.

Their warchest is huge, they could participate in calls to implement, could ship features, but they dont. Even if they did, I would still prefer users not to be locked in to a monoculture, to have to use a specific browser.

This rhetoric that the standards bodies have been usurped is insanity, is bedlam. Show some evidence, make a case. No one does. This age keeps being swept by cheap, lying, low-grade dismissive politicians & schucksters selling popularist rage, and this post is some low quality grade-A unsupported zeal-filled techie-politics rage. It's not true. Standards bodies are alive and well. TAG is still elected, of good healthy techie stock, who review each of the various efforts & emphasize the better critiques & raise their own.

The only selling out that's happened is that the ad-industry keeps Google from doing good things, and sells to sow dissent that someone is trying to ratchet up privacy, which Google has been slowly doing (yes to the benefit of their search engine, but first party traffic ought to have privileges over third party traffic).

Standards work is hard as heck. There is not enough participation, there are not enough players funding standards work. But I don't see people being blocked, people being cut out from the work. I see Apple standing aside usually & silently refusing the calls to implement. I see not enough people participating. But chalking this up to conspiracy & the web being sold out? Please. These techies care. They want a better web, genuinely. They are trying, really hard. Everything happens in the open, in documented meetings. Trying to ascribe conspiracy & great machinations to this is sickening, is revolting disinformation. Do not market yourself on selling distrust & doubt in the world; do ally yourself with those who do foment & tear down & sow doubts (especially so out of hand, so very lacking a case).