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Comment by remram | Hacker News Reader

As a Linux developer, I can test my site in Firefox and Chrome (including on my CI). I can't test it in Safari. The fact that it differs the most makes it a real pain.

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.

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The officially recommended way to test WebKit on Linux is to use the Epiphany browser shipped in GNOME, which shares the same engine (and a quite similar UI even).

Technical previews synchronised with the Safari Technology Preview available at https://webkit.org/downloads/ too.

can't test stuff like ITP though. I ended up just buying an iphone 6s for $50

ITP is part of Epiphany nowadays too: https://blogs.gnome.org/mcatanzaro/2020/09/16/epiphany-3-38-...

And it is part of WebKit's code base, not separately as only part of Safari. Consider Safari as just a UI layer.

oh nice, it wasn't when I was first implementing ITP related stuff, that's good to know.

I don't know how faithful it is, but I recently discovered playwright and it contains a webkit build (even on Linux) which is (in theory) close enough to Safari for web UI testing.

suckless.org's surf could work too.

Why can’t you use BrowserStack or a similar solution to do your MacOS testing? Because this is the same situation MacOS web developers encounter when testing Edge on Windows.

...except that Microsoft makes freely available Windows 10 virtual machine images for testing. [1] Apple expects you to buy a device (several if you need to test multiple iOS and iPadOS versions) or pay a third-party, BriwserStack, which is laggy and an additional cost.

[1] https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...

You probably don't need to test Edge on Windows if you are already testing Chrome since it's the same engine.

If you really want to you can test Edge on MacOS¹ or you can use the Windows virtual machines² that Microsoft provides for free.

1. https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/edge 2. https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/v...

It's the same engine, but capabilities could be different: https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/confluence

No need to use a VM; just download and run: https://www.microsoftedgeinsider.com/en-us/download

Edge is chromium. You can test it just fine from a Mac.

It depends, if you need to support old Edge (Spartan) you'll need to use one of the freely available virtual machines from Microsoft instead of just installing the browser.

Not a huge pain either, but given that there's still people out there that need to test on ie11 I wouldn't be surprised if Edge has befallen the same faith.

Old Edge is essentially gone, since it autoupdated to New Edge. New Edge has Linux and Mac builds.

Edge runs natively macOS

I understand why Apple is doing it, but what does it hurt if I develop for Safari on Windows? Oh no you have to compile the app and support on Windows? Gimme a break. $1 Trillion company and they can't make that work is nothing short of a joke. The OS wars are nothing like they were in the 90s. Apple really needs to wake the hell up. Steve Balmer said it best:

"DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!"

And Steve Ballmer really backed that up by making it possible to compile and test Windows and Microsoft products on every Linux distribution

>I understand why Apple is doing it

Do you? It sounds like you're implying that they can't do it, despite also pointing out that they easily could.

They did the technical work to allow WebKit to build on Windows: https://webkit.org/webkit-on-windows/

That's the AppleWin port which relies on non-redistributable libraries, using the iTunes compatibility libraries.

There's also upstream the WinCairo port, which is redistributable. (can be downloaded from Buildbot at https://trac.webkit.org/wiki/BuildingCairoOnWindows#Download...)

It's just that Apple doesn't want to make Safari as a whole available on Windows, while making it easy for others to develop browsers using that same engine - even on Windows.

They used to distribute Safari on Windows. Back then it had little adoption.

Little adoption among users, but still super useful to developers. I wish they still did.

(WebKit isn't enough; I often need to test Safari behavior specifically)

Well it hurts because your company might not buy you a Mac.

honestly why develop for safari anyway? you can't really complain about apple if you keep bending over backwards to support their software

iOS has around 75% of the mobile apps revenues apparently.

In the US, I assume? Also, note that app stores aren't the only revenue, and precisely because the web does not work as well on ios devices, this number will be slightly biased in apples case.

It appears to be globally, though it depends on what you count exactly (65% of the total revenues, I was off sorry, but 80% of all subscription revenues). The reality is that the hundreds of millions in poorer countries with Android spend peanuts compared to rich countries. https://www.businessofapps.com/data/app-revenues/

But whatever the exact number, the point stands. In most cases, not supporting iOS is a silly business decision.

iOS number includes China Market, while Android's dont. So that distort the numbers a bit. But yes, the main point still stands.

If up to 75% of paying customers browsing on mobile use safari would you serve them a broken website? Remember that 100% of browsers in iOS is safari. Everything else is just Safari with a skin. If I could I would block apple users out with a warning about their broken browser but I doubt any business survive for long if they had a habit of leaving money on the table.

Every single iOS user I know uses Chrome as their browser specifically because Safari is a broken mess in which nothing ever works.

Iphone users aren't allowed to install Chrome. They want chrome, but all they get is a shitty chrome skin on Safari. It does trick a lot of people into thinking that they actually have chrome though.

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