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Comment by criddell | Hacker News Reader

Safari on iOS is basically the only thing stopping the future of the web from being controlled by Google via Blink.

If they really want that to be the case, they need to make Safari available on other OS's again

If they did that, Safari market share would increase 0.01% percent or something.

When it was available for Windows, nobody used it, except web developers who wanted their website to work on Macs, but didn't have a Mac to test with.

I think synchronized bookmarks/history, which didn't exist back then, would be reason enough for many people to switch. So maybe more like 1%. ;)

Also, most people don't know what a browser is. They just look at Internet, or google.

I used it because I liked the Mac font rendering but I had to use Windows for work.

These days with hidpi screens the difference between font rendering between windows and Mac is negligible though. So that's not a factor anymore.

Even if there is a choice, iPhone users might tend to stick with Safari anyway. Desktop Safari's market share is about 10%, roughly the same as macOS' market share, which seems to suggest limited appetite for browser customization.

> Desktop Safari's market share is about 10%, roughly the same as macOS' market share

Where you're getting these numbers from? Doesn't sound right to me, but maybe I just have a biased sample. I'd guesstimate that 50% if not more of my friends with macOS run Chrome, small percentage (2 or 3) runs Firefox and the rest Safari.

I think they mean market share for all desktop/laptops and not just Macs. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...

Statcounter and other sites show ~10% for desktop Safari, and 15-18% in richer countries.

Most people I know with Macs have at least two browsers installed, but then most people with Macs I know are fairly tech savvy.

I can tell you, the users on the whole know about as much about tech as a luddite from 1867.

I mean, that's a huge draw in the consumer space for mac/ios. Remember the scale were at here. Something like 250,000,000 ios devices a YEAR.

I have never read or heard of anyone using desktop Safari due to a “limited appetite for browser customization”. In every context of every conversation I’ve witnessed where desktop Safari was mentioned, every participant was fully aware other browsers exist.

As an example, Safari is the only choice if you don’t want to give more marketshare to Chromium but also need to programatically control or retrieve information from your browser. Firefox has no AppleScript support, which disqualifies it immediately.

One reason for that might be wanting to use the same browser across mobile and desktop though. I know I stuck with Safari for a while because of that. I'm now on Firefox for both Mac and iOS but the iOS experience isn't that great.

Once other browsers are allowed on iOS, it's possible more users will migrate on both desktop & mobile to Chrome/FF.

No. Apple's iPhone app policies on iOS are stopping it. Safari on iOS is utter garbage. Once regulation fixes Apple's app policies, Safari will have to get better.

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