Dear Safari, Things I Hate About You | Hacker News Reader

Dear Safari, Things I Hate About You

magiclasso.co

49 pointsksec65 comments

For the most part I am fine with Safari, but I also can't say there is any browser that I actually like using.

I feel like one of the biggest problems is, well what are the alternatives? I use Firefox on my PC but since that is primarily for gaming I don't really need the interconnectivity. On my Mac, iPhone, and iPad the way everything works together is just way too valuable.

I wish it's memory didnt just keep inching higher and higher and I need to close it regularly, but I don't know if that is unqiue to Safari or if it would happen on other browsers if I opened way too many windows and tabs.

That being said: "Everyone knows about your tawdry Google relationship" yeah that needs to be addressed and is the same reason I don't consider Chrome an option. Everything else, I am not convinced any other browser is really much better.

> On my Mac, iPhone, and iPad the way everything works together is just way too valuable.

I use KDE connect to get this functionality on Firefox/Chromium: https://kdeconnect.kde.org/

I'm sure you've probably had your ear talked-off hearing about this from an ex-Continuity user, so I really have little else to add. My laptop, desktop, phone and tablet all talk on the same network, and can send files and URLs over WiFi direct with a right-click context menu. After I started using Syncthing I never looked back at OneDrive or iCloud with a sense of regret. Synced media control via MPRIS, remote battery reporting and notification sync are the cherries on top. I call it, "The Freecosystem". You're all invited.

I do realize that there are alternatives, but I just don't feel the need too. I am already fully within the Apple Ecosystem for other reasons. Continuity is icing on top.

I prefer Mac to Windows and I have zero desire to use Android.

But I also don't want to have to tinker with my personal tech when I don't need too. I just want everything to work, I already need to debug things for work or personal projects.

I have found that, I don't know if its due to my ADHD or what, but when I am working on something and something that should just work doesnt, than I never get the first thing done. And I heavily rely on Continuity for my workflows outside of work.

Its great that this exist, but I do think we have to acknowledge that there is a place for not needing to tinker with your tech and things just work. (Yes I acknowledge that even Apple's systems are not perfect, but still).

I would consider KDE Connect to be in the list of things that just works.

Syncthing even more so. I set up my folders maybe 4 years ago and haven't opened the sync menu since. If you told me that the core technology behind it was fairy dust I'd probably believe you.

Counter experience: I use Syncthing and sync breaks, conflicts or pauses at least a couple times a year. It's bad enough that I'm actually considering re-subscribing to Dropbox and using the Maestral app.

So, performance hasn't kept up and you don’t like the extension ecosystem?

Performance I understand, its hard to compete with v8 and JS is pumped down our pipes in ever-growing amounts.

Extensions are poor, truly, with this I agree. But extensions are also a huge reason that people consider browsers to be unperformant (hilariously, based on my previous statement). I can understand the Safari team being less than excited to permit even worse performance.

Safari + AdGuard (with the extension enabled) is much slower than Chrome/Firefox + uBlock Origin though

I’m not sure that this is incompatible with the idea that the JS engine is just slower than v8.

Extensions are basically just injected javascript, right?

Safari will never compete on extensions. Just how it is, Firefox has proven that.

They need a different direction, either to heavily lean on limitations and ease of creation/hooking into core APIs in a tested way that won't affect performance. Or something else entirely.

More important: Stop losing authenticated sessions. Stop randomly corrupting the whole past cookie-jar for no reasons. Safari, just stop! This is crazy annoying.

I thought this was just me. It's so infrequent I never look into it, but it's maddening when it happens. And it's been happening for years.

I usually realize it occurred by finding myself logged out of HN.

I'm not sure what it is about Safari, but it does not get along with StackExchange. It's been like this for ages.

Whenever I visit one of their sites, I am constantly having to click through the cookie banner. I don't know if its the "1 week cookie timeout" thing in Safari or what.

I don't know of any other site where I have this problem, but its chronic with StackExchange. And, corollary, whatever it is, SE obviously doesn't care enough to cooperate with it.

It’s inexcusable that the only choices for default search engine are Google, or 4 companies which are reskinned versions of the Bing API.

It should be possible to set the default search engine to any URL with a ?q= parameter.

Yes: https://blog.mojeek.com/2021/09/multiple-choice-in-search.ht...

I couldn't agree more. It's such low hanging fruit for regulators, I'm shocked that such breathtakingly brazen monopolist behavior has been tolerated for this long.

I’m not sure about default, but you can do that on any chromium based browser I’ve tried as a custom engine, where %s gets replaced with the url encoded version of what you type.

Interesting what search engines would you recommend

I use Kagi, which works reliably on all my Mac and iOS devices. I think there was a little one-time fiddle they help you with that sidesteps the iOS default inflexibility.

Yandex & Baidu are one of the few legit alternative search-engines (in a way that they are not reskins of Google or Bing).

Almost all others they have Bing hidden somewhere, and a big lie "we are using Bing for 0.00001% of the results of course".

They are difficult to use to day-to-day but they can be useful sometimes.

For sure they don't share your data with Western governments.

So in terms of privacy it's actually not bad.

And in terms of censorship, they censor less Western content than on Google / Bing, etc.

I hope you'll forgive me if I'm not any more interested in handing my search history to Russia and China than I am in handing it to Google.

I guess Kagi is the only true option (since it's not free), though I use DDG.

That's not really any of your business... for all you care, I could choose localhost:9090?q=%s

Maybe be the change you want to see in the world and don't use/support the most closed ecosystem?

The alternatives are not prefect, nothing is. But they are all more open and that is something we can build upon.

So true. Fun to point out all the flaws in the other major tech companies, but the locked nature of Apple, while seemingly providing opportunities for "security", also makes you feel like cattle in a feed lot when you try do something they don't want you to do.

Safari faults aside, I've never felt more constrained by the whims of a corporation than when I try to reset the password on my Apple ID. Even remembering the process makes me a little feel a little claustrophobic.

This is a generic response that often follows specific complaints about some small aspect of an ecosystem, that trivializes the significance of individuals' ecosystem choices.

The most likely reason people complain about something specific in an ecosystem, as apposed to the whole ecosystem, is ... because that is the level of problem they have.

Without a LOT more information, "move out of the country", "breakup" level advice is not much help.

Lets not talk it up more than necessary, staying within the ecosystem is mostly a convenience. I appreciate the reluctance to change over something minor, the point is a bit broader though. Be aware and maybe consider it for the future.

Orion is a nice, macOS only, Safari-based browser with vertical nested tabs.

https://kagi.com/orion/

It's made by folks at Kagi.

I'm a paid Kagi subscriber but every singe time I've tried Orion it's just been too buggy, even a couple months ago.

It's unstable and incompatible with some web pages sadly, it feels like you're an alien on the web not a first class citizen (although only chrome is one).

Give it a shot again. The development speed of Orion is unmatched [1] and it has the most active browser feedback website on the web [2].

To give more context it is also fairly new, it is built on top of WebKit so basically built from scratch, it is built by a small team and built for and financed only by the users (no VC money involved) and it is incredibily ambitious (like Kagi Search is).

It is also verifiably both the fastest browser on Mac and completely zero telemetry. It has experimental support for both Chrome and Firefox extensions both on macOS and iOS.

I've been using it as a personal daily driver for years now.

[1] https://kagi.com/orion/updates/orion-release-notes.html

[2] https://orionfeedback.org

Could you try to get one of those KYC video/camera pages where you have to take a picture or video in the webpage to work on iOS?

They fail in Safari but work in chrome so it should be possible.

I started a thread of specific complaints on Twitter and tagged @jensimmons. Every issue was quietly resolved a few releases later.

… so you reported bugs and they were fixed?

To be fair, this is a rare occurrence, from my own experiences with reporting bugs to Apple, along with what I hear from others. I have over two pages of bug reports spanning a couple decades marked as "in-progress" or "needs to be reviewed".

These are solid bug reports with PoCs and backing data that took me a lot of time to assemble, not just "Safari don't work". Maybe 10% of my bugs are fixed or closed with "won't fix".

One thing to consider, if you're filing bugs on webkit (e.g engine issues vs. the safari app) is reporting them to bugs.webkit.org, which if nothing else results in more accessible info for you.

The also used to be a fairly active irc channel back in the day, but I vaguely recall articles a few years ago about free node shutting down or something, so I'm not sure where discussions actually happen these days.

Interesting to be written by a company who's revenue comes from selling a Safari plug-in.

If anything it shows they have real skin in the game™ and that their motivations for prodding Apple are authentic.

Also not supporting PWAs and in general being behind and ocking on next gen web features

PWA is a "progressive web app" - a normal web app that can use additional features when available. Everything beyond straight HTML (including CSS and Javascript) is considered "progressive". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Progressive_enhancement

There are many features put under the marketing banner of "PWA" that Safari supports. A large number of the ones which Safari _doesn't_ support are only supported by the Blink engine, and are not on a standards track. Many of these other browser engines have explicitly said they will not support due to the design being harmful for the web.

Google themselves have slowed down significantly on new "PWA" features since ChromeOS started supporting running native Android apps.

Safari absolutely supports PWAs. There are features it doesn't support, but the premise is supported.

If you don't support the PWA features people want PWAs for, then claiming PWA support is silly.

The list of issues with the Apple/Google relationship has a lot of unsubstantiated claims, such as sharing full web browsing history. Does anyone have a reference to where that claim comes from?

Their claim that Safari has gotten slow is that other browsers have gotten better, not that there has been any negative performance changes. I would suspect that HTML rendering as well as Javascript execution have significant diminishing returns on performance improvement investments.

Their first reference it there being issues with Web Extensions was to some person's random GitHub issue tracker, which isn't being updated when issues are fixed and doesn't necessarily provide a FB number to show it was raised to Apple. This IMHO is somewhat Apple's fault as they haven't contributed a Web Extension API component to WebKit; it is a Safari feature and needs to be raised as Feedback (which is then not externally referencable, and may not be updated as internal duplicates of the issue are closed).

The 4th thing in the article title/headline "Dear Safari, 4 Things I Hate About You"... seems to be missing?

How about disabling the unpinch to zoom out to the tab overview? Happens accidentally all the time and reloads tabs/hogs RAM when it does.

Or fixing the erasure of URLs from older tabs? Impossible to easily reload (but Translate to.../then view original does the trick).

Safari did the fundamentals quickly and solidly. Now not so much.

>How about disabling the unpinch to zoom out to the tab overview?

I think I disable pinch Zoom in and out on touch pad. And I dont understand why Tab Overview has to reloads all the tabs either.

>Or fixing the erasure of URLs from older tabs? Impossible to easily reload

Same problem.

I've seen under the apple skirt, and the incentive structure there is such that these issues are inevitable. You get more RSUs and promotions when you make something new, and not when you make something simpler and more robust.

This is a problem I've heard from most large tech companies, most notably Google.

Do you have an example of a company which has been successful with an alternative incentive structure that doesn't have these issues, perhaps one that pushes for more siloed products and rewards employees based on ongoing financial success?

I don’t. I’m only applying my “inside” knowledge of the org I was at there in the orchard. It I can extrapolate to the rest of the greater orgs and company as a whole due to the nature of the internal propaganda and the clear financial signals.

The best incentive I’ve ever had wasn’t financial. It was having an incredible boss whom I DID NOT WANT TO DISAPPOINT.

> You can earn our trust back, but only by stopping this relationship now and putting our privacy first.

I don't mind if Google is an option, but there should be an easy way to add third party search engines too (On top of the new modal where you can pick your default search engine in the EU at least).

For Kagi you have to install an extension just to overwrite that: https://help.kagi.com/kagi/getting-started/setting-default.h...

There's a lot of press about the revenue sharing deals that Apple has with Google (and soon OpenAI on the AI query front).

I think from there that a common assumption formed that Apple does _not_ have a revenue sharing deal required by all partners in these integration categories.

There are things to complain about Safari, but these don't feel that big of a deal. Some of my issues:

1. Massive memory consumption if left running to long 2. Randomly says "you are trying to close two tabs!" when you only have highlighted one 3. Randomly just stops loading a tab, and you have to literally close that tab and open a new one 4. Randomly opens a new tab in a random window when clicking, and you have to hunt for it 5. Hardcoded search engines

That's just off the top of my head.

I'm in Europe but as far as I know we're still stuck with WebKit browsers here as well with no sign of any other browser engines being made available through any alternative app stores. I think Apple has made it theoreticallly possible, but practically impossible and some charges were made against them for it.

Well, for a company so dedicated to Safari, you could design your site with better Safari iOS support ;)

https://webkit.org/blog/7929/designing-websites-for-iphone-x...

Sadely, I happen to be a single issue Safari dismisser kind of human.

When I open (click) on a folder in the bookmarks toolbar and then hover on adjacent folders it doesn't automatically open them, I also have to click on them. For this single feature alone, I never could use this browser.

> "Everyone knows about your tawdry Google relationship"

Of course they know, they specifically requested it.

safari dev tools suck ass. and they have done for at least 5 years if not more.

i'd say they've gotten worse even.

and expecting me to create an Apple ID and then download 30GB of xcode crap just to port my 5kb chrome extension to safari. yea right.

Do you not need a google account to push to the chrome store?

I’m not sure how it would work without such an account, and if you do then it seems like a weird hill to die on… surely you’d be expected to have one for another store.

Is XCode really 30GB?!

> Do you not need a google account to push to the chrome store?

i don't know. i'm just talking about the simple act of porting an existing chrome js file to work in safari.

it takes 2 minutes to port to firefox and you dont need to dowlonad gigs of proprietary junk on your machine and create an account.

Firefox requires you to create a developer account. And, obviously, install firefox.

https://extensionworkshop.com/documentation/publish/submitti...

> "Go to Add-ons Developer Hub and click Submit Your First Add-on or Submit a New Add-on. You reach the following page:"

that's for publishing. i'm just talking about the simple act of porting an extension and running it locally.

you cannot do that at all in safari without xcode and an account to sign,

It used to be, but a few years ago they split the tvOS/watchOS/visionOS support out to separate optional packages. The latest Xcode 16 beta is a 3 GB download and that includes everything you need for Safari extensions.

It’s not just XCode but also all of the other tools and resources.

> Is XCode really 30GB?!

It should be larger than that, if they're still forcing you to download all the simulator files you're never going to use.

It depends. The Xcode app is takes only ~6 GB on disk (it's compressed, and the next version will use even less disk space), and it contains the macOS SDK. The others SDK are optional, so it won't automatically install iOS simulators anymore.

I kinda like Safari…

iCab and Orion are both much better and customizable without sacrificing performance

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