I use the Auto Discard Tabs plug-in, just lets tabs time-out after a set amount of time

I often hear that claim, but for me it was always the opposite. Firefox being fast while Chrome being a slow monster and memory hog. Also when I was using an RPi2b full-time, Firefox was working even though sometimes annoying, while Chrome was a no-go and would led to the OS being unusable.

I mean those aren't real controversies though, it's more like "we added a VPN feature and included the VPN, but have now removed it". A real controversy would be like Mozilla who was pushing for censorship and silencing "bad actors" in the years after the first Trump election.

Significantly better battery life too. Like hours.

You're drinking Apple kool-aid if you think Safari isn't holding web back.

Lots of anti-google people dislike Safari. Safari isn't the only non-google option you know.

Developers don't convince anyone of anything! They just build stuff according to standards (which are inevitably set not by standards orgs, but by the most popular browsers), and then they expect all browsers to follow those standards and "just work".

When a browser like Safari fails to adhere to those standards, sites will break ... but you can't expect developers (of most sites; I'm not talking about the top 100 or anything) to test in every possible browser ... and then change their code to accommodate them. Certainly not in ones with single-digit percentages of market share, that require their own OS to test (like Safari).

Chrome’s developers didn’t have to say anything. Anyone who’s been trying to build on the latest web features (for me, particularly WebGL, WebRTC, WebGPU and IndexedDB) over the past decade has been bitten by Safari over and over again. They usually come around after being raked over the coals by the web dev community, but they’re still usually years behind.

When “Safari is the new IE” was first published, they absolutely were. They’ve gotten a bit better since then, but all the same it was hilarious to see people who used to rail against IE for flaunting web standards (cough John Gruber cough) suddenly start saying that web standards were a bogus racket once Apple decided to stop keeping up with them.

Safari is the new IE not because they refuse to implement questionable new web “standards”, but because

- It has all sorts of random quirks in their supposedly supported features;

- Mobile Safari has even more quirks;

- No other major browser introduces random serious bugs like Safari does (remember the IndexedDB one?);

- Version updates are tied to OS updates meaning it’s the only major browsers that’s not evergreen, and coupled with the previous points you have to carry workarounds for bugs forever, and of course can’t use new features;

- Extensions are 10x harder to develop and more than 10x more expensive to publish since they’re tied to Xcode, Apple Developer Program and MAS, because fuck you;

- Like another commenter said, it’s the only browser that crashes on me (random “this page has experienced a problem and reloaded” or something like that);

- PWA is another kind of hell in Safari but opinions are divided so whatever. At the very least it’s not conducive to an open web.

It’s a piece of hot garbage, like a lot of other Apple software these days. Sure, maybe it’s battery efficient or something. I don’t give a shit because I work plugged in.

Oh and developer tools in Safari are crap but who cares.

> Is it easier to build a browser for MacOS?

Financially, probably. Apple customers represent a disproportionate share of global consumer disposable income.

Technically, I guess Unix-like, BrowserEngineKit and WebKit (Orion uses this) help. Good question, hope someone knowledgeable chimes in!