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Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

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Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#321

Post by olliej »

Google234 wrote: post #99
fragile_frogs wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> web pages aren't something users want notifications from. I agree users don't want notifications from web pages, but the web is much more then just web pages and I would argue that on web applications users are much more likely to allow push notifications if they get a clear benefit.

Every other platform supports these notifications and yet somehow 99% of the sites that do it are using it for spam.

Every non-web platform has an initial gate of "install application X".

The web does not have that gate. The web has "I went to the apps website to see if it did what I wanted. it did/didn't, and then asks to send me update notifications"

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#322

Post by tobr »

africanboy wrote: post #306
tobr wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said Safari is > the reason why we can't have nice things like progressive web apps I.e. implying that progressive web apps are only possible if a specific set of features are supported everywhere. It’s like saying that accessibility is only possible if no users have disabilities.

I think OP is implying that if Safari is the only one lacking a feature that is part of the W3C standard[1], Safari is at fault. [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/push-api/

I feel like I’m repeating myself, but the whole concept of “progressive” web apps is to be resilient to these variations in which features are implemented.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#323

Post by JohnBooty »

jeffchien wrote: post #104
JohnBooty wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ohh and you are on Windows and wan't to debug something on Safari? Forget it. Yeah, this utterly baffles me. You'd think Apple, out of sheer self-interest, would offer some sort of "Safari for Developers" that runs on Windows/Linux. Even if it's some kind of klunky suboptimally-performant thing. Just make it really obvious in terms of it's branding and theming that it's devs-only.

My hypothesis is that Apple is probably getting enough money from companies having to buy their devs Macbooks that they don't feel like releasing Safari on Windows/Linux (much less Xcode).

Apple sells about 20 million Macs a year according to this: https://www.statista.com/statistics/263444/sales-of-apple-ma...

What percentage of that is possibly due to folks buying Macs just to run Safari? Pure speculation on my part but I don't believe it can be more than a percentage of a percentage.

Was there a sudden increase when the Windows version of Safari was discontinued in 2010? It's hard to say exactly, because there are an awful lot of factors involves in sales numbers, but I don't see any evidence to suggest that's the case.

Also: think about your average dev or dev shop that buys a Mac just to make sure their stuff works on Safari. Are they buying a shiny new high-margin Mac? Oh heck no. They're buying the cheapest possible new Mac or, more likely, they're getting some cheapo preowned Mac. Or perhaps even more likely, they're using a service like Browserstack.

They wouldn't shoot their entire web strategy in the foot just to sell some negligible additional amount of Macs per year.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#324

Post by JohnBooty »

pndy wrote: post #224
jeffchien wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My hypothesis is that Apple is probably getting enough money from companies having to buy their devs Macbooks that they don't feel like releasing Safari on Windows/Linux (much less Xcode).

I think it's because at some point they start to rely on features solely available in OSX and at the same time repeating somehow what Microsoft did in dominant years of IE on Windows but without all that predatory tactics. The times obviously change; today companies give their users ecosystems of software and services successfully trapping them within these; Safari is the browser for Apple ecosystem, just like Edge t…

    I think it's because at some point they start to rely on features solely available in OSX
This is the only answer that really makes sense to me. I think it tightly couples with MacOS stuff like sandboxing, whatever codec stuff they're doing, and whatever perf stuff they're doing to make Safari "feel" so fast on the Mac. I think they feel that replicating all of that in Win32 would just be impossible/unsustainable. Still, I wish they'd just make it some kind of "developer edition" thing. It could be a bit janky, even... as long as it was clearly labeled "for developers" or whatever I don't really see it giving the company a black eye.

    We're all dependent on Chromium, its devteam and what Google 
    decides is "best" for the whole world and the Internet. Which 
    I believe, is certainly a bad thing.
I agree wholeheartedly, and Apple seems to agree! That's what's so f'ing baffling to me.

Clearly they feel that Safari is an extremely important project; the only thing standing between Google utterly 100% owning the web in every sense that matters. A thing that would clearly be bad for Apple.

Accordingly, Safari on Mac gets a ton of investment from Apple. And clearly Apple feels Safari is so important that it's the only browser engine allowed on iOS.

But, I can tell you from experience, a hell of a lot of B2B stuff and stuff cranked out by small shops is just never tested on Safari. And one reason is that a lot of small shops just don't have a Mac sitting around. And experience tells us that this is the death of a browser. Nobody wants to stick with browser XYZ once some percentage of their stuff stops working. They don't want to run multiple different browsers. It's a pain. They eventually follow the path of least resistance and just use the browser where 100% of their stuff works.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#325

Post by diebeforei485 »

yunohn wrote: post #129
diebeforei485 wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Great. Take their phone number and text them. Amazon charges what, $0.00645 per SMS?

You want to send potentially sensitive health updates over SMS? Or just a link, that then opens the web-app anyways? Definitely sounds like bad UX.

Here in California, I got updates about my covid19 test results, and my covid19 appointment information, over SMS or a link over SMS.

This includes what vaccine I received, the lot number of its production, plus information from v-safe[1] and reminders to check in telling the government how I feel on days after the vaccine.

1. https://vsafe.cdc.gov/en/

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#326

Post by diebeforei485 »

mortenjorck wrote: post #113
ArchOversight wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, having to click no all the time on desktop Safari is terrible. Also websites have realized that I am going to click No in the browser, so now they popup first asking if I want to allow push notifications in JavaScript so when I click no, they can ask me again later, vs if they popped up the browser and got a "No" there they could never ask me again.

I agree about clicking no all the time. This isn't an intractable problem, though; people just assume the ask-on-visit interaction pattern is the only way to implement this kind of functionality. If I were on the Mobile Safari team, I'd propose bundling notifications into the bookmark workflow. If a user chooses to bookmark a site, prompt them at that moment (as an option in the modal) to subscribe to notifications i…

Perhaps desktop Safari should work the way you described. Whenever I get a new Mac, one of the first things I do is stop allowing any website to ask to notify me.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#327

Post by africanboy »

tobr wrote: post #322
africanboy wrote: post #306

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think OP is implying that if Safari is the only one lacking a feature that is part of the W3C standard[1], Safari is at fault. [1] https://www.w3.org/TR/push-api/

I feel like I’m repeating myself, but the whole concept of “progressive” web apps is to be resilient to these variations in which features are implemented.

> but the whole concept of “progressive” web apps is to be resilient to these variations

Your confusion comes from your personal definition of "Progressive Web App"

For sure the confusion starts from their name, but in short «A progressive web application (PWA) is a type of application software delivered through the web, built using common web technologies including HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It is intended to work on any platform that uses a standards-compliant browser, including both desktop and mobile devices.»

Emphasis on any platform that uses a standards-compliant browser, in this case Safari is not standard compliant.

A Progressive Web App (or PWA in short) is not the same thing of "progressive enhancement" or "graceful degradation" for regular Web Application.

Those are just some of the features, but it doesn't stops there.

Some of the fundamental charateritics of a PWA include being

- App-like — Feels like an app to the user with app-style interactions and navigation

- Re-engageable — Ability to use push notifications to maintain engagement with the user

As you can see being able to notify the user is a key feature of a PWA.

Which is not possible if some vendor refuses to implement the standard features that narrow the gap between Web and Native, like Apple is deliberately doing with Safari.

It's not too hard to make them work without those features, that's not the point, the point is it's impossible to have the same feature set on every platform because one vendor in particular doesn't want you to, they want you to develop native applications which is vastly more costly and it feels like wasting effort and money on something that should have worked with almost the same capabilities on all the major platforms with little or no modifications. It's true everywhere, except on Apple mobile devices, where you can't even chose the web rendering engine.

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#328

Post by tobr »

africanboy wrote: post #327
tobr wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel like I’m repeating myself, but the whole concept of “progressive” web apps is to be resilient to these variations in which features are implemented.

> but the whole concept of “progressive” web apps is to be resilient to these variations Your confusion comes from your personal definition of "Progressive Web App" For sure the confusion starts from their name, but in short «A progressive web application (PWA) is a type of application software delivered through the web, built using common web technologies including HTML, CSS and JavaScript. It is intended to work on…

Not sure what you’re quoting in italics there. But it’s certainly not my “personal definition of the term”, it’s the origin of the term [1]. The idea was to take progressive enhancement so far that a regular website can progressively become something app-like. Over time, people seem to have forgotten why we call them progressive, and think it just means they’re entitled to use every idea that someone in W3C’s Department of Feature Creep put their stamp of approval on.

1: https://infrequently.org/2015/06/progressive-apps-escaping-t...

Re: Safari is now probably the influential wild card browser for user privacy

#329

Post by djxfade »

pjmlp wrote: post #201
djxfade wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because Safari has like 50+ percent of the mobile market share in the west

On the west side of the Atlantic.

About 30% in Europe, but in the "western" part, like Norway, above 60%
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