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For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

blog.perrysun.com

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Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#451

Post by zdragnar »

tinus_hn wrote: post #323
tarsinge wrote: post #319

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It absolutely make sense to make a state of the art app on a platform if it's key to the business. Also resources is not the problem, even big companies (like banks) make low cost web apps instead of native ones if they can. I don't see why Apple should facilitate compromised user experiences instead of setting the bar higher.

Also a PWA can’t compete in quality with a proper native app, should a competitor ever build one you’re toast. The question just revolves around how integral an app is to the business. Online banking probably requires an app. A restaurant that offers online ordering probably does not. A video game requires an app. An online encyclopedia does not.

This is so wrong it hurts. I know businesses that had to decide between making a mobile PWA style website or a native app for their customers to use... and the customers all wanted the website.

No sitting around waiting to download and install updates. No corporate phone-wiping security policies. All the features that mattered, even if Safari didn't look quite as nice and missed one or two.

PWA vs native app doesn't matter at all to the competition, they are gonna be there regardless (esp. B2B scenarios). Whether a website or app works better for B2C is really highly market dependent.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#452

Post by skydhash »

lionkor wrote: post #303
yourenotsmart wrote: post #248

The problem isn't Safari as much, which pioneered HTML5, and is the most power-efficient browser on any platform I've seen. The problem is web devs. Web developers have increasingly the attitude of "I don't want to learn how to make apps, I want to use HTML/CSS/JS for all apps I make", and this plays directly into Google's interests, which benefits from everything being web, because it has its tentacles all over the…

Oh wow, I could not agree more. I've always struggled to put it into words, but > web devs are among the least educated, least sophisticated, most entitled and most whiny bunch there is This is exactly what I see. I'm a C/C++ developer, and recently started to re-make my website[0] (very WIP) together with my partner, and I've had a few web-devs and other devs tell me that it's really fast (i didn't notice because I'…

I just export my own website[0] from Bear.app

[0]: https://hescaide.me/

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#453

Post by JumpCrisscross »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #169
mrtksn wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, and from users perspective I don't care. I find in eerie having the browser being an App platform. Chrome and Android are very dominant platforms, if it is something groundbreaking that can be done in that model it would be done in Android and Chrome and Apple will adopt it. Google is not an underdog.

I have the exact opposite view. I have tons of apps on my phone that really have no business being apps, they should just be websites but with push notifications. For example, I'm not a huge traveler (obviously not in the past year), but even before the pandemic I'd use AirBnB like once a year maybe. I don't want to download an app for something I use once a year. But before and during my trip push notifications are…

> I have tons of apps on my phone that really have no business being apps

I don't like them being apps because of the amount of privilege they gain. But if every site I visit on the web gains those privileges? That's a step backwards for me.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#454

Post by masswerk »

unilynx wrote: post #431
masswerk wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

P.S., my own critique on Safari: the tight tie-in into the OS. Nowadays, as computers are often longer in use as they are in the support/update cycle, it would be really nice to be able to update Safari beyond the OS level. I get it that Safari is basically running the OS web-view framework and that there are serious issues with this (edit: meaning, updating a single framework out of sync with the rest of the OS), bu…

They seem to be working on that. We got Safari 14 some time before the Big Sur release, and I think Safari 13 was faster than the accompanying OS update too ?

This would be great news. As it is, Safari is a great browser, when you get your new Mac, probably the fastest browser, there is (and economical on resources, as well). So there's reason to adopt it as the default browser, but then it eventually falls behind to the point of becoming incompatible with newer sites and users have to shop for a new standard browser. Which isn't the best user experience imaginable.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#456

Post by admax88q »

the_other wrote: post #417
zenexer wrote: post #324

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The idea of IE being purely an "outdated" browser seems to be one perpetuated by young devs reading & misunderstanding old blogposts. That’s certainly not true: it was indeed outdated for much of its life. Yes, through IE6, it did things differently; beyond that point, though, it simply fell behind. It stopped evolving in any meaningful way—with the possible exception of tabs being introduced in IE7–while other bro…

You’re holding on too tight to an argument for the sake of analogy. It’s cute and evocative but it’s blinding you to the bigger picture. The issues with Google monopolising the direction of standards development are the major issue facing browsers, users and developers on the web, today. I get that you’re disappointed Safari doesn’t support the same stuff, the same way as Chrome. Tough. You’re attempting to develop a…

That's absurd.

I'm not targetting Lynx, Haiku, or 8 year old shitty phones. Nor are most web developers.

And the attitude that you must support those things is detrimental to the web. It makes people feel like they're doing it wrong of they don't spend all their time chasing those rare edge cases. Which if you're trying to start something new, can kill your productivity.

I'd rather have web developers target the common platforms only, than have those developers give up and switch to native apps.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#457

Post by falcolas »

slindz wrote: post #13
dhosek wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Safari supports web push notifications. I have never wanted them.

Can you appreciate how a memory challenged/privacy conscious person might find it helpful to opt in to web push notifications?

> Can you appreciate how a memory challenged/privacy conscious person might find it helpful to opt in to web push notifications?

By relying on Chrome, the least privacy conscious web browser in existence? Not really.

Just make an app. All of the benefits, fewer privacy compromises. But, it requires more work on the developer's end, so I also understand why they might not want to. Just stop trying to paint their decisions as being privacy conscious.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#458

Post by jimmaswell »

lucideer wrote: post #255
hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The analogy is simple: back in the day devs got sick of IE because it was the one thing holding them back. You can make a site, easily, that looked beautiful on all the other major browsers, but because IE was outdated when it came to standards support, you had to basically spent all your time fighting with it. Safari serves that role today. There are tons of things I'd love to do but can't because they're not suppor…

But that isn't the case. At all. IE wasn't difficult because it was behind the times; it was difficult because it was deliberately different. The 2nd pillar of Microsoft's infamous Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategy ensured incompatibility, which doubled developer efforts. The idea of IE being purely an "outdated" browser seems to be one perpetuated by young devs reading & misunderstanding old blogposts. The narrat…

Is Safari truly "compliant"? It does so many things differently for no reason. I constantly have to write Safari-specific hacks to get things like scrolling in a modal or button appearance to work as expected.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#459

Post by leppr »

blacktriangle wrote: post #400
leppr wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I simply solve that problem by having most notifications be silent. Only urgent ones (calls, text messages from a select group of people) are effectively "push" notifications. The rest buffers until I get to looking at my phone.

This is where Apple's paternalistic view takes over. I think Apple's design view is that you the user shouldn't have to take action to protect yourself from sties abusing this feature, the Google view is that it's a free for all. There are merits to both approach and I wish users of both platforms would understand that.

Notifications on all Android browsers I've tried are opt-in.

On the subject of notifications in general, Apple lets their users be spammed more by not adding granular notification categories like on Android.

Your comment doesn't reflect reality. If Apple took notification curation seriously like you imply, I would seriously consider switching to their smartphones, but they don't.

Re: For developers, Safari is crap and outdated

#460

Post by otterley »

howinteresting wrote: post #413
otterley wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mozilla is mostly funded by Google.

And that's irrelevant, Mozilla's decision-making is quite independent of Google's. Firefox on Android is an excellent browser. Firefox on iOS could be the same if Apple let go of its chokehold.

> Mozilla's decision-making is quite independent of Google's.

Mozilla certainly keeps the source of their funding in mind when making certain key decisions, in much the same way that elected officials do with respect to their donors. In fact, it's even more significant because Mozilla's funding primarily comes from a single source. And you can't just piss off your sole major benefactor without consequence.

The argument that they have the luxury to make independent decisions would be more plausible if their foundation were funded out of a legacy foundation or something like that.

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