Remember the "Safari is the new IE" narrative? Just because Safari doesn't support some API doesn't make it IE, IE wasn't an inferior browser at the beginning either. What made IE the IE everyone hates was its departure from standards(?) and enforcing its own vision of the web thanks to its enormous market share. On IE's case, MS probably stagnated it to prevent competition against its desktop Apps business and on Go…
The author of that phase, and those that commented on issue at the time admitted they wasn't even programming during IE era. And falsely claim IE era as IE 7.....
Not only that. A lot of people actually quite like IE 5.5. I would even argue IE hate wasn't even because of enforcing its own standard ( Although that is certainly an issue ). It was because they conquered 95+% market share and stop innovating when there were insane amount of low hanging fruit and bugs.
But yeah. Most vocal engineers of today joined the industry in post iPhone era. One reason why Silicon Valley are full of people continue to reinvent the flat tire.