Comment by leptons
6 days ago
Chrome is definitely a better experience than Safari, and not by a little bit. In many ways Safari is the worst browser out there right now. Most of its market share comes from the fact that Apple still forces Safari to be used on iOS no matter what browser you think you have installed. I think the DOJ should go after Apple harder on that than they are on Google, because nobody is forcing anyone to use Chrome the same way Apple is forcing their users to use Safari.
Desktop Safari’s ~15% market share, which exceeds Firefox’s ~7%, suggests otherwise. Mac users can freely switch and yet many don’t.
There are likely several reasons for this but I think the two biggest ones are its differences in philosophy: first, that browsers should be just one utility among many on a desktop OS and not try to set itself apart and second, to actively combat the internet’s hostilities on behalf of the user.
Chrome will never do either. It tries to be a distinct brand and platform instead of meshing with your desktop nicely and it’s not going to do anything that will negatively impact Google’s many ad businesses.
Apple users tend to be people that don't value customization as much as users on other platforms and mostly stick with the defaults or whatever Apple solution is already provided.
That makes it so Safari has a huge advantage over Firefox which is only the default on Linux, which has a tiny Desktop/Mobile install base compared to iOS and MacOS.
I agree that the DOJ should enforce browser choice in iOS much like the EU has but in this scenario it feels besides the point. No matter how better or worse anyone might think Safari is it’s my right to choose which browser I access a site with, and I’d rather not be harassed to change.
Apple forces you to use Safari because it's the least capable mobile browser, which pushes developers to develop iOS apps to use the device APIs that other browsers allow but Safari won't implement - this drives people to the 30% cash grab Apple gets from their app store, instead of using web applications that are possible on other browsers on other platforms. It's awful what Apple is doing with forcing Safari on iOS. To make it worse, there are plenty of Apple-only proprietary things about Safari that make buying their hardware a necessity to debug problems that only appear on Safari. Web developers hate Safari, it's now known as "the new IE" because it's so bad.
Like I said, I agree with you on all that. I develop mobile web sites, I’m very familiar with all this. I still choose to use Safari on my Mac, it should be my choice to make.
> still forces Safari to be used on iOS no matter what browser you think you have inst
What's the difference whether Chrome is using WebKit or Blink from the perspective of most users? How would they notice that and why would they care?
I find Safari to be a fantastic product overall both on desktop and mobile but I have stuck to Chrome to keep my options open in future in case I want to use non-Apple hardware