Comment by cosmic_cheese
6 days ago
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.