First let us install other browser engines on iOS, and then we can talk.
Safari has the most obscene monopoly of any browser ever. IE 6 came pre-installed on windows machines, but you could always install Mosaic or such.
Google Chromebooks come with Chrome as the only default browser, but you can still run Firefox on Chromebooks just fine (even in two different ways, the supported android app version, and the semi-supported linux terminal + launching firefox that way).
Heck, iOS's monopolistic behavior is so bad that multiple regions (the EU + Japan) have already ruled against their behavior, though in reality Apple has complied in a way that makes it impossible to actually make a second browser engine for iOS still (going against the spirit of the law, but the courts haven't caught up to them yet).
Safari is also an awful browser in that it requires someone to buy an expensive machine to see if their site works on it.
I can run a windows trial copy in a VM to see if my site works in IE, I can run Chrome or Firefox on linux to verify if my site works in them. I can install a free android emulator on any common OS to see that my site renders right in those.
But Apple doesn't give me a legal way to freely run an iOS simulator nor even a macOS VM on my linux machine, I have to pay money, to buy their hardware to see if my site will work on Safari.
And even worse, Safari is the browser with the largest number of rendering bugs and quirks currently, while also having a huge number of users (since iOS users can't install another browser), so any web developers are basically forced to shell out for apple hardware.
iOS does not allow third party browser engines. Every browser you download from the iOS App Store is using 'Safari Lite' under the hood. It's ostensibly for security, but it's more about control.
I guess that might have something to do with the fact that Chrome is vastly more popular than Safari, and also available on many more operating systems.
No, it's definitely about control. Allowing an arbitrary browser means allowing access to platform stuff from portable (gasp!) APIs. And Apple doesn't want that. They want an iOS app to be the primary face of everything important, and the other stuff to be an expensive port.
And the problem isn't abstract. Safari lacks a ton of very useful API implementations. Like, try programming a QMK keyboard on an iPhone: it's literally the only platform in the whole world unable to run the Via web app.
Android’s global marketshare is 70% of mobile so you would have to declare a monopoly as “things I can run on an iPhone” as your position for that to work
There is plenty of competition and choice to iOS, you just won’t find that on Apple hardware for reasons that have held for three decades
Why would I use the global market share to determine if someone has a monopoly, though? It seems like a flawed way to determine how much choice consumers have.
For example, there's a monopoly on garbage service where I live, but he company with the monopoly has basically 0% of the world market.
How do you defend a company with 30% marketshare being a monopoly but the other company with 70% market share isn't? I can see the duopoly argument, but no idea how apple could be a monopoly by itself
> How do you defend a company with 30% marketshare being a monopoly but the other company with 70% market share isn't?
One allows you to install different browsers, the other does not.
Being a monopoly isn't illegal (in the US). It's what they do that matters.
Now, that doesn't mean Apple is a monopoly with iOS, because the Sherman act doens't dictate it only looks at US only markets. It look at what makes sense in the context. Of course, a court could decide that regardless of what the numbers are internationall, what matters in this case is just the US market.
Trying to predict that is useless at the moment though because the US courts are all over the place.
Being a monopoly isn't illegal. So many discussions gloss over this fact, and people get at each other's throat over hypothetical abuses and ad-hominem scenarios.
Abusing a monopoly is illegal. Alphabet and Apple are both unquestionably monopoly businesses, and make incredible year-over-year revenue through market-damaging services like AdSense and the App Store. If they are allowed to continue, then other Fortune 500 businesses will copy their decisions, thereby destroying genuine market value that they provide in exchange for safer, more exploitative revenue streams.
In the case of AdSense and Apple's App Store both, I think that any fair FTC investigation would conclude they are shakedown services that harm the greater economy.
I'm not defending anybody. I'm just saying, if I live in a market where one company has 99% of the market, somebody coming in and saying "There's not a monopoly. They only have 30% of the global market! " isn't going to make me feel any better, because I don't live everywhere in the world. I live where I live, and that company has 99% of the market there.
I just don't think the 30% of the global market number is relevant to anything in terms of arguing if somebody has a monopoly. Are there even any countries who use a definition of "monopoly" that uses global marketshare to determine if there's a monopoly? Surely those definitions all look at marketshare within some specific region?
There are entire countries where one company has 93%+ marketshare. Yes, maybe people can go to another country where the marketshare is different, but do we all seriously think that the global marketshare not resembling a monopoly definitely means that there's no one market where a monopoly exists?
Because Apple controls the only browser engine that runs on iOS and iPadOS. There are no alternatives. Chrome, Firefox and other browsers are just the browser chrome on top of the Safari/WebKit engine. Apple will not allow anything else.
Fun fact, the Google Chrome team was very aware of “browser chrome” as a term when they named their browser. They make that clear in the introductory comic.
I'm getting some serious "Microsoft has to protect Internet Explorer from evil competitors like Netscape" vibes from this comment.
Safari simply sucks. If WebKit was any good, then Apple wouldn't have to worry about allowing third-party engines onto iOS. The situation on Mac tells us everything we need to know.
>IMHO, that also should be addressed from the legal perspective very strongly
Then do that FIRST (or at the same time). Don't give us, yet AGAIN, the tired bs song and dance about how you'll make things worse first and then totally someday address the other part properly, and oops what a surprise that turns out to be too hard nevermind.
>But forcing Safari for every Apple owner is certainly not the solution.
Objectively it is a solution though. Because it's been done, and it's been more effective than nothing, while meanwhile nothing has happened from a legal or political angles. If a better solution can be done down the road great, but a hack dealing with a problem non-optimally can absolutely be better then just having the problem completely unaddressed. And count me skeptical that any government is going to have the will or capability to actually address what a lot of us already hate about not just the Chrome monopoly but that entire approach (I don't in fact want my web browser to be a full lowest common denominator operating system with low level hardware access thanks). I dislike much of what Apple does now but I'm glad their selfish interests have happened not to align that way either. Until monopoly lock-in gets better addressed, one of the main ways to push back is via another monopoly lock-in that has different incentives.
At the time the roles were reversed. The spin was "use Chrome to break the IE browser monopoly." And Chrome was a better browser, and much faster. It worked.
If it's browser monopolies you're worried about, Apple beginning to allow other engines on iOS is going to instantly cement Chrome as the only browser in the game.
Apple's Safari enforcement is the only reason Chrome hasn't completely taken over.
I use that to test our website at work in Safari, though without a GPU (there is no virto-gpu driver for macOS and my PC's GPU doesn't support vGPU) the performance isn't great.
At least on iOS, if I am not mistaken, you can only run the Safari Engine. Even if you run Firefox or Chrome, it is running Safari under the hood. That is what I understand. Please, correctme if I am wrong.
Chrome is the new internet explorer. Lots of people coming up with all sorts of arguments why they have to use it and can't switch. Internet Explorer used to be like that. MS really abused users and they still wouldn't switch. It's a form of Stockholm syndrome.
The history of Chrome is that it first displaced Firefox as a reasonable alternative (while funding that via a nice ad deal). And then they just steam rolled Internet Explorer to the point where MS gave up and rebuilt their browser around Chromium. It was that good. Fifteen years ago.
But these days you have to put up with a lot of crap from Google. Ad blocking works better on other browsers. Even some Chromium browsers (like Brave). But the thing with Chromium is that all Chromium derived browsers outsource most of the browser internals to Google. Google decides what features to implement, what PRs to merge, what features not to implement, etc. They set the standards. Safari, Firefox, and hopefully soon Ladybird are the only alternative browser engines keeping them somewhat honest on that front.
I use safari regularly and it has not really kept up. All kinds of stuff that is partly broken for rendering. Especially on heavily dynamic sites. Chrome at least works for any web standard which IE did not.
Where do you run in to this? I switched from Chrome to Safari about 5 years ago and can count the number of websites I’ve had issues with on one hand, I think.
Yup, just like during the bad old days of Internet Explorer's dominance. I remember encountering websites that only worked on the Windows version of Internet Explorer as late as 2006. We had a nice time in the late 2000s and early 2010s when web developers coded against standards instead of against the market-leading web browser. There was competition between Firefox, Opera, Safari, and a revitalized Internet Explorer. I don't remember IE 7 and later being that bad, though by then I had switched to Firefox on Linux/Windows and Safari on Macs.
Then came an upstart web browser from Google named Chrome....and now we're back to the bad old days of web developers coding to the dominant web browser again.
Google has always aggressively promoted Chrome, too. The promotion is just invisible to most people since most people run Chrome.
If you visit a Google property using a Gecko or WebKit-based browser you'll get hit with banners nudging you to switch to Chrome and Google's iOS apps ignore the long-available default browser setting when linked are tapped, prompting you to choose between your default browser and Chrome even if you don't have Chrome installed.
And then there's the whole thing with how Chrome for Android conveniently never gained the ability to run even pared-back MV3 blocker extensions. Massive conflict of interest there.
I wish Google were called out for this stuff way more, but more often than not they're given a free pass.
> Nope. I watch a lotta youtube on a PC, FF runs vids like crap because Google changes something, and FF struggls to play well unlike Chrome or Edge.
I generally use Safari on my Apple devices (and YT works) and Firefox on any Linux machines. If something does not work on Safari I try Firefox on my Mac. In the past I've also sometimes used Chrome when no other option works.
So one option could be to use Firefox as a 'general use' browser, and switch to something else on an as-needed basis.
A bit of a hassle, but it may be the best compromise currently.
Interesting, YouTube runs fairly well on my system with Firefox. I do get the "Experiencing interruptions? Find out why" pop-up often. It's funny though, the only interruption I actually experience is the pop-up. If the pop-up went away, so would all interruptions.
4k? That might have something to do with it. Though given a big enough box that too shouldn't be an issue. But I'm using a decade+ old thinkpad driving a fairly high res dell and it works well enough.
"Nope. I watch a lotta youtube on a PC, FF runs vids like crap because Google changes something, and FF struggls to play well unlike Chrome or Edge."
You must have a hardware problem, as I'm playing 4K videos on a 1st-gen Ryzen and GTX 1080 using Firefox and I've never had a single issue since I got the machine, around the 4th week the processor was available to purchase.
I've used FF for the past 20 years (Linux and Windows). I have seen thousands of youtube videos in that time without a glitch. So have many hundreds of other FF users.
If FF is not working on youtube for, it's not working for you and you alone.
Firefox should just have a 'Chrome' mode where it just shamelessly looks exactly like Chrome. Apart from Chrome removing the flag to hide the close buttons on tabs, I think the UI is damn near perfect.
Ive used Firefox as my daily driver for around 12 years. I switched to Chrome a couple weeks ago to see what the fuss is about and I am shocked how glitchy it is in comparison. Firefox is a much more stable experience.
How many people in this thread would dump their Android for an iPhone if they:
- allowed real 3rd party browser engines
- let you uninstall all the apple bloatware apps
Due to App Store $99 per year compared to PlayStore one-time $25 and iPhone being unaffordable for most people in my country, there's too many niche and/or local apps I'm using in Android where they won't port to iOS.
If you work at Apple/Safari then my free suggestion is to have a "Chrome mode" where all the buttons and doohickeys that Chrome has are all in the same location for Safari. If I'm far to used to where the buttons are for things like "reload" so trying to switch to Safari is enough friction to make me stay with Chrome.
Maybe have an Edge mode as well to convince the Edge users to come over.
I notice no difference using AdGuard (in basic mode, with only the content blocking rules and no page read access) in Safari or uBOL in basic mode on Chrome vs. using UBO on Firefox. And in uBOL’s case you can always increase the filtering level if you’re willing to grant the extension read access to pages to basically match uBO. You can even hide/delete elements or add your own custom rules.
I feel like most people who make MV3 complaints didn’t bother actually trying it, they just repeat the default anti-MV3 talking points.
Google serves ads and videos from the same servers. Adblock can't use DNS to drop the ads without dropping videos too. Ublock in firefox sees the actual content in my browser and can distinguish youtube videos from ads.
Google doesnt turn on MV3 and have it break ads day one that would highlight a negative change for users. Google wants people to move to MV3 and notice no difference and then they can start chipping away later.
I’ve been using Safari since 2003. I was previously using Konqueror, so the transition was pretty easy. It’s always been fast and reliable and Mac-like.
It’s nice to have a browser that is a browser and not something that’s attempting to be another operating system.
If Safari worked in all major OSs like Chrome, Brave and Firefox, I could consider that. I own a Mac but didn't switch to Safari because I use multiple OSs for my work.
I suspect that was a legacy from when they planned for iOS not supporting any third-party apps. If they want to force devs to target mobile Safari, the least they can do was to provide the desktop version on Windows.
Once apps dominate (which requires devs to have a Mac anyway to compile and debug) and turns out nobody use the Windows port, it's just a money sink.
The UX of Safari is just... not as good as chrome. On my phone, on my desktop, I just feel too much friction in the daily cycle of opening a thousand tabs.
The UX of Pages and Keynote are, IMO, far superior to Word/Powerpoint and Google Docs/Slides, but they lag adoption from... ecosystem inertia? I mention this as evidence of my objectivity in reflecting on UX.
No thanks. We have seen multiple times now how it all starts with "good" stuff, then it gets more and more and more locked-down... to the point where you cannot even install apps on your own device, from wherever you want to.
No thanks.. I'd rather switch to Firefox, or even any other shitty browser, but not the one from any other gatekeeping monopoly.
For everything else, I use some chromium derivative that can traverse pirate streaming sites and ChatGPT without disintegrating under their weird JS workloads.
They likely discontinued because there was barely any interest. Likely the only reason Safari has any use is that it's the default on MacOS and monopolized on i*OS.
I quite liked the old Safari for Windows. It felt like bringing over a slice of the Apple ecosystem to the common Windows XP or Vista desktop. You could run Safari and iTunes and have decent parity with (then) Mac OS X for the most common use cases.
Apple forgot to mention Safari not being open source but rather tied to a proprietary platform not to mention Safari on mobile kept in a short leash to protect the AppStore.
There's always Edge (increasingly favored by IT here). Our machines used to ship and favor Chrome, but Edge has been the new IT-gods blessed browser ever since we bumped to Windows 11. Apple seems to be the only tech-titan that is not interested in extending their browser onto other platforms. So be it.
> I would consider Safari, if Apple open sourced it and it ran on Linux.
Yes, absolutely. But then they wouldn't be able to lock the flock in the barn, which is so contrary to Apple's DNA that you can't event talk about it in a 1 mile radius of 1, Infinite loop.
Here are some reasons I don't use Safari in place of Chrome for certain things:
- it doesn't like to serialize the state of tabs. Chrome is pretty good at somehow snapshotting the entire state of tabs to the point where it can be reconstructed after relaunch, even offline.
- webpage loading is sort of janky. Chrome will show the webpage streaming in live, but Safari will simply freeze in place until it's done. Maybe this is due to an Apple philosophy decision, but I don't prefer it.
- similarly to how Safari doesn't seem to serialize tab states, navigating forward or back usually needs to load the page from scratch, including resubmitting forms or whatever.
- speaking of forward and back navigation, I'm kinda annoyed that each time I use the trackpad to navigate history, I have to wait for the swipe animation to finish before I can interact with the webpage. I try to always use cmd+brackets instead now, because it's much faster.
- IIRC, it seems the newer macOS 27 betas caused Safari to develop an issue where after it's been open for long enough, certain types of videos will stop being able to play at all until the browser is quit and restarted. kind of annoying, combined with the lack of tab snapshotting, because I have to manually visit each tab to load it on each launch.
I still daily drive Safari and use it as my main browser. But I keep an instance of Chrome open for tabs that I never really close. And then I have an instance of Orion for spreadsheets. (I use spreadsheets to keep track of medication usage, sleep times and finances)
Yeah. I'm typing this on my safari which shows both vertical tabs and the horizontal tabs - looks so weird. And I always end up clicking a tab and then typing away, and Safari starts switching me to tabs starting with whatever letter I type - very annoying.
I recently downgraded one of my macs so i could use some 32 bit audio peripherals. You can’t update safari separately from the os i found out, and most websites now just won’t render with that os and if they do, barely work. I installed firefox and that was fine.
OTH, i use safari on my other mac, it’s fine most of the time, but i also have have chrome installed as some websites are so buggy otherwise, linkedin is a particular culprit, it barely works on chrome too.
> You can’t update safari separately from the os i found out
I was on Sequoia all throughout Tahoe and still updated Safari to the 26.x versions. There might be a limit to how far back they let you do that, though.
Safari is faster, uses less RAM and is more power-efficient. But people love leaving 2000 tabs open, and I guess Chrome's UX is better for that. I don't think people realize that you can go back to a website after you've visited. It's not strictly necessary to leave the tab open for the rest of your life.
Can you give me a concrete example? I close windows and tabs with ruthless abandon.
Unless you have a web app which is entirely local and doesn't save its state to local storage, what could you possibly be doing that requires a tab to remain in residence?
Safari's performance (both speed and power use) keep me on it vs. Chrome, but I do wish we could have some of the more power-user-friendly features. Chrome's omnibar history and bookmark suggestion algorithm is unparalleled, and I miss it.
On iPhone, for the longest time, every browser has been forced to be Safari's engine underneath. Firefox, Chrome, etc are all forced to run Safari underneath.
This has caused many issues because Apple controls what can run in a web browser and that web browser (safari) is in no way up to date, or worse, selectively implements standards. I'm writing this in the hopes that it will publicly improve.
Since Safari is forced at an OS level on all Apple's iOS and iPadOS users, that's a place to start when it comes to choice.
On MacOS, Safari is actually pretty interesting - it can be much more efficient with battery usage than other browsers and unsurprisingly well integrated. It's nice to use on MacOS because there is choice.
I understand there maybe concerns about security, but also will come out is likely that safari enjoys some OS level integrations that other browsers probably won't be welcome to, similar to the Internet Explorer/Edge days.
The switch to safari is likely tied to something else, given Apple's growing advertising revenue. Meaning, move away from one advertisement engine (Chrome), and move to another (Safari).
Given the state of affairs, anything and anyone pulling people away from Chrome is a good as long as they not more invasive than Chrome. 1 big bad actor is worse than multiple smaller bad actors imo.
First stop blocking iOS pwas from simply installing to the home screen, and don't clear out data in 7 days. Then we'll talk about your browser being better.
Nearly every browser on the market and most desktop application are just Chrome in a ski mask. Safari and Firefox are the tiny holdouts that prevent web technology from being 100% controlled by Google.
This is a bit of a chicken and egg, but the number of iOS users who have saved a web app or PWA to their home screen is probably in the single-digits worldwide. Half-joking.
People are just not aware that this is a thing, and when they learn it's a thing, they don't want to do it.
List of reasons to ditch chrome is very, very, very long, first among which it is becoming the prime enshitification tool for the internet.
But Safari is not the solution until they make it fully (FULLY) open-source, because all Apple trying to do is replace the king of enshitification hill by their own.
First let us install other browser engines on iOS, and then we can talk.
Safari has the most obscene monopoly of any browser ever. IE 6 came pre-installed on windows machines, but you could always install Mosaic or such.
Google Chromebooks come with Chrome as the only default browser, but you can still run Firefox on Chromebooks just fine (even in two different ways, the supported android app version, and the semi-supported linux terminal + launching firefox that way).
Heck, iOS's monopolistic behavior is so bad that multiple regions (the EU + Japan) have already ruled against their behavior, though in reality Apple has complied in a way that makes it impossible to actually make a second browser engine for iOS still (going against the spirit of the law, but the courts haven't caught up to them yet).
Safari is also an awful browser in that it requires someone to buy an expensive machine to see if their site works on it.
I can run a windows trial copy in a VM to see if my site works in IE, I can run Chrome or Firefox on linux to verify if my site works in them. I can install a free android emulator on any common OS to see that my site renders right in those.
But Apple doesn't give me a legal way to freely run an iOS simulator nor even a macOS VM on my linux machine, I have to pay money, to buy their hardware to see if my site will work on Safari.
And even worse, Safari is the browser with the largest number of rendering bugs and quirks currently, while also having a huge number of users (since iOS users can't install another browser), so any web developers are basically forced to shell out for apple hardware.
Can you be more specific on how iOS blocks other browsers? You mean for embedded browser engine in apps?
iOS does not allow third party browser engines. Every browser you download from the iOS App Store is using 'Safari Lite' under the hood. It's ostensibly for security, but it's more about control.
I would bet the security claim holds up, I have definitely seem more RCE mentioned from Chrome than from Safari.
I would bet Google's track record would easily allow them to defend this in court. More an issue with Google though.
I guess that might have something to do with the fact that Chrome is vastly more popular than Safari, and also available on many more operating systems.
No, it's definitely about control. Allowing an arbitrary browser means allowing access to platform stuff from portable (gasp!) APIs. And Apple doesn't want that. They want an iOS app to be the primary face of everything important, and the other stuff to be an expensive port.
And the problem isn't abstract. Safari lacks a ton of very useful API implementations. Like, try programming a QMK keyboard on an iPhone: it's literally the only platform in the whole world unable to run the Via web app.
"Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit JavaScript." https://open-web-advocacy.org/blog/tim-berners-lee-on-apples...
Forgive my ignorance.
How is the iOS engine requirement considered a monopoly?
iOS is a de-facto monopoly in the first place.
Ridiculous take
Android’s global marketshare is 70% of mobile so you would have to declare a monopoly as “things I can run on an iPhone” as your position for that to work
There is plenty of competition and choice to iOS, you just won’t find that on Apple hardware for reasons that have held for three decades
Why would I use the global market share to determine if someone has a monopoly, though? It seems like a flawed way to determine how much choice consumers have.
For example, there's a monopoly on garbage service where I live, but he company with the monopoly has basically 0% of the world market.
How do you defend a company with 30% marketshare being a monopoly but the other company with 70% market share isn't? I can see the duopoly argument, but no idea how apple could be a monopoly by itself
> How do you defend a company with 30% marketshare being a monopoly but the other company with 70% market share isn't?
One allows you to install different browsers, the other does not.
Being a monopoly isn't illegal (in the US). It's what they do that matters.
Now, that doesn't mean Apple is a monopoly with iOS, because the Sherman act doens't dictate it only looks at US only markets. It look at what makes sense in the context. Of course, a court could decide that regardless of what the numbers are internationall, what matters in this case is just the US market.
Trying to predict that is useless at the moment though because the US courts are all over the place.
Being a monopoly isn't illegal. So many discussions gloss over this fact, and people get at each other's throat over hypothetical abuses and ad-hominem scenarios.
Abusing a monopoly is illegal. Alphabet and Apple are both unquestionably monopoly businesses, and make incredible year-over-year revenue through market-damaging services like AdSense and the App Store. If they are allowed to continue, then other Fortune 500 businesses will copy their decisions, thereby destroying genuine market value that they provide in exchange for safer, more exploitative revenue streams.
In the case of AdSense and Apple's App Store both, I think that any fair FTC investigation would conclude they are shakedown services that harm the greater economy.
When nothing is stopping you from using an alternative i just don't see it
You could have said the same thing about Windows during it's antitrust case.
Fat lot of good that logic would do Microsoft when they were deliberately gimping competitors.
I'm not defending anybody. I'm just saying, if I live in a market where one company has 99% of the market, somebody coming in and saying "There's not a monopoly. They only have 30% of the global market! " isn't going to make me feel any better, because I don't live everywhere in the world. I live where I live, and that company has 99% of the market there.
I just don't think the 30% of the global market number is relevant to anything in terms of arguing if somebody has a monopoly. Are there even any countries who use a definition of "monopoly" that uses global marketshare to determine if there's a monopoly? Surely those definitions all look at marketshare within some specific region?
that argument doesn't relate to this discussion at all, though. you aren't limited to only buying Apple devices in your neighborhood, are you?
There are entire countries where one company has 93%+ marketshare. Yes, maybe people can go to another country where the marketshare is different, but do we all seriously think that the global marketshare not resembling a monopoly definitely means that there's no one market where a monopoly exists?
Did you read the post you replied to?
Are you just being pedantic about the definition of monopoly or did you fail to understand the problem as it was explained.
Do you use ios? If so do you like using broken websites? Do you have no desire for things to function as intended?
Id imagine its very annoying as a developer to have your things broken for no reason other than pure corporate greed.
If you do use ios then you probably enjoy paying more for an inferior product so ig this is more of a feature than a bug.
> so you would have to declare a monopoly as “things I can run on an iPhone” as your position for that to work
Yes, that's pretty much it. A similar concern applies to Google and Android.
But you can install other OSes such as Graphene on Android phones, I dont think you can do that on iPhones can you?
https://grapheneos.org/
That's not how monopolies work, though.
As much as I am pro-android, this is a dumb take.
Numbers say otherwise.
Because Apple controls the only browser engine that runs on iOS and iPadOS. There are no alternatives. Chrome, Firefox and other browsers are just the browser chrome on top of the Safari/WebKit engine. Apple will not allow anything else.
> browser chrome
Bad choice of term!
Fun fact, the Google Chrome team was very aware of “browser chrome” as a term when they named their browser. They make that clear in the introductory comic.
https://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/big_24.html
iOS and iPadOS aren't the most dominant OSes, so therefore this can't be a monopoly.
Agree that it should be easier to test on safari from other platforms.
But no way is it a good idea to let other browser engines onto the OS.
I can’t make it website owners problem that their site doesn’t work on non-Google browser. Apple can.
Safari sucks but it’s the only thing stopping Chrome from taking over everything.
Im happy if Google never has that amount of control. We don’t know how bad it could have been, we have enough privacy issues already.
I'm getting some serious "Microsoft has to protect Internet Explorer from evil competitors like Netscape" vibes from this comment.
Safari simply sucks. If WebKit was any good, then Apple wouldn't have to worry about allowing third-party engines onto iOS. The situation on Mac tells us everything we need to know.
IMHO, that also should be addressed from the legal perspective very strongly. But forcing Safari for every Apple owner is certainly not the solution.
>IMHO, that also should be addressed from the legal perspective very strongly
Then do that FIRST (or at the same time). Don't give us, yet AGAIN, the tired bs song and dance about how you'll make things worse first and then totally someday address the other part properly, and oops what a surprise that turns out to be too hard nevermind.
>But forcing Safari for every Apple owner is certainly not the solution.
Objectively it is a solution though. Because it's been done, and it's been more effective than nothing, while meanwhile nothing has happened from a legal or political angles. If a better solution can be done down the road great, but a hack dealing with a problem non-optimally can absolutely be better then just having the problem completely unaddressed. And count me skeptical that any government is going to have the will or capability to actually address what a lot of us already hate about not just the Chrome monopoly but that entire approach (I don't in fact want my web browser to be a full lowest common denominator operating system with low level hardware access thanks). I dislike much of what Apple does now but I'm glad their selfish interests have happened not to align that way either. Until monopoly lock-in gets better addressed, one of the main ways to push back is via another monopoly lock-in that has different incentives.
if someone told me you have to use ie6 so chrome doesn't take over every browser, then I'll just use chrome
At the time the roles were reversed. The spin was "use Chrome to break the IE browser monopoly." And Chrome was a better browser, and much faster. It worked.
>Safari is also an awful browser in that it requires someone to buy an expensive machine to see if their site works on it.
I remember a long time ago they used to make a Windows version of Safari you could download and install, but at some point they stopped.
For testing one could use any other webkit browser. Most of them have similar rendering quirks to Safari.
Anecdotally that's not enough. I've deal with multiple quirks that only happen in Safari but not in linux-based webkit browsers
If it's browser monopolies you're worried about, Apple beginning to allow other engines on iOS is going to instantly cement Chrome as the only browser in the game.
Apple's Safari enforcement is the only reason Chrome hasn't completely taken over.
"The only just monopoly is my monopoly"
As I like to say: "Safari is the new IE."
Also, you /can/ run macOS in a VM on Linux: https://github.com/Coopydood/ultimate-macOS-kvm
I use that to test our website at work in Safari, though without a GPU (there is no virto-gpu driver for macOS and my PC's GPU doesn't support vGPU) the performance isn't great.
I only use Apple hardware. I’ve never used safari only Firefox or brave. I don’t understand why you are saying it is a monopoly.
On macOS it isn't an issue. But on iPhone all the browsers are just different user interfaces for Safari's rendering engine
At least in US, Firefox on iPhone is basically a reskin of the Safari engine.
At least on iOS, if I am not mistaken, you can only run the Safari Engine. Even if you run Firefox or Chrome, it is running Safari under the hood. That is what I understand. Please, correctme if I am wrong.
> First let us install other browser engines on iOS, and then we can talk
Just checked in the App Store, I can install Firefox, Opera, Brave, and many many other browsers on my iPhone.
Those are not the same underpinnings as their desktop/Android brethren. All of these iOS apps are still using WebKit.
Can you use some of the cloud providers that now allow for a macOS instance? I know I know, but maybe better than nothing?
No because apple mandate 24h leasing minimum time.
Chrome is the new internet explorer. Lots of people coming up with all sorts of arguments why they have to use it and can't switch. Internet Explorer used to be like that. MS really abused users and they still wouldn't switch. It's a form of Stockholm syndrome.
The history of Chrome is that it first displaced Firefox as a reasonable alternative (while funding that via a nice ad deal). And then they just steam rolled Internet Explorer to the point where MS gave up and rebuilt their browser around Chromium. It was that good. Fifteen years ago.
But these days you have to put up with a lot of crap from Google. Ad blocking works better on other browsers. Even some Chromium browsers (like Brave). But the thing with Chromium is that all Chromium derived browsers outsource most of the browser internals to Google. Google decides what features to implement, what PRs to merge, what features not to implement, etc. They set the standards. Safari, Firefox, and hopefully soon Ladybird are the only alternative browser engines keeping them somewhat honest on that front.
I use safari regularly and it has not really kept up. All kinds of stuff that is partly broken for rendering. Especially on heavily dynamic sites. Chrome at least works for any web standard which IE did not.
Where do you run in to this? I switched from Chrome to Safari about 5 years ago and can count the number of websites I’ve had issues with on one hand, I think.
Strava is an example of a website that's dog slow on Safari. Pages take 10+ seconds before they start rendering.
Mobile Reddit is awful on Safari, but it speaks more about Reddit developers than it speaks about Safari.
It’s more like devs only test on chrome.
Yes. These days if a site is broken in Safari there's a ~70% chance it's broken or degraded in Firefox too.
Yup, just like during the bad old days of Internet Explorer's dominance. I remember encountering websites that only worked on the Windows version of Internet Explorer as late as 2006. We had a nice time in the late 2000s and early 2010s when web developers coded against standards instead of against the market-leading web browser. There was competition between Firefox, Opera, Safari, and a revitalized Internet Explorer. I don't remember IE 7 and later being that bad, though by then I had switched to Firefox on Linux/Windows and Safari on Macs.
Then came an upstart web browser from Google named Chrome....and now we're back to the bad old days of web developers coding to the dominant web browser again.
Google has always aggressively promoted Chrome, too. The promotion is just invisible to most people since most people run Chrome.
If you visit a Google property using a Gecko or WebKit-based browser you'll get hit with banners nudging you to switch to Chrome and Google's iOS apps ignore the long-available default browser setting when linked are tapped, prompting you to choose between your default browser and Chrome even if you don't have Chrome installed.
And then there's the whole thing with how Chrome for Android conveniently never gained the ability to run even pared-back MV3 blocker extensions. Massive conflict of interest there.
I wish Google were called out for this stuff way more, but more often than not they're given a free pass.
You should ditch Chrome. And switch to FireFox.
Nope.
> Nope
Really well argued, congrats.
I've been very happy with FireFox.
Agreed!
Nope. I watch a lotta youtube on a PC, FF runs vids like crap because Google changes something, and FF struggls to play well unlike Chrome or Edge.
That's the only reason I am not switching to FF 100%. I do use it though but not as a main driver.
I've had zero problems with Youtube on FF for I don't remember how many years. I'm on Mac though.
> Nope. I watch a lotta youtube on a PC, FF runs vids like crap because Google changes something, and FF struggls to play well unlike Chrome or Edge.
I generally use Safari on my Apple devices (and YT works) and Firefox on any Linux machines. If something does not work on Safari I try Firefox on my Mac. In the past I've also sometimes used Chrome when no other option works.
So one option could be to use Firefox as a 'general use' browser, and switch to something else on an as-needed basis.
A bit of a hassle, but it may be the best compromise currently.
Interesting, YouTube runs fairly well on my system with Firefox. I do get the "Experiencing interruptions? Find out why" pop-up often. It's funny though, the only interruption I actually experience is the pop-up. If the pop-up went away, so would all interruptions.
Never had a problem with that.
Many replies about Firefox having no problems on Youtube but I will confirm your complaint that it's an ongoing issue for some of us.
I keep retrying Firefox over multiple years and it's still not quite equal to Chrome for Youtube 4k playback ...
2021: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28783904
2024: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42176450
2026 still talks about the problem: https://go.tabbit.ai/blog/firefox-youtube-4k-stuttering
And a recent Youtube comment (2026-September) notices that Firefox doesn't run as well as Chrome on his modern high-end laptop with 64GB RAM: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIE_PkuFeng&lc=UgxfGeBL6sopr...
4k? That might have something to do with it. Though given a big enough box that too shouldn't be an issue. But I'm using a decade+ old thinkpad driving a fairly high res dell and it works well enough.
"Nope. I watch a lotta youtube on a PC, FF runs vids like crap because Google changes something, and FF struggls to play well unlike Chrome or Edge."
You must have a hardware problem, as I'm playing 4K videos on a 1st-gen Ryzen and GTX 1080 using Firefox and I've never had a single issue since I got the machine, around the 4th week the processor was available to purchase.
I've used FF for the past 20 years (Linux and Windows). I have seen thousands of youtube videos in that time without a glitch. So have many hundreds of other FF users.
If FF is not working on youtube for, it's not working for you and you alone.
They do that on purpose. To keep you using Chrome.
Some of the related posts:
https://www.zdnet.com/article/youtube-is-slowing-video-loads...
I just use Brave for YT. Adblock built in!
Firefox should just have a 'Chrome' mode where it just shamelessly looks exactly like Chrome. Apart from Chrome removing the flag to hide the close buttons on tabs, I think the UI is damn near perfect.
we're getting closer with the nova redesign
No thanks.
I am perfectly happy with Chrome.
Ive used Firefox as my daily driver for around 12 years. I switched to Chrome a couple weeks ago to see what the fuss is about and I am shocked how glitchy it is in comparison. Firefox is a much more stable experience.
How many people in this thread would dump their Android for an iPhone if they: - allowed real 3rd party browser engines - let you uninstall all the apple bloatware apps
If you added "Allowing manual sideloading of apps" to that list I would jump to an iPhone in a heartbeat
yes, having an ADB type of CLI tool is a must.
Ditto
There's TrollStore, but that's a hack not an official way.
https://ios.cfw.guide/installing-trollstore/
Not me, because Apple still disallows direct competition with their other 'apps/features' like Compass.
I’ll dump my iPhone for an Android as soon as:
- iMessage works so I can participate in the family group chat
RCS exists
Due to App Store $99 per year compared to PlayStore one-time $25 and iPhone being unaffordable for most people in my country, there's too many niche and/or local apps I'm using in Android where they won't port to iOS.
If you work at Apple/Safari then my free suggestion is to have a "Chrome mode" where all the buttons and doohickeys that Chrome has are all in the same location for Safari. If I'm far to used to where the buttons are for things like "reload" so trying to switch to Safari is enough friction to make me stay with Chrome.
Maybe have an Edge mode as well to convince the Edge users to come over.
Safari has the same manifest v3 limitations that preclude the full-blooded ublock origin you get with Firefox.
Why don't they lean into ad blockers and making the web less shitty? Is it because the web staying shitty makes people use apps instead?
I’m sure that is a part of the reason. I hate apps with a passion…
I notice no difference using AdGuard (in basic mode, with only the content blocking rules and no page read access) in Safari or uBOL in basic mode on Chrome vs. using UBO on Firefox. And in uBOL’s case you can always increase the filtering level if you’re willing to grant the extension read access to pages to basically match uBO. You can even hide/delete elements or add your own custom rules.
I feel like most people who make MV3 complaints didn’t bother actually trying it, they just repeat the default anti-MV3 talking points.
I personally notice a lot of difference between AdGuard and UBO.
AdGuard just blocks much less.
Does it block ads in youtube videos?
Yes.
Google serves ads and videos from the same servers. Adblock can't use DNS to drop the ads without dropping videos too. Ublock in firefox sees the actual content in my browser and can distinguish youtube videos from ads.
Google doesnt turn on MV3 and have it break ads day one that would highlight a negative change for users. Google wants people to move to MV3 and notice no difference and then they can start chipping away later.
It's cute that you think they have level of sophistication in their strategy.
I’ve been using Safari since 2003. I was previously using Konqueror, so the transition was pretty easy. It’s always been fast and reliable and Mac-like. It’s nice to have a browser that is a browser and not something that’s attempting to be another operating system.
You deserve the kudos for just mentioning Konqueror and extra +1 for using it.
I liked Konqueror but abandoned in favor of Chrome browsers and variants especially after working on frontend projects.
You deserve the kudos for just mentioning Konqueror and extra +1 for using it.
I liked Konqueror but abandoned in favor of Chrome browsers and variants especially after working on frontend projects and stoped using KDE
If Safari worked in all major OSs like Chrome, Brave and Firefox, I could consider that. I own a Mac but didn't switch to Safari because I use multiple OSs for my work.
It even used to run on Windows...
I suspect that was a legacy from when they planned for iOS not supporting any third-party apps. If they want to force devs to target mobile Safari, the least they can do was to provide the desktop version on Windows.
Once apps dominate (which requires devs to have a Mac anyway to compile and debug) and turns out nobody use the Windows port, it's just a money sink.
The UX of Safari is just... not as good as chrome. On my phone, on my desktop, I just feel too much friction in the daily cycle of opening a thousand tabs.
The UX of Pages and Keynote are, IMO, far superior to Word/Powerpoint and Google Docs/Slides, but they lag adoption from... ecosystem inertia? I mention this as evidence of my objectivity in reflecting on UX.
'Find in page' is in.... 'Share' (on mobile). But Apple has the best UX, so who am I to argue?
Or you can just start typing in the address bar and it will list it below the autofilled list
yeah, for one, you can't put multiple tabs in a stack/accordion group
No thanks. We have seen multiple times now how it all starts with "good" stuff, then it gets more and more and more locked-down... to the point where you cannot even install apps on your own device, from wherever you want to.
No thanks.. I'd rather switch to Firefox, or even any other shitty browser, but not the one from any other gatekeeping monopoly.
I was building an pdf export feature for one of my projects the other day.
And safari still behaves differently than my other browsers.
I usually try to give safari a chance whenever I’m working on Macs. I’m always forced to install chrome for some reason or another.
Until the random compatibility quirks stop I don’t see myself returning to safari.
Safari is the ultimate way to browse HN.
For everything else, I use some chromium derivative that can traverse pirate streaming sites and ChatGPT without disintegrating under their weird JS workloads.
Could they please make Safari for Windows again?
They likely discontinued because there was barely any interest. Likely the only reason Safari has any use is that it's the default on MacOS and monopolized on i*OS.
I quite liked the old Safari for Windows. It felt like bringing over a slice of the Apple ecosystem to the common Windows XP or Vista desktop. You could run Safari and iTunes and have decent parity with (then) Mac OS X for the most common use cases.
I’m not going to use different browsers on different devices. I can’t use Safari on my gaming windows desktop.
Its like when M$ was advertising IE11 on TV back in 2012~13
Apple forgot to mention Safari not being open source but rather tied to a proprietary platform not to mention Safari on mobile kept in a short leash to protect the AppStore.
Needs ublock and I would use it
adguard
There is uBlock Origin lite, works pretty well: https://apps.apple.com/pl/app/ublock-origin-lite/id674534269...
ublock origin lite has a safari extension: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home
it's missing the element zapper and has some other limitations, but it works pretty well for the most part
combined with ublacklist and sponsorblock it's fairly good coverage for safari
could also use wblock for custom filter lists
> it's missing the element zapper
Support for element zapper was added more than 18 months ago in version 2025.3.23.1241.[1]
---
[1] https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/releases/tag/uBOLi...
oh ty, I legitimately didn't know I usually hide extensions icons in safari
Wipr2 is amazing.
I ditched both to favor Firefox many many years ago.
Funnily, it's not a "Switch to Safari" campaign, but a "Stay on Safari" if you look at Apple's material.
No problems Apple. How about Safari and keychain for Linux?
There's always Edge (increasingly favored by IT here). Our machines used to ship and favor Chrome, but Edge has been the new IT-gods blessed browser ever since we bumped to Windows 11. Apple seems to be the only tech-titan that is not interested in extending their browser onto other platforms. So be it.
They stopped that years ago. Safari for windows was a thing.
Reminds me of PC vs Mac campaign
Wipr2 for adblocking in Safari - the best adblocker.
I would consider Safari, if Apple open sourced it and it ran on Linux.
> I would consider Safari, if Apple open sourced it and it ran on Linux.
Yes, absolutely. But then they wouldn't be able to lock the flock in the barn, which is so contrary to Apple's DNA that you can't event talk about it in a 1 mile radius of 1, Infinite loop.
Here are some reasons I don't use Safari in place of Chrome for certain things:
- it doesn't like to serialize the state of tabs. Chrome is pretty good at somehow snapshotting the entire state of tabs to the point where it can be reconstructed after relaunch, even offline.
- webpage loading is sort of janky. Chrome will show the webpage streaming in live, but Safari will simply freeze in place until it's done. Maybe this is due to an Apple philosophy decision, but I don't prefer it.
- similarly to how Safari doesn't seem to serialize tab states, navigating forward or back usually needs to load the page from scratch, including resubmitting forms or whatever.
- speaking of forward and back navigation, I'm kinda annoyed that each time I use the trackpad to navigate history, I have to wait for the swipe animation to finish before I can interact with the webpage. I try to always use cmd+brackets instead now, because it's much faster.
- IIRC, it seems the newer macOS 27 betas caused Safari to develop an issue where after it's been open for long enough, certain types of videos will stop being able to play at all until the browser is quit and restarted. kind of annoying, combined with the lack of tab snapshotting, because I have to manually visit each tab to load it on each launch.
I still daily drive Safari and use it as my main browser. But I keep an instance of Chrome open for tabs that I never really close. And then I have an instance of Orion for spreadsheets. (I use spreadsheets to keep track of medication usage, sleep times and finances)
give me Split Tabs outside of Fullscreen you cowards. That's what is holding me back (and Safari occasionally losing all my tabs when I restart it)
They should increase extension support and improve dev tools! And for UI, they can really take a leaf out of BCNY - Arc browser was good.
I am like one more Microsoft / Chrome update away from switching entire company to Firefox.
The absurdity of every week another AI feature, another way for data to leak to their services, another crash report.
They are exhausting and abusing their positions of power.
> switching entire company to Firefox.
They just announced something which might be relevant to you.
https://www.firefox.com/enterprise/
I would... if it <proper> had vertical tabs
Yeah. I'm typing this on my safari which shows both vertical tabs and the horizontal tabs - looks so weird. And I always end up clicking a tab and then typing away, and Safari starts switching me to tabs starting with whatever letter I type - very annoying.
This is the only thing that matters, why does nobody get it right?
I recently downgraded one of my macs so i could use some 32 bit audio peripherals. You can’t update safari separately from the os i found out, and most websites now just won’t render with that os and if they do, barely work. I installed firefox and that was fine.
OTH, i use safari on my other mac, it’s fine most of the time, but i also have have chrome installed as some websites are so buggy otherwise, linkedin is a particular culprit, it barely works on chrome too.
> You can’t update safari separately from the os i found out
I was on Sequoia all throughout Tahoe and still updated Safari to the 26.x versions. There might be a limit to how far back they let you do that, though.
It was to Mojave, and downgrading was a whole task in itself, apple really did not want me to do it.
Adding WebSerial even if it's locked in a Developer tools menu would make Safari a more serious tool for me.
Safari is faster, uses less RAM and is more power-efficient. But people love leaving 2000 tabs open, and I guess Chrome's UX is better for that. I don't think people realize that you can go back to a website after you've visited. It's not strictly necessary to leave the tab open for the rest of your life.
> I don't think people realize that you can go back to a website after you've visited.
This is about as wrong as you can possibly get.
This would be true in a stateless world (assuming you can remember the site you want to visit).
Which the web hasn't been since a very long time.
Can you give me a concrete example? I close windows and tabs with ruthless abandon.
Unless you have a web app which is entirely local and doesn't save its state to local storage, what could you possibly be doing that requires a tab to remain in residence?
> Safari is faster, uses less RAM and is more power-efficient.
I am really curious about data proving these.
I am not aware of any benchmarks proving or disproving.
Put Safari on my Android and Linux devices and I'll consider it
Gives off real "I'm a Mac, he's a PC" campaign vibes from 20 years ago.
Also... not sure all of those ads would still hold up today.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYErwT-zRRI
Safari's performance (both speed and power use) keep me on it vs. Chrome, but I do wish we could have some of the more power-user-friendly features. Chrome's omnibar history and bookmark suggestion algorithm is unparalleled, and I miss it.
On iPhone, for the longest time, every browser has been forced to be Safari's engine underneath. Firefox, Chrome, etc are all forced to run Safari underneath.
This has caused many issues because Apple controls what can run in a web browser and that web browser (safari) is in no way up to date, or worse, selectively implements standards. I'm writing this in the hopes that it will publicly improve.
Since Safari is forced at an OS level on all Apple's iOS and iPadOS users, that's a place to start when it comes to choice.
On MacOS, Safari is actually pretty interesting - it can be much more efficient with battery usage than other browsers and unsurprisingly well integrated. It's nice to use on MacOS because there is choice.
I understand there maybe concerns about security, but also will come out is likely that safari enjoys some OS level integrations that other browsers probably won't be welcome to, similar to the Internet Explorer/Edge days.
The switch to safari is likely tied to something else, given Apple's growing advertising revenue. Meaning, move away from one advertisement engine (Chrome), and move to another (Safari).
Given the state of affairs, anything and anyone pulling people away from Chrome is a good as long as they not more invasive than Chrome. 1 big bad actor is worse than multiple smaller bad actors imo.
Bullshit.
First stop blocking iOS pwas from simply installing to the home screen, and don't clear out data in 7 days. Then we'll talk about your browser being better.
100% this. And in case you missed the Scooby Doo episode... Chrome on mobile iOS is just Safari in a ski mask!
Most other browsers on the market are just chrome in a ski mask. So what's your point?
Nearly every browser on the market and most desktop application are just Chrome in a ski mask. Safari and Firefox are the tiny holdouts that prevent web technology from being 100% controlled by Google.
This is a bit of a chicken and egg, but the number of iOS users who have saved a web app or PWA to their home screen is probably in the single-digits worldwide. Half-joking.
People are just not aware that this is a thing, and when they learn it's a thing, they don't want to do it.
Of course they are not aware it is a thing, it doesn't work. Every dev that tried to support it got burnt.
List of reasons to ditch chrome is very, very, very long, first among which it is becoming the prime enshitification tool for the internet.
But Safari is not the solution until they make it fully (FULLY) open-source, because all Apple trying to do is replace the king of enshitification hill by their own.
firefox ftw
I may hate Chrome in particular and Google in general with every atom of my being, but I would rather be forced to use IE6 than open fucking Safari.
Seriously, if you use anything besides firefox and ubo, I don’t even know what to say.