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- Hacker News
- On iOS platform, it's only limited to apple's browser engine, with chrome I get long time of various bookmarks saved/synced and send page to various devices(not limited to apple ecosystem), those benefits still not give strong reason to let me switch to safari
One thing I do not like is no native dark mode on chrome, but that's okay, I just do not use phone when I preparing to sleep
For the adblock/tracker issue, recently just added builtin DNS-based adblock (backed by several public block list) to my VPN app, it seems works well, given same engine and same network filtered by the same VPN, i guess they are same to me
by mintflow - Safari has the same manifest v3 limitations that preclude the full-blooded ublock origin you get with Firefox.by curt15
- You should ditch Chrome. And switch to FireFox.by jacquesm
- 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.
- Maybe a bit of an edge use case, but I use the translate page feature a lot in browsers. In Chrome you can switch back and forth between languages seamlessly, but in Safari translating a page requires reloading the page - which can cause issues on forms that use POST. Even worse, I've found that switching back to the original language just doesn't work on pages loaded with POST - the page gets stuck on the translated version (which can sometimes cause issues with some poorly designed javascript components like calendar widgets) even after reloading the page. This causes issues frequently enough to prevent me switching to Safari.
On the plus side, though, Safari will also translate text in images.
by freetime2 - Kinda bugs me when people who are against Safari/Apple are also the same people pushing Chrome/Google. Sometimes it feels like web developers these days are basically Chrome developers.
I do get it. Chrome has the majority of users, so it’s easier to just develop and test on Chrome and know you’ve covered most of your users.
But isn’t that just pushing us towards a Chrome monopoly? Safari holding back some web features is annoying, sure, but having Chrome decide what the web should support and everyone else having to follow doesn’t sound much better to me.
by azuanrb - 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.
by TheDong - I'm old enough to have been in the industry when Chrome launched. It was amazing. It was such a relief to move away from IE and all the arcane levels of details I had to remember back then to artisnaly get IE to behave like a moderately modern (for then) browser.
Chrome was fast, did the basic job of correctly rendering pages, and its js runtime was groundbreaking. Node.js was direct outcome of that revolution.
Now these days the only thing keeping me tied to chrome is finger muscle memory. The death of manifest v2 is the 2nd to last nail.
Honestly Opus 5.5 had gotten good enough I've been considering a project to have it build a new browser based on the open source Chrome and keeps the v2 in place. Just customize it specifically for my preferences and call it done. No more unexpected breaking updates. Just a browser that does its job and nothing else.
The problem is I use safari on iOS. Generally not a bad browser. Equivalent and superior to Chrome is certain aspects. I don't really need to run Chrome on my phone. Safari is good enough. However... for a local build only I use maybe it's possible.
by geuis