Okay, Mr. Web Dev, are you a “one and done – it works on Google Chrome and that is good enough for me” kind of guy or do you test your stuff on a range of browsers? How hard is it for you to make your stuff run on Safari?
Quick question, based on your experience and expertise, what is your guesstimate on the resource and battery hit one takes using Brave vs Safari? I’m not really looking for a number, unless you have it! :-), but more your general experience. In short, would I lose much in battery life and over all resource overhead using Brave a the majority of the time versus Safari?
Regarding macOS widgets and Dashboard, I want widgets on my Desktop, like on iOS and iPadOS and GeekTool. As they are now in the sidebar, they are out of sight, out of mind, and useless to me.
Obviously I don’t like sites that are browser-specific. And I agree that people should make stuff that’s cross-platform.
I’ve seen a number of examples to the contrary, though. And the problem is historical, not just a current thing. Safari has been lagging behind for quite awhile.
There’s an article here:
that outlines things pretty well. It’s not just that Safari doesn’t support some new, privacy-invading features that Google is trying to shove down our collective throats. It’s actively behind on some pretty universal (and long-implemented) things.
I’m nowhere near the ferocity of opinion of the guy in the article, but there are still some pretty rough edges. And the more complex a piece of web-based software gets, the more likely it is to get cut by those edges.
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Honestly, I mostly use my MBA in clamshell, so I don’t have much data. I wouldn’t expect Brave to be that much better than Chrome, because it’s basically the same engine. They (Brave) claim better RAM efficiency, which is something I guess - but not a reason to switch from Safari if you’re happy with it.
That said, the three things that keep me from switching to Safari for more of my use are:
- I really need Chrome for dev purposes
- Ad blocking
- Websites that I need to use that don’t work
The first is obviously intractable, although I could just use two browsers. It is more convenient to just have one, though.
What I really enjoy about Brave though is the second - ad blocking. Brave is a much better “out of the box” experience than anything, including Safari. Better at blocking ads, better at dealing with intrusive popups, etc. I realize there are ad block extensions for Safari, but I’m not keen on paying for something I get for free in Brave.
“Websites not working” is much further down on the list, although I was part of an organization that rolled out a new online LMS-based curriculum that had numerous issues with Safari. The LMS provider has been fixing things, and it seems mostly okay now, but choosing to not use that LMS wasn’t really a viable option as an end user.
Thanks for the episode. Here are some observations
Books - not just “needs polishing” but they actually took a wrecking ball to its metadata as reported in this thread: Your favorite Monterey features? - #6 by Diane
Giant leap backwards for the Books app. The table view where you can edit metadata is gone. I can’t see how to edit metadata at all. I use Books for PDF manuals for software, hardware and household appliances, but I also have some fiction and non fiction. A fundamental first organizational divide in a library or bookstore is to separate the fiction from the non fiction, but this has never been the case in the Books app. When sorting by Author, Apple-authored manuals appear between Andre Norton and Arthur Conan Doyle. Worse, sorting by author is a random mixture of alphabetical by first name and alphabetical by last name.
Hiding metadata is one of Apple’s worst antipatterns in my opinion, and it’s sad to see Books getting worse rather than better.
Cloud apps generally - Notes, Mail, etc - search fails and you have to take action to fix it. Of course Apple doesn’t help, Google search does turn up fixes for this.
Mail - right now it’s showing yyyy-mm-dd instead of the date on all my email.
Contacts - is there anyone here who doesn’t have duplicated contacts?
Photos - I have duplicates of duplicates. Their metadata is all different. I can’t let an automated app loose on this.
iOS Camera - focus problems if you try to shoot through a window with mesh over it - whether bug screen or tour bus. Once the camera is set on the mesh I have not found a way (other than switching to Halide) to convince it to focus elsewhere.
Part of the problem apart from “scope” is that people have data stores that are over a decade old and the apps have to keep working with legacy data.
When the episode got to the issue of Sherlocking, I once coined the term “Moriarty” for the reverse Sherlock where an Apple app gets outdone by a rival. Can’t remember what prompted this, feel free to suggest any examples!
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When Microsoft released their new Edge browser two years ago that ended the discussion, IMO. Chromium browsers will be the standard for the foreseeable future.
Although I think that Microsoft releasing Edge as Chromium is a good thing. Now there’s a big tech company with the resources to fork and maintain Chromium if Google pulls any funny business.
Agree and it’s downright scary. I’m at the age where I can sign up for Medicare and I’m getting buried in solicitations. Last week 2 people actually showed up at my door to sell me this stuff! Privacy is non-existent and that is just a fact of life.
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The article you cite simply highlights a difference between Apple and Google that is not going away. Apple has a strong foundation of hardware devices that in turn allow the creation of an amazing variety of software. Google has tried but is nowhere near having that level of hardware. So Google is stuck or has chosen the web as its foundation and has to make pseudo-apps that run in a browser. Where Apple pushes their hardware as a base for new software, Google pushes the browser in order to develop new “apps” for their ecosystem. Google pins all its hopes on the browser, Apple not so much. Given this disparity in application of effort, it is clear that Apple will always be seen to be lagging by Google.
I suppose ignorance really is bliss!
Right, which is why Safari will probably continue to lag behind Chrome in terms of implementing certain features. Although I haven’t come across more than the occasional code change in my (fairly basic) webdev projects.
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I regret to inform you that it doesn’t end. I normally get 10 - 15 pieces of analog spam a week, not counting the “occupant” flyers that the USPS is constantly bringing. The flyers, etc. go directly into the trash cans management places next to our cluster mailboxes. Everything else goes into my shredder. Analog and digital solicitations increase significantly during Medicare enrollment. This is the time of year that I feel sorry for anyone who doesn’t have excellent service side rules.
Tip: Sign up for Informed Delivery and the USPS will send you an email each morning with “previews of your letter sized mail”. It comes in handy for those rare days when they bring you something you actually want. 
https://informeddelivery.usps.com/box/pages/intro/start.action
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But it’s not just Google. This isn’t an Apple vs. Google battle.
These are basic web standards that numerous people use to develop modern web sites. The RedHat site wouldn’t render in Safari several months back due to a major bug in Safari relating to shadow DOM. And it’s not like the RedHat people don’t pay attention to web standards and browser compatibility.
That article I linked itemizes off at least a dozen obvious things that Safari is lacking, many of them defined in CSS Working Group specs. If you want those multi-party industry standards bodies you were talking about, the W3C and CSSWG are them. Apple is even a member - and Safari still isn’t even remotely close to up-to-date, sometimes missing features that have been implemented for half a decade in other browsers.
Again though, it’s not just Google that sees Apple’s Safari as lagging. This is almost to the point of being an industry consensus. I agree with @WayneG:
If somebody wants to make the argument that Safari isn’t as current because Apple isn’t putting the effort in, that’s a perfectly fine argument. I agree 100%.
The question is whether it’s okay for a company the size of Apple, with Apple’s resources, to not be putting the effort in on a product that’s (a) as central to peoples’ lives as a web browser, and (b) as fast-moving as a browser, evolution-of-tech wise. And I think the answer to that is “no”.
You’re free to disagree, of course. And if Safari does everything you need it to do, that’s awesome. If it rendered every website I tried to visit reliably, I’d probably be using it too. 
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It would depend on what they see as their role. But if these apps are largely being ignored and are coming bundled with their hardware anyway, something is lacking.
For the most part, I do not rely on Apple’s software alone aside from Safari (which I find considerably better than Firefox and that probably isn’t saying much), Photos (which is far better on a Mac than on iOS) but then again I have loads of photography apps.
I have Chrome which I’ve used once. I don’t care to be tracked any more than I already am. But I am definitely going to try and see what it does juxtaposed to Safari.
What other browser do you see as being up-to-date?
Well, the graphics sure are nicer on Chrome.
I am happy to serve, in my small way, as a drag on Google’s ambitions for the web. 
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Thanks, this is helpful. I think I’ll continue with Safari as my default and then switch to Brave if/as needed.
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To borrow an automotive analogy, when you’re thinking about browsers, think of it as a combination of “engine” and “trim package”.
There are three main engines - Gecko, Webkit, and Blink. Gecko (or technically Gecko/Quantum/whatever they’re calling it now) is developed by Mozilla. Webkit is what Apple uses / drives the development of. Blink is Google’s engine.
Then there are browsers. With possible limited exceptions, anybody can grab any of those browser engines and make a browser by effectively adding a “trim package” - UI, features, etc.
Each engine has a flagship browser. Google Chrome is Blink with Google’s trim package. Safari is Webkit with Apple’s trim package. Firefox is Gecko with Mozilla’s trim package.
And then there are other browsers. These use the underlying rendering engine, and add their own trim package. Chromium is Blink with a community-developed trim package that’s pretty similar to Google’s. Brave is Blink with Brave’s trim package. And so on, and so on.
This means that when you’re picking a browser, there are two considerations - the rendering engine, and the trim package.
IMNSHO Blink is, hands-down, the most standards-compliant, fault-tolerant, and up-to-date rendering engine out there today. That’s my preferred rendering engine. It’s not necessarily the most power-efficient or memory-conserving option, but it renders pages correctly better than anything else. It’s good to have Firefox and Safari for testing the different engines, but if I could only have one it would be Blink.
But let’s throw a monkey wrench in this already-messy landscape.
Everything above is true on desktop computers (Windows / Mac / etc.). But on iOS, all browsers MUST use WebKit. So if you install Chrome on iOS because you like Blink as a rendering engine, you’re not getting Blink - you’re getting WebKit with a Google Chrome trim package. Firefox is WebKit with a Mozilla trim package. And so on, and so forth.
This means that practically, on iOS, browser choice doesn’t really matter hardly at all.
But on desktop computers where you can choose, my standard recommendation is a Blink engine with whatever trim package somebody is comfy with. This is why instead of Google Chrome, I use Brave, which uses the same Blink rendering engine as Google Chrome - but without Google’s “creep” factor.
Hope that makes sense.
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Why, Numbers is one of my fav apps?
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