There are folks that think Safari is the worst current browser. Safari is the new IE, they say. You wouldn’t have to convince Alex Russell who regularly points to the fact that there isn’t browser choice on iOS, which is direct fuel for the app store, so keeping the web down is a business strategy. ios404.com points out 58 missing APIs on iOS WebKit. Roderick E.J.H. Gadellaa has itemized all the “Safari Showstoppers” by year, which is why Alex tends to call this a “rolling problem”. Nicolas Magand thinks Safari is going downhill just for regular usage, like watching YouTube. Matt Birchler has done a bit of science which directly combats the folk wisdom that Chrome is a battery hog. Chrome is actually more efficient than Safari, so this data says.
That paints a negative pictures of Safari, but it’s not terribly hard to picture a positive picture as well, pointing to years and years of accelerated releases, forging ahead on useful platform features. Seeing cross-document View Transitions get released so quickly after starting life as a Chrome-led project, for instance, to me is a great thing. I have doubts that there is an actual internal conspiracy at Apple to keep the web down, while at the same time wishing they’d loosen up the iOS browser choice restrictions and invest even more in Safari development.
