[HN Gopher] Apple should re-release Safari for Windows
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Apple should re-release Safari for Windows
Author : cacozen
Score : 62 points
Date : 2023-09-11 18:51 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (twitter.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (twitter.com)
| vGPU wrote:
| I don't even use safari on Mac, why would I use it on windows?
| modeless wrote:
| Apple still builds WebKit for Windows, and you can run it today!
| https://james.darpinian.com/blog/safari-on-windows
|
| Of course, it's not Safari. But it could be useful for testing
| CSS quirks or similar without requiring a Mac. And if Apple
| wanted to ship Safari for Windows... well it would still be a
| tremendous amount of work. And I don't see what Apple would get
| out of it. But at least porting WebKit is already half done.
| sebazzz wrote:
| It is basically what is offerted in MS Playwright, right?
| WhereIsTheTruth wrote:
| That would be nice, Apple and Mozilla seems to be the only
| companies caring about efficiency..
|
| https://medium.com/homullus/8-browsers-in-a-tiny-car-energy-...
| tstrimple wrote:
| One of the reasons I appreciate Safari on OS X is that it's one
| of the fastest and lowest power usage browsers due to Apple being
| intimately familiar with their internal APIs and hardware. I
| never got the same feeling of polish for _any_ software Apple
| makes to run on Windows. I feel like a lot of what makes Safari
| worthwhile on OS X simply won 't exist on a Windows version.
| solardev wrote:
| Reminds me of iTunes for Windows. That was a trashy app if I've
| ever seen one... makes Spotify on desktop (which I think is an
| electron web app?) feel like a dream in comparison.
| activitypea wrote:
| Then you'll be glad to hear Apple Music is back on Windows,
| and almost as terrible!
| sleepybrett wrote:
| Let's be clear though, iTunes on mac is no peach.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I'm happy to believe that iTunes on NT is terrible, but the
| missing datapoint is whether iTunes on Darwin is _also_
| terrible. That is - is it a badly supported platform, or is
| iTunes just awful?
| LexGray wrote:
| It was far less glitchy than iTunes for Windows, but no
| longer exists on macOS. years ago Apple split it into TV
| app, Music app, and they do device sync is through the file
| system Finder app.
|
| Generally the replacements still lack many iTunes features
| many years later, but iTunes really did grow into an
| unmanageable monster.
| olyjohn wrote:
| I've run it on both. And it's kinda shit on both. But it's
| really, really shitty on Windows.
| andrewstuart wrote:
| Urgh no thanks.
|
| We only just saw the end of IE6, don't bring it back.
|
| Safari is deliberately stunted, behind and incompatible.
|
| Simple, top of the head example, where is AV1 video playback?
| xwowsersx wrote:
| I thought the tweet author responded to this exact point?
|
| > I hear you saying: Safari is the modern ie6, but this is
| changing: For some reason Apple is investing on Safari again,
| they hired a bunch of people and things that were glaringly
| missing are now being shipped.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| If you're not logged into twitter/X you can't read replies or
| any other context, so thanks for posting that but try to
| phrase it in a more helpful way instead of assuming we can
| all see that.
| solardev wrote:
| Thanks for pointing that out. I didn't even realize tweets
| had replies... the new UI is so confusing I wish we could
| ban tweets as sources
| Tempest1981 wrote:
| I had no idea, thanks!
|
| It shows this: (why no reply count??)
|
| > 4 Reposts / 2 Quotes / 16 Likes / 2 Bookmarks
| tannhaeuser wrote:
| > _I hear you saying: Safari is the modern ie6_
|
| Chrome is the modern ie6 period.
| gruturo wrote:
| Not quite sure I see Apple being willing to spend resources to
| make Windows less of an unpleasant cesspool, and even losing
| business if a few people, thanks to Safari, find it tolerable and
| don't switch to Apple.
| eyelidlessness wrote:
| Apple sure wouldn't _mind_ gaining more Windows converts. But
| it hasn't been their core strategy for a long time. They _do_
| care about Safari being supported by websites--and thus by
| developers of those websites--so the browsing experience on iOS
| doesn't suck.
|
| Apple will produce another Windows version of Safari if, and
| probably only if, they come to believe it's an important and
| necessary developer target. For now, they probably rightly
| believe otherwise... whether that's because developers are
| using and/or testing in Safari on Apple devices already, or
| because their efforts targeting Blink are sufficiently
| compatible.
| [deleted]
| jug wrote:
| Yes, please! More Webkit on Windows and in particular Safari of
| course for testing. But also for the sake of renderer
| competition. I don't think it'd hurt Apple other than maintenance
| overhead. Safari of all things never gave Apple the slightest of
| a competitive edge! iMessages and stuff did.
|
| I'm also a weirdo in that I actually fancy macOS smoother
| "typeface-first" font hinting (or rather lack thereof) even if
| they become a bit "blurrier".
| mikestew wrote:
| Said by someone that I'm going to have to assume never used the
| Windows version of Safari when it was available. I was one of
| those hard-core Mac users forced to use Windows for work,
| and...meh, it was easier to quit struggling against the
| restraints and just use Firefox if I wanted an alternative
| browser. I mean, Safari on Windows was fine (best I can
| remember), but the only thing it really seemed to bring to the
| table was "it looks like the browser on my Mac". Faster JS? Who
| cares? Geeks, that's who. And Apple isn't about to spend
| gazillions to write a Windows browser for geeks (hell, look at
| how they treat devs for their own platforms).
|
| So when I use a Windows machine (ten years or so later, still
| have to use one for work), I just fire up Firefox, just like I'd
| do even if there were a current version of Safari for Windows. I
| have no ideological dog in this fight, so I'll go the easiest
| route that doesn't involve Edge or Chrome.
|
| EDIT: oops, _there 's_ an HN bug. I went to update the original
| comment, and it posts this duplicate (with my updates) instead.
| I'll delete the original/dupe here in a minute or two.
| o1y32 wrote:
| Yeah, "should", as in "Apple should invest millions of dollars in
| a product that (almost) nobody uses or cares about". Tweeting is
| easy, isn't it?
| salil999 wrote:
| Do you have proof nobody uses it? Quick Google search shows
| that it has slightly under 20% market share:
| https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
| chaseha wrote:
| I assume parent commenter was referring to Safari for Windows
| jeromegv wrote:
| It was in reference to the Windows version specifically, it
| was definitely not 20% marketshare on Windows
| [deleted]
| kllrnohj wrote:
| Part of that is going to be iOS where Apple simply bans
| anything not using the OS provided webkit. Filter to desktop
| share and the number drops to 13%
| https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-
| share/desktop/worl...
|
| Which is still a decent chunk, but if it didn't have the same
| preinstalled advantage or OS/hardware optimizations it enjoys
| on MacOS it's hard to imagine that number would change much.
| [deleted]
| timbo1642 wrote:
| [dead]
| bee_rider wrote:
| If we're signing Apple up for big projects without any
| discernible benefit, why not shoot for the moon? Apple should
| release iOS for x86. Makes about as much sense.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Why wait for Apple to do it? WebKit is Open Source and cross-
| platform, all of the tools to make a stripped-back, privacy
| respecting browser are right in front of you. Linux even has a
| couple WebKit-based browsers to prove that it's possible,
| although none of them are really that popular relative to Chrome
| or Firefox. All things considered, it's not surprising that Apple
| (or anyone really) hasn't done this.
| Terretta wrote:
| Another proof point:
|
| https://browser.kagi.com/
|
| Though not Windows, it shows marrying up Chrome/Firefox
| extensions on WebKit engine, with iCloud sync.
| sebazzz wrote:
| Interesting. I assumed it was just another Chromium clone.
| This might be the closest thing we also have when it comes to
| testing Safari compat on Windows.
| solardev wrote:
| No regular user is going to care that there is yet another
| Webkit derivative browser if it's not backed by a big name like
| Apple.
| smoldesu wrote:
| Many regular users wouldn't care regardless. To the contrary,
| some might ask why we need another big proprietary browser
| option at all. If the answer is merely "to appease Apple
| users on other platforms", the outcome will probably be
| similar to the last time Safari went cross-plat.
| solardev wrote:
| True. Even as a Mac user I wouldn't want to use Safari on
| Windows again. It just feels like a second-class citizen.
| tibbydudeza wrote:
| ITunes for Windows - clearly Apple don't care about Windows.
| olliej wrote:
| In all fairness iTunes is terrible on Mac as well.
| [deleted]
| activitypea wrote:
| If iTunes = Apple Music, then I wish more people talked about
| this. The UX is so-so on iPhones, and terrible on Mac, and
| probably irredeemable on Windows. Insane that such a
| cornerstone of Apple's services offerring is so bad.
| kylehotchkiss wrote:
| I'm working full time in safari nowadays and very recently google
| decided that logins for accounts with yubikeys as required 2fa no
| longer can sign in without errors. I love safari but it's
| frustrating that it's still second class for even major companies
| like google to test their changes on.
| adamwk wrote:
| I agree that google apps are especially bad on safari. Meets is
| frequently very laggy and sheets can take a long time to load
| with the UI frozen.
| activitypea wrote:
| Same. Also, even without the ChromeTM ExclusiveTM
| Enchancements, I could swear my camera looks better in Chrome
| than Safari, when if anything it should be other way around.
| kstrauser wrote:
| I use my YubiKey with Safari for Google without errors.
|
| Edit: Not saying it's working right for everyone, only that
| it's not universally broken. That is, it's _capable_ of
| working, even if it 's not OK on your system.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| Google being anti-competitive isn't Safari's fault.
| phil917 wrote:
| Please no. Safari is the browser that gives our company the most
| pain by far in terms of development and user experience.
|
| And when I've personally tried using it on my various Macs over
| the years, I've always encountered bugs and glitches on websites
| that are seemingly not there with other browsers.
|
| To be honest I'm pretty unhappy with a few of Apple's "core"
| apps. Music is another dumpster fire...
| conradfr wrote:
| What are web developers that don't have any Apple devices
| supposed to do?
|
| Does the most profitable company in the world really need to
| gate-keep its browser like it does for developing on its
| phones?
| jug wrote:
| I think this is an argument for why Windows should get it.
| There's clearly a lack of Webkit compatibility attention here?
| Isn't this the whole problem with Chromium domination? Websites
| become designed for Chromium rather than the web. Of course,
| HTML5 and WHATWG helped a whole lot but there are still browser
| idiosyncrasies as usual.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| This person lives in a fantasy land. Safari may be on a brief hot
| streak right now but they have a long and deep history of
| dragging feet and literally slowing down the entire ecosystem.
| activitypea wrote:
| I don't think slowing down the (Google-propelled) web standards
| commitees is the worst thing in the world. The endless rolling
| release stifles browser competition. I wish we could treat the
| web as a protocol and say "here, this is all it does and all it
| will do for the next N years, make the most of it".
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Probably not a good idea for the same reason we do not make
| phones a protocol and say this is all phones will do for N
| years, make the most of it?
|
| YMMV. If you hate Google and love Apple - it sounds like a
| good idea to kill innovation at Google's expense.
|
| There's nothing stopping the web from being frozen. Safari
| could do it if it wanted to. All that would happen is that
| Safari would lose market share.
| jchw wrote:
| In general this would be a good thing, but not the way Safari
| does it. Why? Well, because eventually, almost everything
| Safari doesn't implement _does_ get implemented in Safari,
| and because some of their longer running omissions smell
| suspiciously like conflicts of interest that hurt the
| ecosystem. A lot of people are incorrectly under the
| impression that Safari finally supports WebM and Opus, but it
| only does so on macOS (and every time I point this out,
| someone under that impression claims it has changed recently,
| and it never has; it 's like Apple wants you to think it's
| supported.) Not to mention their "great" influence on the
| WebGPU standard and any other number of weird omissions and
| quirks in Safari.
|
| It's annoying that I need Apple hardware to make sure my web
| applications work in Safari when I basically never need to
| specifically test Chrome or Firefox.
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