> This is because lazy/incompetent web developers make their sites in Chrome and don’t bother testing other browsers.
This has not been my experience at all.. I use Firefox on a day to day basis and generally build applications which work in Chrome and Firefox. They used to work well with EdgeHTML too.
I've run into cases in the past where basic SVG rendering with an feColorMatrix filter doesn't work properly in Safari and looks like garbage .. but works fine in Firefox and Chrome. I've run into lack of support for HTML elements that every other modern browser vendor supports. I still can't believe there's no proper input[type=date] support on desktop.
Away from desktop, I've also run into Mobile Safari failing to properly calculate the height of <iframe> elements, not supporting background-attachment: fixed and localStorage failing unintuitively in incognito mode.
Safari is absolutely the browser that gives me the most issues; I'd call it the new IE.
Or they just don't own a Mac and have mixed results with virtualization. Maybe instead of blaming them recognize that Safari is extremely inaccessible software for most people
> Safari is extremely inaccessible software for most people
How the hell is it "extremely inaccessible" for "most" people?
It's Chrome that has an weirdass non-standard UI (the practice of showing app preferences/dialogs in a webpage needs to burn in the flames of Hades) and other niggles, not to mention being a privacy black hole.
If they weren't told to use Chrome (i.e. Google didn't nag people to use Chrome when they're trying to use Search etc.) "most" Mac users wouldn't give a fuck about Chrome.
> How the hell is it "extremely inaccessible" for "most" people?
Because most people don't own Macs. The last Windows compatible version of Safari was back in 2012 or so, and as far as I know, it was never available on Linux.
Therefore, for me to test on Safari, I either have to spend thousands to buy a laptop, or pay out of my pocket for some sort of cross-browser testing tool (even if it's free, I am spending extra time) while Chrome/Firefox are used by most of the world and ensuring that I deal with Safari's idiosyncrasies does nothing much for me.
> It's Chrome that has an weirdass non-standard UI (the practice of showing app preferences/dialogs in a webpage needs to burn in the flames of Hades) and other niggles, not to mention being a privacy black hole.
I would argue its more standard since it is the same UI in every OS I wanted to use. I honestly don't think people are that angry about preferences as a webpage.
In terms of privacy, Firefox kicks Safari out of the water, and in terms of performance, it is faster, and actually renders everything (something Safari fails way too often at).
> "most" Mac users wouldn't give a fuck about Chrome.
Eh. Safari not rendering elements of the page, constantly crashing, and other myriad of issues do well enough to push people to Chrome/Firefox. Also, most people quickly start using Firefox when they realize that UBlock Origin doesn't work on Safari and is easily better than anything that comes on Safari.
Honestly, for me as developer, Safari is the new IE6, except possibly worse because bugs for IE6 are very well-documented with good workarounds.
"Therefore, for me to test on Safari, I either have to... pay out of my pocket for some sort of cross-browser testing tool (even if it's free, I am spending extra time)"
That's precisely the 'lazy web developer' that they're talking about. Oh god no, you have to test on a browser you don't use.
Sure Chrome is dominant, but Safari has about 15% of the market so by taking the stance you do, you're dismissing 1 of 6 people. Because you're lazy.
That 15% of the market is only relevant for companies targeting first world countries with people having wages to buy Apple stuff.
The large majority of the companies across the globe have already enough to do with their local markets with zero (0%) presence of Apple devices.
If Apple wants them to care about Safari, they can easily make Safari available in other platforms, has they have done when they were struggling for survival.
Supporting 85% of the market is basically free - because you already have a PC, and all browsers can be installed on that, except for Safari. But supporting the remaining 15% requires paying several hundred dollars for hardware that you don't really need for any other purpose. I don't think that refusing to do the latter is a case of "lazy".
I don’t remember good workarounds. IE6 fixes often required entire libraries. Websites ballooned in size due to needing constant shims, normalization, and polyfills. For a long while it wasn’t uncommon to send out a separate stylesheet for ie6 to fix whatever would break using the regular styles. I can’t think of anything Safari does that’s that bad.
How does Firefox win in privacy? Maybe through certain extensions but Safari has the edge in things like private mode tabs not sharing cookies etc. between each other.
Privacy/no-cookie sharing: Container Tabs + Multi Account Containers in Firefox is incredible. Yes, I realize those are extensions - but that kind of control or extensibility isn't even possible in Safari.
Which is actually the biggest reason I don't use Safari, it has no support for profiles or user-chosen cookie separation (multiple different accounts for GSuite, etc).
As for Chrome just getting patched with zero-days - fine, but remember that Safari doesn't have the concept or ability to do Site Isolation the way Chrome or FF do, Chrome uses the macOS sandbox the same way Safari does, and there have been plenty of Safari CVEs as well. Chrome is usually the last to fall at Pwn2Own; pointing out "oh they just patched a zero-day CVE" doesn't mean much, especially since Apple pushes Safari updates far less often than Chrome does, and will often leave desktop Safari unpatched for weeks after iOS has been fixed.
If you're a professional and don't test Safari, you're not being professional. Don't have a Mac? Use https://www.browserstack.com or similar. Don't want to bother? Then, yeah, you're lazy.
I don't have a Windows machine. I still test against Edge. No Android phone. Still test against a range of them. How? See above.
Not so much in macos but in ios safari is our constant pain. Most bugs we get are in ios and most of the times are because of bugs in safari engine and are unfixable.
This is because lazy/incompetent web developers make their sites in Chrome and don’t bother testing other browsers.
You could have said the same about any browser that wasn’t IE a decade ago.