It’s absurd to me that patching the browser requires an OS update. I mean, come on Apple, you created the App Store, a seemingly perfect tool for update single applications like this without requiring a reboot 🤔
Over 2 decades ago in the late 1990's - which makes me realise many people below 35 might not be aware of - Microsoft was prosecuted for anti-trust behavior by the Department of Justice for baking in their browser into the Windows operating system.
It's not clear to me how that reprehensible act differs from Apple baking in the browser into the macOS operating system?
It's not just Safari. Every app that comes with macOS could potentially be offered as a standalone app that is updatable separately.
Even though the difference is not clear to me - it is nevertheless not surprising since, if we see the landscape today, there are lots of people doing lots of things which, in an earlier era, action would have been taken. Nowadays, I don't think people care that no action is taken.
The proof that people don't care is the mantra that has taken root in our society, which is: "if you don't like it, don't buy/use it". In other words, even if something is desperately wrong on a larger scale, people are now taught that it suffices if the individual person shuts they eyes so that they themselves are not affected by it.
For instance, if you press this issue, some smartie will come along and say, "If you don't like it, don't use macOS". That person does not care that, decades ago, such behavior was considered an appropriate basis for an anti-trust action against Microsoft.