Apple Reminds Developers That Safari 14 Supports Extensions Ported From Chrome, Firefox, and Edge

[rafark]

Safari is a forgotten browser I’d argue. Nowadays the web browser choice is either google chrome/any chromium skin or Firefox, and nothing else. Apple certainly sees their Safari lacking extension support, but putting $99/year as the bar of entry?


Technically it is correct, but the reality is, what’s the off chance of an average user knowing other browser choices outside of google chrome, Firefox and maybe safari? Google at this point can just flip a switch to turn the entire web browser industry into everlasting chaos because so many other browsers uses some flavours of Chromium one way or another. Sure, other forked chromium browsers can choose to not adapt, but website rendering issue will force them to adapt as time goes on. See the problem here?

Absolutely not. Having different engines is the absolute chaos. Having variety is not always the best thing. It’s like asking for 4 or 5 different major desktop or mobile OSs (5 per desktop and 5 per mobile)? Can you imagine how hard it would be to buy a computer that supports all the applications you need? What happened to Windows Mobile, Windows phone, Symbian, and blackberry os? All vanished because as a software developer having to support too many environments is not only a nightmare. It’s not feasible.

 

[Shirasaki]

Absolutely not. Having different engines is the absolute chaos. Having variety is not always the best thing. It’s like asking for 4 or 5 different major desktop or mobile OSs (5 per desktop and 5 per mobile)? Can you imagine how hard it would be to buy a computer that supports all the applications you need? What happened to Windows Mobile, Windows phone, Symbian, and blackberry os? All vanished because as a software developer having to support too many environments is not only a nightmare. It’s not feasible.

Yeah, nobody wanted to go back to 1980 when computers released by the same company were not even compatible with each other. The thing is, Google Chrome becomes the de facto standard of web browser and Chromium becomes the de factor engine, granting Google way too much power in the browser world. We all know Google’s “don’t be evil” motto has long been abandoned, and they are working on fundamentally changing how ad blockers work, rendering some of the most powerful ad blockers useless in a future release.

Granted, blocking ads hurts Google’s bottom line and it is logical to see they take swift actions against it. But I can’t stop but wonder what if Google dislikes how website should look like in certain ways and change it, and suddenly Firefox and Safari have difficulty rendering website correctly? This May as well happen several years down the line.

 

[MacBH928]

Seriously...who would want to pay $99 yearly to do the extra work to import his plugin to Safari that only a small portion of Mac customers use? Apple is like fighting to keep Safari market share to a minimum. Unless that Plug-in is compatible with iOS devices too.

No uBlock Origin no Go

I wish Apple or someone else would (re)introduce a WebKit based browser for other platforms. Google has a stranglehold on the web, Firefox is nearly dead and Microsoft’s answer is a (admittedly rather good) Chrome skin.

If you think Mozilla is dead at 8% market share think how dead Safari is at 4% market share. Firefox is the only open source made by non-profit organization that does not use chromium/blink as their base. It is of our best interest as consumers and society to keep that alive before Google eats all of the web.

 

[nicho]

If you think Mozilla is dead at 8% market share think how dead Safari is at 4% market share.

The answer to this would seem to be "twice as dead as it actually is".

Desktop Browser Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats

This graph shows the market share of desktop browsers worldwide based on over 5 billion monthly page views.

gs.statcounter.com

 

[bsolar]

Absolutely not. Having different engines is the absolute chaos. Having variety is not always the best thing.

The way it should work is that you have web standards and every engine implements the same standards and compete against each other on e.g speed, security, memory footprint etc...

What happens when an engine has a huge market share is that they can start ignoring standards or implement their own private extensions. Furthermore, without credible competition the push for innovation would inevitably dwindle until a credible competitor manages to rise to the challenge.

This is exactly what happened with IE6 by the way.

 

[0924487]

Can extensions be sideloaded? Can unsigned ones be individually allowed through Gatekeeper or would you have to disable Gatekeeper completely?

You can sideload it if you know how to compile in Xcode and sign the app with your free-tier Apple developer account. It's pretty easy.

 

[Wowfunhappy]

You can sideload it if you know how to compile in Xcode and sign the app with your free-tier Apple developer account. It's pretty easy.

...yeah that doesn’t really work imo, compiling stuff is a massive pain. If there’s no other way that’s pretty disappointing, it’s not how the Mac usually works!

 

[0924487]

...yeah that doesn’t really work imo, compiling stuff is a massive pain. If there’s no other way that’s pretty disappointing, it’s not how the Mac usually works!

That is only for advanced users like STEM graduates and other programmers. For laymen, it's a bit too difficult.

BTW, Adguard for Safari is free, and it's pretty good imo. I don't see a significant difference from UBO

 

[FaustsHausUK]

The answer to this would seem to be "twice as dead as it actually is".

Desktop Browser Market Share Worldwide | Statcounter Global Stats

This graph shows the market share of desktop browsers worldwide based on over 5 billion monthly page views.

gs.statcounter.com

It has something like 26% market share on mobile. Global market share isn’t always a useful statistic - my company’s audience has a higher concentration of IE11 users than the web at large, so we have to support that (Microsoft browsers are harder to cut off due to slow-moving institutions like libraries and financial companies).

 

[mi7chy]

How about uBlock Origin????? The best! However YouTube is sneaky with their ads now and most blockers no longer block them, if you're logged into your YouTube account.

uBlock Origin and Nano/Defender are my go to. They both still block YouTube ads in Chrome on Windows 10. What browser and OS are you using?

 

[bsolar]

BTW, Adguard for Safari is free, and it's pretty good imo. I don't see a significant difference from UBO

AdGuard for Safari is good but AFAIK they bypass through a workaround Apple's limitation of max 50k filtering rules (which is quite a low number in practice), although so far Apple didn't intervene to stop them.

AFAIK UBO is more powerful especially on Firefox, where there are no limitations and it's able to stop more advanced anti-adblock and tracking techniques thanks to the more powerful APIs available.

 

[ghostface147]

uBlock Origin and Nano/Defender are my go to. They both still block YouTube ads in Chrome on Windows 10. What browser and OS are you using?

Big Sur, Safari and 1blocker. It also happened on Catalina. The developer of 1blocker said YouTube is being sneaky. The Brave browser developers also have a cat and mouse game going on with YouTube as well and their ads. I don't use Chrome because I value battery life.

 

[MacBH928]

It has something like 26% market share on mobile. Global market share isn’t always a useful statistic - my company’s audience has a higher concentration of IE11 users than the web at large, so we have to support that (Microsoft browsers are harder to cut off due to slow-moving institutions like libraries and financial companies).

Why these institutions and libraries not update? aren't they afraid of security issues which the current trend of having a "rolling" app updates on daily basis fixing issues and patching security?

 

[0924487]

AdGuard for Safari is good but AFAIK they bypass through a workaround Apple's limitation of max 50k filtering rules (which is quite a low number in practice), although so far Apple didn't intervene to stop them.

AFAIK UBO is more powerful especially on Firefox, where there are no limitations and it's able to stop more advanced anti-adblock and tracking techniques thanks to the more powerful APIs available.

I would adopt Firefox if Firefox can get their act together when it comes to UI and UX. It doesn't even support pitch to zoom. It feels like a Linux app being ported to mac, not a mac-native app.

 

[bsolar]

I would adopt Firefox if Firefox can get their act together when it comes to UI and UX. It doesn't even support pitch to zoom. It feels like a Linux app being ported to mac, not a mac-native app.

Pinch to zoom is actually supported, although the settings are hidden and you need to set them in about:config. I don't use that feature so I cannot say how well it works.

I'm very satisfied with Firefox but there are advantages and disadvantages with all browsers so ultimately you have to decide what suits your tastes and needs better.

 

[Mr Lizard]

So, first an extension dev needs to purchase a Mac. Then they need to pay £99 a year vs Google’s £5 one time Chrome dev fee.

Good luck with that.

 

[0924487]

Pinch to zoom is actually supported, although the settings are hidden and you need to set them in about:config. I don't use that feature so I cannot say how well it works.

I'm very satisfied with Firefox but there are advantages and disadvantages with all browsers so ultimately you have to decide what suits your tastes and needs better.

That is not pinch-to-zoom. That is a shortcut for "cmd +", aka, enlarge text. You can try it for yourself. They probably don't use Apple's native UIkit so it's difficult for them to have it. Firefox just looks like a Linux app.

 

[FaustsHausUK]

Why these institutions and libraries not update? aren't they afraid of security issues which the current trend of having a "rolling" app updates on daily basis fixing issues and patching security?

Myriad reasons really.

- Limited IT resources to perform necessary upgrades (often coupled with super locked down admin rights so users can't perform their own upgrades or install third party software).
- Limited resources to upgrade internal systems that require IE.
- Entrenched IT managers who don't know any better.
- General IT illiteracy.

It's been infuriating working in the financial services industry, wanting to write for the modern web but wasting hours supporting outdated garbage like IE.

 

[MacBH928]

Myriad reasons really.

- Limited IT resources to perform necessary upgrades (often coupled with super locked down admin rights so users can't perform their own upgrades or install third party software).
- Limited resources to upgrade internal systems that require IE.
- Entrenched IT managers who don't know any better.
- General IT illiteracy.

It's been infuriating working in the financial services industry, wanting to write for the modern web but wasting hours supporting outdated garbage like IE.

I think maybe they want to stick to what they know works instead of upgrading to something that might break their workflow..?

 

[freediverx00]

Rather misleading, considering the severe restrictions Apple has placed non Safari extensions. It's impossible to post uBlock Origin to Safari now without sacrificing most of its capabilities.