Safari Team Asks for Feedback Amid Accusations That 'Safari Is the Worst, It's the New IE'

[CJM]

Her tweets read like she had a bad week, some exec got wind of the complaints and told her to fix it asap and so she exasperatedly put out a call for feedback on Twitter.

And then her final tweet making it about gender.. *eyeroll*

 

[bbplayer5]

Safari is great. I use it on My Macs and obviously my IOS devices.

 

[invis_insight]

If Safari could use a sandbox to run plugins from chrome or Firefox, it work would be a huge leap for developer acceptance. The dev community is the most vocal on this, and the complaints will principally be about dev conventions and expectations

 

[AndiG]

@Simmons
First of all, Apple doesn't address bugs in a serious way. It was ok some years ago, it took them a while to answer a report but mostly it was ok. Since "Feedback Assistant" answers to bug reports got worse.

Bugs in Safari?
- Cookie Banners and Popups. Often don't work in Safari. Either they are invisible or have the wrong size. ;maybe a problem of the banner html code, but no problems occur with FireFox/Chromium based browsers.
- iPadOS Safari. Webpages stop loading or load extremely slow. Killing and restarting Safari fixes loading times immediately.
- many more ....

Since bug reporting became that bad, I stopped reporting.

 

[jamcgahey]

I understand this is an apple fan page, but in all honestly I really do prefer safari over all other browsers. The only annoying aspect is the bookmarks have to be on the side. I'd like the option for a bookmarks bar, but its something I've lived with. I think the browser performs well otherwise.

 

[Sean J]

Doh, they have to ask?

Safari lags way behind when it comes to implementing the latest standards for CSS/ HTML, etc etc.

 

[Janschi]

Don’t you have to pay for that?

If you're paying .99 for the 50GB iCloud storage, you'll have it enabled. For me Private Relay causes some issues with loading websites, hence why it still says beta.

 

[Janschi]

I understand this is an apple fan page, but in all honestly I really do prefer safari over all other browsers. The only annoying aspect is the bookmarks have to be on the side. I'd like the option for a bookmarks bar, but its something I've lived with. I think the browser performs well otherwise.

I agree, it is much more energy efficient and works good most of the times. Just sometimes either Private Relay causes issues, or not having cleared the cache/cookies/history for a long time.

 

[Ifti]

Safari is great. I use it on My Macs and obviously my IOS devices.

Same - I have no issue with it at all.

 

[MacBH928]

safari is pretty stable and I hear no fans with this one and battery life is nice, but otherwise its the most limiting of all browsers in capabilities if you are a power user.

I have to say its the worse one that renders sites imo, if a site will malfunction it will malfunction on safari. Surprisingly, Firefox with a much smaller userbase will have sites always working in my experience

 

[MacBH928]

Im a light user and enjoy Safari but slowly things have been frustrating me. The fact I couldn’t look at a bank statement because Safari doesn’t have a PDF viewer was frustrating making me use Chrome. While watching Twitch, Safari eats up so many resources I get memory errors so I need to use Chrome for that as well. Some of the websites I need for work don’t display at all on Safari so Chrome it is again…what’s the point when none of the things I do work in Safari? I really don’t like Chrome but I have to use what works.

Start by separating Safari updates from OS ones on all platforms.

use Brave Browser. Its like Chrome minus Google spy code and is open source.

 

[boss.king]

If you're paying .99 for the 50GB iCloud storage, you'll have it enabled. For me Private Relay causes some issues with loading websites, hence why it still says beta.

What I’m trying to saying is I don’t pay for it and my Safari experience still sucks, so Private Relay may make it even worse, but it’s not the main cause of the issues.

 

[ender78]

Thanks for pointing out, I will check that.

Edit: Sadly a subscription, no way.

How do you expect the vendor to keep a list of content up to date? A subscription is what pays for continued blocked item development.

 

[ender78]

Poor Apple just can’t afford staffing to figure out safari issues.

Maybe one day when they are more financially successful then can figure out how to pay for more staff to get this stuff ironed out.

Fingers crossed!

Do you think it is really just about money? Hiring good people is hard. The best ones already have jobs, jobs they may actually like. Those talented resources can't be lured from their existing roles with just a bigger payday.


There seems to be a thread in many posts that all Apple has to do is spend more money and all the problems they face are solved. Hiring more people is a great idea, Apple's insistence that their employees need to be in SoCal is also a big deterrent to people moving over and working for Apple. That is one of the cultural dogmas that they will need to change to be more successful.

 

[gank41]

Safari has limped to version 15. Chrome is on version 98. Firefox is on version 97. That speaks volumes. Safari is underdeveloped compared to its rivals.

Well, by that logic, the Safari Technical Preview has them all beat at release #140...

 

[svish]

Quite satisfied with Safari!!

 

[gank41]

It's fairly simple & easy in a forum like this to just say negative things or be rude in general, but I'm honestly very proud of these 17 (so far) pages. A very prominent developer that works on Safari at Apple put themselves out there, full well knowing the criticism they'd receive, and here we are this many pages in with a TON of posts with specifics on what's missing or needs to be fixed. You'd think with 17 pages of posts, there'd be a bunch of "Safari Sucks! Use Chrome!" posts, but there's not that many! That makes me proud of this community...

And for what it's worth, I did send a tweet to @jensimmons directly relaying my points, noting the filed Feedback:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1491437889233645571

Despite what people may say about "the haters" here, there's legitimate complaints about longstanding issues or recently removed features.. It can be easy to tell people to "get over it". But when an app you use has a specific feature for, say, 6 years and then suddenly a part of that feature makes a specific change and breaks workflow? Maybe it's not important to (the proverbial) you, but it can be to someone else. Safari's still the best browser on macOS, though.

 

[boss.king]

It's fairly simple & easy in a forum like this to just say negative things or be rude in general, but I'm honestly very proud of these 17 (so far) pages. A very prominent developer that works on Safari at Apple put themselves out there, full well knowing the criticism they'd receive, and here we are this many pages in with a TON of posts with specifics on what's missing or needs to be fixed. You'd think with 17 pages of posts, there'd be a bunch of "Safari Sucks! Use Chrome!" posts, but there's not that many! That makes me proud of this community...

And for what it's worth, I did send a tweet to @jensimmons directly relaying my points, noting the filed Feedback:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1491437889233645571

Despite what people may say about "the haters" here, there's legitimate complaints about longstanding issues or recently removed features.. It can be easy to tell people to "get over it". But when an app you use has a specific feature for, say, 6 years and then suddenly a part of that feature makes a specific change and breaks workflow? Maybe it's not important to (the proverbial) you, but it can be to someone else. Safari's still the best browser on macOS, though.

Good take. I think all too often people use “haters” to describe people who are angry that the thing they like isn’t as good as it could/should be. I’m very vocal about Safari’s shortcomings because I used to use it with few to no issues and now its unusable as a daily driver browser.

 

[Wildkraut]

How do you expect the vendor to keep a list of content up to date? A subscription is what pays for continued blocked item development.

They don't have to, they are very likely using the freely available Easylist sources anyway.
They built the App the wrong way, probably on purpose.
Look at Adguard, that's how it's done correctly, their blocklist updates are independent from App updates.
Tying the blocklist to the App itself is just an excuse to enforce subscriptions.
There is no need for the App Developer to maintain an extra blocklist, just let the users use Easylist.
Easylist is freely available, maintained by volunteers, very up to date, free to use, and the best blocklist anyway.

 

[gank41]

Good take. I think all too often people use “haters” to describe people who are angry that the thing they like isn’t as good as it could/should be. I’m very vocal about Safari’s shortcomings because I used to use it with few to no issues and now its unusable as a daily driver browser.

I feel "stuck" using Safari because I'm so invested in all of the other features, specifically the Reeding List. And now that after 6 years or so of their being a specific workflow to get at any links in my Reeding List, I've resorted to exporting my long list into the Reeder RSS app, and I've also resorted to using Edge for work along with Chrome for various other sites. One browser that hasn't worked as well for me on macOS is Firefox, and I'm now somewhat discouraged after looking into Jen Simmons profile on her personal website to see she still has herself listed as a Designer and Developer Advocate at Mozilla although her Twitter profile says she works on Safari. I can only assume the negative changes I've been dealing with come from anything she's brought with her from Mozilla... That might also sound like a "hater" comment 😆 but my 16 years in IT Phone Support has taken its toll on me lol

 

[AJK13K]

I’ve used Safari since my conversion to Apple many years ago. Before that I was at the whim of ms. IE was the worst browser I ever used. I have had no trouble with safari and it is and will be my browser of choice. My Measure is usability and complexity and Safari is easily usable and even a dummy programmer like me can use safari.

Art K

 

[l3it3r]

I'm always genuinely surprised when people say they refuse to use Safari. I find it to be the most reliable and definitely the quickest browser I use daily. I use it exclusively in MacOS and on iOS. I also use Edge (Chromium) in Win 11 and Win 10 and Chrome (which I'm not really a fan of these days).

 

[chrono1081]

I love Safari, and I've noticed what this person mentioned, the "Safari sucks!" crowd never gives specific examples. I hate Chrome, I can give a big example why and it's because on every machine I have it on it never updates saved passwords right away. It takes weeks sometimes before I get the prompt to update a saved password.

 

[nvmls]

Developers ARE coding specifically for chrome, it’s been mentioned several times in this thread. Anything that’s coded specifically for chrome won’t work in Safari.

1. Developers need professional dev tools which have been lacking big time in Safari over and over.
2. STP has been worthless, ships with broken basic stuff 90% of the time & the feedback is ignored as always.
3. Up until January 2022, Chrome had 65% worldwide desktop browser market share, is this because devs develop only for it or the other way around?
4. Why does Apple have only a measly 9.5% worldwide desktop browser market share being one of the most popular development platforms & considering Chrome is a memory hog data mining app behind a browser UI?
5. If we take in account mobile & tablet market shares (the latter has barely any significant competition for Apple even) numbers raise to another measly 19%.
6. Why does a company like Google which lives off mined data offers more granular privacy extension tools than Apple self-claimed "privacy oriented" browser?
7. Why other browsers keep forking Chromium if Safari is the best? Why a browser with all the bloat & downsides Chrome currently has, is still outperforming your "native" browser on your own OS?

So yea, guess devs target Chrome only, good one.

 

[boss.king]

I feel "stuck" using Safari because I'm so invested in all of the other features, specifically the Reeding List. And now that after 6 years or so of their being a specific workflow to get at any links in my Reeding List, I've resorted to exporting my long list into the Reeder RSS app, and I've also resorted to using Edge for work along with Chrome for various other sites. One browser that hasn't worked as well for me on macOS is Firefox, and I'm now somewhat discouraged after looking into Jen Simmons profile on her personal website to see she still has herself listed as a Designer and Developer Advocate at Mozilla although her Twitter profile says she works on Safari. I can only assume the negative changes I've been dealing with come from anything she's brought with her from Mozilla... That might also sound like a "hater" comment ? but my 16 years in IT Phone Support has taken its toll on me lol

I currently use Edge on MacOS and would actually love to use Firefox if they could just get the battery consumption down a little more. I see very little in common between the new Safari and what Firefox is doing, so I wouldn’t worry about what Jen Simmons is doing ?

Ultimately, I doubt Safari is ever going to be fully viable for me again unless they make some pretty drastic changes, but I can always dream.