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0 pointsatonse1y ago0 comments

Eh not quite. I switched off Chrome many years ago (on macOS) because it had gotten so bloated and was constantly running my fans.

I remember reading that Chrome had worked on fixing a lot of that bloat (so did FF). But Safari was a breath of fresh air in how fast it worked and didn't seem to constantly kill my battery.

Yes it has the occasional quirks. But I do like that Apple focuses more on UX than just DevEx by trying to implement everything and the kitchen sink web standards.

As others have said, we definitely need alternative browsers and browser engines.

But at the end of the day, it's just mostly WebKit (and Blink derived from it) and Firefox, so it's not like there's all that much competition.

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troupo1y ago

> But at the end of the day, it's just mostly WebKit (and Blink derived from it) and Firefox

Blink is a separate engine, as it has significantly diverted from WebKit.

atonseOP1y ago

How significantly could it actually change? Maybe the process model, etc but I doubt most of the layout algorithms etc have changed much.

solardev1y ago

Blink forked from Webkit more than a decade ago. There are tests that try to measure their compatibility, like https://wpt.fyi/results/?label=experimental&label=master&ali... (part of https://web-platform-tests.org/). They also have different JS engines these days (V8 vs JSCore).

That said, as a frontend dev, I very very rarely run into real world issues between Safari and Chrome. More often it's Firefox/Gecko that lags behind, usually in some sort of graphics optimization (SVG and canvas stuff). Also some differences in WebGL and webgpu support, but those are niche enough that it's not a big deal yet.

wobfan1y ago

That's true, I'm mostly pissed about Apple locking down the iOS browser ecosystem, which is not the case on macOS. While I think Firefox and Chrome did not have a level playing field especially the release of the M1, because Apple has started optimizing Safari for their arm64 platform for example way earlier than FF/Chrome even could. Also, obviously, Safari can focus on a single OS while Chrome/Firefox has a lot more to manage here. But I mean, that's not Apples fault.

Still, while I also experienced the problems you referenced with Firefox on my M1 for months or a year, it has greatly improved and IMO is at this point on par with Safari. With the plus of being open, having a huge community and heavy customization options, and privacy. But with the minus of being ugly in comparison to Safari, I must say.

So yeah I mostly am in line with your opinion, apart from one thing:

> so it's not like there's all that much competition.

This, at least this is my opionion, is no argument. It's playing down the importance of free choice IMO. It should not be more okay to disallow alternative browsers based on the existence of alternatives. I mean, if they never allow it, there will never be any. We can just hope that at some point some competitors will rise again, maybe Firefox will get a bigger foothold, or Ladybird, or Servo, or whatever. I'm just trying to keep my hopes high here, haha.

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