this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2024
19 points (100.0% liked)

Technology

34906 readers
1342 users here now

This is the official technology community of Lemmy.ml for all news related to creation and use of technology, and to facilitate civil, meaningful discussion around it.


Ask in DM before posting product reviews or ads. All such posts otherwise are subject to removal.


Rules:

1: All Lemmy rules apply

2: Do not post low effort posts

3: NEVER post naziped*gore stuff

4: Always post article URLs or their archived version URLs as sources, NOT screenshots. Help the blind users.

5: personal rants of Big Tech CEOs like Elon Musk are unwelcome (does not include posts about their companies affecting wide range of people)

6: no advertisement posts unless verified as legitimate and non-exploitative/non-consumerist

7: crypto related posts, unless essential, are disallowed

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

TL;DR: iOS Safari is more than an inconvenience for developers, it's the fundamental reason interoperability has been stymied in...

top 5 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 4 points 1 month ago (2 children)

Before I get flak: yes I know Safari sucks

Here is my two cents: The author mentioned you can't have a social app without push notifications: I hate the idea that everything should be able to grab my attention. Though obviously the support is needed.

But also, Safari is the last browser stopping Google from total market dominance. Firefox is irrelevant. And this is coming from a Firefox user who remembers when 2.0 came out...

I do wish things were better.

[–] loki@lemmy.ml 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Firefox being irrelevant and Safari coming to the rescue against Chrome is a pipedream. Apart from their upper management issues and community unfriendly UI department, Firefox is doing just fine imo.

Firefox's stats look bad because they block trackers by default (enhanced protection) and most news sites and tech "journalist" take a user stats off of a tracking company (statcounter), which depends on script placed on websites to "track" users which is blocked.

Firefox users are also more likely to use superior adblocks and privacy extensions which doesn't do its usage metrics any justice. There are also popular forks which come with these things inbuilt which are still Firefox.

Apple should start allowing alternative browser engine on iOS and also start blocking trackers by default too, since it so overwhelmingly likes to market itself as "privacy friendly" and see how soon its usage stats drop.

This is coming from a Firefox user who remebers the founding of Mozilla and the company name being a combination of Mosaic and Godzilla.

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

If tracking being off by default was the issue, the share of Firefox users should be consistently under 1% because who even turns on tracking?

The reality is, nobody outside of tech circles uses it anymore. Hell, a lot of devs even prefer to not support Firefox if they want to do something non-standard that Chromium allows and Firefox doesn't.

Safari sucks but it has actual usage numbers and is currently the only reason not to put a big ass "this site only runs on Chromium" error on a lot of websites.

The Safari-Chromium illusion of choice might be a better deal for iOS users but that would still be only 2 browsers to choose from. Mozilla ain't gonna invest in anything that isn't AI or advertising. Firefox on iOS is a pipe dream.

[–] Excel@beehaw.org 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Safari is also irrelevant, the article is just showing some of the reasons why

[–] boonhet@lemm.ee 2 points 1 month ago

It's currently used by a billion people worldwide. If it was irrelevant, devs wouldn't be worried about it breaking things now would they