An Apple employee who defends Safari developers was amused after taking to Twitter to ask users for feedback on why the Safari browser is unpopular and asking them to report specific issues with it.
Jen Simmons, Apple Evangelist and Developer Advocate on the Web Developer Experience team for Safari and WebKit, was extremely surprised by the responses.
"Catched up with Twitter on tech this morning and it looks like there are a bunch of angry guys out there who really want Safari to go away," Simmons tweeted. “Do we really want to live in a XNUMX% Chromium browser world? That would be a terrible future for the web. We need more voices, not fewer.
Twitter
Jen Simmons, a developer on the Safari Web Developer Experience team, asked for user views in Apple's browser.
Unlike certain competing browsers, like Mozilla Firefox's Mozilla Firefox, Apple's updates to Safari are rare, with essential updates only once a year. Therefore, most new functionality is often incorporated into one instance. While this may be appealing to some who don't like the usual browser updates, it also means that updates and/or patches to Safari are rare.
In recent times, however, Safari has borne the brunt of protests over bugs in the browser, user interface and experience, and site compatibility, according to MacRumors.
Last June, Apple unveiled a substantial redesign of Safari at the company's Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC). However, many of these changes were quickly criticized, calling them "contradictory".
Apple made multiple iterations of the browser over the summer, both on mobile and desktop, letting users largely revert to Safari's legacy design before the release of iOS XNUMX, iPadOS XNUMX, and macOS Monterey.
The developer has also continued to work to improve privacy in Safari as it looks to gain market share in the company. For example, in the current version of iOS XNUMX (in beta), Apple has been working to change the way Safari accesses Google's Safe Browsing service. The Safe Browsing service warns users when they visit a fraudulent site. Through this service, Apple issues "Rogue Site Warning" alarms for iOS and iPadOS devices.
While Safari, the native browser on Apple devices, has a significant number of users, especially on the iPhone and iPad, Google's Chromium has become the de facto browser for the most part with around sixty-four users. % of monthly users, according to W3Counter, a website. traffic monitoring service. Safari is far behind at XNUMX% of web traffic. Internet Explorer/Edge ranks third at XNUMX% of the traffic, with Mozilla Firefox and Opera claiming XNUMX% and XNUMX% respectively.
Net MarketShare web traffic tracker is more detached with Safari; sets the share of users for Google Chrome at XNUMX%, Safari at XNUMX%, and Mozilla Firefox at XNUMX%.
While Safari might be second in employment, at times it seems to be last in likability based on responses to Simmons' query.
"Everyone in my mentions saying Safari is the worst is the new IE," Simmons tweeted.
Hoping to get to the bottom of the anger, Simmons asked Twitter users to report specific bugs and lack of support that frustrated them or made it difficult to build sites or apps. "Bonus points for post links," she wrote.
“Details that we can correct. Lazy hate is honestly super counterproductive,” she added.
While some, like @emoryzanef, expressed their "love" for Safari, they also expressed frustration that it had become imperfect.
"I like afari," wrote Emory Fierlinger, web designer and developer. "I switched a few years ago. Unfortunately, recently it's become so conflicting that I started looking for alternative options. I use @webflow a lot and it works better in Google-based browsers Chrome. I don't know if it's their fault or Safari's..."
Fierlinger also complained that certain pop-up windows were annoying and scrolling, while Safari generated a jittery screen.
Another Twitter user, @epintobasto, complained that Safari doesn't "accept Metamask or any other cryptographic wallets. I hope the cryptographic community adopts Safari on macOS and also iOS."
Simmons asked users who notice bugs that are several years old and have not been fixed to contact her via a link http://bugs.webkit.org or via http://feedbackassistant.Apple.com.
"I would like to consult," he wrote.
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