---
date: '2024-03-27T18:30-08:00'
title: 'I like Safari, but nobody should be required to use it'
description: "I've tried all the browsers and I always return to Safari. I've been a longtime resident of Apple's walled garden/prison, my grandmother bought stock during Apple's IPO and my whole family uses, well, all of it. I'm technical support and firmly tethered by familial and financial bonds here."
tags: ['tech', 'Apple', 'development']
---
I've tried all the browsers (not Arc, but that's a big stack of nonsense dressing up Chromium) and I always return to Safari. I've been a longtime resident of Apple's walled garden/prison, my grandmother bought stock during Apple's IPO and my whole family uses, well, all of it. I'm technical support and firmly tethered by familial and financial bonds here.<!-- excerpt -->

Chrome is — still — a memory hog and getting inexorably worse as Google bolts on AI, hampers ad blocking and tacks on gimmicky shopping features. Firefox feels unsteady as Mozilla shuffles about, aimlessly looking for a plan — any plan. Additionally, as anyone will readily tell you, on iOS, they're both just cosmetic wrappers around WebKit/Safari and that is untenable.

An operating system as broadly popular and adopted as Apple's should not be held to a single browser engine. It's not more secure — it's less. Apple ships and patches vulnerabilities, but it leaves other browsers unable to ship their own fixes because they can't ship their own engines.

Safari isn't some brave champion holding off a Chromium monoculture. It's a snappy, enjoyable to use, but features are shipped slowly (if at all) and their implementation can be haphazard. Its development isn't a priority anymore than it's required to avoid regulatory scrutiny. Apple's concern is offering a browser that's just good enough *not* to interfere with rents generated by the App Store.

<strong class="highlight-text"> All of this is bad.</strong>

The web is the platform and Apple should open up their's. I don't want to use Chrome, but I want Safari to compete on the merits, not as an accomplice to the preservation of App Store interests. I was thrilled when Apple added Safari web extensions and other browsers should be able to offer the same functionality.

I work on the web, I love the web (I'm repetitive when it comes to this particular point) and I want Safari to be a better browser than it is and <strong class="highlight-text"> I want everyone to be able to make the choice to use something else.</strong>