Safari is the modern IE. the fact that PWAs didn’t take off in the last decade js purely due to Safari.

The only reason Apple has banned alternative engines and continues to hold back on major web technologies is anticompetitive behaviour.

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ryandrake 7 hours ago | parent | next [-]

No, I think Chrome is the modern IE. It has huge market share, to the point where developers often just ignore the other browsers or at best treat them as P2. Just like they did when IE was dominant.

I'm torn on this honestly. Safari (particularly mobile Safari) is literally the only thing keeping the web from becoming Chrome-only. While I would love to see Safari-alternative engines on the iPhone, I fear that the "open web" in terms of browser compatibility is cooked the day that happens: Commercial web developers are supremely lazy and their product managers are, too. They will consider the web Chrome-only from that day forward and simply refuse to lift a finger for other browsers.

I think when IE6 died, on one hand it was a relief for web developers, who (very quickly) deleted all the code needed to maintain compatibility, but on the other hand, it made the web worse by bringing us closer to browser monopoly.

	▲	xp84 3 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Chrome is the IE in that it’s all the web devs target or test and the browser that every enterprise just uses as the assumed target. Safari is the late-stage IE that doesn’t add any features or modern standards that its (supposed) competitors add. Although Apple seems to have different and more strategic reasons than MS did. Apple just hates the Web because they can’t effectively tollbooth it, whereas I think MS just didn’t care about investing in IE after 2001 or so.

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crazygringo 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Safari is the modern IE.

That's not true. It's not even available on most computers. IE was about Microsoft not following web standards and abusing its monopoly position; Safari is a minor browser by overall market share and is broadly standards-compliant.

> the fact that PWAs didn’t take off in the last decade js purely due to Safari.

So then why aren't PWA's super-popular on Windows and on Android? Since Safari doesn't affect those?

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kelthuzad 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

>So then why aren't PWA's super-popular on Windows and on Android? Since Safari doesn't affect those?

Says who?

"Yes, PWAs have become popular on these platforms. I work for Microsoft on the Microsoft Store (app store on Windows) and I work with the Edge team, and I work on PWABuilder.com, which publishes PWAs to app stores. Some of the most popular apps in the Microsoft Store are PWAs: Netflix, TikTok, Adobe Creative Cloud, Disney+, and many others.

To view the list of PWAs in the Store, on a Windows box you can run ms-windows-store://assoc/?Tags=AppExtension-microsoft.store.edgePWA" - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46457849

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realusername 6 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Safari is a minor browser by overall market share and is broadly standards-compliant.

It's officially compliant but in practice there's a lot of buggy implementations in Safari and you'll spend lots of time on workarounds and debugging.

It's also the last non-evergreen browser being tied to the OS so it's the slowest to update, compounding that effect.

> So then why aren't PWA's super-popular on Windows and on Android? Since Safari doesn't affect those?

Personally I think that's because it's still not that convenient even on Android even if better.

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crazygringo 5 hours ago | parent [-]

If those are the extent of complaints, then I think Safari's doing just fine. That's nothing like the next IE, and shows that PWA still have their own problems regardless of Apple.

	▲	kelthuzad 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		It's interesting how the "Apple can do no wrong" shareholders and "I will hate on PWAs no matter what" types, curiously converge and keep regurgitating the same talking points that have been addressed ad nauseam, even in this thread. Every technology has its "own problems" regardless of Apple, but it certainly doesn't help when Apple, being one of the biggest companies in the world, persistently engages in its sabotage.