Posted by ivell 10 hours ago
- it doesn't like to serialize the state of tabs. Chrome is pretty good at somehow snapshotting the entire state of tabs to the point where it can be reconstructed after relaunch, even offline.
- webpage loading is sort of janky. Chrome will show the webpage streaming in live, but Safari will simply freeze in place until it's done. Maybe this is due to an Apple philosophy decision, but I don't prefer it.
- similarly to how Safari doesn't seem to serialize tab states, navigating forward or back usually needs to load the page from scratch, including resubmitting forms or whatever.
- speaking of forward and back navigation, I'm kinda annoyed that each time I use the trackpad to navigate history, I have to wait for the swipe animation to finish before I can interact with the webpage. I try to always use cmd+brackets instead now, because it's much faster.
- IIRC, it seems the newer macOS 27 betas caused Safari to develop an issue where after it's been open for long enough, certain types of videos will stop being able to play at all until the browser is quit and restarted. kind of annoying, combined with the lack of tab snapshotting, because I have to manually visit each tab to load it on each launch.
I still daily drive Safari and use it as my main browser. But I keep an instance of Chrome open for tabs that I never really close. And then I have an instance of Orion for spreadsheets. (I use spreadsheets to keep track of medication usage, sleep times and finances)
This has caused many issues because Apple controls what can run in a web browser and that web browser (safari) is in no way up to date, or worse, selectively implements standards. I'm writing this in the hopes that it will publicly improve.
Since Safari is forced at an OS level on all Apple's iOS and iPadOS users, that's a place to start when it comes to choice.
On MacOS, Safari is actually pretty interesting - it can be much more efficient with battery usage than other browsers and unsurprisingly well integrated. It's nice to use on MacOS because there is choice.
I understand there maybe concerns about security, but also will come out is likely that safari enjoys some OS level integrations that other browsers probably won't be welcome to, similar to the Internet Explorer/Edge days.
The switch to safari is likely tied to something else, given Apple's growing advertising revenue. Meaning, move away from one advertisement engine (Chrome), and move to another (Safari).
OTH, i use safari on my other mac, it’s fine most of the time, but i also have have chrome installed as some websites are so buggy otherwise, linkedin is a particular culprit, it barely works on chrome too.
I was on Sequoia all throughout Tahoe and still updated Safari to the 26.x versions. There might be a limit to how far back they let you do that, though.
I had an M1 MBP that I needed to re-pave with Monterey. Yes, it's end-of-support, but it's also only 4 years old. And runs on that Mac.
So, first step, I make a USB installer, and run it. Great. Reboots, and says "FYI, this is an unsupported OS. You can install a newer OS instead, or run Monterey in "Reduced Security" mode." That was fine for me.
"Installation of Reduced Security mode failed." Nothing else. Eventually my understanding of this was because the machine had been upgraded previously all the way to Tahoe, that somewhere along the line some firmware or something in the EFI had been upgraded and was too new for Monterey. No thanks to Apple. No info, debug logs, anything, just "Installation failed. Reboot?"
So what then?
Hmm, more research. "Do an IPSW image restore via DFU", i.e. pave it with a largely installed image. Could work, might have the same issue, but since I'm stuck right now, with a Mac I can't install anything on, a four year old $3,000 brick, why not?
Alright, I have a Mac Studio. I get the IPSW image, and Apple Configurator. Connect the two as per Apple's instructions and the MBP does indeed show up in Configurator as being "not booted, DFU mode".
Apple's instructions, "Drag the IPSW image onto the DFU 'box' for the target Mac". No. It doesn't light up like it's accepting a drag and drop, and indeed it doesn't. Nor does it accept a "restore..." or similar from the Configurator menu options. There's nothing in Configurator that seems to allow you to image the MBP. Again: no error, no instructions, just the error "bonk" noise.
So... off to ChatGPT, Reddit, etc., I go.
Much repeating of the same. However, ChatGPT pokes a little button. Near the very end of its answer, it says "Newer versions of macOS may have limitations on the age of the image they might restore. You may need a slightly older macOS to do this. Even an Intel MBP running Ventura could work."
As fortune has it, my fiance happens to still have her old i5 MBP with touchbar, and the latest version of Ventura... let's plug it in, let it catch a little charge and boot...
Alright, I need Configurator on this laptop.
No soup for you, says the App Store, "You need macOS Sequoia to install Configurator".
Back off to Reddit, where I find someone who has helpfully zipped up an older version of Configurator that runs on Ventura, and in the end, I'm able to re-pave via IPSW.
But Apple's docs absolutely are incorrect/incomplete about Configurator, and DFU restores.
"You can use Restore... in the Configurator menu to select the software image". No, you can't, even leaving aside the "old/unsupported". It actually means restoring from a "backup" (presumably Time Machine, though it doesn't specify) and you can't select any file or image.
"Drag the image onto DFU". Doesn't work in that situation, no error, no "hey, you're doing the right thing but I can't do this", just acting like a fool trying to drag the image onto DFU only to have it bounce off.
Like I said, I didn't have DFU port issues, but Apple's docs on how to make this happen were either non-existent, or incorrect about the process, or flat out told me I couldn't do it. But mostly non-existent and overly simplistic covering the most basic scenarios only - which I get for general support, but by the time you are "connect to a second mac in DFU mode and run Configurator" in their own words, we're way beyond simplistic "you can just install a newer macOS" type "instructions".
First stop blocking iOS pwas from simply installing to the home screen, and don't clear out data in 7 days. Then we'll talk about your browser being better.
People are just not aware that this is a thing, and when they learn it's a thing, they don't want to do it.
But Safari is not the solution until they make it fully (FULLY) open-source, because all Apple trying to do is replace the king of enshitification hill by their own.
firefox ftw