I do occasionally think Safari is the new IE though -- not in terms of terribleness but just in terms of holding back the web by being the slowest to implement big new features.
I wouldn't care about Safari at all if Apple allowed any other browser engine on iOS. The fact that they don't allow other browsers to use their own browser engine is a fucking travesty, and it's part of the reason Apple is being sued by the DOJ.
WebGL took forever on mobile. WebGPU still is only partially supported on desktop. Memory64 isn't available yet at all. That's just my short list of things I care about, but any time I look at the boxes in caniuse safari is always the red one.
Since 2014, three years after desktop, I'll grant you that (though it's not forever)
> WebGPU still is only partially supported on desktop.
And it's only partially supported in Firefox. Perhaps something to do with actually fleshing out the APIs and not rushing with implementations like Chrome?
Edit: Firefox enabled WebGPU only on Windows this year.
Safari enabled WebGPU on all devices this year with *OS 26.
> Memory64 isn't available yet at all.
You mean the one released in Chrome this past February, and in Firefox this past January? Less than a year old?
These things sit in standards comities for years. Firefox has way fewer resources than everyone else, but Safari has no excuse other than that they mostly can't be bothered, because they'd rather you use an app.
And honestly I wouldn't care except they don't let you USE ANY OTHER ENGINE in mobile. If I could just skip Safari I would, but even Chrome on iOS is basically Safari.
I don't think I've seen a feature that was shipped in s browser for years, then removed, and then shipped again.
I'd love to know why. They only explanations I've seen seem to be this: https://x.com/xeenon/status/652573047623323648 "The implementation of Shared Web Workers was imposing undesirable constraints on the engine. It never gained any adoption." and this: https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=149850#c5 "This feature was originally removed temporarily during multiprocess bring-up, and actual usage on the web has been pretty low. We're willing to reconsider if there is significant demand."
I do occasionally think Safari is the new IE though -- not in terms of terribleness but just in terms of holding back the web by being the slowest to implement big new features.