Apple took a shortcut for DPI scaling implementation because they only care about selling their own hardware.
If you use anything else, it's a pain in the ass. This is a big problem of today's Apple, because they can't manage to release competitively priced hardware in some categories.
Apple's change for the sake of change is extremely annoying, especially since the changes have been regressions lately.
They always push their commercial interest at the cost of their users, refusing to maintain stuff properly to save money.
At some point I had to change a Mac because the GPU wasn't compatible with some apps after they pushed their Metal framework. But it was working just fine for me, and I didn't really need to change it at this moment; Apple just decided so.
And if you use their software on different hardware and make the mistake of upgrading just one, it is very likely that you will have to upgrade the other because the newer software version won't be compatible with the older hardware (had the problem with Notes/Reminders database needing an OS upgrade to be able to sync).
Microsoft is all over the place, but at least it is very likely that you can get away with changing your hardware only once every 10 years if you buy high-end stuff.
And the problem with those comparisons is that they make it look like everything is swappable without any issue.
Places where we raise cows generally do not support other types of agriculture (especially milk cows in the mountains).
You may stop raising cows, but it doesn't mean you will be able to grow nuts or pulses in the same place. That causes big problems for food security and economic networks.
All the arguments around emissions or caloric efficiency are way too simplistic to accurately describe the problem.
The reason to use Chrome is better extension support, better/more useful functionalities (translation, favicon bookmarks, Google Lens), better autofill/autologin, and better performance for web apps generally. Another very useful property is being able to sync your Chrome profile on any computer, which comes in very handy when you need to do stuff on computers you do not own. Doing the same with Safari is possible but a hassle.
I have used Safari since it replace Internet Explorer back in the days, then switched to Chrome a few years ago after a beta broke password syncing and AdBlocker Extensions for Safari were paid/not as good.
Like much of Apple's software, it has strengths and looks good but is really lacking in many ways. It also locks you into the walled garden pretty tight, which can be annoying at times.
Apple should go back to releasing a cross-platform version if they want to be taken seriously, in my opinion. In general, their incentive to build software solely for their platform is a double-edged sword because they can't manage to create hardware that can cover every need (especially for 3D/engineering), and it becomes very annoying to rely on it the moment you need to use another OS (either Windows or Linux).
Another example is Apple Notes being decent, but using it in the web browser is basically a joke (might as well not exist).
Safari has translation, bookmarks (favorites bar) can be either icon only, text only, or both text and icon at the same time, tabs can be pinned (Chrome also has it), "better" autofill/autologin is subjective. Chrome doesn't have better performance than Safari, both on macOS and iOS Safari is optimized better, both for battery and memory.
If you use Google products extensively and don't use Apple ecosystem integration features, then Chrome may look like it has better features; the same is true if you are on the Apple ecosystem (Notes, Reminders, Calendar, Passwords, multiple devices, etc). Seamless integration of Apple devices is one of the biggest advantages of using Apple software like Safari, where you can use iCloud Tabs to switch between devices. Also, Tab Groups is a neat feature; you can move Safari windows to an iPad with Sidecar and so on.
Google's ecosystem also has similar features, but you can argue that you're "locked into a walled garden pretty tight" with Google as well.
Browsers have their different advantages, but they are not so different from each other, especially when we compare Safari and Chrome. Maybe the only real difference is that Chrome has way more extensions.
Translation came out much later and isn't as convenient (no auto-loading).
Form filling and login just work better on Chrome; that's not subjective at all.
Tabs syncing works better and faster with Chrome, one of the reasons I switched is that Safari implementation was laggy and buggy (happened with the password sync problem as well).
Bookmarks favicons came back, but they were removed for many versions, which was very annoying.
I don't use Google apps much, and I don't find the Apple ecosystem integration to be that useful. At best they are a convenience, but often just gimmicks.
I still mostly use Apple devices but have a PC as well. Apple iCloud for Windows is buggy and annoying as hell and requires using Chrome anyway; might as well skip the step of using Safari.
Google definitely has some walling as well, but it works with more hardware and is generally easier to integrate. Apple really plays nice with their own stuff.
I was once a defender of Apple's approach, especially for native apps and stuff like that. They have shown they can't be trusted. We are very far from the era when Apple was making Safari for Windows because they wanted to offer a better browser to everyone. Now only the bottom line matters, even though they have never been as rich as now.
The reason they fight so hard to prevent 3rd-party browser engines on iOS is because they know they would lose market share extremely fast.
Make no mistake, I would prefer to use Apple stuff but it just isn't very competitive anymore, and they really need to put a lot of effort into it.
As someone who daily drives Safari as primary browser on Mac, iPhone, and iPad figured I would comment on each of those:
> translation
Safari has Translation built in
> favicon bookmarks
Yeah to my knowledge this is not possible (someone correct me if I am wrong), but I also fail to see the value given how large screens are today and favicons are kinda terrible.
> Google Lens
That alone is a reason for me not to use chrome.
> better autofill/autologin
I have never had any major issue with autofill or login on Safari. It pulls in my contact information when filling out a form, it pulls in my credit card information, and it pulls in one time codes from mail and messages when those happen. The only real issue I have here is that I use both Apple Passwords and 1Password and the popups for both interfere, but I doubt that is really a safari unique issue.
> better performance for web apps generally
Do we have data to back that up? Websites perform just fine for me.
> Another very useful property is being able to sync your Chrome profile on any computer, which comes in very handy when you need to do stuff on computers you do not own. Doing the same with Safari is possible but a hassle.
Not sure if syncing with a computer you don't own is really a feature that we should be encouraging? That seems really bad advice.
Regardless, outside of Windows (which I just don't care or have any desire to have my main computing sync too) Safari syncs just fine between my devices I care for it to sync too.
> Apple should go back to releasing a cross-platform version
I disagree with the "Seriously" part but I agree in spirit. I would love to have Safari on Windows again so I can never use Chrome or Firefox again. As far as other apps being on Windows, I care less but I would love to see icloud.com improved when needed in a pinch.
You just dismiss all my critics as irrelevant and not something I should care about.
Translation came later and isn't as convenient as on Chrome.
I don't know why you think "never use any other hardware than Apple's" is a viable argument.
I need to have both a PC and a Mac; having a browser that syncs without the hassle that is iCloud on Windows is important.
If they can't make what people want, they go somewhere else, exactly what I did.
> In my 3-hour tests, Safari consumed 18.67% of my battery each time on average, and Chrome averaged 17.33% battery drain. That works out to about 9% less battery drain from Chrome than Safari. Yes, you read that right, I found Chrome was easier on my battery than Safari.
With how much engineering was poured over V8, I don't doubt.
Yep, it's just the reality distortion field.
Apple fanboys can never admit they don't have the best stuff.
In similar veins, they'll say that Windows uses more RAM than macOS. Yet on both an iMac that was bootcamped and a custom-built hackintosh, macOS almost always used more RAM after booting.
Apple makes great hardware but the software is often very mid, its only visually pleasing.
Since MV3 Chrome has not had better extension API support, although Apple’s insistence on publishing them on the App Store means availability is still restricted. I’ve found that using `xcrun safari-web-extension-converter` on almost any Chrome extension works fine and I’ve self-signed a few (eg. Bypass Paywalls Clean) with Xcode to run on my Mac and iPhone.
> Apple’s insistence on publishing them on the App Store means availability is still restricted.
This is not true. You can distribute Safari extensions outside the Mac App Store.
While it's true that you can't distribute Safari extensions outside the iOS App Store, mobile Chrome doesn't even have extension support, so in this case, Safari has vastly better extension support.
You do still need to notarise it with an Apple Developer membership, right? Else you have to enable unsigned extensions every time you open Safari. The cost barrier is still there even if the approval barrier isn’t.
Yes, but your initial comment was kind of a strange way to phrase a cost complaint. After all, Google insists that extensions be published in the Chrome Web Store, and that requires Google's approval, a process that can often take much longer than App Store approval.
I suspect that the difference in extension availability is mostly due to desktop market share, since Safari is nonexistent on Windows and Linux.
There’s quite a difference between a one time $5 fee and an annual $99 fee for the economics of publishing a free browser extension.
Given almost 100% compatibility with the same Web Extension APIs that Chrome uses, I think you’d expect near-parity in extension availability between Chrome and Safari if that barrier didn’t exist.
> There’s quite a difference between a one time $5 fee and an annual $99 fee for the economics of publishing a free browser extension.
Yes? I didn't deny that. I said your initial comment didn't mention cost.
> Given almost 100% compatibility with the same Web Extension APIs that Chrome uses, I think you’d expect near-parity in extension availability between Chrome and Safari if that barrier didn’t exist.
It feels like you ignored the points I made in my last comment. Why would you expect near parity in extension availability when you can't even develop Safari extensions on Windows and Linux computers?
“publishing them on the App Store” was intended as (perhaps imprecise for you) shorthand for all of these distribution issues.
You very much can develop Safari extensions on Windows or Linux because they use largely the same APIs as Chrome extensions as I already mentioned. Any differences are well documented. The only thing you need a Mac for is, again, distribution. If not for that it’s really not that different to developing a website that will open on Safari without access to an Apple device.
Once upon a time Apple had a separate Safari extensions website where they allowed extension developers to publish or sign extensions after registering for free as they recognised these barriers. They could either be distributed on Apple’s extensions gallery or you could distribute the files yourself.
API level maybe, but what I care about is being able to install an extension with one click and no hassle.
Apple makes this too hard to extort money via the App Store, so they can shove it where the sun doesn't shine.
Potatoes have low caloric density (80 kcal/100 g), so the ideal would be to dry them and store them in a sustainable form like ready-to-use mash.
At 2000 kcal/day average caloric expenditure, you could feed 1.6 million people for a day. Or 3.2 if it was only half the diet.
That's a lot of food indeed!
The problem is most of the volume/weight is water; that's not very convenient. In comparison, an equivalent volume of cereals would feed 7 million people and are much easier to store long term, they are very efficient !
I feel like if you were to be content with those tools, you wouldn't really want to pay for them.
I guess the argument is getting access to Final Cut and Logic for cheap, but there are pro software of the same quality accessible for free or close to it (usually people get starter DAW licenses from buying hardware, and DaVinci has free stuff).
Apple is losing the plot on so many levels.
If they want to make their stuff subscription, they really need to make it much better than it is at the moment.
Yeah, in my experience, Pixelmator looks the part but isn't a very good software, especially for vectors.
Affinity stuff doesn't look as good but gets much closer to Adobe quality tools.
Well, that's a very hard question to answer without additional details.
If it's graphics/presentation heavy, you most likely will need something like InDesign.
If there is a lot of math, you'll need something like Latex (typist).
If there are a lot of tables, you probably need something like Word to auto-update embeds from Excel.
In general, Word will allow you to control features like footnotes/endnotes, tables of figures, etc, much better than Pages ever will.
If it's mostly literature, you can use something like Vellum (https://vellum.pub/)
I don't have a list of solutions ready, but maybe I should make one. This is a complex problem, and the safe answer is usually to just use Word.
The problem with Pages is that it is extremely mediocre at everything while still locking you down to Apple hardware.
The young, foolish version of myself was a rabid Apple fanboy and pushed people to use Pages (back in the day when the iWork suite was paid but cheaper). Then people came back to me with problems that could be solved in Word relatively easily, but I had no answer for with Pages.
After being tired of saying, "no you can't do that" or "that has to be done manually," I stopped advocating for Pages.
I don't do much document preparation nowadays, but I think the ideal solution would be a GUI to bridge between web publishing and paper publishing.
That has always been an issue. Pros buy Apple hardware but very rarely commit to Apple software.
In my experience, they are perfectly right. Not only can Apple not be trusted to maintain the software to be competitive feature-wise, but they are also very likely to get bored or make some annoying hardware requirement that makes fleet management annoying.
In the end, their creative software is just ok; it's probably best to not rely on it too much if you don't want to get stuck.
After they canceled Aperture for no good reason and destroyed the iWork suite while taking forever to even manage feature parity, I'll never rely on or recommend Apple software.
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