I certainly don't mean it to come off as a hate piece - I would really like Safari to do well, and I'm definitely not a fan of Chrome's approach.
My concern is that the approach you describe - if Chrome goes further & further forwards and Safari refuses to keep up or engage whatsoever and more sites start to use those features - eventually leads to a world where everybody _must_ to use Chromium to use the web.
If we get there, the whole browser ecosystem collapses, and the open web is in very serious trouble.
I would rather a world where Safari actively leads web standards, and ensures that they are designed from the start with a concern for privacy and battery life.
Except that we're seeing a world where folks are sometimes deciding to leave Chrome for Safari (or others).
Even in my non-web-dev circles of average folks, they're saying "I hate Chrome" and going somewhere else for their browser.
Even if Chrome "goes further and further forwards" it won't matter if it becomes the de-facto hated browser over time. Safari is banking on the fact that security and stability are more important than "some new flashy CSS" and it is possible they might succeed by following this strategy.
Yet Apple gave up on Safari on Windows and isn't present on Android phones. Unless Macs and iOS devices take over the world (which may happen years from now), Safari will continue to be outnumbered and pushed aside.
> If we get there, the whole browser ecosystem collapses, and the open web is in very serious trouble.
I'm not so sure about that. It doesn't seem to me that users are demanding ever more features in their browser. I'm personally just interested in relatively dumb websites, and the only features that could improve the experience is those that improve speed (so I did see some features on the list I wish Safari added, but not many).
And I'm not sure that approach is even sustainable in the long term. How big should the collection of web standards be? Maybe it's come to a point where it's good that a browser holds back a bit? I think that makes it easier for Firefox to keep up with the common standard. It's clear that they're a few years behind on a lot of things, but if Apple really tried Firefox could be the one browser that was always behind, and since nobody is really encourage to use it by any big corporation, it could easily die. I make a point of supporting Firefox on my Windows devices (and it's my back-up browser for Mac as well).
I think the Web being such a gigantic standard that only one or two big megacorporations has the chance to make a browser engine for is much worse for the open web, than Safari lagging a few years behind.
Google (WHATWG) putting "HTML living standard", "URL standard", etc. as heading on their their phone-book-sized monstrosities and calling it a day, then leveraging their power over Mozilla to bless it, then putting pressure over others as the media powerhouse they are, thereby driving browser vendors out of business, can hardly be described as "standard" or other process of finding consensus.
> If we get there, the whole browser ecosystem collapses, and the open web is in very serious trouble.
I don't get this take. Everyone says if Apple doesn't catch up to Chrome then Google will control the web... But like... If Apple is implementing everything Google releases in Chrome to "stay up to date" then don't they already control the web?
Isn't Apple staying back and saying "Nah, we won't be implementing that stuff" making sure that Google doesn't control the web?
> I would rather a world where Safari actively leads web standards, and ensures that they are designed from the start with a concern for privacy and battery life.
We can assume Safari is leading.. but is Chrome following? :)
My concern is that the approach you describe - if Chrome goes further & further forwards and Safari refuses to keep up or engage whatsoever and more sites start to use those features - eventually leads to a world where everybody _must_ to use Chromium to use the web.
If we get there, the whole browser ecosystem collapses, and the open web is in very serious trouble.
I would rather a world where Safari actively leads web standards, and ensures that they are designed from the start with a concern for privacy and battery life.