The curious case of why Safari browser is wonderful on iOS and s*** on MacOS

Full disclosure: Before I start, I have to confess something. I am sort of an Apple fan boy and for those of you who doesn’t know what that means, it’s sort of like that I really love Apple products. I prefer iPhone above Android. I prefer MacBook above Windows. So, I am a little biased on this matter.

The reason I’m bringing this up, is because as a fanboy you really want to like everything (in my case Apple) a company makes. A little bit like how you really want to love every movie/series your favourite actor makes. That can be a stretch, because the thing is, Apple isn’t perfect. They’ve made and still make some excellent products, but they do have there flaws.

And software is one of them.

Now I could easily start rambling about all the software Apple has made over the years which never should have been shipped. Which should have been disconnected years ago.

Again, you get.

Before Safari

It all started with Netscape Navigator

Safari is as you probably know, Apple’s main browser since 2003. Before that all iMacs and MacBooks were shipped with Netscape Navigator as the default and only browser. Netscape Navigator was based on Mosaic, which is called first true web browser. By the way, a fun fact I didn’t know is that Navigator was build by Marc Andreessen. That’s right, the same Marc A. who later founded the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. Anyhow, Netscape Navigator was a great browser and looking at old screenshots reminds me of those days. ¹ And it reminds me of Halt and Catch Fire, a superb series about the early days of computers. If you haven’t watched it already, please do yourself a favour and bing all seasons right now.

The official narrative is that Netscape Navigator lived until 2008, but that wasn’t really the case. In 1995 Netscape Communications Corporation made an extremely successful IPO, with an initial offering of US$28 per share, while trading for US$75 on the first day. A success story that lasted until 1999 when AOL bought the company and well, basically killed it. Something the fine people of Netscape already foresaw that things went south, because they made the code open source, which later was used by another famous browser Mozilla Firefox.

Both Microsoft and Apple knew that had to come up with their own browser, because besides Netspace there weren’t a lot of other options. And creating a browser for your own operating system has the big advantage that you can engineer it completely for that platform. Microsoft did launch Internet Explorer for Windows in 1995, and a special version for the Mac in 1996. (Can you imagine Internet Explorer on a Mac?)

Meanwhile Apple was building their own browser, which was launched in 2003. (Link to the video of the original presentation below.)

Steve Jobs called Safari, “a turbo browser for Mac OS X.” It was created for speed and, in comparison to Netscape Navigator which was a multi platform browser, Safari was blazingly fast. Written in C, C++ and Objective-C, with a WebKit engine ²Also build and created by Apple, it was indeed an absolute delight. But, keep in hindsight, we are talking about the days of internet, where the competition was Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator. Firefox and Chrome didn’t exist yet.

A browser as a port key

We live online

Fast forward to today, there is one thing important to remember. Nowadays, your browser isn’t just a piece of software, it’s your key to the world. That sounds a little bit dramatic, but it is. We live and breathe online. We connect, we find friends, we date, we watch videos and series, we relax, we scream, we publish, we shop, we are online.

So in my opinion a browser should do a two things very well:

1. Don’t stand in the way
2. Give me the web in the best possible ways

What do I mean by the statement Don’t stand in the way?A browser should just work, always and fast. All necessary actions should be intuitive. You shouldn’t even have to think about your browser.

You can say all you want about Google, but they sure know how to make really good products. Gmail, Google Photos, Google Drive, Google Calendar, are all excellent pieces of software. And there is one product which stands above it all: Google Chrome.

Believe me, how much I would like to hate it, it’s just a really good piece of work. The UI and UX is spot on, it’s intuitive for almost every human being on the planet, it always works, and it does the 2 things I want in a browser super well. There are two major disadvantages:

1. It’s build by Google (You know privacy and data)
2. It’s not Apple

Smaller screens

Mobile first

Ok, back to the main topic and what the story initially was about. Because how can it be that a browser on a mobile phone is a delight and on a desktop s***? To answer my own question, one simple reason could be that a smartphone isn’t just a smaller screen compared to a desktop/laptop.

It sort of reminds me of my early days as a web dev when responsive design and mobile first were introduced. Back then, you would make a beautiful website for desktop and use @media-queries to make sure it scaled to tablet and smartphone. In other words, you would just squeeze a full size website into a smaller box, because that’s how I saw responsive design back then.

It was only later that I understood that it’s not just a smaller screen, but also a completely different experience. And to be fair, it still is. I do use my smartphone differently compared to my MacBook. For example, I use my smartphone 1 task/window at a time. So I either browse the web, or I check my mail, messages, or…

My MacBook on the other hand, I use very differently. I often have multiple programs open at the same time, I scroll the web, check my mail, play music, download a thing or two, upload stuff via ftp, do a bit of coding, writing something, etc.

That 1 task also applies to my tabs. On my phone I have at most 3 tabs open and I do basically everything in 1 tab, while on my computer I have at least 20 tabs open and then usually also have multiple profiles and browsers.

And that is exactly where the core of the difference lies for me. Safari is built on speed and especially with the adage that Apple preaches, namely simplicity. This works out great on my iPhone, where a simple browser is the thing that I am looking for. But on my MacBook it is a completely different story, because behind my laptop I have more needs. I want all kinds of extensions and scripts running, I want to have multiple tabs open at the same time, I want to be able to inspect websites and check html code, I want to be able to quickly and easily access my search history and bookmarks, etc.

And this is apart from the annoying pop ups and warnings that I should use a different browser.

Where is this leading to?

Is Apple gonna give up?

I started this article by saying that Apple isn’t great when it comes to making software and Safari for MacOS, is, in my opinion, one of them. In 2021 Apple attempted to make the browser more … intuitive?! with a design change, which makes it clear to me that it will never be okay again. Fanboy or not, I also have to take my heart into account, because no human can handle that much frustration and stress.

To be continued.