>IE executed a "developer preview" strategy leading up to IE9 6 years ago. I should know, I was a PM on that team.
That (Safari adopting "developer previews" now) doesn't mean much regarding whether Safari is the new IE. When people say that phrase they don't mean their both trying (or having tried) developer previews. They mean whether Safari is as backwards and holding the web back as IE6 was for ages.
Which is not. IE9 was years behind Safari at the time you talk about (6 years ago) --and really first version of IE that started to really compete at all for the modern web--, while Safari was, and still is (the preview) at the top of the heap regarding ES6 compliance, etc.
And while much smaller in userbase, Safari grew along with the modern web, introducing major new features that IE hasn't done since 2000 or so (Canvas, CSS animations, etc), being the basis for Chrome, and getting the JIT treatment right along the 2 other modern browsers (Chrome, FF).
As for the mobile space, Safari has been lagging in some features (compared to desktop browsers), but was always ahead of the pack in lots of areas, to the point one cannot say mobile Chrome is that better. In fact, maybe the opposite:
>Safari is holding back the mobile web the exact same way IE held back the desktop web for the exact same reason: native apps.
That's a classic tinfoil theory, but with absolutely no substance.
First, Apple sells hardware, first and foremost, not apps (it's the inverse with Microsoft). Their app store profits are negligible compared to all else.
Second, Apple has consistently made the best mobile web browser for many years -- Android had the horrible crippled Android Browser which was not even competing, before Chrome became competitive there.
That's not what you do when you want to cripple mobile apps -- which few users care about anyway, the money (for developers) and the convenience (for users) are at native apps.
Do you see "mobile apps" thriving in Android or MS Phone compared to native apps? Because I do not.
>Lol? I know very few (none?) web developers who uses Safari as their primary target browser. ES6 support or not.
What Lol? Safari's engine is what Chrome has been based on, and for most of its life it has been one and the same codebase.
Developers just don't prefer Safari's developer tools compared to Chrome's -- and of course Chrome is more popular (and cross platform), so it makes sense to use what most users use. Back in the day all developers used FF and its dev tools too, for similar reasons.
If you think that consumers are purchasing iPhones so that they can rock out on Safari and Mail, you are mistaken. A year ago over the App Store hit 100B cumulative app downloads:
Native apps drive hardware purchase decisions for consumers. That's the lesson of Windows Phone.
> Safari's engine is what Chrome has been based on, and for most of its life it has been one and the same codebase.
You misunderstand how a browser is constructed. Browsers are much more than just a rendering engine like Webkit. Chrome and Safari have different JavaScript engines, support different web standards (no WebRTC for Safari!) and are architected in completely different ways. You might find this a helpful place to start:
What does "Primary target browser" even mean? Many (me included) prefer Chrome as a dev browser because the dev tools are better and many extensions are only available for chrome (react dev tools etc.). But at the end of the day, you need to support Safari (which usually isn't a problem).
Off topic tip: I've had success with the Safari dev tools on some issues that I couldn't debug on chrome. Sometimes it's worth trying both.
That (Safari adopting "developer previews" now) doesn't mean much regarding whether Safari is the new IE. When people say that phrase they don't mean their both trying (or having tried) developer previews. They mean whether Safari is as backwards and holding the web back as IE6 was for ages.
Which is not. IE9 was years behind Safari at the time you talk about (6 years ago) --and really first version of IE that started to really compete at all for the modern web--, while Safari was, and still is (the preview) at the top of the heap regarding ES6 compliance, etc.
And while much smaller in userbase, Safari grew along with the modern web, introducing major new features that IE hasn't done since 2000 or so (Canvas, CSS animations, etc), being the basis for Chrome, and getting the JIT treatment right along the 2 other modern browsers (Chrome, FF).
As for the mobile space, Safari has been lagging in some features (compared to desktop browsers), but was always ahead of the pack in lots of areas, to the point one cannot say mobile Chrome is that better. In fact, maybe the opposite:
https://blog.runspired.com/2016/03/25/the-chrome-distortion-...