It's a chicken-and-egg problem. How can you get web developers to test their websites in Safari, when the majority of Mac devs haven't opened Safari in ages? We have the answer already. Safari doesn't compete on it's own merit.
WebKit is a second-class citizen on the web, and we can argue about why that is, but nobody can sincerely deny it. Apple's strategy has been dead in the water for over a decade. iOS lost.
Safari is still relevant and iOS hasn't lost; the very existence of this thread serves as a clear rejection of that framing. If Safari wasn't competing, or if iOS had lost, nobody would care.
Meanwhile we have people bitching and moaning and meanwhile, as a Firefox user, I go to Safari when I encounter a website that doesn't work in Firefox. Because at the end of the day, developers are forced to test in Safari, and that is a Good Thing. No developer is forced to test in Firefox.
>the very existence of this thread serves as a clear rejection of that framing.
The existence of the "Switch to Safari" campaign is a clear rejection that Safari is competing - it's not, it's the laughing stock of web browsers in 2026, it holds the same place that IE6 did in the early 2000s.
>Because at the end of the day, developers are forced to test in Safari,
I'm not forced to test in Safari, because I don't have money for an iOS device. So Apple users can continue to suffer with whatever browser they use on their i-device. I really don't care, and Apple has done this - not me, because they offer no way but purchasing their hardware to test their wonky browser engine.
And yes, you can emulate an android device on MacOS, so don't bother trying that again. You don't need to purchase an android device to test on android.
This (incredibly lame) campaign is only referring to macOS, not iOS. The grandparent asserted that "iOS lost."
On macOS, Google plays with a lot of dark patterns to get people to install Chrome. I can't count the number of times I've visited my sister or parents and seen Chrome on their Mac, and their explanation is "because Google told me I needed it."
Sure it's choice. I use Firefox on Linux; I have to forego a handful of websites, but nothing is a dealbreaker. YouTube works, Gmail works, my life isn't interrupted without Chrome installed.
It sounds like your family is using Chrome because it's more convenient. It's 2026, we can't blame anyone given what Safari spent the past decade doing. Apple does not provide convenient Safari sync for Windows and Android devices, which comprise the majority of smart devices sold. They don't support the normie extensions that people use on Firefox and Chrome. Safari lags behind Chrome in features, WebKit lags behind Blink in cross-platform support, and Apple doesn't allow Safari forks to boost their market share. Apple draws very clear and arbitrary lines in the sand, and then redrafts them once they finally change their mind about PWAs or notification support. By the time it reaches Safari, your parents have been using the feature in Chrome for 8 months.
We may have to agree to disagree. Apple's incessant marketing for their own inferior, ad-ridden packin software is part of why I left macOS to begin with. It's infantilizing to be told that I can't be trusted to make a smart decision, when Apple's own suggestion is a half baked, self-serving alternative. I empathize with Mac users that ignore Safari because that's exactly what I did on my Mac, too. I'd have been using Chrome if Firefox wasn't an option. And I still would, because WebKit is a dog's dinner on my OS.
Just because you are able to make informed choices doesn't mean everyone can. Nor should everyone be expected to.
If you think my mother or sister have the faintest idea what a web browser is, or how one might be better than another, then you haven't met my mother or sister. To suggest that they made any kind of informed choice is absurd. They were influenced by marketing, plain and simple.
Personally, I'd be fascinated to see an in-depth study showing what percentage of web users chose their browser based on true/objective criteria, as opposed to marketing, brand preference, herd mentality, or wrong assumptions. Is exposing someone to marketing really what we mean by choice?
It's worth remembering that choice isn't necessarily the pure good we intuitively believe it to be. Western consumers have an extraordinary choice of food, yet that hasn't necessarily translated into healthier diets. This is especially problematic when the choices themselves are shaped by corporations whose interests aren't well aligned with the consumer's.
99% of Mac users are installing Chrome or Firefox using Safari. They are objectively assessing it in a real-world test, and deciding that Safari lost. You're lucky there's no convenient way to uninstall Safari from the OS, the user telemetry would be a bloodbath.
Apple is a corporation too, and they have their own (quite sizable) financial interest in gimping the web as an alternative to native app distribution. Apple used to recognize this, and prioritized interoperability with OpenGL and OpenCL as a hedge against the web becoming the only cross-platform API that the Mac supported. The Apple of today has abandoned those interests and lost all pretenses of humility. They are equally as mask-off as Google or Microsoft is, pushing Metal and WebKit just as shamelessly as Microsoft crams the corpse of DirectX into things. This isn't a charity project, it is another way for Apple to control iOS software distribution, their primary service cash cow, Tim Cook's pride and joy. Apple is happy to give Google money for their Apple Intelligence integration, this isn't a grudge that they take seriously.
Apple could have supported KHTML upstream, and killed Blink in the cradle. They could have made Safari a billion-dollar cross-platform product, and won. They made this horrible bed, and now they want to users to moralize Google's victory. Why would anyone, knowledgeable or naive, insult themselves by standing with Apple here?
I do use safari in my playwright tests, and it led to me doing a note on my known limitations page - that those tests take longer than Firefox and Chrome, my daily drivers. But, that could be due to using it on Linux maybe. I do hate having to dig out ios devices for app testing.
WebKit is a second-class citizen on the web, and we can argue about why that is, but nobody can sincerely deny it. Apple's strategy has been dead in the water for over a decade. iOS lost.