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Comment by corrral | Hacker News Reader

The main selling point is that it's far more respectful of system resources than its big two competitors. Noticeably lower power use, reduced effects on performance of other software outside the browser.

If the rest of your stuff is also Apple, browser sync is a pretty solid Just Works thing, which can be a benefit of using it, but you're not all-Apple, so that benefit's out.

[EDIT] "So what are the downsides?" worse dev tools, worse add-on ecosystem. Sometimes it's missing engine features that FF and Chrome have (this never hinders me at all in practice, with my usage patterns, and in fact I'm usually glad when they choose not to uncritically and promptly implement every single feature Google adds to Chrome, but I understand it bothers some people a lot, so would definitely count against Safari if those features are things you really want/need)

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> and in fact I'm usually glad when they choose not to uncritically and promptly implement every single feature Google adds to Chrome, but I understand it bothers some people a lot, so would definitely count against Safari if those features are things you really want/need)

Thanks someone for bring it up. More features Chrome add are in the larger scheme of thing invates our privacy, WebTorrent (leaks IP addresses of the other peers). WebGPU leaks hardware info finger printing, etc.

By using web browser I expect some sort of sandboxing. Why do I need all these features in a document based viewing portal?

I didn't know that it was lighter on system resources, that's interesting. Makes me wonder if a FF-based Electron would ever take off, because the main issue with Electron apps is the insane amount of memory consumption (last I checked anyways). Especially if you have multiple electron apps running simultaneously.

> I didn't know that it was lighter on system resources, that's interesting. Makes me wonder if a FF-based Electron would ever take off, because the main issue with Electron apps is the insane amount of memory consumption

During my own Great Browser Migration, part of my motivation for going from FF to Chrome was that Chrome caused fewer beachballs when I wasn't even using it (I'm a tab hoarder, so it's my own damn fault, kinda). My switch to Safari came when I realized it almost never caused a beachball (plus the huge battery life improvement).

I'd hope Chrome and FF have both gotten better (this was about ten years ago), but I still use FF off-and-on (though mostly on Windows) and my sense is that it hasn't improved a ton on that front. My understanding is you can fix much of this with various add-ons, though, at least on Firefox (less sure about Chrome). The Great Suspender, stuff like that. I've not used them, though.

AFAIK Firefox has The great suspender built in.

This is exactly why I use safari, it's not perfect, but it respects the battery life to a noticeable extent.

I love it. In my eyes it’s the best browser because of that and it’s Apple ecosystem integration.

It also feels so much faster. Maybe the others have caught up on the Mac over the years. But it used to be night and day.

I even use it for development. The dev tools are fine for me. I agree FF/Chrome are better, so I use them when I need it. Especially for the React or Redux plug-ins.

But for standard JS errors and CSS tinkering I find Safari works just fine.

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