Hacker News Reader

Comment by JohnBooty | Hacker News Reader

   Its in Apple's interest to not have Safari work well 
   on older machines (since they want people to buy new
   machines)

Then they're failing miserably, because as I (and others in this conversation) have attested to... Safari is noticeably faster than Firefox or Chrome on older Mac hardware.

So I don't think your theory holds any water. Sorry.

(Edit: My post was unclear. I and others feel that Safari, despite its other shortcomings, is the most responsive browser on OSX - not the least.)

View on HN

I think he interpreted your post as being the opposite of what you meant it to say. You said the performance gap is more noticeable but you probably mean in favor of safari, although it could be interpreted either way.

I think you're right. I edited my post for clarity.

I did, and I should have read it more carefully. That being said, I think there is a balance that Apple tries to maintain here. If there experience on older systems is terrible, they run the risk of people switching to a different operating system and platform. If the experience isn't significantly better on newer hardware, however, customers won't be motivated to upgrade.

I would definitely not attribute it to any purposeful attempt at by a company to make things worse for older systems... human beings developing software on new hardware is already enough to make performance issues happen.

In reality, if the lead developers of some software find the experience to be good enough on their machines, that's going to lead to it becoming worse on old hardware, no matter what the company (as people have said in this thread, it's even worse with chrome and firefox.)

It takes huge amounts of effort to ensure that the development work you're doing is performant on a range of hardware. If you neglect doing that, I'd definitely chalk it up to laziness and not malice.

(In other words, I agree that performance gets worse from version to version, but you don't need to attribute to malice that which can equally be attributed to laziness.)

I don't necessarily attribute it to malice either. Their interest in making money and being successful will motivate where they spend their development dollars in maintaining older software and keeping current customers happy on their older systems versus developing new features and software that will increase sales.

    I should have read it more carefully

No, I was unclear. :)

    If there experience on older systems is terrible, they 
    run the risk of people switching to a different operating 
    system and platform. If the experience isn't significantly 
    better on newer hardware, however, customers won't be 
    motivated to upgrade.

I'm certain the main engineering goal they have for Safari is energy efficiency.

Battery life is one of the two or three major selling points of all their devices, and improved (or at least equivalent) battery life is something they deliver with every iteration of OSX.

I believe Safari's performance/responsiveness is largely a happy accidental byproduct of this focus on energy efficiency.

Again, I'm not defending anything they do. I'm a OSX user and Firefox is my browser of choice, if that tells you anything!

Reply on news.ycombinator.com