I use Safari as my day-to-day browser (I switched from Chrome 2 years back) and I'm a satisfied user. I'd be less happy if companies started dropping Safari support.
You as a user are now just collateral damage from a pissing contest between two corporations and DRM :)
Though for Spotify and other streaming sites, I would want a DRM option because I provide a way for people to buy the music DRM-free in any format they want with a reasonable license.
I think you're misunderstanding how much of a difference there was between the rest of the browsers and IE.
Besides, your claim the 'wins' Safari has had - first browser to implement ES6 in its entirety a year or so back. Chrome still doesn't support features users/clients actually ask for, like CSS Scroll snap points for making carousels http://caniuse.com/#search=scroll-snap-type
Apple also tries to implement some privacy features:
https://www.cnet.com/news/apple-rejects-ad-industry-complain...
And I guess it's Spotify that made the call to pull the rug out from under their Safari users.
It seems hard to blame Apple here. Should the web standard really just be "whatever Google says?"
That is simpler for web developers, but I think would be terrible for the web as a platform and bad for users.
At some point you have to decide who the web is for, the users or the advertisers and content distributors? Apple is going one way and Google is going another, and I, for one, am happy there isn't universal acceptance of Google's direction, despite the inconvenience to web developers.
You got it backwards. Internet Explorer 6 was the one who supported some stuff first and in its own way -- like Chrome today, and who careless developers, like those who swear by Chrome today, dependent upon, and did their sites "IE-only".
That's how we got in the mess with legacy IE support.
Firefox, Chrome and Edge/IE can all be installed in one way or another on any of the 3 major platforms (if you include 3rd party tools). For free even.
Guess the only thing keeping people on Safari is that it is deeply integrated into OS X and has battery life advantages over Chrome/FF.
I burnt my finger once with Service Workers[1]. "Oh, but I use Safari as my primary browser" doesn't hold anymore, because, you're not the majority. Sorry. [2]
I second it. Safari is the new IE.
[1] http://caniuse.com/#feat=serviceworkers
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m...
1. https://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpr...
What if Apple also "flexed some muscle" and dropped the iOS Spotify app from the App Store?
I'm not suggesting the lack of support is intentional on either side, but completion sometimes affects user experience.
A couple months ago, Spotify switched their web player from using Flash to using HTML5 + DRM (the "standardized" web DRM).
At least, that was the case for Chrome and Firefox, which I noticed because I exclusively use the Spotify web player.
But I guess Safari doesn't support web DRM via the Widevine CDM. So they must have kept the Flash based web player around for Safari.
And, indeed, Flash would only be needed for Safari. Chrome and Firefox support web DRM on Windows, Linux, and AFAIK MacOS too.
Now, supporting both a Flash based web player and an HTML5 based web player is a lot of engineering. I'll bet at some point they decided they didn't want to do that. The only reason they still had the Flash player was to support Safari and Safari only has 2% market share. On top of that, I'll bet most of their customers use the desktop app. So of the 2% of Safari users, how many are using the Spotify web player?
So they dropped their Flash based player, and thus had to also drop support for Safari.
I think it's a fairly reasonable move. Flash is dying; they couldn't keep their player on it, so they _had_ to move to HTML5. Since they have to use DRM at the behest of the RIAA, web DRM thus becomes their only choice.
I doubt the story is much better for alternatives. Even if any of the other music subscription platforms are still using Flash, that's unlikely to continue for long.
I don't blame Safari for not implementing web DRM. That leaves only one party left to point the finger at; the RIAA. If you need someone to blame, blame them.
So Spotify, due to the end of Flash player moved to HTML5 player.
And then the only browser which need a flash player is Apple Safari ?
Oh, the irony :-)
Well worldwide.....maybe? But if you're in the game for paying customers you're looking at 10-20% easily, with desktop users. Mobile users even more.
> On top of that, I'll bet most of their customers use the desktop app
That's true. Staring at that green icon in my dock right now!
Big site's will support all the CDMs because they have the resources but everyone else will standardize on the one with the largest installed base (Widevine).
It was absolutely awful maintaining them.
Is this a deliberate strategic decision (i.e. to drive Apple users toward native apps?). Or pure Hanlon's razor?
Apple, Microsoft, and Google all have different approaches to the consumer software that they put out. Microsoft values backwards-compatibility above all else, and Google values the bleeding edge and experimentation. Apple values predictability and ease of use. For example, Google created and deployed SPDY because they thought they had a better way to do HTTP. Eventually this turned into HTTP/2, but in the meantime Google is now faced with supporting both SPDY and HTTP/2, or deprecating and removing SPDY from Chrome. Apple, on the other hand, waited for the HTTP/2 standard to be debated and ratified before implementing and distributing it to end users.
Safari is released infrequently, but when it is it only contains (mostly) solid features. However, if you value the bleeding edge and are willing to tolerate some amount of breakage, you can always install the Safari Technology Preview, which releases much more frequently.
Safari is like when MS let IE sit at v6 for ages while Mozilla et al ran ahead.
Chrome is IE from back around the first browser war between MS and Netscape, by introducing new stuff before it has been properly ratified.
That said i have the impression that the stewardship of Webkit was what forced Google's hand in all this, by taking forever to accept patches etc.
First, prove Apple has let it stagnate. Safari continues to improve with every release. The latest tech preview scores a 459 on the html5 test. The last released version scored a 419. It's still behind the other major browsers, but stagnating implies not improving which is clearly not the case.
It might be a better question to ask why hasn't Safari implemented whatever certain feature you want to use, i.e. service workers.
That said this is the weakest score of the top 4 browsers:
519 Chrome 57
518 Opera 45
474 Firefox 53
473 Edge 15
Mozilla is generally a safe option.
I don't care if it has a gazillion bands and trillions of songs. Or if the big stars with million dollar marketing budget are on it.
This is referring specifically to desktop Safari. Spotify already has an iOS app.
In the US. In the EU, iOS has a marketshare between 15 and 20% at best, which is closer to Windows Phone’s best times than to any other mobile OS.
If you filter out a lot of Eastern Europe and focus on the wealthier Western countries that are more akin to the US you're back in the near 50% range.
My primary browser is Chrome, but I decided I wanted to no longer be logged in on Facebook in Chrome and having my usage tracked. So I used Facebook only in Safari.
Unfortunately if you visit business.facebook.com in Safari, it tells you it's an unsupported browser. You can't set up Facebook ad campaigns or even check your business messages in Safari at all. :(
If anyone from Facebook is reading this, the iOS Facebook Pages app is also broken. Notifications of new messages to your page don't work after you put a page in Business Manager in Facebook. It's hugely frustrating.
* 50,000 of your own tracks can be uploaded to their cloud and listened to on all your devices.
* Casting
* Essentially all the same artists as on Spotify.
* Use with your all powerful google account.
[1] https://github.com/paulyoung/Statusfy [2] https://github.com/hnarayanan/shpotify
[1] https://github.com/citelao/Spotify-for-Alfred [2] https://spotify-notifications.citruspi.io/
In 2011 they were caught using 'supercookies' that can be persisted even when the user clears their cookies in the browser.
It is entirely possible they're refusing to support Safari because of the privacy changes Apple made, changes that specifically defeat the kind of tracking Spotify has previously been known to use.
I understand that/why OP is unhappy but that is a pretty decent choice they offer here.
