My Month with Safari

A month ago I upgraded to OSX 10.10 Yosemite and tried to set Safari as my default browser. While a fun, Safari ultimately does not offer any functionality beyond marginal battery savings on my aging computer. However, this was actually enough for Safari to earn a permanent place on my dock, albeit in a secondary role. Safari is my battery saver browser, but my heart remains made of cold, solid Chrome.

Chrome is still my workhorse web browser, because it makes me forget I’m web browsing. It removes any barriers between me and content, without adding external unnecessary features that are so poorly employed they may as well not exist – I’m looking at you, reader function.

Immersive browsing

Undoubtedly the number one thing I missed was how fluid browsing on Chrome was. Pages work almost flawlessly on Chrome, and the updates come frequently enough that I feel like every step is being taken to improve the web surfing process. In comparison the safari tab system felt like it was playing catch up, and the automatic drop down menu when I selected the URL was distracting. It’s also harder to copy paste links to webpages to people.

Tab Recovery

In Safari you can use CMD + Z to undo the last closed tab, but it’s limited to one. Why? In Chrome you can restore your entire session or even one at a time if you wish. Completely nonsense and just worse.

Extensions

I installed pocket, adblock, and social fixer, and I don’t think I even used pocket once. Adblock was worse than the chrome version no doubt, and I’m pretty sure social fixer didn’t add anything to Safari for me.

This isn’t a knock on the developers, but the development ecosystem on Chrome is easily much more saturated, meaning that there are better, more polished extensions. Safari also has needless features like reading list, which I forgot existed, and an ability to see all your tabs in panes. I would only even do this by accident.

Downloads

On my Mac, downloading anything in Safari would immediately pop it into my downloads folder. However, unlike Chrome the downloads are readily accessible from the bottom toolbar. It’s only a single click, but I’d always follow the file into my downloads folder before realizing it was back on the toolbar. It’s unintuitive because of how the download action goes into the dock, and doesn’t add value.

iCloud

iCloud integration was neat, but I never really found a real use for it. Sure, it was cool to open the tab I had open, but rarely did I need to read the tabs I had open on my computer on my phone, meaning this functionality was basically useless.

Tweet and Share from Within

Aside from the fact that I would never post something I found from the internet onto LinkedIn before making sure it was professional, I did like Safari’s ability to seamlessly integrate with “online accounts” in the newer iterations of OSX. Still, it wasn’t the most exciting feature and I can definitely part with it if it means I can use Chrome.

Integration

I really missed Hangouts integration. Being able to access hangouts from the desktop was useful, especially since Messages doesn’t yet support group hangouts. Beyond that, Chrome plays the best with its own Chrome ecosystem without blasting the Activity Manager, something that I would notice when using Safari to access Google Drive.

Confirmation

At the end of my one month foray into Safari, I feel like I’ve just confirmed what everyone has known: Chrome is the best browser available. It’s now the most compatible, has the most robust extension ecosystem, and takes a layer off the internet in a way no other browser can.

However, Safari does have its space in the world. I found that Safari is much more battery efficient, especially when watching Netflix, making Safari an excellent candidate for watching shows unplugged. Of course, always exercise caution using your MacBook on blanketed surfaces if it gets hot, like some older models. Still, I’m happy to be going back to Chrome; I had my fun out in the Safari, but nothing feels quite like home.