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"Best" Mac browser: Your view (lemmy.world)

submitted 9 months ago by schmurnan@lemmy.world to c/technology@lemmy.world

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I know “best” is subjective, but as someone who’s entrenched in the Apple ecosystem I always used to use the stock apps: Reminders, Calendar, Mail, Podcasts and, of course, Safari.

But over time I’ve moved away from some of those apps, towards things that work better than the stock apps but also still sync with my other Apple devices (iPhone, iPad, Watch): Things and Todoist (because I can’t decide on one over the other), Fantastical, Mail (still), Overcast… but I tend to hover between browsers.

I mainly use Safari, and try to use profiles to separate personal and work stuff. But over the years I’ve also tried Firefox, I’ve tried Brave and more recently I’ve tried Arc. But I just can’t make my mind up.

So I was curious what your browser of choice is (and also, if you have any other views on the best stock app replacements - including alternatives to the ones I listed above for GTD, calendars, email and podcasts (don’t get me started on the “best” search engine!), I’d be interested to get your opinions.

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[–] Toes@ani.social 41 points 9 months ago (11 children)

Fun fact, there's only 3 real choices.

There's Firefox, Chromium and Safari.

Every other browser is essentially a skin of one of those.

I would suggest using Firefox or one of its spin off versions.

[–] schmurnan@lemmy.world 9 points 9 months ago (2 children)

Yeah I know they’re all based on one of three, but they are all subtly different in what they offer.

So whilst there are three main engines, there are definitely more than three choices.

Bottom of the pile for me is Chrome - I don’t use anything Google knowingly/willingly.

[–] Toes@ani.social 4 points 9 months ago

Personally, I use the ESR version of Firefox so I don't regularly get unneeded updates.

[–] abhibeckert@lemmy.world -2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (2 children)

Google might be the primary maintainer of Chromium, but they don't really control it. Literally hundreds of other companies and thousands if individual developers contribute to Chromium every day and if Google did something they don't like the engine would be forked in a heartbeat.

In fact it has been forked — thousands of times (according to GitHub). It's just none of those forks have gained much traction. If Google really messes things up, such as if they actually go ahead and remove cookies as they've threatened to do for years, then one or two of those forks will gain traction. Likely enough traction that Google themselves would struggle to keep up and could end up killing Blink and basing Chrome off one of the forks.

If you don't trust Google (I don't), then don't use Chrome. But I wouldn't write off all Chromium based browsers, some of them are awesome. And the main problem it used to have (battery life) isn't an issue anymore. My M1 MacBook Air lasts forever on battery power and I always have a chromium based browser running.

[–] AProfessional@lemmy.world 3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Over 96% of contributions are Google, terrible take.

[–] abhibeckert@lemmy.world 0 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago) (1 children)

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromium/src/+/HEAD/AUTHORS

The vast majority of names on that list are not google employees. And that's nowhere near a complete list. Chromium dates back to kthmlw almost three deacdes ago. The vast majority of the code in Chromium was not written by Google.

[–] AProfessional@lemmy.world 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

The authors file is not the source of who writes it today.

Look at actual commit data, like here https://bkardell.com/blog/2023-Mid-Season-Power-Rankings.html

History is history. Those people won’t magically come back.

[–] schmurnan@lemmy.world 1 points 9 months ago

Sorry, I wasn’t classing Chrome and Chromium as the same thing. I’m a software developer of 20 years so I understand they’re not the same thing. I guess I just took that opportunity to state that I don’t use Google services/products if I can help it.

In work we’re a Windows house, but I’ve managed to get my hands on an M2 MacBook Pro. For now I’m still using Edge but would like to get my iCloud exemption so I can use some of the apps on my personal MBP for work, and I’m wondering whether I should continue using Edge for work and A. N. Other browser for personal (and mirror this on my iPhone); or whether to use profiles, for example, on Safari and split it that way. I might be limited to what I can download on the work machine, but I’d like to synergies everything as much as I can where possible rather than having two completely different Mac experiences with my iPhone sort of thrown in the middle of both.

Which browser do you prefer? I assume a Chromium-based derivative?

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