@glyph Did you quote post something?
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@aeva @mcc @seanlinsley I can’t imagine how it would be. maybe if we lived in different jurisdictions and there were app store revenue involved or something? but the only “getting in trouble” I could imagine for 3rd-party download mac stuff would be if you put some malware in there it might burn my account if it got caught
@aeva @mcc @seanlinsley to be clear please don’t put any malware in there
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@aeva @mcc @seanlinsley to be clear please don’t put any malware in there
@glyph @mcc @seanlinsley if malware ends up in any of my projects i'll be just as surprised as you
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@glyph @mcc @seanlinsley if malware ends up in any of my projects i'll be just as surprised as you
@glyph @mcc @seanlinsley anyway, I'll keep your offer in mind should the stars align for it. i don't have any hardware to port on, so it probably won't be for a while. ironically i am somewhat interested in doing a retro osx port, but i also don't have hardware for that handy either. the next actual planned port is "webpage"
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@glyph I tried switching to Safari and made it about two months before I got angry and came back to Firefox, simply because the Firefox feature set is too damn good: tab containers for sandboxing certain domains, tab sending (push and pull) between multiple devices, and proper ad block extensions and privacy features.
Every time they make me angry with their ai nonsense I just remember that no other browser gets even one of those right, let alone all three.
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@glyph I tried switching to Safari and made it about two months before I got angry and came back to Firefox, simply because the Firefox feature set is too damn good: tab containers for sandboxing certain domains, tab sending (push and pull) between multiple devices, and proper ad block extensions and privacy features.
Every time they make me angry with their ai nonsense I just remember that no other browser gets even one of those right, let alone all three.
@amethyst Trend lines suggest that at least half of Firefox users have stopped using it in the last 5 years or so, so I'm curious to hear from them — I was very surprised when I saw the public numbers because some version of the story you just related is the one I hear the most often *socially* from people who talk about Firefox at all, and I kinda assumed that their user population was holding steady as a result.
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@amethyst Trend lines suggest that at least half of Firefox users have stopped using it in the last 5 years or so, so I'm curious to hear from them — I was very surprised when I saw the public numbers because some version of the story you just related is the one I hear the most often *socially* from people who talk about Firefox at all, and I kinda assumed that their user population was holding steady as a result.
@amethyst it *also* halved in usage from 2015-2020, so the people still using it in 2020 were almost certainly aware of some of its benefits and yet attrition continued, which is what I'm curious about.
I guess a better question for you might be: what made you want to *try* switching to Safari in the first place?
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@glyph Do you have a link to the data? (FWIW I'm not in the group, Firefox has been my secondary browser since around a decade ago, with Safari as primary due to the large performance difference historically and now mostly inertia.)
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@glyph Do you have a link to the data? (FWIW I'm not in the group, Firefox has been my secondary browser since around a decade ago, with Safari as primary due to the large performance difference historically and now mostly inertia.)
@mirth click around on https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/all/worldwide/2015 for various years, but you can look at other reports like https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/browser-market-share-2025-q3 . Different absolute numbers by a few percent depending on where you source your data, but similar trends all around
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@amethyst it *also* halved in usage from 2015-2020, so the people still using it in 2020 were almost certainly aware of some of its benefits and yet attrition continued, which is what I'm curious about.
I guess a better question for you might be: what made you want to *try* switching to Safari in the first place?
@glyph Most recently was because Apple Pay stopped working in Firefox on macOS (after working fine for a couple years), along with being tempted by some nifty-looking Safari extensions that—because iOS jail—would actually work on both the desktop and the phone browser, while my Firefox extensions only work on the desktop.
In the background, I've had growing concerns about Mozilla Foundation being stupid, doing/saying shitty things around crypto/ai/etc, along with repeated rollout of features I absolutely do not want in my browser, that were enabled by default, or the concern that Mozilla itself might be turning into enablers of various sorts and me losing trust in the foundation to follow its mission. Their most recent CEO announcement is adding an awful lot to that feeling.
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@mirth click around on https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/all/worldwide/2015 for various years, but you can look at other reports like https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/browser-market-share-2025-q3 . Different absolute numbers by a few percent depending on where you source your data, but similar trends all around
@glyph Interesting. Their self-reported data shows a slow decline in absolute usage [1] while ITU data [2] shows a big increase in total usage, consistent with the reports of rapidly dropping share.
1. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
2. https://www.itu.int/itu-d/reports/statistics/2024/11/10/ff24-internet-use/ -
@glyph Interesting. Their self-reported data shows a slow decline in absolute usage [1] while ITU data [2] shows a big increase in total usage, consistent with the reports of rapidly dropping share.
1. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
2. https://www.itu.int/itu-d/reports/statistics/2024/11/10/ff24-internet-use/@mirth interesting! the idea that the total internet population was increasing had not occurred to me but I guess if we are looking over a decade that makes sense!
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@mirth interesting! the idea that the total internet population was increasing had not occurred to me but I guess if we are looking over a decade that makes sense!
@glyph I have observed but not followed closely the conversations about Firefox direction, "AI" features, etc. I'm not well-informed enough to have any strong opinions but one thing that's certainly different vs a decade ago is all of the major browsers work well in terms of compatibility, performance, stability, etc. There are differences, but they're all plenty usable. At the same time there a lot of smaller hurdles to switching (bookmarks, device sync, G acct sign-in).
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@glyph I have observed but not followed closely the conversations about Firefox direction, "AI" features, etc. I'm not well-informed enough to have any strong opinions but one thing that's certainly different vs a decade ago is all of the major browsers work well in terms of compatibility, performance, stability, etc. There are differences, but they're all plenty usable. At the same time there a lot of smaller hurdles to switching (bookmarks, device sync, G acct sign-in).
@glyph What that suggests to me is the usage dynamics are more like soft drinks, an inexpensive product where choices are driven by habit, brand perception, and distribution more than anything in the product itself. Not much different from how Coca-Cola and Pepsi are more or less interchangeable and equally bad for you.
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@glyph I recently (= after summer vacay or so) stopped using Firefox altogether in favor of Librewolf. However I've been using Vivaldi for a long time now for the webpages that don't work well enough in Firefox. The list is depressingly long. Librewolf is so uptight that I now have to use Vivaldi ever more often. I can foresee a time when it will only work on old sites.
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@glyph What that suggests to me is the usage dynamics are more like soft drinks, an inexpensive product where choices are driven by habit, brand perception, and distribution more than anything in the product itself. Not much different from how Coca-Cola and Pepsi are more or less interchangeable and equally bad for you.
@glyph @glyph On the one hand this is an uninspiring possibility because it implies that without an external stabilizing force the browser world will stabilize with just a few dominant brands. On the other, it suggests that succeeding with a new browser doesn't necessarily entail a massive technical effort, more a cultural, packaging, and marketing project.
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@glyph I am using https://duckduckgo.com/ more than firefox these days. Reason: more private. Or so they promise.
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@amethyst Trend lines suggest that at least half of Firefox users have stopped using it in the last 5 years or so, so I'm curious to hear from them — I was very surprised when I saw the public numbers because some version of the story you just related is the one I hear the most often *socially* from people who talk about Firefox at all, and I kinda assumed that their user population was holding steady as a result.
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@glyph Chrome -> FF about fiveish years ago, for fairly obvious reasons, but never liked FF — it was always super slow and buggy for me (even without extensions, and adding just a few extensions made it lots worse). Switched to Vivaldi 2-3 years ago and am very happy: it’s fast, stable, and has all the key features I want: built-in adblocking, multi-device tab sync, split pane windows, etc.
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@glyph I still use Firefox as my main browser, but I switched to librewolf some time ago to test it. If mozilla keeps pushing unwanted stuff into the browser, I may be tempted to switch permanently
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@glyph I used to run Firefox as my day-to-day browser, but I decided to give Safari a try when upgrading my laptop a while back and was pleasantly surprised by it.
The fact that anyone who cares about mobile (which is everybody) is forced by Apple's iOS policies into testing on Safari means I see fewer sites break than before, and while the privacy controls aren't as fine-grained or powerful as Firefox they still offer what I think is a reasonable baseline. Performance is also decent, and the battery-life impact is hard to beat.
I still keep Firefox installed, and I still use it for some things (especially browser-based games), but I'd say my usage of it has dropped probably 80% or more.