Not sure if you're serious about 1 update per year...iOS has ~4 major releases per year. (9.0, 9.1, 9.2, 9.3). Safari receives updates in each one. iOS 10.3, which is in beta, comes with tons of Safari changes.
OS updates happen more often, but Safari’s browser engine (WebKit) gets updated with bug fixes and new features exactly twice per year (in March and September), AFAIK.
These past years Safari gets two releases per year, the big one with the release of MacOS in fall and a .1 spring release, adapting web technologies and sometimes extra releases tied to other Apple events and Apple proprietary APIs
I'm somewhat sceptical about evergreen browser, but that's mostly because I hate having the user interface changed under me without any action on my part. I would have hated to get the Safari 15 Beta just by opening my browser in the morning. A better update strategy seems to me to keep the big UI changes for a yearly update; but update the web engine somewhat more often, bi-monthly or so.
The issue is that major updates to Safari follow the same cycle as updates to the MacOS and iOS operating systems, meaning once per year at the current rate. Adding major features once per year (and even then, only once they have been in use on other platforms for at least a year or two) means that Safari can lag by three years in terms of features (case in point: WebRTC).
Another point here: you can't update safari without updating ios itself.
True. But each release of iOS gets to around 90% of the installed base by the time the next version of iOS gets rolled out; it’s non-issue for the vast majority of iOS users.
iOS 15 was updated 12 times [1] between September 2021 and July 2022; iOS users either got bug fixes or new features (usually both) in Safari each time, including users of the iPhone 6s, which shipped September 2015, more than 7 years ago.
Also, safari STILL doesn't support a lot of new wasm extensions.
According to caniuse [2], Safari’s WASM support seems to be just as current as Chrome and Firefox.
[1]:
Version Build Release Date
15.0 19A341, 19A346 September 20, 2021
15.0.1 19A348 October 1, 2021
15.0.2 19A404 October 11, 2021
15.1 19B74 October 25, 2021
15.1.1 19B81 November 17, 2021
15.2 19C56, 19C57 December 13, 2021
15.2.1 19C63 January 12, 2022
15.3 19D50 January 26, 2022
15.3.1 19D52 February 10, 2022
15.4 19E241 March 14, 2022
15.4.1 19E258 March 31, 2022
15.5 19F77 May 16, 2022
15.6 19G71 July 20, 2022
Yeah they've always updated Safari on the previous version of macOS, but that's pretty far from being evergreen, and the average user isn't going to be using the technology preview.
Take Chrome for example, where there's roughly an update every 60 days and the option for them to push out security fixes quicker.
Imagine having to wait for an operating system update (major or minor version) to just get the latest secure version of Chrome. That's pretty much where Safari is, especially on iOS.
Don't get me wrong, I think Safari gets a lot of unwarranted hate and it can certainly be a bit quirky here and there, but if they didn't have to wait for the next major/minor release of macOS/iOS to update Safari I think it'd be in a much better place.
> A new version of Safari shipped 17 times in the last 28 month
> Yes, not as frequent as monthly releases, but Apple shipped 7 Safari updates on iOS in 2023.
That's a very recent change: prior to 2022 Apple had far fewer updates to Safari on both macOS and iOS - and still witholds Safari updates from older iOS versions - for example, there was only 1 macOS Safari update per year between 2008 and 2015, and only 2 updates per year from 2015 to 2022; while things were just as sparse on iOS.
You're correct about iOS. For OS X, open App Store and then Updates. You'll see individual Safari updates (separate from OS updates) in the update history.
It’s more often than twice a year, at that. It would be nice if Safari and Safari WebView were updated more frequently like Chrome and other browsers, but the pace that exists is not as slow as people like to pretend.
It's mostly free from the OS release cycle now: They have been shipping major web platform features in Safari versions that ship with their minor OS updates. (e.g. macOS 14.2, iOS 17.1) so every ~3 months, which is a nice cadence.
The major OS release cadence only seems to affect major UI revamps which aren't that frequent anyway, so it's not that much of a limitation.
You can now also update Safari independently of macOS, which is nice for IT environments that restrict major macOS updates until they have been approved.
Hopefully in the future they will also allow that for iOS, so that older devices that can't update have some more longevity for web apps (and so that we as web developers don't need to support as many older versions)
We're litigating Apple's release cadance from 9 years ago?
I get it. Apple used to update Safari infrequently. In the past two years they've increased how frequently they update. "Apple patch their browser twice a year at best" is no longer true.
On macOS, Safari releases are independent of OS releases and show up as separate updates as and when they’re released. They may coincide on the date sometimes. It’s not like iOS where Safari updates never show up as separate updates, and are bundled with iOS updates.
I agree - I thought the reason this was posted to HN was the fact this is a fairly significant update with its own announcement page, which doesn't appear to have been the case with .1 releases in the past. Perhaps iOS is moving to a faster update cycle?
I hope Safari gets more meaningful updates as well - the once-a-year updates sometimes with not much new (looking at you Safari 9) is real slow progress for web developers, especially compared to Chrome and Firefox.
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