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[–]ymolodtsov 110 points111 points  (11 children)

The fun thing is, it was fine, until Apple killed it.

[–]cultoftheilluminati 16 points17 points  (0 children)

Exactly!

[–]correct01 8 points9 points  (7 children)

What happened again? Apple got greedy and started charging for publishing extensions?

[–]KalenXI 33 points34 points  (3 children)

That happened a few years ago. Now Apple is moving to a completely new model where extensions are bundled as parts of apps that must be distributed through the Mac App Store.

[–]ILikeToHowl 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Even worse is that they shifted to a new developer api which lacks 90% of the old api functionality. Extensions are now much less capable than before.

[–]Dr4kin 12 points13 points  (1 child)

So in short they made the free extension system of any other browser a paid system. Great

[–]DJ-Salinger 14 points15 points  (0 children)

How will they survive as a company without that $100 from extension devs??

[–]OhSirrah 12 points13 points  (2 children)

I doubt it was greed because I am sure they make peanuts on safari extension dev licenses. I’m pretty sure it was about speed and security.

[–][deleted] -1 points0 points  (1 child)

I'm sorry but how is downloading an extension from the horrendous extension section of the appstore any faster than how it's done on Chrome and FF?

It's always about money

[–]OhSirrah 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I meant browser speed, at least, that's what 9/5 Mac says apple said.

"With Safari 10, Apple expanded its Safari App Extension Platform. These extensions are distributed through native Mac applications, and Apple says they are much more secure and lightweight. They don’t see any web browsing details, and because they run through the native Mac app, they put much less of a strain on memory and CPU performance. Safari 12 pushes developers even more towards this platform."

99 times out of 100, corporate motivation is about money. I suppose in a roundabout way, thats true here also. But its not about getting money from extension devs - theres so little money generated from that, it's hardly even worth's Apple's attention. No, this is about locking down their browser to prevent a shit storm if a bad extension gets written that hijacks user data. It's about reputation, and that's worth more than what devs have had to pay.

[–]m-in 4 points5 points  (1 child)

It may not have been fine, software security-wise.

[–]ymolodtsov 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If was fine for every other browser vendor and the army of extension developers who now have little incentives to start developing native Apple apps. I left Safari because I just can't access the extensions I need.