Disagree with this assessment. IE was so bad because Microsoft tried to go off and create its own standards that were incompatible with Mozilla / Firefox / etc. (I'm thinking of IE6 specifically). And this was big, core functionality like page layout and CSS; not some data structures that can be implemented in other ways (albeit with a performance hit). This was doubly bad because "enterprise" companies (SAP, SAS, Oracle, etc) built their original web interfaces against IE6; and those systems are so costly to upgrade that many companies
still run IE6-compatible browsers. Chrome even has an option that can be pushed out via GPO to render certain pages using an IE6-compatible renderer. Safari is nowhere near that bad; I have yet to run across a page that works in Chrome that doesn't work in Safari.
Safari, by comparison, is just behind the curve on some developer-centric features. But Safari also has some things going in its favor: in my experience, it's the fastest browser on OS X by a pretty wide margin. Chrome is so bloated and full of garbage at this point that when I have it open, I usually have at least one tab sitting at 100% CPU (and this is with FlashBlock enabled). Safari also manages to feel faster while using significantly less power -- I suspect Apple has done some optimizations through Grand Central on this front.
Safari on mobile is a bit of a different story; yes it has problems, but I don't know that supporting a larger feature set is the answer.
Safari, by comparison, is just behind the curve on some developer-centric features. But Safari also has some things going in its favor: in my experience, it's the fastest browser on OS X by a pretty wide margin. Chrome is so bloated and full of garbage at this point that when I have it open, I usually have at least one tab sitting at 100% CPU (and this is with FlashBlock enabled). Safari also manages to feel faster while using significantly less power -- I suspect Apple has done some optimizations through Grand Central on this front.
Safari on mobile is a bit of a different story; yes it has problems, but I don't know that supporting a larger feature set is the answer.