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.

  • schmurnan@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    9·
    10 months ago

    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.socialEnglish
      4·
      10 months ago

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

    • abhibeckert@lemmy.worldEnglish
      13·
      10 months ago

      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.