The State of Safari Extensions
honestbleeps (via Peter Steinberger, Hacker News):
A little over a year ago, Apple announced that Safari extension developers would no longer be able to develop extensions for free. Instead, they had to pay the same $100 per year that iOS and MacOS developers do. The benefit, they alleged, is that you’d get the tools and support to develop iOS and MacOS apps in addition to Safari Extension development. According to them, this “simplified” their program.
[…]
All of the browsers’ extension galleries require that you submit your extension for review. Each of them, except Safari, has some automated processes to ensure you’ve checked all the right boxes and included all the right files and data. The fact that we waited two weeks to be notified of such a simple omission, and one that wasn’t noted in the first rejection, is pretty awful.
So, we submitted yet again, once again providing documentation of our license to use the term “reddit” in the name, just in case. What happens? We wait a few weeks and are once again rejected for using the term “reddit” in the name of our extension!
[…]
All four of the other browsers use effectively the same APIs — Safari is potentially going to change that in some ugly ways.
To develop a Safari extension may eventually require Xcode, rather than whatever editor a developer prefers to use.
The difference with Edge vs Safari is that Edge spent time getting extensions right. They worked directly with extension developers (including me!) to ensure that Edge supported as much of what RES needed as possible. I was even flown out to Microsoft to work with their developers for a day and help them get RES running.
Microsoft showed us a great deal of kindness and respect. Apple has essentially given us the middle finger.
