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When you type realty.com into Safari it takes you to realtor.com (facebook.com)
1039 points by shiftpgdn on June 25, 2020 | hide | past | favorite | 425 comments



This has been driving me mad for the better part of a year: the autocomplete behavior in Safari is totally broken. Last year it started picking words from your query and going through your history and using that to autocomplete so you'd always go to some random thing from your history that's barely relevant even for the most generic search terms (if I type "ptrace" I want to go to a web search, not some random Stack Overflow question I clicked on two years ago that happened to have "ptrace" in its title). Now it's randomly loading other websites I have never been to when I type search terms (I searched "sketch" the other day and it took me to "sketchers.com"). It's WWDC week, so FB7333211 for the first one and another incoming once I can reproduce this reliably. Please fix your stuff, Apple.

Oh, while I'm here: trying to escape out of the autocomplete suggestion is also awful, it's some sort of combination of ⎋ and ⌫ and the arrow keys until you can get the thing to not show up in the bar, and then you have to look very closely to make sure that it's not going to send you to the Top Hit anyways.


Posting reply here for more visibility.

Folks who can reproduce the "sketch" --> "sketchers.com" behavior or the "realty.com" --> "realtor.com" behavior, would any of you be willing to file the issue via Feedback Assistant (only needs a free developer.apple.com account) with a sysdiagnose and a screen recording? Then give me the FB number.

I can get the Safari team to look at this, but I can't reproduce either behavior myself. Any other examples of bogus/unexpected autocomplete also welcome.

I looked at the FB# cited in the parent, but it doesn't have a specific example or a sysdiagnose. Since may of these things only reproduce for some users, we need all the data we can get to resolve these issues.


Filed a report here: FB7796744 This has driven me absolutely nuts as well...occurs when trying to visit wbay.com (instead sends me to ebay.com)


Wow, I just tried wbay.com and it sent me to eBay.com, I find this very disturbing.


None of the others triggered for me but this does. I’m running the Big Sur beta and notice that spotlight search is comically wrong as well.

What gives Apple?


If you're curious why this happens, it's overzealous typo fixes.


this happens to me too using safari on ipados


I just triggered this myself - if I specifically type out the https portion, Safari won't change the URL, and from that point on I can get to wbay.com by just typing wbay.com.


Thanks for filing. I can reproduce this one!


I have another one. "b.dk" turns into "eb.dk".

Two different Danish newspapers. Can't be true I can only use one of them :)


> but I can't reproduce either behavior myself

Me neither.

manOS Catalina, Version 10.15.5. Safari Version 13.1.1 (15609.2.9.1.2)

EDIT: Still can't get used to Safari's URL completion behaviour. It is completely unnatural and hard to feel as useful, unlike chrome's which is very handy and behaves like I expect.


A separate search and URL field would be nice, it’s just not the same thing. Issues with autocomplete and with copy and paste abound.


Any specific feedback on completion behaviors that feel wrong?


Visit a url with the same work in the title and the url, ie https://github.com/Whitespace/Glome

Close safari and reopen it.

Type in "Whitespace" then "Bookmarks and History" shows up. Highlight a result, then go to the end of the line and delete that work, thinking you'll be editing the url directly to get: https://github.com/Whitespace

It matches on the title and allows you to edit that, leaving you with the option to search on "Whitespace/glome: Glome! Powered by " which is extremely baffling.

My expectation is that it matches the url and allows me to edit it, which is something I do very often for github repos: type the name of the user, highlight a history result so https://github.com/ is filled out, then option delete the repo and type in the one I want to go to.


Thanks for the specific example!


I like to start typing whatever I'm looking for, in the browser bar. There a list will be populated with "suggestions" which I like to use (arrow down) to extent my search query and add some more words.

Safari expects me to "arrow right" or my (more or less) carefully crafted search will be auto removed (since the text will be "selected"). I fall for this x times per day (probably says more about me then about safari). Chrome will allow me to move to one of the suggestions and happily append my text without the need to "deselect" the text.

But there are more "usability" issues with Safari:

Why is the "x" to close a tab, on the left instead of right? Why do I need to press the ALT key to get the option to open a link in private mode (after a right click on the link)? Why can I not drag a URL to a bookmark folder directly? Why can I not re-attach a browser window as a tab in an open window?


> Why is the "x" to close a tab, on the left instead of right? Why do I need to press the ALT key to get the option to open a link in private mode (after a right click on the link)?

I think these are both just macOS convention.

> Why can I not re-attach a browser window as a tab in an open window?

This seems to work for me?


Never autocomplete a URL, just offer suggestions that the user can select manually


I recently ran into input fields being autocorrected and autocapitalized at 2 different levels (disabled it with an attribute and this caused a delayed capitalization by autocorrect instead of an immediate one) by safari in the iOS emulator..

Luckily the field in question was an actual email so I could fix it by changing the type, since all the official and apple custom attributes I tried failed to turn off the correction..

I would like the security of a non-android device, but using apple products is utterly infuriating with all the damn "help" missfiring all the time.


Input fields is a different thing than the location field. Please file that one too, if you have a reproducible case of autocorrect/autocapitalize that you don't expect.


Apple is targeting the average user as usual and breaking the world wide web standards.


Shh ... Don't give them ideas, or else very soon Safari might be converted to a Chromium based browser as well :P - and that will be the end of browser war forever (yeah, Firefox is giving a tough fight but not in terms of market share).


Well they are already both Webkit and that aspect is the problem (yes I know about Blink vs Webkit, but still).


Yes, I know it's webkit based, but not entirely Chromium based like Microsoft Edge is. And as you already know Chromium is Blink based now.


I want to stress the point that autocomplete on iOS Safari is not well designed either. It is one of these things that "customers will never tell you", but they still are annoyed every time .


I was able to stop this behavior by deactivating options in Settings > Siri & Search > Safari.


I can reliably reproduce the "sketch" example on iOS 13. Is there anything helpful I can provide re: that?


You can probably get a sysdiagnose from your iOS device with: https://www.jessesquires.com/blog/2018/02/08/how-to-sysdiagn...


sysdiagnose, screen recording, file via Feedback Assistant if possible and share the FB#.Is this a relatively new device, or one you have been using for a while>


it's my daily driver, and I upgraded and restored from iCloud for the last few devices in a row so it's hardly pristine. I'll see if I can do a sysdiagnose tomorrow.


Yes, you’re right, I did neglect to actually put a specific search term that was doing this for me. That was almost a year ago so I can’t completely remember why I didn’t, but I think it had to do with it being history-specific so I didn’t really think it would be all that helpful for reproducing the issue. Still, my mistake, and if it helps I think that I took that sysdiagnose right after reproducing that issue. As for the other bug: according to my history I first hit that on the 16th on my iPad. I didn’t file it at that point because 1. we don’t have tap-to-Radar so I’m a bit lazier about filing bugs when I’m not at my computer and 2. submitting bugs for something you saw once the week before WWDC is a surefire way to get it ignored.

Speaking of that, I’d just like to say one more thing on this topic while I still have your attention here. While the things I mentioned here could have been filed a bit better, aside from that I really do try my best to report things I find, often in great detail and depth that I specifically take time out of my day for. I run Safari Technology Preview ten hours a day, every day, on whatever the latest developer beta is. (Yes, I’m running Big Sur and using yesterday’s build.) I think Safari is a great browser; I know everyone on the team is passionate and cares about making it better, and I’m sure they’d be disappointed to hear that I’m going around calling some part of it “totally broken” on a reasonably sized social website and that my experience is clearly shared by many of the people here.

But the usual Apple complaint still applies here: they need to be more responsive to reports, and yes they need to actually fix their stuff. I know this is not your team, and that you probably don’t have much control over this, but you’re surely in contact with them often and I’d appreciate it if you could remind them. I have filed literally dozens of Safari bugs in the last few years. It’s probably the component I file bugs against the most because I use it so much and because I care very much that it works right. But it’s disheartening to see maybe half of them getting any response at all, and of those just a couple with actual responses that are not just “please attach a sysdiagnose” or “this bug has been marked as a duplicate”. It’s disheartening to find bugs in Safari Technology Preview running on a developer seed and have them be ignored as they slowly make their way into public beta Safari and then into an official release where other people run into it. It’s disheartening when I can go a month without being able to launch Safari Technology Preview with it crashing immediately until I literally take a binary diff of Safari.framework, disassemble it, and find the exact change made and the circumstances that made it crash, and highlight it in a red circle along with a suggested patch to get it fixed correctly (Safari Technology Preview releases 37 and 38, rdar://problem/33815640, rdar://problem/34167199). More recently I was having crashes every two hours-or under load, even more frequently-because of something which I will bet you $10 is a data race in Safari’s Remote Web Inspector Lockdown code (this has stopped crashing but now causes an infinite loop, and I’ve become accustomed to attaching a debugger to Safari, breaking in the offending code, and suspending the lockdown queue from there; FB7660529). When you put out these prerelease builds and I take the time and effort to use them and file issues about them, I think the least I can expect is the bugs actually being fixed or barring even that just some acknowledgement of the issue. Thanks.


Thanks for the feedback. I agree that communication about bugs could be better. Still would appreciate an FB# for any weird autocompletes you experience.


I’ll make sure to file a feedback if I run into it again, and if you’d like I’d be more than happy to email the number to you as well if you’d like to CC yourself on it or push it to the right people. Thanks for your help!


Unable to reproduce on iOS 13.5.1

FWIW I have none of those sites “sketch, sketchers, realty, realtor” in my history or bookmarks


> I searched "sketch" the other day and it took me to "sketchers.com"

I got curious and tried the same, with the same results. And I have never before bought shoes online, ever.

But it's even worse than you said: the website is actually "skechers.com", with no t. So, when you type "sketch", Safari is guessing that you're misspelling the name of a shoe retailer.


One thing that doesn't seem to be discussed a lot in this thread is that the keystrokes alone don't tell you what Safari will do. The second and third cases of the original video show Safari adding extra characters (the second and third phone added "m" as in "realty.com[m]", and in my testing, "sketch" added "rs" as in "sketch[rs]". When I tried (iPad Safari) "realty.com", the "Top Hit" was "realty.com" and it did not autofill anything, and I got to realty.com (no problem there). However, The first phone in the video did not show any extra characters. Is Safari considering it a "search autocompletion" but not showing any extra characters, perhaps because they are suppressed? Also, many commentors here report this not happening for them, but they do not specify the state of Search Engine Suggestions and Safari Suggestions options on their devices. My testing was done with all the default options (which is both Search Engine and Safari Suggestions are turned on)

EDIT: Could it be that the Suggestions system is taking the autocomplete candidate ("sketchrs" and "realty.comm") as its input (instead of what the user actually typed)? That would explain what I've read here except for the very first iPhone in the video...


I'm a bit confused... I just typed "sketch" in Safari on my phone.

The first suggested result was indeed skechers.com.

But then I hit enter (so the total keystrokes were "s k e t c h return") and it did a search in my default search engine for "sketch". Which is what I expected.

so what am I doing that you're not?


I can confirm the "s k e t c h return" -> skechers behavior.

"s k e t c h SPACE return" got me the google search results.


Folks who can reproduce the "sketch" --> "sketchers.com" behavior or the "realty.com" --> "realtor.com" behavior, would any of you be willing to file the issue via Feedback Assistant (only needs a free developer.apple.com account) with a sysdiagnose and a screen recording? Then give me the FB number.

I can get the Safari team to look at this, but I can't reproduce either behavior myself. Any other examples of bogus/unexpected autocomplete also welcome.


I only use Safari and I’ve actually been on realtor.com a ton the past few days. I just punched in realty.com and it directed me to realtor.com. If I do http://realty.com it takes me to the correct site.


Interesting! Maybe it takes a lot of visits to realtor.com to get in this state.


Done: FB7793463. It sounds like you work at Apple? The screen recording is attached to the report.


Thank you! I do work at Apple, on WebKit mostly but I'm in touch with a lot of Safari folks too.


I can't tell if it's my company's censorware or Safari but lately it really likes redirecting 127.0.0.1 to http://www.127.0.0.1.com if a server isn't listening on the port I requested. Localhost does the same thing


I don’t have a developer’s account, but I’m new to iPhone in the last 4 months and my phone also goes from realty.com to realtor.com.

Not sure if a lack of history is for some reason causing it, or the presence of history is preventing it


It's free to sign up on developer.apple.com! Bug reports filed via Feedback Assistant are a lot more actionable, so worth it if you are considering reporting issues.


Happy to as well. Able to reproduce on my iPhone 8. Type in “sketch” to safari. Hit enter. End up at sketchers.com


When I search in iPhone Safari for “sketch” I get a dictionary definition for the word as the top suggested result. Pressing “go” does a Google search for “sketch”.



What do you get if you switch your search engine to DDG?


I use DDG and I see the same behavior:

sketch<enter> --> skechers.com

sketch <enter> --> search for sketch on DDG

So this is presumably not DDG specific behavior. Safari on latest Catalina macOS.


DDG and I get the second response for both cases.


doesn’t do it for me. one difference is my default search engine is duck duck go.


Aha! Same here, it looks like maybe DDG vs Google is the real difference here?


iPhone X here, running iOS 13.5.1. I have Google set as my search engine in Safari.

When I type sketch and press return I am taken to the Google Search results.

Notably, however, I have “Search Engine Suggestions” turned off in my Safari settings, and I also have “Safari Suggestions” turned off in my Safari settings. I’ve turned them off a while back because they were more of a nuisance than a help.

Maybe you and others turned those things off at some point too?


I have "Search Engine Suggestions" and "Safari Suggestions" both enabled, Google as "Search Engine" and I see the same behaviour as you (typing "sketch" RETURN in safari address bar takes me to the Google search results).


I have a completely stock iOS setup (Google search) and have had this happen occasionally. I thought I was going crazy. Glad to see this isn’t just me.


So the hypotheses is, it’s doing a web search and google is doing an auto “I’m feeling lucky” redirect.


I use ddg and I can confirm the sketch<enter> -> Skechers.com


I use DuckDuckGo ;)


I can reproduce on an ipad, with ddg as the search engine. Neat.


iPhone 11 Pro here, everything up to date, and I get the same as you. Type in "sketch" and press GO and I get the DDG results for the term "sketch".

I also tried the example in the OP link and typed "realty.com" and it went to realty.com as expected.

Funnily enough though, as proof that Safari suggestions are still broken despite the above examples working for me... if I now type in "sketch" again, it suggests "realty.com" as the top result. Wtf.


Are you using private browsing? Safari also did a search in my default search engine for me (but sketch.com was the top result on DDG). But when I turn off private browsing and type sketch it immediately sends me to skechers.com despite the fact that I wouldn’t be caught dead in a pair of their shoes and my purchase/browsing history reflects that.

Odd that private browsing would impact the autocomplete behavior in that way...


No


On iPhone 11 Pro and updated Safari typing “sketch” and pressing “go” leads to sketchers website. Have to click on “google searches” to get other results.


Interesting! I have a very new iPhone 11 and it takes me straight to the google results. I wonder if the behaviour depends on your locale?


iPhone X here, running iOS 13.5.1. I have Google set as my search engine in Safari.

When I type sketch and press return I am taken to the Google Search results. Notably, however, I have “Search Engine Suggestions” turned off in my Safari settings, and I also have “Safari Suggestions” turned off in my Safari settings. I’ve turned them off a while back because they were more of a nuisance than a help.

Maybe you and others turned those things off at some point too?


I have both turned on, but cannot reproduce on ios 13. Must be 14 new shiny thing, glad I skipped the update. The amount of things that Apple improved over last 7 years is incredible, I think it’s time for them to move on.


iPhone 8 it leads me to DDG search results.


iPhone 10 on 13.5.1...

I opened a new tab, typed in “sketch” saw Skechers.com below it, but just hit enter on the keyboard... went to Skechers.com.

I’ve never purchased shoes from Skechers.com and have only bought shoes online once before. (A pair of Tevas from amazon in 2019).


I tried the behavior on both my work and personal macbook pros with safari. Work laptop does not suggest anything and searches sketch but my personal one suggests sketchtoy.com for sketch and sketch.com as a second result. Its clearly Siri hijacking the ENTER button.

Edit: Just to mention, I use Firefox as my daily browser in both, so my safari does not have any history on both computers.


When I keyed "sketch" into Brave on a mac, the first entry was momentarily "Sketch — The digital design toolkit". Then that was preceded by "SKECHERS® Official Site - Shoes, Boots & Clothing".


And here's a video: https://share.icloud.com/photos/0xTe8fTeUgpQX6ymGcR8zputg

Note this is on the iOS 14 beta


I wonder if this is somehow region specific. In the UK, this goes to Sketch London (a place for food)


s k e t c h takes me to a DuckDuckGo search.

I’ve always been frustrated with Chrome where it always tries to force the longest URL in my history that matches the current entry.


Ha, I didn't even notice that! Yeah, it's gotten really aggressive about thinking it knows better than you…


Maybe this is the final push to eliminate brands that are misspelled normal words?


Reading through yours and the other comments here...I just can't even understand...who came up with the idea of changing key word searches into autocompleting URLs? Personally, I still find the idea of a URL bar doubling as a search bar a bit disconcerting as it is. I expect specific behaviour from a URL bar. I type in an address and either it takes me to what I type or it can't find it.

This behaviour everyone's describing from safari would fill me with so much rage. That shit would drive me nuts. Having non existent addresses being interpreted as search queries is annoying enough, if my browser started deciding my searches were random web addresses I'd lose my shit.


TBH I quite like it, especially in chrome. I can type "GitHub [project name] pulls" and it will take me where I want to go, I can type "app.dev myfeature" and it will go suggest "app.dev.company.com/some/deep/path-abcd1234/myfeature"


The difference is how it's visualized. On Chrome, it shows you the complete path. If I type "gi" in omnibox, I can visually see "github.com/EhsanKia" and then I press enter.

In the video shown above, you visually SEE "realty.comm" (there's an extra m there which I found very strange, which makes me think this is a bug), but when the person pressed enter, it goes to realtor.com. I expect pressing enter to run the query I see, not for it to change after I press enter.


> SEE "realty.comm"

I don't see 2 ms, at least not in the first example in the video.


The very first one didn't, but every other one after that did, and that's across two different phones.


Meanwhile in Chrome for me I type my project manager’s name to bring up their WebEx link I visit several times a day and it comes up but first I have to move my mouse down past several autocomplete suggestions for travel destinations and popular musicians.


I have always had this problem with Chrome suggestions. the Firefox suggestions about ten years ago were perfect. I miss them.


Sure that's great, but that should either be separate from the address bar or at the very least shouldn't be so 'default' for lack of a better term, that just clicking without thinking activates that behaviour. For people like yourself that use it to its full advantage I won't argue that is a good feature. For the majority of people trying to make a simple search, it doesn't seem so helpful.

I feel like default behaviour should be broadly helpful, while specifically helpful behaviour should be easily accessible but not so easily accessible that a mindless click triggers it.


It used to be two different lines in the address bar in Firefox. Then Chrome came along with the omnibar and people liked it so it stuck.


At least Firefox still lets you put back a dedicated search box


On my Firefox 79, if I pop open a new tab, 1) the cursor is refocused from the search box to the URL bar and 2) the URL bar is a search box (even if search-in-url-box is successfully disabled in not-new tabs).

Even better, the option to set new tab to a webpage is gone. The only choices are the Firefox default page or a blank webpage.

Normally this wouldn't be a problem. I'd just try one of the dozen of known tweaks to about:config or userChrome.css and defeat this behavior. Except none of them impact this.

Again, this is only for a new tab.


Ew, yeah, that's a pain.

FWIW, and as a workaround and not any sort of defense of FF breaking itself: You could, from an existing page, type what you want in the search box, then middle-click (or ctrl+click) the search button, which opens the result in a new tab. Again, you shouldn't have to do this, but it seems like it'd patch your workflow.


In the end I opted for an extension - it redirects a new tab to a web page of my choosing.

The action is a bit distracting but it happens fast enough that it's not a bother.

I'll note it was the 2nd extension I tried. It may be some onerous Firefox security measure needs to be bypassed & the first extension hadn't managed it yet.


It used to be two different boxes in Opera. Early Firefox or IE didn’t have a search box.


Firefox 1.0 had a search box, see the screenshot at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox_early_version_history#...


The point here is to be able to offer suggestion without leaking search intent / keywords to a search engine that happens to use it for ad profiling.

But the way Apple is doing it is an uphill battle because without much context, it's harder to offer an anonymized solution. I remain hopeful it's just a buggy implementation and that they don't give up because I really like the model from a privacy perspective.


Holy cow, yes. I switched to FF a while back, and your description of the behavior alone raised my blood pressure. They way return automatically opens whatever the first suggestion is immensely frustrating. The way hitting `return` is literally a race condition against how quickly the autocomplete returns its results.

There are some things I miss about Safari, but the search bar behavior is not one of them.


Wait until you see Spotlight in Big Sur beta 1, it teleports back in time to give you a result for the query you typed in the last time you opened it :/


> the autocomplete behavior in Safari is totally broken.

I'm looking for a genuine honest answer here, this really isn't rhetorical. Every second thread regarding Apple seems to have top comments complaining about the quality of what Apple has become. The first I recall was the butterfly keyboard fiasco, then some others, then El Capitan and Big Sur bugs, then this.

Again, I really want to understand this: why the continued loyalty?


I’ve used a maxed out ThinkPad X1 Extreme and a maxed out MacBook Pro side by side. At a glance, very comparable specs. The MacBook Pro was a nicer experience. Not loyalty, it’s just better. The complaints are typically more of a, “You’ve gotten so many things right and better than everyone else, why is this rough edge still a problem!?”


Meanwhile my maxed out MBP 16 suffers from consistent kernel panics and reboots any time I plug into a thunderbolt dock. This is my first Mac after being in Windows land for a long time and getting fed up with recurring driver/firmware issues with my Dell XPS15 (fantastic hardware, terrible software/firmware integration though).

There are definitely things that are nicer on OSX, but there are also a lot of warts that people seem to gloss over. Finder is an absolute abomination as a file explorer and it boggles my mind that this is the best OSX has to offer after years of refinement. Having to install a separate utility to switch mouse scroll directions when using a BT mouse is also ridiculous. You have to shell out money just to have basic features your OS should provide like window management (Better touch tool / magnet).

External monitor rendering is really bad if you connect to a non HDPI monitor. Thunderbolt dock integration is pretty atrocious if you are trying to connect to more than one external monitor. And the OS keeps getting more locked down so opening a simple Word file takes > 5 seconds because of all the sandboxing going on in Catalina.

There are definitely things OSX / MBP does much better, but everyone acts like it is far superior to Windows-based laptops, and I have unfortunately been rather surprised at the large number of pain points I have had with my MBP... none of which have anything to do with me having spent more time on Windows.

There is a very good chance that a colleague of mine who has been a life-long OSX user and I will end up switching back to a windows-based laptop in a couple of years. Windows is far more dev friendly and with WSL2 + CUDA + GUI apps on the roadmap, a solid Windows laptop with an nVidia GPU looks like a much more interesting proposition even if I have to put up with some rough edges.


One thing that our IT people complain a lot about is that some of the macbooks don't have enough power on their USB ports/port replicator, so you can't attach some USB devices when on battery. Even more infuriating, for some projectors don't work without the notebook (because the port-replicator does not have enough power).

I also find it very interesting that if there is a problem with a some website/file/software mac-users blame it on the software (and actually windows users agree even if it works fine for them), but if it's a Linux user that has problems, it's always "because he/she is using Linux"


I totally agree about "Finder" - a better name might have been "Loser" - since it's only good at making you lose things.

I switched from Windows to Mac about 6 years ago - because I needed an all-in-one system that could compile iOS, Android and UWP apps. However even 6 years later I still have problems with Finder - big problems - it just doesn't behave at all how I expect. I often find myself using Windows Explorer (in my Parallels VM) to navigate the file system because it is just so much easier and predictable.


> why is this rough edge still a problem!?

This perspective makes tons of sense. Safari is a rough edge for me, and I don't even use Apple - I think most of my hatred for the platform is derived from supporting that awful browser.

For my wedding website, I simply wanted to overlay some lines on MapBox with shadows to look like strings and pins on a map. My approach used dynamic SVG (changing a path attribute when the map is moved/tilted/whatever). This performed perfectly on my PC, on my Pixel and even the shitty Samsung browser my fiance uses. It completely annihilated all Apple devices I tried it on (locking up my friend's iPhone entirely), I had to remove the shadows. I really wish they would get it right, or allow alternate browser engines.


Re: the butterfly keys... Yeah, they’re way more susceptible to debris than scissor switches (and I guess more fragile if you like to hammer on your keys). I’ve had to turn my laptop over and blow it out once or twice. But honestly I prefer the key feel and it’s not been a problem. I see the appeal of where they were going. It was a compromise and it didn’t go over well for a vocal and large enough minority that they unwound it. I’ll miss my butterfly keys when I refresh though.


I have the opposite. I have a now two year old midrange Lenovo Yoga and a brand new midrange MBP. The MBP runs hot under Thunderbolt, becomes unresponsive under even moderate load, and requires a dance of "turn the monitor on, turn the monitor off, unplug the cable, plug the cable in" everytime I wake it from sleep with an external monitor. I've had to download software to turn the fan curve to "always on all the time", because the combination of Radeon + Thunderbolt hits 70 degrees at idle, and if I don't, the CPU throttles to nothing.

I can definitely see why the coffee-shop set would love this machine, since it works really well on the couch (disconnected from everything) but it's been borderline unusable tethered to my desk. In that situation, I don't care about the large trackpad, because I use the same external mouse as on all my other machines.

Don't even get me started on third party software quality.


There’s an overheating issue with charging from the left side on MBPs that could be a factor. Otherwise, as a counterpoint, I have a great experience driving the Pro Display XDR with the MBP.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/barrycollins/2020/04/24/why-you...


I've played around with this, and it doesn't make a _huge_ amount of difference - I currently charge on the RHS just to be sure, but I have my external monitor dongle on the left.

I'm sure the Apple product to Apple product compatibility is great, but I don't really want to have to buy an entire new monitor just so that my work laptop doesn't suck.


Did you use a Carbon or X1 Extreme? There is no “carbon X1 extreme”

I’ve used both side by side too. Other than the keyboard being better on Lenovo and trackpad being better on MacBook. The rest is same same to me.


X1 Extreme, sorry for the confusion. Edited the original.

The trackpad was a huge one for me. I really couldn’t bear it. I did like the ThinkPad keyboard though. The 135W charger was also a ThinkPad win. I would be tempted by a ThinkPad in the future if they could get anywhere near as good a trackpad as the MacBook.

Oh! Also the MacBook speakers and mics are lightyears better. The ThinkPad speakers are an embarrassing tinny downward firing mess. MacBook on the other hand shock me the sound comes from something so small (my 2015 MBP was already good and much better than 2019 X1E... 2019 MBP is totally another league.. made me stop packing Bluetooth speakers while traveling on some occasions).


Oh yes the speakers. I think laptop speakers 10 years ago were better than what we get today. Apple still has quality speakers.


Someone told me that it’s the people we love the most that make us the most angry. Apple products are unreal (both software and hardware). People get really frustrated with little annoyances all the time and get quite heated. But, ask them to switch, and the answer is “hell no”. Bugs should be fixed for sure, but still minor in the grand scheme of things.


I understand this perspective. I understand why people think that Windows is a hot mess, I has earned that reputation and them some.

I haven't had Windows do stupid shit in over two years. Updating it is a habit once in a while, possibly barely more frequently than it forces (unless I hear about a big vulnerability on HN). I'd probably be annoyed if I didn't understand how important updates were and kept postponing them (until it forced me to apply them, and it really does).

That's the only real complaint people really have of Windows these days. Then there's my complaint: Privacy.

Especially concerning Edge, that Microsoft keeps doing. It hasn't happened to me. Maybe because I have both FF and Chrome installed? Or some group policy I forgot I applied? I have no idea. During login a few days ago it asked for consent on a bunch of things that were previously opt-out, annoying for 2 minutes, but honestly healthy in the long run and a needed change.

Apple wins the privacy war any day of the week, but Windows really is Apple without the little annoyances. If you configure it like I did (and I couldn't tell you how).


Good god, I agree about privacy, but as somebody who does .NET dev for her day job, how did you get rid of the annoyances?

Some of these are little stuff but, off the top of my head: I can't understand the different between these smart "locations" and folders in explorer (documents vs my documents, why everything is under desktop in some file pickers, why C:\ is so hard to get to these days) even after using windows for going on two decades, the system makes me confirm I want to delete something twice (first it asks me if I want to move something to the recycle bin, then it asks me if I want to empty the recycle bin. you only need one! the whole point of having the recycle bin is so that deleting isn't dangerous), the win10 start menu is cluttered and has ads in it and I don't want to spend so much time mucking with tiles, usage of menu bars is utterly inconsistent, and there are seemingly no strong UI conventions for third-party apps. There are at least three and probably four layers of control panel these days, and the newest one almost never has the feature I'm looking for. Search is still bad, and finds what I don't want far more often than what I do.

That being said it has yet to BSOD on me after a couple years of use and that's more I can say about any other version of windows


Use Classic Start. I get it through Ninite. It's perfect.

Shift-delete removes the recycle bin portion. If you access the recycle bin as infrequently as most people (read: only when the drive complains about space), you won't really be concerned about an extra confirmation.

Smart locations are pretty frustrating but I don't remember the last time they weren't just folders under the user directory, similar to MacOS and Linux. My Documents is a legacy shim, Simba. You must never go there.

I think the UI conventions thing is a matter of personal preference. I really like applications that use a UI convention that suits the application. PowerPoint and Google Chrome are different apps for different purposes, so they should have different UIs.

The Settings app/Control Panel is unforgivably broken. That said, if you search for what you want in the start menu, it's usually pretty good at finding it. But yeah, the ODBC driver connection dialog from 3.1 is still in there somewhere.


It’s the confirmation when deleting that bothers me every time, the one when emptying is appropriate.


You can also open an Explorer window and then enter the location that you want to go to into the location bar. <Win+E><Ctrl+L>C:<Enter> takes you to C: and <Win+E><Ctrl+L>Control Panel<Enter> takes you to the "old" control panel, instead of the confusing new "Settings" UI. <Win+E><Ctrl+L>Network Connections<Enter> also works and is often useful because all the newer network configuration utilities are useless. <Win+X>A gives you an administrative prompt. While in an open explorer window, [<Ctrl+Space>]<Shift+Menu>S will give you a regular prompt in the current folder.

These are the small quality-of-life tricks that I use daily. I am not going to claim it makes it enjoyable, though.


Windows hasn't required confirmations for deletions in years. And the Documents vs My documents folder makes me think it's your organisations setup that is to blame for much of this.

Don't use classic start either. Just remove the pinned stuff from the start menu and it's like your using Windows 2000 again.


It might be our active directory setup but I could have sworn I experienced this on personal devices too.


Is Windows still made by Microsoft?

Cool, that's all I need to know.


We complain because we want Apple to return to the quality it had. I know all about Windows and Linux, I get to help my wife out with her HP/MS problems all the time and I use Linux professionally every day.

I'm loyal to Apple because the alternatives are so terrible.

I guess the real question is, why are Windows people so loyal? I kind of get Linux loyalty and that would be my second choice.


Good question. I've already bailed out. After many satisfied years with Apple never thought I'd say this but having a much better time with Windows and wsl2. If that wasn't available would have went to linux. Used to look forward to Apple's keynotes and innovations. It's been all downhill since 2015 and I don't see it getting any better. Wish it would, but it's clear someone else is going to have to take charge of Apple before that happens.


I've seen continued decline in the quality of autocorrect on the relatively new swipe-to-text keyboard, increasingly poor siri voice recognition, and have also noticed this behavior in Safari that frustrates me to no end when it happens.

I think the reason I'm still here is trust in the overall product, along with some heavily rose tinted glasses. I still use other products sometimes and almost always only find problems that would prevent me from switching. So perhaps it's also some monopolistic behavior impacting my personal behavior.


I do software development and music production. I am not as thrilled with Apple products as I once was, but they remain my preferred choice for what I want to do with my computers. Inadequate selection of music software for GNU/Linux, and I find Windows just generally unpleasant to use.


I’m a long time Apple user (and professional Android developer/user up until about 3 years ago). My answer is that I use Apple mobile products because they seem to still be better than all alternatives.

That said, I haven’t looked earnestly at Android phones for about 3 years. I also use an iPad as my primary computer for everything when I’m not on the clock, and I’m fairly confident there’s not much competition in the high-end tablet market.


It doesn’t sound like you’ve tried Google Pixel products for Android phone + tablet. They’re expensive, but they are the best. I use both Android and iOS devices regularly everyday. I wouldn’t waste my time on anything but Google products for Android.

It’s also the only fair comparison of Android to iOS: when using Pixel, the OS & hardware are dictated by Google just like Apple does with the OS & hardware for its phones.

I have good & bad to say about each, but pointless to share them. My peeves are nnot yours and vice-versa.


I have been an Apple user for almost my entire adult life. Most of my friends and family are on iPhones. I have a personal and a work Macbook. I have a lot of Apple momentum in my life.

Is there something so good about the Pixel ecosystem I should consider a switch?


From my experience, Pixels are great mainly because they are just as fluid as iphones and aren't bloated with crap that basically every android hardware vendor puts on. I tried out a htc one and a samsung galaxy s4 and went straight back to iphones as the software was just so laggy and bloated. My pixel 2 feels just as fluid as the iphones I have had though.

Iphones and pixels are both great and far above the other phones I have had so I don't think you can go wrong with either. Main benefit I have with android currently is that I can sideload a wifi hotspot app without paying a stupid subscription fee and google services like assistant, photos, and maps are much better in my opinion.


Battery life for me is important on my phone. So I just can’t use android, period.

Every android phone I’ve had or people I know. The battery is great, but as you download apps it gets slower, and laggier, and battery life shortens.

That simply just doesn’t happen on an iPhone. This happens even with an expensive pixel or a Samsung and large battery.

People can complain the battery is smaller in iPhone, but it still lasts longer.


> Battery life for me is important on my phone.

They actually decreased the battery capacity on the Pixel 4 compared to the 3 (yay for thinner devices!). This seems like a good reason.

I've always plugged in my phone in the car (being a big fan of Android Auto), at my desk and when I sleep. I'd probably go mad if I didn't have those habits.


This is new for me. I use Android myself, and people around me are mixed of Android and iPhone users. All iPhones users I know carry mobile battery. None of the Android users I know do (well, technically they do, but it is almost never used)


Five years ago, I was a big proponent of Macs (not iOS devices). Obviously Linux had its uses, and Windows had, um, games, but Apple's precision-engineered combination of hardware and software was really hard to beat for day-to-day use.

I won't be buying another Mac. Both OS X and MacBook design get worse with each new release, for years. They don't care about anything but iOS anymore--the Mac line is treated as a semi-portable accessory for your iPhone.


For me: privacy and build quality.

Yes, you do see issues with build quality, but all manufacturers have bugs. Overall, it is still much better than the alternatives.


Linux is way better when it comes to privacy, without any doubt.

Dell is way better when it comes to hardware. Dell believes enough in their products to sell laptops with next business day repair included. It's definetly not cheap to send people to fix a single laptop in the middle of nowhere. Apple doesn't think their laptops are good enough for this to be worth it, so that says a bit about the build quality.


Yeah. I have thought about getting a Dell XPS running Linux for years, but I just can’t ever pull the trigger. I don’t even have great reasons other than I have been a satisfied Mac user for 15 years.


Genuine honest answer: because even without being good Apple offers far and away the best product in their markets.


Right ! I sorta started to approach the subject with my girlfriend that works on only apple and 99/100 of her tasks are browser based... I sorta mentioned (after she complained again about xyz of apple) maybe we can get her a nice Linux desktop/laptop.... I was nearly single again..


Big Sur just came out, so I can forgive its buginess ;) But even with these bugs Apple is still the best of the batch, so you can read into that what you will (but it’ll hopefully be something like “everything else sucks even more”).


iOS is still miles ahead of Android and those are the only real choices. Plus the privacy thing. Plus development on Apple products is better.


> Plus the privacy thing.

I really have to hand it to Apple there. I think they must be big tech that really cares (I use Fastmail etc. for this reason, but they aren't the same scope). Their privacy story nearly converted me a year back, but the walled garden has always been my biggest hurdle for switching to Apple. I personally regard the walled garden as a greater violation of what I think consumer rights are.

I'd probably deal with the rest, like you all do.


In addition to reducing freedom, the walled garden reduces privacy. You cannot install an app on your phone, not even (especially!) one you develop yourself, without telling Apple. The privacy marketing that Apple does for iOS is the biggest scam in consumer tech.


This is true. The privacy threat model of an iPhone is absolute trust in Apple that has more control over your device than you do. For me, it doesn't compute.


It computes for me. It's my Trusted Computing Base, in fact. Would rather have to trust one company than several, as with Android. Can we do better somehow?

These 4-5 years may be the last era where we could trust our hardware, until governments all demand backdoors in the OS.


> Would rather have to trust one company than several,

What? Get the google pixel. One company. They don’t manufacture the phones but have complete control over them... and they are really good.


I disagree on two of those three, and I use both everyday. I develop for both, too. Do you? Kotlin on Android or something else?


Kotlin on Android is great, I think I prefer it over Swift. Android Studio frustrates me significantly more than XCode. Gradle frustrates me more than... whatever iOS uses for builds + CocoaPods. The Android Simulator frustrates me more than the iOS simulator. The Android BLE stack is a disaster; the iOS BLE stack is tolerable. Being able to hand out APKs is nice.

Edit: not being able to work on the iOS app while my MacBook is getting repaired after a coffee incident is pretty terrible. Android Studio works fine on my spare Linux laptop.


what makes you think the ones complaining have any loyalty to Apple?


I've been an Apple fan since 1989 (I remember the exact moment).

I have low expectation of other technology companies. But every time Apple falls the slightest bit short it's like a kick in the stomach.

There was a story about how, when Bill Gates spoke at an Apple conference, beforehand, Steve Jobs announced a new hinge on the iBook. The crowd went wild and Bill was apparently totally bemused by the reaction to such a small detail. But that's why - I expect every detail to be just right.


it's the blind hatred of the major alternative (windows).


Money spent? Resistance to learning a new platform? Required for work%platform specific applications?

It really boils down to macos, windows, or nix. Pick your poison. Cell phones are worse with only android and ios.


My boss wants only Apple stuff in the company. Despite working with it for 12 years, I still hate the macOS UX. The hardware isn't bad and even looks aesthetically pleasing, but looks aren't something I find important in a computer. The UI too, looks nice, but personally I find there are some annoyances that make it cumbersome and counterproductive to use to the point where I've taken to do any serious work by remoting into Windows and Linux machines. With one exception (inserting a network cable into my Mac is the fastest way to reboot it - instant kernel panic, a known bug that was reported to Apple about 10 years ago and is still unresolved), none of the things I hate about macOS are bugs... they are all working as designed with some of them even touted as important features by Apple. A few of them I could work around - I've spent some serious money on simple utilities that make the OS usable to me - but others remain daily annoyances. If given half the chance, I'll drop Apple's software like a brick and never look back.


Funny how that gets you downvoted on here immediately. It's just an honest response to a legitimate question.


My phone's language and my native language are different. Oftentimes it'll recommend me an English wikipedia article while typing (which is fine). But whenever I select it, it fails, since an article with the same title as the English wikipedia doesn't exist in the phone's language. Why are the recommendations in the language I'm typing, but the links it follows through with defaulting to the phone's language? It's slightly bizarre.


Turn off "Include search engine suggestions" in the search pane of the Safari preferences.

You’ll still get autocomplete from your own history (requiring you to press backspace before return to get a web search), but at least it won’t arbitrarily send you to sites you have never visited before.


But I want search engine suggestions…as long as they are just suggestions. They shouldn't forcefully redirect me to somewhere I don't want to go. (I should also note that the thing I actually wanted to do is search, not go to something from my history!)


It only disables search engine suggestions that's half the problem solved.

Now, let's say I have a bookmark for "abcd.com" and I have visited "abcd.com" a million times. So the moment I am done typing "ab" in address bar I get abcd.com suggestion which is good.

Now one day I visit (or mistype and hit enter) "ab"ihkskgskkfsbkgbskgbks.com. Yes, just once. Now, for days I get the suggestion "abihkskgskkfsbkgbskgbks.com" when I type "ab" even though every time I type few more letters or delete and change it "abcd.com" before hitting enter. Or maybe for weeks because I just end up going to history and delete that abihkskgskkfsbkgbskgbks.com so that it would never show up in suggestions.


Thats rediculous, and theres plenty of other equally undermining things technology does these days. When did technologists get so arrogant to think they should implement these things? I dont want my computer to think or make decisions for me, just get better at doing what I say.


I see similar things across the board. Chrome has terrible autocomplete also. The suggestions have to be physically back-spaced to avoid them being autocompleted when you press enter.


Apple IS trying do what they think the users are saying.


This drives me nuts too. I search for “COVID Tokyo news” and it takes me to a government website (https://stopcovid19.metro.tokyo.lg.jp/en/), when what I want to do is see all the latest news indexed by google.


I have my Safari on Mojave set to use duckduckgo and typing Cmd + L, then typing sketch, then pressing return - takes me to a DDG search for sketch.

I wonder if there's some other setting I've changed that causes this difference in behaviour though.


I am so glad that someone else hates this as much as I do. I stick with Safari because I like the password manager and the power performance, but the search bar is just completely nonfunctional. God forbid I ever even _think_ of a word that contains the letters "sch", because Safari will then forever navigate to some website containing that word instead of Schwab.com, which I navigate to multiple times a day.


I’m under the impression that there’s also some timing bug going on. Pressing enter too soon sometime leaves me with a filled in address field (no focus anymore) but also a blank page. I need to cmd+L, wait, enter again before firing off the query. Running into this occasionally on powerful hardware as well. Maybe because I’m in EU and roundtrip to US takes a while?


I’ve gotten into the habit of hitting the space bar after entering the query but before hitting enter. Seems to work fine at preventing erroneously bringing up the browser history.


Because the UI "designers" are now trying to satisfy a person who slams their fist on the keyboard and the browser takes them to where they need be.


> This has been driving me mad for the better part of a year

Also here - I quit using desktop Safari just for this reason.

I could write a full URL, press enter, and Safari would take me to a different page on a different website from my history.

It then seems almost impossible to reach the URL I wanted. I got into the habit of copying the URL to the clipboard in case I needed to re-try, or use another browser.

(This doesn't appear to be happening to me right now)


HTH: The quickest way I know to dismiss suggestions in favor of a search is to hit Space after whatever intended search term is matching a suggestion.


This used to work! But now it doesn't because it's doing page title match, and the title of course is something like "ptrace returning EINVAL" and now your space still makes it match…


Apple's iOS autocomplete ain't much to write home about either, to be honest. One of my biggest gripes with the iPhone is when it freakin' turns something I spelled correctly into a wholly different word, and it does it ALL the damn time.


I turned it off. Now I just handle each red squiggly on it’s own.


Just the other day I typed in the name of a company I wanted to find a product number for “foobar inc”, and I end up getting sent to their YouTube channel by Google :(


"It just works" - Apple Marketing

I remember when I believed it. Then I actually got an iPhone and it killed that idea.

Cool box and fun signup, but it never felt quite intuitive.


"It just works" is absolutely still a thing; it's just that not everything "just works". And with Feedback Assistant being as bad as it is, shouting on Hacker News is the best I can do to get things fixed :(


> "It just works" is absolutely still a thing; it's just that not everything "just works".

What could that possibly mean?


“Most things just work” or alternatively “it just works (the way most users want it to work)”

There is not and can never be “it just works for everyone and every use case with no configuration”.


But that's true for everything, not just iphone. So "just works" loses it's meaning.


Have you ever used an Oracle product?


Yup.


In retrospect, the Chrome-driven change from separate URL and search bars to one combined bar was a really bad idea.


Try typing a space after the word/text you want to search for. Works almost every time for me.


Stop using it.


Haven't gotten to the point where I'd want to use something else yet. Unless you have some suggestions that might not be on my radar?


Why would you have history of what you searched 2 years ago?

I automatically clear my history every day. It sounds like a privacy issue when someone gets your phone.


Apple says that this information is end-to-end encrypted, so ideally the only person able to access it is myself. And I find it very handy: it's a lot easier to store a "pointer" to something in my head than the actual content. Whenever I need to look something up I saw before, I use a couple of keywords and I can kind it by searching there, so it's invaluable.


Source for it being encrypted: https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT202303 (but it says iOS 13 is required for that).


>Source for it being encrypted: https://support.apple.com/en-in/HT202303 (but it says iOS 13 is required for that).

Does it restore (by default) if you buy a new iPhone? If yes, then Apple stores a copy of your key to go along with the encrypted data. If it is restorable, it's technically encrypted, but in practice Apple (and whomever Apple decrees) have access to it anyway.


A more specific test would be to check if it restores once you remove all other iOS devices that could possibly share a key with you to decrypt it.


It's not much better if Apple controls the mechanism for key sharing anyway.


That might also explain why my iOS 12 iPhone stopped syncing that information with my other devices.


I never clear my history. Nothing is more satisfying than being nerd-swiped by an article and seeing it already visited.


You think clearing your history improves your privacy somehow? How so?


Maybe he never does anything on his work machine that would cause privacy concerns?


At my work, clearing browser history is a red flag for audit. Their idea on the policy is anything you do on your work machine is work-related and the company has the right to see that history. If you want privacy, use your own device.

And while that’s not my policy, I’ve worked in security long enough to know... anything you do on your work computers is already being watched by the security team. Web proxies and log aggregation go a long way, especially with web proxies being able to decrypt SSL traffic on-the-fly.


> Their idea on the policy is anything you do on your work machine is work-related and the company has the right to see that history. If you want privacy, use your own device.

These lines are often blurred (practically–not legally) with BYOD and people doing things like using their personal devices on company Wi-Fi networks.


Most BYOD policies I’ve seen (10 years in info sec and 6 as a consultant) allow you to bring your own personal device but as soon as you do it basically becomes company property. The physics hardware is yours but any information on it is owned by the company and the company can take physical possession of it temporarily if they need to do a forensic investigation.

Likewise most WiFi policies I’ve seen say personal devices are forbidden from the corporate network and have to run on the guest network, which is usually not monitored as heavily.

Please read your employee handbook, (IANAL but based on what I’ve experienced) legally companies have to disclose this. Unfortunately many people do not read the e-handbook and are upset when the learn the rules they’ve unwittingly agreed to follow.

BYOD or personal devices, just always imagine that if it’s using any corporate resources, the company will claim ownership if there is any dispute. And depending on your e-handbook, they’re likely to win a legal battle because likely you signed an agreement saying they can.


My company's BYOD policy is that you have to load the company's management software onto your personal hardware, and then if you leave the company, they wipe the device remotely, including all of your personal data.

I think it's draconian, but plenty of people signed up for the program. I prefer to keep my home and work gear isolated from one another. I don't even have them on the same ISP.


Yeah, that sounds pretty bad and precisely the kind of thing I don't like at all. The carte blanche that companies have over anything that has been anywhere near anything of theirs is really annoying and not really practical for most people, and kind of stupid of you stop to think about it. Why can't we have company data in a thing where you can wipe just that? If I come to work and bring a personal device, they can supposedly search it. But what am I really supposed to do, leave my phone and watch at home and drop off the face of the earth during that time period? I understand that corporate security is a thing and all but some of this is just something that needs to actually consider practicality :/


They’re not searching your watch or phone unless you’ve connected them to the corporate WiFi and/or accessed corporate information using those devices. The devices they care about are ones used to access internal data.

So no, don’t leave your phone and watch at home. Just don’t connect them to Wifi at work or your work email/calendar. Make your company provide you a corporate phone if they want you to answer email on your phone.


Please remind me not to work where you do.


How about a reminder to not work where you do?

Unless you’re running the company, and you’re the only employee, your work internet usage is being monitored and logged at some level. Believing otherwise is giving your employer a very generous benefit of the doubt, let’s say, but still probably naive. It’s worth understanding why all companies might be required by law to monitor, or short of that, be incentivized to monitor employee internet usage:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Respondeat_superior

https://www.spamtitan.com/web-filtering/liability-for-employ...


Disclosure: UK business owner and employer but no US employees. For us here at least, there’s no such requirement to betray the trust of our staff and spy on them, and we don’t do so. To be honest, the idea that anyone might consider this an acceptable behaviour never occurred to me. I’d like to think this is the norm but have no data either way.


The UK is definitely different than the US, and it looks to me like in the UK employees do have slightly higher expectations of privacy at work than in the US. However, some quick googling show me that UK employers are allowed to monitor employee internet usage in general.

When you say you don’t log or monitor usage, have you actively audited your company equipment and disabled all logging? Have you contacted your ISP and cloud providers to discuss what data they have? Aside from your company network equipment, it’s not easy to make sure you’re not “monitoring” from the employees perspective, if you provide company computers or phones, or any cloud services to your employees.

As a business owner, what would you do if you were contacted with a cease and desist letter from another company claiming your business domain was doing something illegal? What would you do if one of your employees told you another employee was doing something illegal at work and the employee denied it?

I do find your language interesting, especially as a business owner. Using the words ‘betray’, ‘trust’, and ‘spy’, seems like a very one-sided view of the situation, and one that comes with some assumptions. In the US, most employment contracts, and employee trainings, will disclose the fact that company equipment is monitored for aggregate or individual behavior, and it is stated and agreed to that the equipment is for work use, not personal use. Because employees are notified and they actively agree to use work equipment for only work reasons, there is no “spying” or “betraying of trust” taking place. Trust goes both ways as well, and when an employee agrees to use work equipment only for work, and then turn around a browse Facebook while getting paid, or download porn from the work domain, the employees have not just betrayed the company trust, but have also broken their explicit agreements.

https://www.lexology.com/library/detail.aspx?g=0818e4d9-ee76...

https://www.spamtitan.com/web-filtering/liability-for-employ...


Look up PCI-DSS, or Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. It absolutely applies to the UK and absolutely requires centralized logging and review of those logs.

Centralized logging and review is the norm and I do have data to say that. You are wrong.


Nobody at my employer has time to waste on logging, never mind reviewing my internet usage. If they did, it would be unappealing just for wasting time on crap, all creepiness aside.

Now, of course, most of it never gets near the office.


Nobody at my employer has time to waste on logging, never mind reviewing my internet usage

Which is why there are dozens and dozens of companies to which this sort of thing is outsourced, either explicitly, or as part of some generic security "suite."


Unless you work for an absolutely tiny company that outsources all of its financial operations, you’re absolutely wrong. If you have an info sec team, they’re monitoring you. If you don’t have an info sec team and you’re not at an absolutely tiny company, like others have said there is a third party monitoring you.

Payment Card Industry (PCI) and Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) regulations both require centralized logging and review of those logs for audit reasons.

Basically if your company provides health insurance or processes payments, your activity on all corporate machines are being aggregated and monitored. Even GDPR has a loophole for information security monitoring.


Nobody anywhere has time to waste on logging, and nobody really wants to review employee internet usage. That doesn’t mean it isn’t taking place. What makes you so certain it isn’t happening to you? Logging doesn’t take time, it’s automated, and nobody has to actively review internet usage, it can happen as needed when either some automated alarm goes off or when your company is contacted by another company or an ISP or the government regarding internet usage. Your GP comment above feels quite flippant, and makes me suspect you might not be aware of the realities of running a company, and may be lacking imagination for the kinds of things IT teams anywhere have to do just to set up a network and provide internet access to you, not to mention establish security rules, create QOS tables, and deal with real-world employee behavior. A lot of corporate routers and other network appliances do some level of logging by default.

Maybe you work for a tiny startup that hasn’t started logging your usage yet, but pretty much all non-small companies in the US have to have automated monitoring of usage for liability reasons (I guess you didn’t actually read my links). Many companies need to know how much time employees spend on Facebook while at work in the aggregate, and while finding that out might seem creepy, what’s also creepy is employees being on Facebook while they’re getting paid to work. Even if you don’t, some people have problems with this and spend a lot of time on Facebook, or other sites, while getting paid to supposedly work. Internet usage monitoring is often the result of employee complaints to management about other employees.

One company I worked at received legal threats from a media conglomerate because of torrent sharing of new release movies. Turns out the employee was just downloading porn because the work internet connection was much higher bandwidth than his home connection, and a hidden bot in the software he was using was doing other illegal torrent activity. The company didn’t figure it out immediately because they weren’t creepily actively reviewing internet connections, but between the logs that were there and some sleuthing, they figured out who the employee was. My company didn’t give a crap about the porn (though told the employee please never do that at work) but the movies being shared could have been millions of dollars in damage.

If you are at a small company that isn’t monitoring yet, and your company grows, it will happen to you eventually. Otherwise, if you’re not at a small company, chances are high that you already are being logged and don’t know it. In any case, there’s no good reason to pass judgement on HN users who work for companies that do this; it’s ubiquitous and there is no clear cut line on where monitoring begins, and more importantly no reasonable expectation of privacy while at work in the US, except in the bathroom.

Aside from all that, your ISP and the backbone providers and the ISPs of every site you visit is - 100% chance - monitoring connections. The majority of commercial sites on the internet are gathering analytics. Facebook and Google are watching everything they possibly can. Your employer monitoring may be the least of your problems, as long as you’re not surfing all day at work.


Want another fun Safari auto complete bug?

Have a tab open that is changing its title on an interval.

Try to type something in any tabs address bar and use the arrow or a mouse to try and pick a result, the focus will constant jump and reset to the beginning every time the title changes on any tab, making it nearly impossible to pick a result if its changing fast enough.

The auto complete list seems to be populated with web page titles in real time and the list is being modified causing the results to be rerendered.

I found this after trying to use a Super Micro IPMI that updates the title with the current FPS on every frame, had it in a background tab and couldn't get to a search result, oh the frustration and time that cost me to actually track down.

Reported it to Apple of course nothing.


This behavior sends me to undesired pages on a daily basis. Thank you for finally telling me what causes it!

It essentially makes basic keyboard shortcuts useless on safari.


Yup was able to replicate that with

   setInterval(() => document.title = `${Math.random()}`, 1000)


Holy sh!&*@#!t thank you. I had similar behaviour with a different remote BMC thing.


So that's how this happens. I always thought it had something to do with sticky arrow keys or something.


Reminds me of an issue on Windows I just figured out. My keyboard input kept getting yanked to the other PC.

For some reason, my mouse cursor moves back and forth when I use the arrow keys. Been happening for a while, but whatever.

Magic Mouse (KBM emulator) at some point got configured so that holding ctrl-shift-mousemove would snap the mouse to the PC in that direction.

Sooo, Ctrl-Shift-Left (highlight previous word, something I would do frequently [like just now to highlight and italicize 'frequently']) would end up also moving the mouse left a few pixels... which would send the mouse and keyboard over to the other PC.

Took me a few weeks to track that one down.


This has been annoying me for ages now and I couldn't always reliably replicate it. Nice find!


very similar experience trying to use Windows explorer while a group policy refresh is underway.


I just tried this on Safari on my phone - I was sent to Realtor.com as well. I tried it a few times and was redirected each time, even though I typed "realty.com" in the URL bar (and it didn't auto-correct before I hit "Go").


Wow. I'd be livid if I were this guy. That's an expensive domain. Even if it's in the history, the browser shouldn't be guessing at what to do when it gets exact instructions.


I typed in realty.com and went straight to realty.com. iPhone 11 running iOS 13.5.1. I can’t reproduce any of these behaviors.

Edit: I have “Suggestions in Search” turned off, maybe that’s it?


Of course that’s it!


But it's working fine for me. On iPhone 11 with the latest version of iOS.


Are you in the US? Suggestions are locale specific.


Me, too. Absolutely should not happen. Will give the benefit of the doubt that it's a glitch. Still unacceptable, certainly for a .com.


This is also happening on my Macbook's Safari


It doesn’t work for me. I wonder if it’s location related? I’m in spain if it makes any difference.


Any chance you were using private browsing?

When I enable private browsing, Safari correctly takes me to realty.com

When I disable private browsing, Safari takes me to realtor.com

I am in the US


Is your phone in English? That seems more likely to be related.


My phone is in English, but I didn’t get the redirect. I’m in Canada.


Didn't happen for me either in Germany (despite English iOS). May be US-specific?


iPhone 11 on the iOS 14 beta and it takes me to realty.com as desired. Wonder if it's just inconsistency or something that has been fixed.


I just tried and I went to realty.com. I’m Danish but I set the keyboard to English and it still sent me to realty.com.


Safari is the absolute worst web browser by far. Both mobile and desktop.

This kind of egregious error is only the most obvious part.

Try doing a WebRTC conference call in Safari. Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Slack, Zoom, Jitsi Meet, etc, etc, etc. None of them support Safari. Do you know why? It's because Safari is absolutely riddled with bugs: [1][2][3].

It is incredible how bad Safari is.

[1] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=211181

[2] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=212669

[3] https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=212780


Could not agree more, at least for iOS safari. It's way worse that IE ever was.

Safari lacks features, it's inconsistent, it's full of bugs, and the worst part? There is nothing you can do about it, it's not like Apple allows other browsers access to the platform.

I can't even count the number of times where scrolling stops working, but then you refresh the page and it works again, even if it's the exact same HTML and CSS.

And then there was the issue hundreds of user complained about: the keyboard would not show up when pressing the url bar, on any page. Quitting and opening safari again usually fixed this.

For some reason iOS users seems to have no idea what's what. When the browser stops working, they usually contact me, like I would be able to do anything about it. Apple needs to take feedback from their users.


Google Meet works fine, as does Jitsi Meet. We're working with popular WebRTC providers one at a time. Unfortunately, the state of WebRTC interop is pretty bad across the board, so providers use website lockouts and qualify one browser at a time. Sorry about those three bugs. They do sound like bugs and will be looked into.


Huh, I never got anything that does audio/video calling to work on Safari. Always only provides a test video and audio. Permissions are all granted


Isn't that the "Use mock capture devices" function in the Develop > WebRTC menu?


Sounds like a bug. The things I mentioned should work, as well as bluejeans and tokbox among others. If they don't for you, please file via Feedback Assistant with a sysdiagnose.


I once tried to watch a video sped up in Safari, and the sound was awful. An acquaintance tried to report the bug to Apple years ago, and it went into a black hole. Compare to the public bug trackers for Firefox and Chromium, and it's easy to understand why Safari remains nearly useless.


WebKit has a public bug tracker.


Apple Safari (mobile and desktop) doesn't use the WebKit.org bug tracker. They do their own thing.


Video playback is a WebKit feature.


The platform audio libraries that Webkit uses on MacOS and iOS are not part of Webkit.


They aren't, but WebKit does a lot of the work around that and it's possible that the bug is in that rather than the platform libraries (which generally do work outside of the browser…) I'd say it's worth filing a bug for WebKit and then see if they send you over to Safari.


May I ask: do you or have you recently developed web front ends for money?


It is probably done on purpose so that you use the apps instead of the browser... it's not like they don't have the money to fix it.


I think this is symptomatic of the really overzealous approach that Apple has towards autocomplete and autocorrect these days. The autocorrect has a nasty habit of replacing my correct sentences containing absolutely normal non-technical vocabulary with annoyingly incorrect garbage. It routinely replaces “well” with “we’ll” when it makes absolutely no sense to do so, and generally adds apostrophes all over the place. Not to mention the way it handles names. Sometimes I want my name to not be capitalised, such as in my email address. Even pressing backspace, then typing the same thing in again after it autocorrects incorrectly doesn’t solve anything.


I just prefer to disable autocorrect.


I received my new American Express and, when trying to enter the URL on the sticker, Safari suggested a phishing site as the "top result". I tried reporting this to both Apple and AMEX but never received a response :(


Maybe worth semi weaponizing it? Make your own phishing page that gets into this list (easier said than done) and as soon as they click the sign in button (pre credential entry) splash a page explaining that Apple is busted?


no way make it a Tim Cook crypto giveaway with a continuous livestream of a video of him talking about technology, and a countdown

why should you have to only shell out money for some petty bs, if you randomly find a gold mining claim you go excavate the gold.


Go for the gold, make the result for apple a blog post about how apples suggestions are terrible


If it was open source you could fix it yourself, sounds easier.


I just typed realty.com into OSX Safari 13.1.1 and got the proper site. Then when I picked up my iPhone (ios 13.5) and started to do the same test it autocompleted 'real' into 'realty.com'.

On the OSX side, the 'search' pane of settings has Safar Suggestions and Quick Website Search on, has preload top hit and show favorites off, and has DDG as the search. On IOS I have DDG as the search, and have Search Engine Suggestions, Safari Suggestions, and Quick Website Search on, and Preload Top Hit off. And have Frequently Visited Sites off.

It is worth mentioning that OSX Safari offered 'realtor.com' as a 'Top Hit' suggestion below the address bar, which I could have chosen with a quick downarrow, return, but at no point did it try to fill in autocomplete for me.

I almost wonder if this is happening to the owner of realty.com because they have spent a lot of time looking at realtor.com while building a site that competes with it, and Safari now thinks this is a site they really love to go to. — EDIT. Oh no I missed the part where there are videos of this being done on demo iPhones at the Apple store. Crazy! And not good.


Yup, similar -- I've never visited either in my life prior, but on macOS it goes to realty.com, but I am shocked that on iOS I type in "realty.com" and it doesn't autocorrect, but lists "realtor.com" as the top suggestion below, but when I hit enter it goes to realtor.com instead of realty.com!

That is seriously bad functionality. I've already been annoyed at iOS's keyboard overly autocorrecting, but to change a URL I typed in explicitly really pisses me off.


I'm curious, did yours also have the extra m (realty.comm)? Both the 2nd and 3rd phone the video shows has the extra m, which makes me think it's an actual bug in the autocomplete, where it has completed to "realtor.com" (notice realtor has one more letter than realty), but you actually don't see it (except the last letter, the extra m at the end). So when you press enter, it goes to realtor.

If you do get the extra m, can you play around and see what happens if you delete the extra m at the end? Does it go to realtor.co? realty.com?


Nope, never saw any extra m. Sounds like something in your personal autocomplete "learned dictionary".

I don't know why, but 5 years ago the autocorrect on iOS never bothered me much, but over the past 1-2 years it's gotten much more "wrong". It's been driving me nuts.


To be clear, I don't have an iPhone myself, which is why I was wondering if you could check. I was referring to the video linked by the post. The phones there are brand new so they shouldn't have a learned dictionary, yet both the 2nd and third phone have the same behavior of adding an extra "m" at the end there if you look closely at the video.


> I almost wonder if this is happening to the owner of realty.com because they have spent a lot of time looking at realtor.com

No - this is why the video demo does it not on his devices (where previous personal history would be relevant) but on "clean" phones in Apple Store.


Ah, i missed that detail!


I'm on OSX 10.15.5 and when I type "realty" and hit enter (in safari) I get taken to realtor.com

EDIT: even if I type "realty.com" and hit enter, I get taken to realtor.com.


I just tested on my iPhone, never visited either, and got realtor.com instead.


Same here.

I found that if I am in private browsing mode, this does not happen.


I recommend editing at the beginning of your comment instead of the end, it is a lot of anecdotal/incorrect text to read through before the edit and it sort of comes off as biased or naive even though I know that wasn't your intention.


This is not the case if you look at the video. He's trying it out on iPhones in an Apple Store (not owned by him).


Best Buy rather than Apple store.

Of course the most obvious explanation of all is that someone set up a domain redirect for the sole purpose of getting a front page on HN and Reddit. This domain seems to be very poorly ranked, yet here everyone is plugging it into their browsers and telling Google and everyone else how very important it is.


Your reply sounds irrelevant when multiple people on this thread have been able to replicate. It only happens on Safari and if you turn off Safari suggestions it stops. People have also been able to replicate it on macOS. So it’s obvious it’s coming from Safari suggestions. Feel free to test for yourself.


Url editing on iphone safari is highly messed up experience ... the text selection and editing behavior is just broken since ios 12 or 11 -- whichever one introduced the new text selection model ...

My standard easy repro -- go to a long url and try to edit the second to last segment of the url path (something which i do for work frequently when folks send me links to projects under development).

Enjoy the frustration.


Am I going crazy, or did this change recently to become even worse? I know before it was pointless to even try to click into the middle of a URL, so my standard procedure was to click past the end to get a cursor and drag back to where I wanted to edit. But recently it changed so now that's impossible: if I click past the end of the URL, even if I'm very careful to avoid the Ⓧ it still just deletes the entire URL! Now I have to click the URL itself to select the entire thing and then drag the starting selection marker to the end. It's a small change but infuriating after years of the old habit.


How could something so basic be so broken? You could put a completely logic free html input there and it would be a better experience.


Works fine for me. I just long press on the keyboard to get into cursor edit mode and swipe along until I get to where I want.


Nice, thanks! Now that you remind me I’m sure I’ve seen that move before, but forgot about it and have been frustrated when editing urls every day since. I think this is the worst thing about using an iPhone for me and probably a lot of other users. Here is the full incantation to get it to work:

1. Touch the address bar and the keyboard will appear.

2. Long press on the spacebar (other parts of the keyboard won’t do it) until a cursor appears in the address bar.

3. Without lifting your finger after the long press, start dragging your finger left and right. The cursor will move.

Maybe writing that out will help me remember. If only there was some affordance in the ui indicating this common use is supported.


This is better than what I've been doing ...

But I find the experience of the cursor navigation by long-press on keyboard quite odd still ... if you stay in the mode for awhile -- and try sliding back and forth its quite an odd experience as it feels like the algorithm behind the cursor motion and its relationship to scrolling becomes less clear over time rather than more understood ...

Maybe there is something wrong with my touchscreen ... I can't figure out how to get the soft keyboard to scroll the cursor position reliably past the viewable area -- sometimes it does scroll and sometimes it doesn't and its a bit of a mystery to me what the intended motion input into the device is that will meet my desires ...

seems like maybe the panning speed needs to be proportional to the fingers vertical height in the keyboard or something -- no panning up top, and fast panning below


It seems that if the cursor won’t go right as far as you want, it helps to move your finger all the way left for a while, then try moving it right again (and vice versa). But that doesn’t always work so it doesn’t fully describe the mechanic. Performing this basic function feels like learning a fighting game. You need to charge up you cursor-moving mana.


I've run into a similar problem on the Mac version of Safari for a while now:

I'll paste in a full (http:// or https://) URL and hit Enter, but instead of loading the requested URL it just reloads the current page. I sometimes have to paste it a couple times before it will actually load the URL I want.

Anyone else encountered this or am I just going crazy?


You are not crazy. There is a bug in the last 2 minor releases of Safari where you can type in or paste a link and it'll just end up reloading the same page. You can do this several times. It drives me mad, quite honestly. But it is indeed a bug. No idea why. I doubt it's related to this suggestion feature.


Ah so I’m not going crazy. These things are just... the type of bug that indicates a deeper issue in the code. Poor software engineering decisions, and many of them.

Mobile Safari had a bug for a year where the zoom function would get stuck somehow, breaking rendering completely. I wonder how that happened too.


I have this problem too. I've been searching for others having the same issue for forever and this is the first time I've seen any mention of it. I submitted feedback to Apple with a screen recording but nothing ever came of that.

It seems like it has something to do with the cadence of when I press the return key while it's loading suggestions into the autocomplete dropdown. It's almost as if pressing return is selecting an item that isn't in the dropdown list yet. If I paste a URL and wait a second or two I never have that problem. It's when I'm moving quickly that I frequently run into it.


This infuriates me every single day, and it also happens when just editing the URL of the current page.

Typing a space at the end of the URL and waiting a second before hitting enter seems to circumvent this issue.


Yep, I get this constantly in both Catalina & Mojave across two different Macs. Drives me crazy.


i was hoping someone would bring this up. it happens to me all the time.


Me too!


I've seen this too, but never figured out why it's doing this. If the underlying bug is some sort of timing related thing, then it might be related?


Alright, while we’re talking about iOS autocomplete - I have a question. I noticed that sometimes when I’m typing an out-of-dictionary word, sometimes the keyboard will actually type the key next to the key I tapped that would type a real word. I imagine they’ve put a lot of effort into making the touch keyboard accurate, so is this a feature to that end or, more likely, is it a Baader-Meinhof thing, that I only notice when it happens?


This is probably the keyboard adjusting the tap area of the keys based on the predicted likelyhood of that key being pressed: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=20&v=wPmVKyhyl9U


Wow, I never would have been able to google that. Thanks for confirming I'm not crazy.


I always felt like I was the only one that experienced this. Even worse, I think sometimes it highlights the character you actually want, but once you release your finger it inserts something else. It happens very rarely but I remember I had to retype a character 5 or 6 times at one point, thinking I was going mad.


I just moved to android and this bugs the shit out of me. It’s definitely real. I had to retype a character once by using the side of the key farthest from the one it was touch jacking.


File a bug report on https://webkit.org/reporting-bugs/. Unlike the apple bug reporter where it goes into an abyss and might be years before a resolution or even a reply, with the webkit reporting system I usually get a response from apple employees very quickly and majority of the items fixed in the next release or two.


That has _not_ been my experience when reporting bugs to webkit.

I've reported a couple of bugs that are still there, years after I reported them.

See this one for example reported in 2016:

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=162512

Or this other one from 6 months ago and still no response from the team:

https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=207049


Sadly I think this is specifically a Safari bug, so it pretty much has to go into Feedback Assistant. (I figure if you file a bug for WebKit they'll tell you to go report it there anyways.)


No way. I've reported several iOS Safari bugs to the webkit tracker and all of them were marked confirmed and not a single one has been fixed. In the last 3 years.

Apple is in way over its head trying to build/maintain a web browser on mobile and desktop.


This in particular is a Safari bug, not WebKit, so not ideal to file there. If anyone files a case of this with sysdiagnose and screen recording and posts the FB# here, I will make sure it gets looked at.


What really drives me mad is that there is no public bugreporting for any Apple soft, except for the betas obviously.

Only then we'd be able to have an idea of the sheer extent of bugginess of their products, and how the heavily advertised features never work. I hope someone with energy and time actually creates and maintains an open, alternative bugzilla for that purpose specifically.


> What really drives me mad is that there is no public bugreporting for any Apple soft, except for the betas obviously.

Second google result for ‘report apple bug’ :

https://www.apple.com/feedback/iphone.html


I think that the intent of parent is to have the bugs be publicly visible, like https://issuetracker.google.com/issues?q=status:open


That's even more of a black hole than Feedback Assistant.


Have you tried typing 'form/multipart' into your firefox url bar? I expect a google search - what I get is a redirect to `https://form.com/multipart` - what?!


Firefox does that to fix quickly typed domains if they're not found by DNS (it appends .com and tries to load that). It's probably because form/multipart is nearly a functional URL (where "form" is the hostname, which could very well be resolved in corporate networks or through a hosts file, for example).

If you want to be sure you're executing a search, either use a keyword for Google or start your query with a question mark. A quick way to execute a search is to hit control+k, which puts focus to the URL bar and prepopulates it with "? " so that whatever you type after it is executed as a search.

I actually dislike it when Firefox does the opposite for websites like pi.hole or fritz.box. The domain does resolve, but you get redirected to a search page regardless and Firefox put a suggestion to navigate to what you typed. My address bar is not a Google search form, it's an address bar that happens to search on Google when I type something that's not a web address.


Same happens for me, realty.com -> realtor.com. However, explicitly typing https://realty.com works fine.

iOS 13.5.1


I've noticed that Safari on iOS autocompletes so aggressively that if you go to a full URL on a site (e.g. https://example.com/somesection/page.html) you can pretty much no longer type just "example.com" into the address bar. It will pretty damn aggressively autofill in the URL to the page you visited earlier.

Maybe it was a bug in an earlier version that's been fixed, I don't do a whole lot of browsing on my phone. But that was (or still is) easily the most obnoxious browser bug in my recent memory.


Killer service idea for apple users: RealUrlBar.io

You type in a url into a textbox, and then it gives you a hyperlink to that site.


Safari's latest version has added some asynchronous coding that has impact behavior of the browser in negative ways. If you type the first part of a URL and there are multiple options so you use down arrow to get to the one that you want, a lot of times, the list is still being populated and Safari will jump the cursor back up to the top of the list. I think this is part of that same bad coding.


And people wonder why I've been begging for the ability to set my own default browser in iOS for so long...

So many people defend Apple's walled garden, and then they do things like this, be it on purpose or by accident.

What a mess.


TIL you can't set your own default browser on iOS.


Until 2 days back. With iOS 14 you can now choose default browser and mail client


I tested on my iPhone and it does not have this behavior. It went to the correct site on Safari & on Firefox.

Why is he demonstrating on random phones in an Apple store? That’s not really a good example of a ‘clean’, out of the box device.

A ton of people have tinkered with those phones. Isn’t it possible that some other people typed ‘realtor.com’ in all those phones in the past?

Either way it you type a specific, valid URL, it should never be overridden with an autocomplete.


Cannot replicate on the iOS 14 beta. While I get a suggestion for realtor.com, typing realty.com and hitting go takes me to realty.com.


I can't replicate on the iOS beta or the MacOS beta for realty.com. For "sketch" - first result Safari shows is sketchup.google.com but it shows Skechers.com as a choice.

BTW, been super pleased with the betas so far.


Tangential. I find it annoying that Firefox hardcoded a whole bunch of URL's in their search bar history. I have 'Provide suggestions' off (privacy), yet it suggests me walmart.com, facebook.com, americanexpress.com, etcetera.. all sites that I have zero interest for. I guess they must be there, because they earn some money from it?


The whole idea of recommendation systems is based on the assumption that you're gonna keep doing the samething over. Its accuracy is depending on whether you are a person of habbits or constantly changing. While in some aspects having a pattern is good (work or routine life tasks), in many others it's an indication of something unhealthy or not optimal. You don't want to be that person that seems to have a limited vocab and just keep using the same phares. You also most likely dont want to keep buying the same stuff or reading just that one particular genre/author/news outlet. Autocomplete particularly never worked to me and I'm happy that I cant seem to be typecasted by a machine. As a software developer, I wonder what the people who made these engines think. Are they actually happy that their code makes people more predictable?


Omnibars and browsers "guessing what you want" in general is pretty trash. I'm having an issue with the Firefox one:

If I type a word, like "resolv" into the omnibar, it gives me the option to "search with google". Great. But if I type in "resolv.conf", it by default wants to "visit" (thinking .conf. is a tld)... but it doesn't even show me the option to "search with google" in the dropdown! I've literally had to resort to typing "google resolv.conf" which is a super gross way of going about it.

I don't know if combining search and URLs in one box was ever a good idea. I feel I preferred the dual-box layout, where you had a URL bar on the left and a search bar on the right.


Trying to reproduce this Apple bug reminded me of another annoyance in the UI. I went to enable Safari Suggestions on my iPad, but it wouldn’t let me. The button remained greyed out. It turns out that I need enable Show Siri Suggestions in App before I can enable Safari Suggestions. Buy why? They seem unrelated. If you stick to the defaults in the Settings menu, everything is fine, but if you change them you get exposed to inscrutable dependencies among the settings. I imagine there is an explosion of complexity that isn’t easily tested.


I've just tried this on both macOS and iOS.

macOS 10.15.5 Safari 13.1.1 Tested 4 configurations: Search engine: DDG vs Google Wipr adblock extension on/off.

In all four cases: Typed in realty.com and hit enter - got realty.com. Typed in sketch and hit enter - got search results for the word sketch.

Tested exact same configurations (DDG/Google, Wipr on/off) on my phone. iOS 13.5.1 on iPhone XR Same results as above.

I'm just not seeing the behaviour that's being described here. Perhaps its a geo thing? I'm in Australia. I assume most people here are in the US?


I see the same behaviour down under. I wonder if Siri has got anything to do with it? Mine is always disabled.


I've got Siri enabled. It's odd.

EDITED: Sorry, I just realised, I'm not sure if you meant you're seeing the same behaviour as me, or as everyone else.


I meant I see the same behaviour as you :-) Can open those URLs just fine without any redirection.


Does anybody believe Apple is making money off this? Redirecting websites to competitors.


Probably not tbh - the cost/benefit of getting such small amounts of money versus enormous reputational damage is not remotely worth it.


My question is can they bid on it behind the scenes like a keyword. Siri suggestions must have some type of revenue.


It would be a poorly considered algorithm rather than some bidding situation. No sane person would build this intentionally. The big companies have too much to lose especially.


Basically, this is Google's entire business: getting paid to send us where someone else wants us to go. Google are "big". Why wouldn't Apple want in on this action?


Sponsored search results are marked as such in the Google results, it's nothing like the automagic redirect Safari is showing here.


Apple uses this to promote first party services like Apple Music, Apple News, and App Store. All of these generate revenue for Apple.

If they land on Google, then Google would be promoting YouTube Music, Google News, etc, which is lost revenue for Apple.


If it was an autocomplete thing all sorts of words entered would be generating false hits.

These are super specific high value search terms. Apple is most definitely being paid to do this.


Guccc -> Gucci.com Gucce -> Gucci.com Pradd -> Prada.com Praada -> Prada.com

Low value target words just seem to go directly to google searches though.


It's just a bug. We could use bug reports of this because it doesn't seem to reproduce for everyone.


Wouldn't it be google doing it if it is set as the web search engine?


I always hated having search in the address bar, And hidding the full url. Its gotten even worse with all the screwy tlds.


What drives me mad is typing queries that have a space. Most of the time it'll do the intended search, but sometimes it'll try to go directly to the domain with the space which immediately fails.


Personally I hate conflating the URL entry space with the search query space. Which is why I was so disappointed that Firefox removed my ability to separate them recently.


I keep Firefox up to date on my Windows box (version 77.0.1) and I still have the ability to have a dedicated search box. Are you on a pre-release channel?


You have the ability to have a dedicated search box, but your URL bar is also a search box, and you can't turn it off. I want to enter URLs in a box which doesn't try to autocomplete as a search, doesn't search my search engine, doesn't try to fill in missing TLDs, etc. I had something close before 75.0, which introduced the "revamped" address bar that is also swollen.

I separated the search box not because I want a search box (I really don't want a browser with a "search box" at all) but because I want un-interpreted, un-looked-up URLs. Though the current URL box doesn't seem to actually search implicitly, it's really hard to tell if its suggestions are coming from the search engine or not and it's at least a step back in the wrong direction).

I'd love any suggestions for making the URL box dumber.


This is still possible in Firefox 77 if I am understanding correctly.

The magic entries in about:config are

keyword.enabled - Turning this off will make firefox never search for something you type in the address bar.

browser.fixup.alternate.enabled - Turning this off will make firefox never try to "fix" the url you type in by putting .com on the end of it.


This is greatly appreciated!


Thank you!!


Was able to reproduce this with Safari on an iPhone with search engine (should be irrelevant though) set to Duckduckgo.

After a couple repeated failures (where it went to realtor.com) I tried typing in http://realty.com (I forgot to use https fwiw) then it visited the real site realty.com and again went to that same real correct site on every subsequent attempt using just the bare string realty.com —- of course that’s too much to ask of users, nor would anyone have a chance to ask them.


As an android user who has an apple-only-girlfriend... I'm always amazed at how exceptionally terrible autocomplete is on her iPhone, and how much better the Android counterpart is. Lol the complete absolute nonsense the iPhone of hers will predict is crazy for a premium phone from the worlds most valuable company. Not hating (I love their hardware - not software) just wondering why is it so bad on Apple ? Is there like a setting she must switch on like "Planet Earth English" ?


Maybe she’s the problem? It “learns” as you go based on your habits, so she probably just writes very differently from you.


I was thinking that ! Surely it must uses your like past history right ? Is there something she should turn on ?


I feel like when Brave's similar behavior was posted on HN a week or so ago, the company itself was getting a lot more hate for what I think is a less egregious behavior.

Why the discrepancy?


This doesn't do it for me in the UK, but I did wonder if there was a spelling auto correction happening between the Go and it hitting the address bar. Looks like a bug nonetheless.


There’s a cottage industry of these terms apparently, I have “slickdeals.com” autocompleting when typing “sl” and it forwards to a google “snow leopard” search. Maddening.


I just tried it on my iphone and I don't see this behavior. I have this option of "pre-load top hit" disabled. I understand not a lot of users will have this disabled and is probably what is causing this issue. Therefore, this is more of an issue with the aggressive suggestions engine for websites that a testament to how poor Safari as a browser is (which is what many comments here seem to suggest).


The broken Spotlight search of OSX was one reason I moved to Windows. Day after day of this: 1. Try to open Photoshop, an app I use almost every day 2. Type in 'phot...' 3. Autocomplete successfully 4. Just at the point I hit enter, it changes autocomplete suggestion to random file i have not opened in 7 years ('Photonic Irrigation Techniques of the Yagi')


Safari autocomplete on macOS is such a mess. Ever since I switched to DuckDuckGo, I have to give it about two seconds between when I type a word and when I can arrow down into the suggested pages and click enter. Otherwise, when the suggested results from DDG come back the arrow position is reset and I end up tapping enter to go to the wrong page. Didn’t have this issue with google search or chrome.


I only made it halfway through the comments. I like my machines to NOT do the thinking for me and allow me to make my shortcuts.

One of the things I appreciateon my (default) phone setup (Android, Honor 8x, Firefox, DDG) is that when I type on the browser's URL/search the autocorrect is OFF. When I type in the DDF search form the autocorrect is ON.

I find this super logical (I keep suggestions off)


Why doesn’t it give you any indication that it’s going to “correct” your query before you hit enter? This has been bugging me lately.


Couldn't this lead to a nice settlement for this guy? Or would "it's a bug" be an acceptable defense for Apple?


Apple and this website have no business relationship, so there’s no breech of contract. Beyond that, Apple‘s duty of care is really very low.

If Google can take money to sent people to a website that otherwise would rank below yours, Apple certainly isn’t liable for doing the same without intention.


It baffles me how many commenters here and on Facebook just assume this is somehow illegal.

I‘m not saying I know the US Code by heart or anything, but lacking the basic intuition for what the laws of the land are must be a terrible disadvantage.


Don't have an Apple device right now, but if I go to BrowserStack.com (just created a free account there) and try it on a 'real cloud iPhone 11 Pro' (yeah, whatever that means) I cannot reproduce it. But then they don't allow you to go and check if the suggestions are turned on or off so not sure.


Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, Firefox, all working hard to take away the Web's usefulness, feature by feature.


Really? That's a very cynical outlook.


Indeed it is, and I am not a cynical person. I tend to attribute incompetence over malice, and I am not even sure that malice is actually at play here.

But the reality is that with every release of Firefox, Chrome, Safari, piece by piece, the Web's most important behaviors and features, the things which make it so awesome, are being removed.


> Seems not that legal

> That seems incredibly illegal.

Why would it be illegal? I understand that it's unfair, but what law would be broken here?


My wife's new iPhone SE 2020 does the same thing. My iPhone 6 Plus on iOS 12.4 correctly goes to realty.com


Does your phone have private browsing turned on and hers have it turned off?


Just the word "realty" (and "realty.com") sends me to "realtor.com"


I can’t reproduce this on my iPhone


Can't reproduce on iPhone X in the beta of iOS 14. Though I've also never had this sort of thing happen to me generally. Safari always either does a search for what I typed it goes to the exact address I entered.


I tried on mobile safari and it went to reality.com - bug didn't reproduce for me


Seems like typing realty.com and getting sent to reality.com is bad, too.


reality or realty?


oh my bad, just tried realty and it worked too as it went to realty.com


Weird, my iPhone is in English, but I live in Brazil, and couldn’t reproduce it (iOS 13.5.1).

However, a bit unrelated, Siri suggested a website whose title is “Home - Donuts” when I was typing news.ycombinator. And the link for it is just “news”


All of these take me to DDG search results on my iPhone X.

- reality

- reality.com

- sketch

I tried with “Search Engine Suggestions” on and off, with the same results.

I couldn’t test with “Safari Suggestions”. The switch was disabled. I assume this is due to having Siri disabled.


On that same note Apple's auto-correction really sucks.

On my iPhone I replaced the keyboard with SwiftKey b/c I kept making embarrassing mistakes with the default keyboard.


Safari lost it when it stopped showing full url in address bar.


Can't replicate it on ios 13.5.1. Then again I also have a bunch of safari features turned off (eg. suggestions, preloading) so it could be that.


He mentions in the post that turning suggestions off fixes it.


Not getting this in the UK. I’m guessing their suggestions are location specific maybe? Though I don’t recall ever seen Safari do this myself.


I was redirected to realtor.com - iPhone 11 iOS 13.4.1


I turned off the options in Settings > Siri & Search > Safari and now “s k e t c h return” goes to google not skechers.com!


Odd, totally not happening for me - and I’m a frequent realtor.com user. I type in realty.com and it takes me to the correct website.


I just replicated this on my iPhone 11 iOS 13 on Safari. Northeastern US, home WIFI connection.

Does not replicate on Chrome or Firefox on the same phone


I wonder what it does in other localities. Is "realtor" even a word, outside of the US?


FWIW, it's a trademark and very much protected in Canada too.


Realty.com owner can technically sue the Apple and settle for a million dollars at least


I just tried this on desktop Safari 14.0 and I went to realty.com without a problem.


Heads up: this seems to be a mobile Safari bug only; I can’t reproduce it on macOS.


I was just able to replicate it in Safari 13.1.1 on Catalina


It works correctly if you add a space after realty.com

Tested on iPhone, Safari, iOS 13.5.1


I don't have an iphone, but what would correct behavior actually be for "realty.com "?


This is pretty typical of most software these days: user-hostile and painfully dumbed down. Browsers especially seem to be able to get away with this because there are practically no non-annoying alternatives that are sufficiently secure and compatible.


Went to realty.com on first test. Catalina 10.15.4, Safari 13.1


Already fixed? Can’t replicate on ipad pro ios 13


Not fixed it just does not happen on every device but it even happens on MacBooks and iMacs


Just tried this on my iPhone, took me to Realty.com but not before being forced through a CAPTCHA page. It’s not an excuse, but I wonder if that has anything to do with it.


The CAPTCHA is part of the site and has nothing to do with the domain.

The CAPTCHA is provided by Cloudflare and it’s up to the customer to chose to show it before access to the site since it can decrease spam and hug of deaths


Wow suddenly I have a great deal more sympathy for Safari's behavior. When a site is that hostile to visitors, steering them away is almost a value-added service.


Not seeing this in Germany. iOS 13.5.1.


hopefully apple doesn't just whitelist realty.com to forward to realtor.com.. They should actually send you to the qualified URL if you type in a .com or whatever.. like who these days types http:// or https:// ? In chrome for example it hides the http or https now..


In Jira if you type an autocomplete @name too fast it will show the right person selected in a list but autocomplete the wrong result.


Replicated on iOS 12.3.1 iPhone SE


I ended up at realty.com on iOS 13


Realty.com on a iPhone XR


Replicated on my iPhone


Does anyone believe that Apple is making money off this?


Hard to read on Mobile page. Here is non-mobile link:

https://www.facebook.com/story.php?story_fbid=10157161487396...



Yep, URL should be changed


Not so fast. The altered link requires a login to Facebook. The original actually shows partial content.


Hmm, I'm not seeing that.


I would assume the store devices (Best Buy) are locked to a small set of domains for obvious reasons.

Further it seems that it's adding an extra m on the end on all but the first.

EDIT: LOL, -10 on this post. This place is such a swamp of imbeciles. Again, this is 100% a DNS issue, and note that the majority do not have this. Verizon or some other specific provider is blocking what they see, incorrectly, as typosquatting. Guy tried zero Android devices in comparison. Probably because he knew all of the "HRURR EVIL APPLE MAKING MONEY REDIRECTING" sloths would run with it.


It happens on my iPhone... and I actually also get the extra 'm' when i type the 'realty.com'


The best feature of safari is "Remove from dock"


This is another reason people should not buy Apple.


Wow. And these are all on high value searches. Somebody is taking money here, no way this is an autocomplete error.


This is truly outrageous. Why would Apple want to destroy this man's business?


This is wild though... full domain entered and directs to a competitor? Is Apple getting kick backs? Wonder what small businesses are crippled by this?


Will this be enough to make you swear off ever buying another Apple product?

If not, they have no reason to fix it. You will get used to it, soon enough, and like every other offense, it will soon seem unremarkable.

The battered wife doesn't leave him because, she says, "I can still stand it."


Probably because he has Realtor.com in his history. I didn't, so Realty.com worked for me.


I don't think I have either Realty.com or Realtor.com in my history and I was able to reproduce. In the video, it looks like he tries it on a few devices at the Apple Store, which likely have little history.


I didn't have either... if i typed "realty.com", safari tried to autocomplete with a second 'm' in com (realty.comm), and then took me to realtor.com when i hit "go" (even though the 'first suggestion' said 'realty.com'

If I hit space after 'realty.com', it would try a google search... but if i hit space and then delete the space, it would send me to realty.com

Super confusing... this is on iOS 13.3.1


Still wrong behavior. There's no way a standalone domain name should go elsewhere.


Did you watch the video? He tried it on a bunch of demo phones in an Apple Store and they all did the redirect.


I have never been to either site and was able to reproduce what the post says.


There’s a pretty simple explanation, and I think the behavior is almost certainly a bug or a UX edge case they overlooked.

The entry in safari is acting only as a search box it seems, and Go takes you to the first result that is finds - which is the first result on Google, likely a paid ad, or just coincidentally a higher ranking.

If you visit the realty.com site directly (Not suggesting this is a workaround, see thread), then type it in, Safari remembers it and gives it higher priority. This seems to be a quirk of a “first visit” UX - it still is meaningful to anyone who has competitors with similar names, and I’d call it a bug to not check the domain first, though assuming good intent, maybe it does, but something about that domain is not right for some heuristic (HSTS, something else?)


>If you visit the realty.com site directly

How? He literally types "realty.com" (ie: the full domain) in the bar and it goes to "realtor.com."


That’s what I thought I explained.

If you look at the list of items that appear below his typing, the “Top Hit” is “realtor.com” - I am saying that this is reading the typing as a search, and not as a domain. It’s a bug imo that the domain isn’t considered first.

I think it came across as if I’m saying this is correct behavior, I’m not, I’m saying it’s following the UX available, it’s not a nefarious trick to redirect to a competitor. It’s still damaging and needs to be fixed.


I don't think people are misreading your post as approving of the bug. What people are responding to is your suggestion of a workaround: "If you visit the realty.com site directly..."

And the question is: How do you visit the site directly if typing the domain name into the url field doesn't take you there. Your workaround either doesn't work or needs more explanation.


Whoa, thanks for that perspective.

That was NOT meant to be a recommended workaround, that is absurd, so thanks for the downvotes folks!

I was pointing out that after doing that, the default UX behavior leading to the “bad” website no longer happens, indicating it is all about UX and not a DNS thing, or other weird Safari bug.


Feel like this may be the case. It was redirecting me on every attempt initially.

The second suggestion when typing `realty.com` was `Google search: realty.com`. Clicking on that took me directly to `realty.com`, which is also misleading because I was expecting to be taken to a list of Google results where I’d attempt to click on a link to `realty.com`.

Typing in `realty.com` works every time as expected after that.


How do you 'visit the realty.com' site directly if it won't let you type the exact url and go to it?


That’s the bug. I’m not saying it’s not broken, it totally is. I’m explaining why it’s doing what it does from the UX available, in an attempt to differentiate between bad UX/design and some malicious thing done by Apple to a specific website.


I think somehow Apple is getting monetized by Safari suggestions and is stealing this traffic from sites like Realty.com and getting paid by Fortune 500 companies like Realtor.com


I doubt it. I’m sure they are monetizing things associated with it and they should, but Apple would get dragged if they were doing something shady, or maybe not, Google does this and only HN is annoyed (paid results, AMP, licensing google to FF etc. )


How many other businesses are getting screwed by this? Are you saying it’s okay because “oh other companies kinda do the same thing”... come on... direct domain search goes to another domain.... that’s bad, super bad. Are they censoring other searches by deciding what you should and shouldn’t see? I don’t want to be all “conspiracy theory” here but come on... this is a problem, just admit it.


To answer your actual question: put in the https URI scheme first. It won’t assume it’s a search.




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