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.

What gives Apple?

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

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.

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.

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?

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?

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.

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.

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

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.

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...

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?

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

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.

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

sketch<enter> --> skechers.com

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

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

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 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.

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

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 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).

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

Note this is on the iOS 14 beta

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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?

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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).

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).

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

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.

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

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

Cool, that's all I need to know.

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.

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.

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’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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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)

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.

What could that possibly mean?

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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...

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

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

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."

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.

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.