The 60 times a day crash (more specifically the app just froze), took 1 to 2 months to fix and it affected every web app. Users would have to force kill the app and restart.
I'd recommend reading through all the comments to get a really good idea on how severe the issue was: https://open-web-advocacy.org/walled-gardens-report/#ios-saf...
https://open-web-advocacy.org/walled-gardens-report/#safari-...
In 2021, after 10 years of these issues, no progress on important web app features (like push/install prompts), no response from Apple or the Safari/Webkit team, we decided the only method by which Apple would fund Safari properly was to goto governments and regulators to reverse their ban on third party browsers.
Not long after we petitioned regulators Apple started working on push notifications, 12 years after they came out for native.
Eg: Not allowing to set the size of an iframe unless using some hack.
https://github.com/PierBover/ios-iframe-fix
This was not a bug. It was a deliberate decision.
I do agree that developer experience is important, and that Apple should take developer experience more seriously than it does, and that applies across every org in the company. Case in point: the infuriatingly-opaque and mercurial nature of the App Store review process.
The problem is that, percentage-wise, developers are a minuscule portion of Apple's overall userbase. That makes the justification for fixing concerns that are (perceived as) unique to developers difficult when the culture has traditionally leaned toward prioritizing issues with a more obvious impact on the majority of users. I'm not saying this is correct or desirable, just the way things have worked historically.
Given all of that, I think “a browser full of bugs” is relative. I witnessed many instances of bugs being experienced by large numbers of users being fixed extremely quickly. It's always been a function of (obvious, measurable) impact. If a significant percentage of web apps were crashing 60 times a day, those bugs would have been fixed extraordinarily quickly.