I have a M1 laptop and one-before-last iphone SE that cannot open a ticketing website from a major global airline on Safari without an OS update. Irony being I can open the same website on all chromium browsers and firefox without an OS update.
If this is not a completely broken experience, I don't know what is.
The website works on the Safari that comes with the latest OS. I can't update the Safari version without updating the OS with a 14GB update. Nevermind the extremely annoying hassle of having to backup the devices before the updates "just in case".
I don't have to do that for any non-Apple browser while using the same Apple laptop. [0]
I think it was the late and great Joe Armstrong who said, in a tongue-in-cheek remark on object oriented programming,
"You want a banana, but to get the banana you need the gorilla holding the banana and the [goddamn] rain forest it lives in." (brackets might be my frustrated addition.)
[0] there were other websites that would work seamlessly on other browsers but would throw security errors that disappeared after the OS update, including an email provider that is regular posted about on HN.
If you're sweating your socks off trying to get a plane ticket last minute on the go, someone telling you for whatever reason to update your OS can kindly fuck-off.
That's utter contempt for your users and a non-option pure and simple. The only real option is to hug and hold onto your non-Safari browser for dear life.
This hasn't been true for a few years. When I bought my first iPhone a few years ago (the iPhone 12 in 2020), Safari indeed was a piece of junk. But starting the very next iteration cycle (iOS 14 or 15 I think) they fixed almost all the issues I had with it (tons of bugs, including rendering issues on some sites, but also quality of life features, like moving the URL bar at the bottom).
At first I used Safari because there was no other choice, today I use it because it's a decent browser and doesn't drain battery too much. Even if Firefox with Gecko or Chrome with Blink were available, I would stick with Safari.