Can I download Teams without it also requiring Microsoft updaters and other stuff that insists on lurking in the background? Having a standalone MS app is fine, but I will never allow their updaters and background processes.

The Microsoft AutoUpdate tool is fully configurable so long as your organization doesn’t have any specific forced configurations.

You can uncheck automatically update and install.

You can decide whether or not to run the background service at all at the OS level.

This is a really strange hill to die on because your OS and other programs already have similar functionality, you are just saying no to Microsoft specifically. Chrome runs a background process to stay up to date, for example.

Yeah, so i'm not running Chrome either. I do not (from experience) trust Microsoft or Google to have software constantly running on my computer.

I realize that i can disable the service of course, but then i end up with outdated software.

You either update the software in the background, you update it manually, or you leave the software out of date.

Microsoft offers you all three options and you don’t like any of them.

I don’t quite understand what mystery fourth option you prefer Microsoft provides for you.

Going back to my original comment, you could have tried Teams in a real web browser before deciding it sucks. Safari is trash.

... and that's how browser monopolies are formed.

Your "something better" is certainly Chrome.

But that's irellevant because the likes of teams and google chat are made for management and at best sales, while slack is made for engineers.

Weird, there are an awful lot of engineers (last 3 SaaS companies I worked for) that are all Teams.

Do you think anyone asked them what they prefer? :)

I bet a lot of them don’t really care. At some point chat is chat.

I ran Teams calls in Firefox on Linux for years, it worked as well as Zoom, I'd say. Other integrations, like the online office files had some issues. Didn't do chats there, though, only the meetings.

All I know is the other two browser major engines work a lot better in practice than WebKit.

I don’t really know or care as an end user if WebKit represents browser choice. The fact is they Apple isn’t putting enough effort in to making their browser engine “just work” with popular websites.

If it was a requirement in iOS and a default in macOS nobody would choose it by choice. It would be dead as a doornail if it competed in a free market.

In my experience a comparatively broke Mozilla Foundation makes a better browser experience than the most profitable consumer electronics company in the world. Apple needs to do better.

Why is it on apple to make teams work for their web browser and not the other way around?

Because it’s not just Teams that’s broken, it’s a solid percentage of the websites I visit.

Apple can’t blame developers for their browser’s inconsistency.

Firefox has 1/10th of Apple’s market share and that browser is clearly more compatible with websites in my experience.

Whenever I have some kind of rendering issue or functionality glitch in Safari I switch to Firefox and it works fine.

Like, dear lord safari can’t even implement the back button normally. The behavior is terrible. It’s like you see a static screenshot of the precious page and everything is frozen for a second, and then if you’re lucky it unfreezes and at worst your scroll position gets messed up, or you’re unlucky and the entire page reloads.

Why can’t they make a working webapp for one of the largest browsers in the world? It isn’t like I tried to use Opera…

Because nobody can. Safari breaks on all kinds of popular websites while Firefox’s bucket of nickels development budget does a better job.

Apple can’t even make the back button behave smoothly.

Popular doesn’t mean good. Safari sucks.

From the perspective of someone who solely owns an iPhone they’d probably see a chromium monopoly as an upgrade.