Orion Browser Brings WebKit Speed and Privacy Focus to Mac Users

As a web developer I hate WebKit and Safari and it annoys me when people praise it.
Safari for example didn't support .webp images to 2020 and the browser updates are tied to iOS/macOS releases, just like Internet Explorer was in the earl 2000s.
WebKit recently had a bug where fixed elements that were positioned using bottom: X broke on mobile devices causing elements to float in the middle of the viewport rather than being attached to the bottom.
Then we have the glacial pace of implementing new features or weird WebKit only quirks that require special work arounds, just like IE did back in the day.

Safari is tied to the OS, can't update it individually.

That’s not true and it’s simply misinformation. They have released several Safari updates, and you can install them directly from System Settings.

I am on macOS Sequoia and I’ve already installed more than two Safari updates, including the latest one that’s in macOS Tahoe. Also, the fact that there aren’t many updates doesn’t mean anything bad. Apple will know when to update it if there’s an emergency, like patching an exploit to prevent attacks. I don’t need constant updates that add bloat to my browser.

How is it any different from Safari in that regard?

Supporting Chrome and Firefox extensions appears to be the big thing.

This actually might be the goldilocks browser for me. I’ve always preferred the battery life and privacy of Safari, but the extensions of Chrome and Firefox.

Also, when I really like a browser and want to stick to it across all my devices so I have browser tab syncing, their iOS apps usually suck compared to Safari. I’m such a huge fan of the UI where the URL bar is at the bottom and you can slide left, right, or up to switch between tabs. It looks like Orion even included this UI in their iOS apps Wow, I’m excited to try this out!

Orion Browser Brings WebKit Speed and Privacy Focus to Mac Users

How is it any different from Safari in that regard?

I've been trying out Kagi, which has been a pretty capable search engine.

As for Orion, though, if it's based off Webkit, what are the convincing differences that make it a better alternative to Safari? Can it really support Chrome and Firefox extensions, if it's a Webkit-based browser?

Someone above posted that Safari is tied to macOS releases whereas Orion might not be, which could be a plus... but again, we are talking about Webkit here, so whatever benefits and detriments the Webkit engine features, wouldn't those be carried over into Orion?

When it comes to alternative browsers for macOS, I must admit that I've never really been captivated enough by any of them to move away from Safari. Safari works great when you're moving between Apple devices—I don't see that other browsers can offer quite as seamless of an experience.

Regardless, it will be interesting to check out the preferences and settings of Orion...

I like the concept of WebKit because Google has proven they will use literally any illegal means to stifle competition. Apple is single handedly holding off the most evil machinations of Chrome. Without Apple Google would do its very best to make the internet an unusable hellscape of overlapping non-skippable video ads. Google's vision for the internet is no different than Grandma's Internet Explorer of 2009 with 30 toolbars and 6000 popups.

That is the ONLY reason I use Safari. Because just the limitation on search engine choices is nearly enough to make me switch to Brave on iXX devices since there isn't much point in pretend privacy since all your searches are going to either Google, Microsoft, or Mossad. But we do what we can. Pro Tip: you can mitigate this with the XSearch browser extension (of course you have to remember to use it).

However, I am perplexed by the claim WebKit in general and Safari in particular is faster. Or even fast. Or even not slow.

In addition to no small number of rendering errors: some of them cripplingly bad, Safari even on Mac goes to multi second rendering times on very long web pages e.g. asking an AI coding questions. I literally had to switch browsers. Now this is a case of a "page" that contains hundreds, maybe thousands of DOM objects. But what takes Safari literally 10 seconds to render Brave will do in less than 1. I have no fancy open source benchmark tools to support that. Just V1.0 eyeballs of a repeatable performance problem so crippling it invalidates Safari as a tool for that application.

WebKit is an important weapon to balance the power structure on who controls the Internet. But our knight in shining armor has a lot of warts and his horse doesn't run very fast anymore.