"It doesn't work with Safari"

In the past month or so, I have encountered three websites that have always worked well for me, but suddenly do not work at all. These are all big businesses, not mom-and-pop operations. In all three cases, when I got through to the I.T. crowd, their first response was, "Oh, you must be using Safari. Apple made some changes, and we are working on an update to our site. But for now, please use Chrome." One guy even suggested the abomination that is Internet Explorer.

This really rubs me the wrong way. As I understand it, Safari is the second most popular web browser in the world. Operators of websites have to deal with it, not tell users it doesn't work.

I suspect part of the problem is the arrogance of Apple, which makes all sorts of changes that affect people's lives with no advance warning whatsoever. They probably have no one available to help the website operators figure out what they have to fix. And the people Apple does have are probably under strict instructions to keep a lot of stuff secret.

The internet has come a long way, but man, it still has a long way to go.