- A post about Microsoft Edge has sparked a fierce debate about X
- The post asked who runs Edge on Apple’s macOS platform.
- Users praised and criticized Edge, but I still prefer Firefox
Apple and Microsoft are known to be archrivals in the tech world, so when X user Macfolio asked his followers “what kind of monster uses Microsoft Edge on a Mac?” They might have expected the debate to play out along partisan lines, with rival groups of fans lining up to berate each other’s products.
But while there was vigorous debate, it was not the buildup one might have expected. Instead, many users provided reasons why they enjoy using the combination of Microsoft’s web browser and Apple’s macOS operating system.
X user @wiedymi, for example, described Edge as “the best browser for Mac.” User @secretised explained that when they used it, it was “the only browser that didn’t consume 4GB of RAM with four tabs,” while @osxdaily said “It’s actually pretty good!”
For others, the reason was more prosaic, with @asikunaa noting that “some internal government sites require you to use Edge because they don’t distribute security certificates for Chrome.”
Meanwhile, user @tarekmohmd9 summed up what a lot of people were apparently feeling, saying that Edge on macOS has “the speed boost of Chromium without Chrome’s horrible RAM management, it’s great (faster than Safari, uses fewer resources than Chrome, supports most Chromium extensions unlike Opera and Firefox).” They ended succinctly by saying “it’s excellent.”
Of course, not all responses were positive. The user @rafalo stated that “I downloaded it and uninstalled it later [five seconds].” And @LansorHQ simply asked, “What kind of monster does Edge use in general?”
Why do I use Firefox?
I am a long-time Firefox user and have been using the Mozilla browser for over 20 years. I’ve dabbled in other browsers, from big ones like Chrome and Safari to more specialized offerings like Opera and Vivaldi. And yes, I’ve also spent a lot of time with Microsoft Edge.
Yet despite all that, I keep coming back to Firefox. There are several reasons for this, and I must admit that one of them is inertia. After so many years of use, Firefox feels comfortable and familiar. I like how it works and switching would be a chore considering how many extensions and tabs I have running.
But there are many more things I love about Firefox. I use both a Mac and a PC in my daily life, and Firefox runs on both, unlike the Mac-only Safari. I can also send tabs between any of my devices, which is useful when I find something interesting on my iPhone and want to read it later on my Mac or PC.
As I wrote above, it’s also a genuine browser that prioritizes privacy and does everything it can to protect your data, which is something I really appreciate. It isolates cookies from creating a detailed picture of you, and Firefox limits access to my data that could be used to create a “fingerprint” of my browsing habits.
So despite the debate about X, I won’t be switching to Microsoft Edge anytime soon. But the discussion highlights that just because you use one operating system or another, you don’t have to be exclusively loyal to that developer’s products; you can even switch to those made by its archrival.
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