> Safari may take a second or two just to open a new blank tab on a 2014 iMac
Is "blank" actually blank? If you have new tabs set to show Top Sites (the default setting), there's a notable lag that doesn't occur if you set it to Empty Page. Of course, changing it is a reduction in functionality, and it's silly that loading a simple grid of screenshots is so slow. Chrome, for its part, is even slower (on my machine) to actually load the new tab page, but it loads it asynchronously with the address bar responding instantaneously, whereas Safari lags out the whole UI.
I still use Safari myself, with new tabs set to Empty Page, because I don't really care about the screenshot-grid functionality (in either browser), and Safari has better performance in other respects, as well as lower power consumption. But it irks me that the default macOS experience makes you wait to open a new tab; it's a terrible UX for something that shouldn't be hard to optimize.
Is "blank" actually blank? If you have new tabs set to show Top Sites (the default setting), there's a notable lag that doesn't occur if you set it to Empty Page. Of course, changing it is a reduction in functionality, and it's silly that loading a simple grid of screenshots is so slow. Chrome, for its part, is even slower (on my machine) to actually load the new tab page, but it loads it asynchronously with the address bar responding instantaneously, whereas Safari lags out the whole UI.
I still use Safari myself, with new tabs set to Empty Page, because I don't really care about the screenshot-grid functionality (in either browser), and Safari has better performance in other respects, as well as lower power consumption. But it irks me that the default macOS experience makes you wait to open a new tab; it's a terrible UX for something that shouldn't be hard to optimize.