The answer in my team's case is browser support and especially Safari on iOS. Our UI is quite complex and demanding regarding functionality, visual presentation and accessibility and would benefit greatly from most of these features, especially subgrid and container queries (and anchor positioning, but that feature doesn't exist outside of the latest version of Chrome).
Even though MDN lists most of these features as "baseline" supported, the reality is that a small but still meaningful share of our users are using old iOS devices – especially iPads – and they can't or won't update their operating system to update Safari. Our oldest supported browser is Safari 14 because of Flexbox gap support.
None of the other platforms are a problem, as basically everyone else is using an automatically updating evergreen browser.
I've read a few articles like this in the last few days and I don't understand why everyone is ignoring the elephant in the room. It's 2024 and Safari is still not evergreen.
When people say Safari is the new Internet Explorer, replies always mention how Safari just adopted such and such bleeding edge CSS feature (while ignoring much older features, though), but the truth is many Apple users won't see those features for years, until their devices break.
Apple is stopping both users and developers from enjoying these very same new features they so happily announce. The web is stuck in time, waiting for enough people to update their devices. Just like in the age of Internet Explorer. At least back then people had the option of installing a different browser. So maybe Safari and the apple ecosystem is actually worse than IE and Windows used to be.
Even though MDN lists most of these features as "baseline" supported, the reality is that a small but still meaningful share of our users are using old iOS devices – especially iPads – and they can't or won't update their operating system to update Safari. Our oldest supported browser is Safari 14 because of Flexbox gap support.
None of the other platforms are a problem, as basically everyone else is using an automatically updating evergreen browser.