alt Hacker NewsI think the “imperfect frames” on the Safari search bar are, practically, just fine and doing it in the way that looks better in screenshots would be worse.
The cursor appears on the left because that’s where the user will actually start writing. I assume that’s where people look, if they know the UI. Having it appear in the middle of the screen and then move over would be unnecessary and distracting.
The stand-in text slides over to the left, to draw the attention of the unfamiliar user.
To add to this, experienced users will often start typing without looking based on what they trust the eventual state of the UI will be. Moving the cursor immediately makes it explicit that this should work.
This is following a more important rule which is "Never make keyboard input timing dependent!" I'm looking at you new Windows start menu and VS Code quick open.