“Safari, eat Google’s dust — its Chrome Web browser — under its developmental title Chromium — has hit version 4.0 on the Mac, and our tests confirm it’s the fastest browser in the world on both PC and now on Mac OS X,” Nate Lanxon reports for CNET UK.
“But despite its 4.0 moniker and its impressive speed, Chrome for Mac is still riddled with bugs,” Lanxon reports. “Big ones, like those spiders in Eight Legged Freaks, only even more hellacious.”
“When benchmarking Chrome 4.0’s rendering speed on a PC last week, it obliterated its previous record and scored 100/100 on the Acid3 standards-compliancy tests. On the Mac, it only gets better. It completed the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark in just 657ms. Only 4 percent faster than its PC brother, sure, but 34 percent faster than Safari 4.0.3, which scored 886ms on the same 2.0GHz Intel MacBook,” Lanxon reports. “Keeping things in some sort of delicious context, Firefox version 3.5.2 on OS X scored 1,508ms and Opera 10 beta 3 scored 5,958ms.”
Full article here.
Does google Chrome keep track of your web browsing habits (what sites you visit, how long you spend there, what text you enter into text boxes, etc.) and send the info back to Google? The fact that they retain your search history FOREVER and read and index your email and store it FOREVER and read and index your Google Docs and store the indexed text FOREVER leads me to be a bit afraid of using google’s browser until I know more about what it does for Google and how Google plans to profit off it.
There are things that matter more than speed. How many of us drive NHRA top fuel drag racers to work? Some of us like to be able to make turns.
And so it is with Chrome – a pain in the ass in real world operation. It is a buggy mess. Moreover, it goes against one’s instincts to rely on products that have one primary purpose: to profile you for the profit of marketeers.
Let someone else polish Google’s chrome. Customer service and good product development have been put on the back burner while Google/Doubleclick finds more ways to extract personal information from us. Yes, Google is turning evil. Stick to reliable non-evil browsers (Firefox, iCab, Omniweb, Opera, and Safari).
Buggy software is worthless. The headline touts speed, but the warts in Chrome are numerous and the performance is not better across the board. Also, when something is already fast, 34% is not necessarily a significant increase (although faster is always better).
“Chrome 4.0 has better support for Adobe Flash now (ironically, the first version of the browser on OS X didn’t work with Flash, meaning Google’s own YouTube was unsupported). Problem is, it’s still criminally inefficient, resulting in poor frame rates, excessive CPU usage and choppy playback — three issues not present in Safari or Firefox on OS X.”
And I bet you don’t have to reboot your computer after every Chrome update
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How did they get to version 4.0 already? It’s not even finished… should be version 1.0.
And strange that they don’t make it easy to find the Mac version of Chrome… says “still in development, sign up to receive notifications”. I have v3.x, how did I get that?
Excellent – Chrome on the dreaded work PC is light and fast, and the tab behavior is great and, in my opinion, better than Safari’s. Nice to see that Apple & Google are in competition. Better for us.
not sure about this, when is it going to be released v.1.0 to the public? why taking so long? seems like Mac is not a priority for Google anymore, especially since the shakeup of the corporate boards, and articles like this:
http://www.derekunderwood.com/web-programming/google-chrome-is-really-just-for-windows/
“Safari does seem slower than advertised!”
That’s because you use it to visit MDN, where all browsers seem excruciatingly slow.
I use Chrome often on my work WinXPpc and I prefer it to other browsers. Not perfect, but a good choice. Let’s hope it pushes the envelope and gets AAPL to make an even better Safari…
If they can get it stable and fast then all credit to them, until then my interest is passing at best.
The only difference between Chrome and Safari is Javascript, right? Since they both use Webkit as their rendering engine.
Um, what is the point of this article? Chrome on the Mac is an prerelease, incomplete development version. To claim it’s “riddled with bugs” is just stupid.
it’s version 0.4 not 4.0
1.0 and a stable release are far far away
What I miss in this discussion is balance.
I have been using the nightly builts for awhile now and they have become richer and stabler each day.
The interface took some getting used to, but now I like it and the interaction with google search is certainly interesting. Chrome is every bit as solid as Safari, which still craps out on a regular basis.
Perhaps, some of you should just be trying it out before condemning it … “my platform right or wrong” seems a little myopic.
Safari will always be faster than Chrome on G5 for obvious reasons.
Hmmm…I am not able to download chrome for myself….I guess vaporware is always faster than real software.
“That’s because you use it to visit MDN, where all browsers seem excruciatingly slow.”
Tru dat.
I only use browsers that have mouse gestures. It’s pure pain if you have to click back button.
Redmond….I mean Cupertino…have only themselves to blame. Looking forward to giving this a go. Wouldn’t have looked at it seriously before the Microsoft inspired Safari 4.
Chrome = nice competition for Safari. The hilarity is the IE is sitting face down in the mud miles behind them both.
But how does a browser jump from version 1.0 to version 4.0 within a few months. This sounds terribly ‘Microsoft’ to me. Fake higher version numbers in order to catch up with the version number of the competition, like that means anything. Watch them tick up to Chrome version 5 next month faking an iteration advantage over Safari 4. Pure, unadulterated marketing moron stooopidity. Go blow yourselves Google. Me = laughing at you.
Wait until safari us running under Snow Leopard!