Submitted by After a long wait, Google has finally released the first official beta release of Google Chrome for Mac. This being a beta release, it is not yet entirely on par feature-wise with the Windows version, but in return Mac users get a browser that is very well integrated with Mac OS X. Update The Linux beta is out too! More here.
I think there’s little need to repeat the major advantages and disadvantages Google Chrome offers compared to other Mac browser mainstays like Safari, Camino, and Firefox. Chrome obviously brings with it lots of speed and a more polished interface (tabs on top done properly), but the real deal here is less obvious to casual users: process-per-tab, which makes sure that a misbehaving page cannot bring down your entire browser.
On the disadvantages end, the extension framework for Chrome is still not ready, and is also not part of the Mac beta release. Firefox’ extension ecosystem is one of the major reasons users stick to Firefox. A few features are also missing, such as the bookmark manager and support for Google Gears.
In return, Mac users get features that integrate the Chrome browser quite well with Mac OS X, something Firefox is still working on, even after all these years. Chrome for Mac taps into Mac OS X’s native spell checking and keychain architectures, and also sports various Mac-specific animations. The interface is also as Mac OS X as possible, which helps in making the browser feel like a native citizen on your Mac. On the technical side, Chrome for Mac uses Mac OS X’s native sandboxing features.
The beta release is available for Leopard users and up, and only works on Intel Macs. You can download it from the download page.
http://www.google.com/chrome/intl/en/w00t.html
The beta for Linux (Debian Ubuntu and Fedora) has been released today too. You can download it here http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html
Edit: Ups! kragil beat me.
Edited 2009-12-08 18:36 UTC
There is a very visible benefit for this architecture – the UI doesn’t “hang” when the page does. “Close other tabs” was never this reponsive ;-).
It’s a vindication for those of us who cringed as the “Threads are cool! Threads are the future!” crowd gained dominanace.
Process-based has always been the better model for these things. What threw people was that the giant codebase that was Netscape4 was dumped on them. It was written for Windows, and thus used threads. Were we to refuse it because it was thread based? We didn’t. And we rooted for the pathetically ailing Mozilla for years. And then Firefox. And before you could say, “Oooo, my browser crashed again!” we were all on the threads bandwagon. All because of the infection we picked up back in 1998 or so, from the dying Netscape.
I blame Java for the widespread acceptance of threads.
Java provided an “easy” approach to threading, creating an illusion that threads are a reasonable way to implement concurrency – since, it appeared, you would still be able to write synchronous code most of the time without learning the ins and outs of asynchronous programming.
Google is showing the new generation that nothing frees resources faster than exit(0) or kill(), which is fantastic.
Context switching with threads is cheaper than with processes.
If you are doing heavy multiprocessing code you will surely note the difference between multiple threads and multiple processes.
EDIT: small typo
Edited 2009-12-08 19:39 UTC
If you are doing heavy multiprocessing code, you will surely notice when everything comes crashing down when a bug in your code is hit. And before that, you will surely notice that you are responsible for details that, by all rights, the OS should be responsible for. Is it really worth it? To avoid a little context switching overhead?
Most people are not doing heavy multiprocessing with threads – threads only add performance as long as you have as many threads running as you have cores.
Threads are mostly used because passing data between them is free, and because they provide some programming convenience – albeit with grave effects on general robustness.
In linux fork a process is much more efficient than in windows. Unix and linux were developed oriented to process while windows always was oriented to threads.
Threads are important to some applications but use them to render multiple pages is not very smart. Google Chrome is showing this.
In all fairness, it should be noted that the Firefox guys don’t work very *hard* on integration with non-Windows OSes. The thing that Linux and Mac users need to understand is that it’s not that the FF devs are stupid, or incompetent, or anything. It is that they don’t really care about you except as a check box and bullet point for their PR efforts.
Edited 2009-12-08 18:47 UTC
They never really made a secret of it either, at least back in the pheonix days, they were very clear that their goal was to create the best browser for the windows platform.
That’s because, at the time, Chimera/Camino was a very capable browser just for Mac OS X and it was the inspiration for Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox.
I’m fine with the way Firefox works on Mac OS X because I consider its flexibility an asset. I dropped Camino because it was crashing and there wasn’t much Camino progress since Firefox hit version 2.0.
And what’s so new about that? FOSS improve the software anyway and now Firefox has KDE integration thanks to the OpenSUSE devs.
I’ve heard that Chrome runs faster in Linux than Windows and Google don’t exactly know why. Chrome feels very fast in Linux and so far seems to be a good job.
Edited 2009-12-08 19:17 UTC
OpenSuse’s Firefox is really half integrated (still an improvement). All the dialogs are KDE, but the browser itself is still quite GTK in feel.
The devs do have some idea why Chrome is faster on Linux. First, it only applies to the Chrome look and feel, the GTK one is quite slow (on par with other GTK apps). The main reason was that when properly supported by the driver, X11 commands tended to be much faster than the equivalent Windows commands and they needed less of them.
Well, they care as much as people use Firefox on those platforms compared to Windows. (Firefox on Windows has easily 10x the users as on Mac or Linux)
So 10x time more emphasis to Windows is justifiable..
.. and besides. For years Firefox provided Linux and Mac with a good browser. It might have been better on Windows, but still it was _by_far_ the best browser there was for Linux and Mac.
I still like what Mozilla is doing. Supporting open standards (esp. Theora and Vorbis) and the open internet.
Not sure that every distro switching to Chrome would be a good solution in the long run.
It’s commendable, even. Firefox has long been the stronghold of “open web” among the windows users, against IE. Mozilla won’t be devastated if Chromium eats a big chunk of its market share on Linux.
I agree of course.
Without Firefox on Windows Linux and Macs (even more) wouldn’t be as popular as they are today.
WWW is THE most important use case for an OS PERIOD.
Without Firefox we would have Internet like in South Korea where IE on Windows is mandatory and ActiveX is everywhere.
Scary stuff, THANKS Mozilla!
If I may interrupt your love-fest for a moment…
The “Enemy of my enemy is my friend” philosophy starts breaking down as one approaches the finish line and goals begin to diverge again.
There is no doubt that the (limited) success that FF has had against IE has been beneficial to everyone. But I dislike strategies that ensure that the best we can ever be is second class citizens. Thus I recommend FF to people who are using Windows… and “anything else” to people who are using Linux. Epiphany is fantastic now that it is using webkit by default. I recommend it to Gnome users. Konqueror sucks donkey balls, and you can’t suggest anything to KDE folk anyway. But… one could do a lot worse than choosing Aurora, I suppose.
Chromium (not Chrome) *might* be a good choice. It doesn’t seem to integrate well with any Linux desktop. But it does have Webkit goodness. And the process-based model. And with Chromium, at least, you have some assurance that it’s not indexing your personal information and sending it to Google.
On Linux and/or Mac, choosing FF ensures that even if we win, we lose.
Limited success?
http://thenextweb.com/europe/2009/12/02/congratulations-mozilla-fir…
Whatever.
Arora. It is only just getting off the ground, but it basically works. It does use webkit and Qt, and it has an adblock function, so it is off to a good start.
There is also rekonq, but I’m not sure how far that effort is getting.
Don’t see how. FF now has support for using the desktop native file picker, an KDE4 at least with qtcurve has good support for integrating the look and feel of Qt and GTK+ applications on the same desktop.
Yes. limited. Firefox inches out IE by one metric in one tiny corner of the world and Lemur2 can only find one link to herald the fact on OSNews. And while he is searching for more links to link-spam us with, IE continues to dominate the global web.
Edited 2009-12-09 02:06 UTC
Tetchy.
Look at the trends. Globally.
IE was stagnant for years, then along came Firefox, and suddenly there are new (and more standards compliant) versions of IE, new competitors (such as Google Chrome, which I am trialling right now as I type this) and a fierce demand for better performance and features (whatever browser we are talking about). There is competition once more in the browser space.
That is huge success by any measure.
Indeed. But… don’t count your chickens…
And don’t count Mozilla Corp as being out of the “Fox” camp.
Edited 2009-12-10 00:36 UTC
We understand that Firefox stepped on your lawn, but that does not change the fact that Mozilla was, is and will be an important part of the FOSS ecosystem. Bugzilla, Thunderbird, Firefox are all widely popular FOSS programs and they helped/help/will help Linux,Open Standards and the Open Internet a great deal.
Sure Epiphany on a 64bit Linux box might be better in a few cases (only since very few months tbh), but it is unfamiliar and migrating people over to Linux is enough of a change already .. you don’t want to change every app and loose all plugins etc.
Slow migrations with OpenOffice, Firefox, Thunderbird etc. tend to be the most successful ones (look at Munich, but I guess Germany is only a tiny part of the world, although it sets a lot of precedents in Europe, which is arguably the most important part of the world.)
And KDE will be fine, KDEwebkit/Kpart is getting ready. KDEs browser problems will be solved with KDE SC 4.5.
Fine post and I agree what you said, so hate to nitpick, but some people say Munich has hardly been a success, quite the opposite.
Well, there are a lot of stupid people.
They just take “slow migration” literally. Being German they do it thoroughly and plan to migrate 80% of desktops by the year 2012 (maybe they are betting on the world ending by then JK)
They are under budget and within schedule .. just because it takes ages and it is planned to take ages it isn’t a failure.(Nearly all desktops use Firefox, Thunderbird and OpenOffice now)
The longer you wait the harder it gets.
My guess is that a lot of people will wish they had started the migration when Munich did.
“within the delayed schedule”
.. they started one year late (2006), because of legal (patent) issues.
So in 3 years they migrated nearly all office apps and 1500 desktops (they want to migrate 12000 to 13000) and they want to port all special programms (thousands) to the web or to servers etc. It is an enormous task, make no mistake.
I think they might migrate hardware and software .. so if you want a new shiny machine you have to take the bitter bitter Linux pill
(Not sure about that tho .. but it would fit the timeline.)
Glad that you brought this up:
http://limuxwatch.blogspot.com/
Quite an entertaining shill – he conjures the image of an angry goblin trying to fight a bulldozer.
They don’t care about rendering consistency either. I had to learn this the hard way when working on an AJAX project.
I actually had fewer problems with consistency between Mac Safari/Windows Chrome than Mac Firefox/Windows Firefox.
Mozilla should either switch to webkit or dump Firefox OSX. Most Apple users I know have gone back to Safari anyways.
Please add a tar.gz/bz2 with a static build for 32 and 64 bits archs.
Thanks,
Diego
why static? thats not needed, just a standard build(done on debian or something) packaged in a tarball would be fine
http://www.google.com/chrome?platform=mac
This gets you past the youtube flash pages. (youtube is barred in my browser. same for facebook and other flash/silverlight ridden sites)
thanks very much, finding that damn link seemed to be impossible via that web site, it just wanted to tell me about and not let me download it!
In another news:
“If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place“, Google chief Schmidt said.
This really should go to the disadvantages end Thom mentioned.
Hypothetically speaking… if I masturbated last night, but didn’t tweet about it, is that OK? Am I safe?
Edited 2009-12-08 19:56 UTC
You have to ask from Schmidt.
But if you use Chrome browser on Chrome OS with Google DNS and Gmail, then I am sorry to inform you that it is probably already in the Cloud. Prepare for some more Viagra advertisements.
If you haven’t tried Chrome yet, please do. I’d bet these words will cross your mind:
“He gazed up at the enormous face. Forty years it had taken him to learn what kind of smile was hidden beneath the dark moustache. O cruel, needless misunderstanding! O stubborn, self-willed exile from the loving breast! Two gin-scented tears trickled down the sides of his nose. But it was all right, everything was all right, the struggle was finished. He had won the victory over himself. He loved Big Brother.”
As for me, I’ve loved Google all along. Bite me!
This is the most insightful use of a quote I’ve seen in a long time.
It’s not Chrome OS. No, it’s Chrome the web browser. No, it’s Google. A big brother? A Dada hears googoo from it’s cooing baby. Googled, Dad says you can’t write to those Linux-geek, Google haters any more today.
Is it just me or does scrolling with the touchpad indeed feel noticeably worse on all sites I visit compared to Safari and Firefox? I’m owning a fairly new MacBook Pro 5,1 so it shouldn’t really be due to lack of system resources. Quite disappointing for a browser which prides itself with its so-called “snapiness”.
It’s not just you, I reported this a while back and got shot down for it.
SantaRosa Macbook on 10.6 here
Firefox used to suffer badly from this too, it has improved a lot in the last version or two.
Edited 2009-12-08 20:19 UTC
The scrolling was one of the things that made me switch to Safari in the first place. Call me shallow but I love scrolling around pages and getting that smooth feeling you get with safari
And yes, Chrome is much worse than Safari when it comes to the scrolling. Too bad, felt snappy otherwise.
No MobileMe synchronization.
I need my bookmarks in sync with my iPhone.
It does sync your bookmarks across different computers you are using chromium on through your google account:
http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=165…
It might be that supporting iPhone users was not a priority for Google ;-).
It’s about time.
Shift click the zoom button (the green one) to maximize chrome. Thanks google!
BTW, i like it. I can’t explain why, but chrome feels “right”. I’m comfortable with it.
You mean it doesn’t have to look 100 % like an Apple product to feel right? 😀
I can only imagine the Apple fanatics sucking wind as the beta was released and it was different but really good. The thing I always hear is that “it doesn’t look like [fill in the Apple application] so it’s not really a native application.”
I don’t use Safari normally because Firefox works consistently on all of the operating systems I use but I’ll keep Chrome on hand as well.
http://tinyvid.tv/
HTML 5 videos (Theora codec) on that site work in Firefox 3.5 but not in Google Chrome beta for Linux.
Are they supposed to work yet? Does anyone know?
Edited 2009-12-09 12:28 UTC
For Chromium on Linux, there are a bunch of codec packs that need to be installed.
Not sure if that applies to Chrome or not.
However, using the Chrome beta on Kubuntu 9.10, I can watch movies on that site. (I have all the Chromium codec packs installed.)
Thanks Google. Thanks everyone involved. Finally I am able to browse the internet with less UI chrome, than with Firefox. All Firefox gives me is chrome UI, and a tiny space for viewing the page. Unless I press fullscreen, Firefox is a no-go. Thanks Chrome, I can have a better sight.
sudo apt-get install google-chrome-beta
🙂
What kind of web developer support does Chrome have? I use Safari’s “Inspect Element” and Firefox’s Plug-in “Web Developer” side by side to get different angles on my code, it would be nice to have a third point of view.
Not sure about Chrome, but with Epiphany, “Web Inspector” just sort of showed up during the transition from the old Gecko renderer to the more featureful Webkit. So maybe it’s a feature of Webkit.
OK, ya it looks just like Safari’s developer set so it’s probably a Webkit thing. And it crashed within two minutes of using it. Nice.
In the Developer menu:
– View Source
– Developer Tools
– JavaScript Console
– Task Manager
And Developer Tools brings up a fancy-shmancy code inspector. No idea what it does, or how to use it, but it certainly looks pretty.
Until google gets off their arse and release native 64bit versions of their browser … its worthless.
So tell me about the advantages of a 64 bit browser over a 32 bit one. Please be specific.
Why copy and paste when it’s a waste of time? Same differences between 32bit and 64bit applications …
Which are?
Larger pointers. Larger binaries. Diminished effectiveness of L1 and L2 cache. Disk cache, as well. Those would be some *disadvantages* of 64 bit binaries.
Advantages? Well… more registers for the compiler to use when optimizing. It seems to make a few percent difference. If your browser is consuming so much memory that virtual memory addressing issues come into play, then you have bigger problems than 32 vs 64 bit. And Chrome’s process-per-tab and process-per-site memory models would alleviate that even if it were an issue.
Assuming that you have enough memory for it to be an issue at the OS level, a 64 bit kernel get’s you the advantages of 64 bit. From there, 32 bit vs 64 bit userspace is a tradeoff where there is no clear winner. Often, 32 bit wins.
Edited 2009-12-11 16:46 UTC
Bah, an intelligent response, I was expecting a troll
I am glad my expectations were proven wrong 
Any how, On a 32bit system with 3g of ram, using chrome or even firefox, I run into disk swapping issues with only 15 tabs open.
These are mainly news sites, and maybe a few gaming sites. (gaming as in flash based games, not gaming news). I look at my ram and its monstrous.
64bit? so I can use all 8gb of ram? hell yes please.