Comments on: Chrome-on-Mac precursor rough but workable

The development project underlying Chrome for the Mac is buggy, but CNET News' Stephen Shankland is cautiously impressed with the progress thus far.

[eekitsericc]

yes finally!

although its buggy...

i love this! :D

[Hunnter2k3]

Looking pretty good so far.
Still, to go the route of sticking with the "Apple interface", it is losing a little bit of browser space.
(Not that your average person will really care, though)

Also, i can't wait for HTML5s Local Storage, and generally just HTML5.
Hopefully Microsoft won't stay behind (as usual) and buckle the adoption of it.
Please Microsoft! Pretty please?

[Jonnygthedrummer]

Yes!! , seems good, little glitchy but Yes,,, i cant get the Home button to show up on the toolbar

[cheboncruz]

Based on the test, firefox was the loser (i can't believe it).

[Shankland]

Bear in mind that JavaScript speed is not the sole measure of a browser's performance, much less its overall capability. Firefox also is available today on Mac, Linux, and Windows (and more), an advantage the other browsers can't claim.

But JavaScript is important, and I was surprised how poorly Firefox's JavaScript fared compared to Chrome and Safari on the Mac.

[YankeePoodle]

Opera is available on Mac, Linux and Windows. I am not an Opera nut, but I think people overlook this cute browser in the discussion. Given Chrome's position in Browser totem pole, over looking Opera for comparison is bad idea.

[B-Ri]

Not even an alpha level product? Why do the Mac users have to continue to wait for a browser that was made available to Windows nearly a year ago. Considering it is based on the tech underpinnings of safari what is the holdup? I thought Google and Apple were best buds?

[Sausagebiscuit]

Most likely (and it's just a guess, maybe even a poor one) is that Chrome was developed for the largest market share first. I'm not a coder at all, but I would guess some time was needed to get the code working/ported or whatever to OSX/Linux even though I am sure the code is cross-platform(ish) it still takes time... and I think alot of work is done by volunteers since it is open source.

[Shankland]

In fairness, the Windows version arrived in September 2008, so we still have a few months to go before its 1-year anniversary. Google often releases software and Web sites that are very preliminary to get feedback, adoption, and publicity, then iterates relatively quickly. That can leave some people waiting for features and exposes Google to criticisms of releasing weak products, but realistically, if they'd waited to release Chrome until there was a Mac version ready, they'd have nothing on the market today. And given how fast the browser market is moving today, that would have been foolish.

In a perfect world they might have had more programmers for the Mac and Linux versions, but even Google's giant bucket of money only goes so far, and software engineering is one of those challenges notorious for not getting much faster when you throw more bodies at it.

[renGek]

If you were running a business selling 2 products but only have time to build one. Then knowing that product A can be sold to a max of 1 million customers vs product B which can be sold to a max of 100K customers which one would you attempt to market first. $$$ drives all.

[uberbrady]

There's also <a href='http://www.stainlessapp.com'>Stainless</a> for the mac - an independently created browser based on Webkit which has one process-per-tab. No mention of that though? It's been getting more and more stable as of late. I don't know how it will hold up against Chrome for Mac once it comes out - but it's got a great lead so far.

[Shankland]

Mac-only browsers interest me much less than cross-platform alternatives, especially those funded by companies that advertise browsers on TV, generate more than $1 billion in profit per quarter through online services, and criticize Microsoft for its antitrust record.

Safari (and WebKit more broadly) became more intriguing to me once Apple decided to bring it out of its comfortable Mac OS X niche into the big, scary, chaotic world of Windows. Say what you will about Mac vs PC, but being available on Windows means exposure to a lot more users.

That said, I'll try to give Stainless a whirl soon.

[stanlemon]

Stainless (http://stainlessapp.com) is a fantastic independent mac project! Conceptually it's similar to Chrome, but a pure mac implementation. If you haven't checked it out, do so!

[myles taylor]

Definitely checking it out. I've been looking forward to it for quite some time.

I think a big part of it is that Mac users (not to start any kind of flame war) tend to be more tech savvy than the majority of Windows users. Yes there are less of them but they are probably more likely to try a new browser than your average Windows user.

[goodspeed8701]

Do you even know what you are talking about. please dont start a war here. Go back to the time chrome was released and see how their market share rises. But it eventually took a nose dive after people tested it and find it not cool enough to switch from their IE or firefox browser. But I think Opera is the victim here cos it loses market share to chrome.

[endless17]

That firefox Sunspider score looks mighty suspect. Do you have the latest JIT compiler enabled? My Firefox 3.5 beta scores well under 2ms, although it is a smidge slower than both Safari 4 and the windows version of Chrome

[Shankland]

Unless something happened I don't know about, TraceMonkey has been enabled by default for a couple Firefox betas now.

[Shankland]

I re-ran the JavaScript tests after a reboot and got better results for Firefox on SunSpider--thanks for doing your own checks. However, it still was weak on Google's V8 benchmark, for what it's worth.

[queticomn]

Notice, C-Net did not include Opera in the test. *typical bias C-Net/CBS-tv*

[goodspeed8701]

And Stupid opera will take microsoft to court for this. Lol.

They should think of a way to market their browser and leave M$ alone. Cnet is one of the reason they are not doing well. Lol. They are oneof the reason why mac is over hyped. One thing is for sure... They have tried their best to see M$ fall with biased articles and M$ reacted with windows 7.

Opera is my alternative browser IE and opera are my favourites. I used linux and its a joke no wonder its free and only less than 1 percent care world wide. I used the mac and i will say peopleare truely brainwashed. anyway mac is my alternative but i will only use it if microsoft stops existing.

[queticomn]

Carakan, Over the past few months, a small team of developers and testers have been working on implementing a new ECMAScript/JavaScript engine for Opera. When Opera's current ECMAScript engine, called Futhark, was first released in a public version, it was the fastest engine on the mark

http://my.opera.com/core/blog/2009/02/04/carakan

[pa-sedativchunk]

I am a programmer and web developer and I encourage anyone that is not using Google Chrome to transition over it. I've used nearly every browser in the book including the first graphical web browser, Mosaic, and no browser beats Google Chrome for speed and flexibility.

I'm not sure how buggy the Mac version is, but I don't really care as I am not a Mac user. But for Windows, I can't use any other browser! Chrome opens up in under 3 seconds, it never crashes, it never annoys me with updates and pop ups like Firefox, and the search/address bar built into one another is one of the greatest things I've ever seen a browser have and I see no flaws in "privacy", what this article mentioned was a flaw. If the person is looking up anything inappropriate in the first place, the user can go into Incognito mode, something not even mentioned in this article, and all their browser history, cache, sessions, and cookies is deleted once the incognito Window closes. So no, this article has it all wrong on those grounds.
Regarding CNet's charts, I find it disgusting that the Great Google Chrome can be matched up at all against Safari. Safari is absolute garbage for a web browser. The speed is nice, but the browser is broken, it follows no standards, the fonts are ugly, and it favors too much Mac garbage including the ugly Mac interface for it's browser window on Windows. Not everyone finds Mac stuff elegant and sophisticated.

If your a Firefox user even, Chrome is better. Firefox has gone down hill since the release of Firefox 3.0. Now they even want to throw out tabbed browsing and introduce something similar to the iTunes interface. How disgusting and disappointing from what once was the best web browser.

[goodspeed8701]

In windows 7 IE8 opens in less than 3 second. so whats your point. i used the chrome its nice but nothing more to offer to make me change like you said. life is not all about speed but its about compactibility.

[renGek]

As a web developer I would prefer fewer browsers. :)
Less testing and development for browser specific fixes. I'm tried of people whining that function xyz doesn't work on their particular browser with a particular plug in. So much time is wasted chasing after all these little setups. It was painful enough just developing for IE and firefox without throwing chrome into the mix. For now I can ignore opera, konquerer and safari (which ticks off my fanboi manager to no end) because there are so few of them in our user pool that it doesn't matter. If chrome reigns supreme thats fine as long as it totally dominates and not take 30% of the share because that would be the worse case scenario....from a developers perspective.

[asagrera]

Great!

[queticomn]

For anyone who thinks chrome is a good browser? Please direct your browser to this link... The acid 3 test. Test available here, http://acid3.acidtests.org/

Opera: 100/100 very fast.
Safari: 100/100 fast
FireFox: Failure.
Chrome: Failure
iE8: failure. (could not even read the results)

[goodspeed8701]

till i see a site that says page cannot be displayed cos u failed java speed test or acid or spider all y'all can go to hell with you java this acid that and along came a spider test.

[Shankland]

@queticomn: On Windows with Chrome 2.0.177.1, Acid3 gives me 100/100, but linktest failed. Safari passes; Firefox 93/100. I get same results on Mac OS X.

If you're curious about tracking how well the Chrome engineers handle this issue, I recommend you star the two following Chrome issues:

Acid3 fails on Chrome:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=231

Acid3 Linktest fails on Chrome:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=6208

[3volva]

CNet go WAY too soft on Apple & Google . If this was a windows application, would you use terminology, such as ''........definitely buggy, as one would expect for a developer version ...' or and I quote ' ......I can tell you that overall, it works.....' WOW ' it works....!?? based on the google R&D budget, I would expect it to at a minimum. Lets not be soft on them because they use the terminology developer version ( the beta word is part of the google branding ) . I look forward to the Explorer 9 review .'........well, it works...!! not what I would call subjective review ! Oh well, I look forward to the next PC commercial review where we get to hear the reporter feedback on the make of the car wheel rims and how out of place they are with marketing message......

[goodspeed8701]

I agree

[Xiltheria]

Seriously, why bother?

It's built on the Safari engine, and Safari is light years ahead of chrome.

[ncalishome]

It's not built on Webkit like Safari is, it's a new underlying engine Chromium. On Windows Chrome is far, far better than Safari, and I imagine it will be on Mac too once it's complete. My bet is that Chrome will far outpace Safari in development over time.

[Shankland]

Chrome uses WebKit for its rendering engine, but uses Google's own V8 (not WebKit's Squirrelfish) for JavaScript.

[queticomn]

@Shankland

I downloaded the latest chrome release this morning specifically for the acid3 test. Chrome failed.

[Shankland]

Was the score less than 100 for you?

As I said above, for both Chromium on Mac and Chrome on Windows, I got 100/100 on Acid3, but linktest failed. And to reiterate, here are the bugs if you want to track them.

Acid3 fails on Chrome:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=231

Acid3 Linktest fails on Chrome:
http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=6208

[Femmegeek--2008]

I think it's worth mentioning that non of these versions are ready to run on a non Intel Mac

From Google Code Chromium Wiki

Prerequisites

* An Intel Mac running Mac OS X 10.5 (?Leopard?). V8 does not currently support PowerPC.

[queticomn]

Chrome fails acid3.
more resources, http://www.webstandards.org/

[topgunb2]

mac itself is buggy, why blame poor chrome