The beta version of Chrome for Mac OS X is available. Google released its browser beta for Linux too.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)Two key pieces of Google's effort to make Chrome a more competitive browser fell into place on Tuesday as Google released beta versions of the browser for Mac OS X and Linux.
Tuesday's software release is a version of Chrome that had previously been available only as developer preview software for Mac and Linux machines. "It took longer than we expected, but we hope the wait was worth it," product manager Brian Rakowski said in a blog post.
Macs are widely used, if not as common as Windows machines, and there's been some demand in tech circles for the Mac version of Chrome. Linux, while less widely used among ordinary computer users, has importance of its own: it's the foundation for Chrome OS. That's the browser-based operating system Google hopes will be popular on Netbooks starting next year.
According to the Chromium development calendar, the beta versions are scheduled to graduate to the next level of maturity, "stable," on January 12. Chrome for Windows graduated out of beta almost exactly a year ago.
Google doesn't emphasize product version numbers in the project, instead automatically delivering updates behind the scenes to the browser that take effect when it's restarted. But it does use version milestones to keep track of development internally.
The biggest new feature of Chrome 4.0 is support for extensions, which let people customize the browser. In the Mozilla world, they're called add-ons, and they've been a big part of Firefox's success.
Mac OS X has a mandatory menu bar, so unlike the Windows version, Chrome on the Mac has traditional menus.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)Extensions aren't useful, though, unless people can find them. Google on Tuesday also launched a Chrome extensions gallery page.
There are more than 300 extensions available for Chrome, extensions programmers Aaron Boodman and Erik Kay said in a blog post.
However, extensions on the Mac aren't yet available, though they had been for a time in the developer-preview version. "Extensions aren't quite beta-quality on Mac yet, but you will be able to preview them on a developer channel soon," Rakowski said.
Also on the Chrome for Mac to-do list: a bookmark manager, PDF viewing in the browser, bookmark synchronization, 64-bit support, and my personal favorite differentiator of Firefox 3.6 on the Mac, full-screen support.
Chrome now has an extensions gallery.
(Credit: Screenshot by Stephen Shankland/CNET)
Why try Chrome?
For those of you new to Chrome, here's a brief version of why it's my default browser on both Windows and, as of about a month ago, Mac OS X. Your preferences and needs may vary, of course, and I still use Firefox every day, too.
• Speed. It's fast to start up, though not quite as snappy as it once was now that it's not so bare-bones, and rivals are making progress. It's also fast loading Web pages and running JavaScript programs on them.
• Tabs. I spawn innumerable new tabs all day long, and when it takes a long time (I'm looking at you, Internet Explorer), I get infuriated. I also like the order in which new tabs arrive, a style Firefox is mimicking.
• The omnibox. It's a single bar that merges the utility of an address bar and search bar. I hit Ctrl-L (on Windows) or Command-L (on Mac) to pop my cursor up there, and start typing. One nice--if somewhat obscure--feature is fast site search on some domains, so for example I can type A, M, tab, and up pops an Amazon.com icon; what I type afterward is entered as a search on Amazon. That conveniently gets me straight to the search results so I don't have to see yet another Kindle ad.
• A minimal user interface. When browsing, I like my user interface to step aside and make way for the Web page. Scrolling was a wonderful innovation in computers a few decades ago, but I like to avoid it when I can. Chrome puts tabs in the real estate ordinarily devoted to a program's title bar and shuffles the menu controls off to the right of that tab strip (though the Mac version gets a regular menu bar).
Another potential perk: avant-garde Web technology, including WebGL and O3D for accelerated 3D graphics and Native Client for speeding up Web apps with direct access to a processor, are being built into Chrome. Another such Google project, Gears, is already built into Chrome--though Gears doesn't work on Mac OS X 10.6.
There are things you might miss--the full panoply of Firefox extensions, toolbars from Google or others, print preview. And the "browser not supported" error messages on various Web pages are annoying, though in my experience there's rarely an actual compatibility problem. Overall, I like it.
Is Google spying on me?
If you're worried about what new data Google will be able to harvest on you, I recommend a close read of Google's Chrome privacy page. This doesn't worry me much, but I may be insufficiently paranoid. In my opinion, the biggest thing is that Google stores 2 percent of the data it gathers when people type text into Chrome's combination search and address bar, called the omnibox.
That means Google can see not only what you're searching for (as it would for any Google search), but what Web site addresses you're typing as well. The data is anonymized within 24 hours, Google said.
Also, Chrome has a feature called DNS pre-fetching that tracks down the Internet server addresses on Web pages in anticipation that you'll be clicking links on the page. So Chrome--and Google, too, if you're using Google Public DNS--retrieves this information from the Internet.
Updated at 12:30 p.m. PST and 1:20 p.m.. Added further detail.
Google plans to release a Mac beta of Chrome in early December, judging by some chatter on a mailing list for the browser.
Chrome 4.0 is available today as a beta version for Windows but only as a rougher developer-preview version on Linux and Mac OS X. The standout feature of the new version is customization through extensions, a technology that long has been a core asset of another open-source browser, Firefox.
Google has been moving to a new extensions presentation technology called Browser Actions that let people interact with extensions through a small button toward the upper right of the browser window. "We've noticed that many of you have updated your extensions to take advantage of the new UI. We'd like to encourage the rest of you to do so as well," said Nick Baum, a Google Chrome product manager, in a mailing list posting.
But here's the hitch: Browser Actions only work on Windows and Linux right now. That means those building extensions will leave Mac Chrome users behind for a time. But in telling those developers they won't have long to wait, Baum mentioned the deadline for the beta version.
"The earlier you switch, the more time you will have to polish your experience for our Beta launch in early December," he said.
And Google is on the case for adding Browser Actions to the Mac version of Chrome.
"We realize this means dropping Mac support for a couple of weeks, but we already have people working on that," Baum said. "If you prioritize the Windows and Linux versions, we'll bring you cross-platform parity as soon as we can!"
Apple developers have been having a tough time renewing their iPhone development licenses, according to reports. For them, the company had some good news Friday: the licensing for all developers has been extended to July 11--one year after the opening of the iTunes App Store.
Additionally, Apple announced that licensing renewals will begin in May, a full 60 days prior to the developer program expiration date. Developers got the news in an e-mail.
The message sent to developers is shown below:
Recently, according to CNET News' Tom Krazit, there has been astounding growth in the iTunes App Store, and the growth continues at a fast pace with more than 25,000 applications listed. The growth has been so great that Apple has had trouble keeping up with it, leaving a few kinks in the App Store to figure out.
Now, developers can rest easy because Apple has finally managed to work out the kinks and keep its developers happy--none of their licenses will expire abruptly after all.
With Safari 3, I admired Apple's chutzpah for bringing its browser to Windows. With the new Safari 4 beta, I'm actually starting to admire the browser, too.
A big user interface overhaul makes Safari look polished rather than clunky on Windows, builds in better search abilities, and makes good use of the fact that people often visit the same sites over and over.
However, the lack of something like the extensions architecture that Firefox pioneered still means Safari 4 (download for Windows and Mac OS X) is better only than Safari 3, not the competition.
... Read MoreIn an apparent attempt to make up for the problems that plagued MobileMe's launch in July, Apple has announced that it will extend user accounts another 60 days for free--that's on top of the 30-day free extension Apple gave users in July.
In an e-mail sent Monday to MobileMe subscribers announcing the extension, Apple acknowledged that the Web services suite needs more work:
We have already made many improvements to MobileMe, but we still have many more to make. To recognize our users' patience, we are giving every MobileMe subscriber as of today a free 60-day extension. This is in addition to the one-month extension most subscribers have already received.
We are working very hard to make MobileMe a great service we can all be proud of. We know that MobileMe's launch has not been our finest hour, and we truly appreciate your patience as we turn this around. Read this article for more details.
The MobileMe Team
The linked article on Apple's support site explains the extension and eligibility.
MobileMe is the next evolution of Apple's .Mac service. It's essentially a cloud storage solution that allows subscribers to synchronize e-mail, calendars, contacts, photos, Safari bookmarks, Dashboard widgets, and more, among Macs, the iPhone, and the iPod Touch. It allows for 20GB of storage on Apple's servers, and it even cooperates with Outlook on Windows computers. Because it is Web-based, subscribers can access the online applications from any Web browser.
But from its launch on July 10, MobileMe had problems. Most notably, subscribers had trouble accessing the site, and some even lost e-mail. Subscribers also reported problems accessing calendars and contact information, which was caused by a misjudgment in demand, according to an Apple blog post.
Earlier this month, Apple CEO Steve Jobs admitted that it was a "mistake" to roll out the company's MobileMe service at the same time it launched the iPhone 3G and other big products, tech news site Ars Technica reported.
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