This is a followup to the blog post I wrote on December 9, 2009 (Is Mac Chrome Beta better than Safari?). Lots of things happened in the last two months so I decided to add some more thoughts on this topic. I have no clear cut answer on which browser is best, but one thing is certain. The browsing experience for Mac users is going to get much better!
I actually had to revise this post because about 10 minutes after I clicked the Publish button in WordPress, Google announced the release of its new beta version of Google Chrome for Mac. The big news about the new version of Chrome is that it supports over 2,000 extensions.
If you use Firefox and got used to extensions, you may get excited by this news. I myself never cared for extensions that much. A lot of those extensions are junk anyway. As a Mac user, you can get many of the same functions on the Mac OS/X Dashboard or you can download Safari plugins. Extension support is a great promotional tool for Google, providing them with an ideal platform to promote their own products (Google Wave, Google Translate, Google Reader, Gmail, yada, yada, yada). The big question is, will loading up your Chrome with extensions slow it down?
In other major news since the initial release of Google Chrome for Mac, the iPad was announced. This is probably going to be a big factor going forward since the iPad will run on Safari. As we speak, the developers at Apple are working hard at making Safari faster, easier to use and more powerful. As a software company, Google has enabled Chrome with some powerful features aimed at software developers and tech savvy users. As a mobile device company, Apple is putting more emphasis on the user experience with the snazzy graphics and navigational magic that Apple products (iPhone, iPod) are known for.
Both browsers are very good and you can use either one on your Mac (or both for that matter). The following are some other points to consider:
Developer Support: Google has enabled Chrome with some powerful features aimed at software developers. So if you are a software developer/website designer, then Chrome may be more suitable to you (read more about that here). But Safari 4.0 has an extensive set of development tools as well which are disabled by default (to enable these tools, click Show Develop menu in menu bar).
Safari Advanced Preferences
Speed. Some bloggers are saying that Chrome is faster. I have not noticed any differences in speed and both browsers load and display pages at equivalent speeds. This is not an official benchmark, but the sites that I use most frequently were loading at comparable speeds. It would be interesting to hear from users that load a few extensions into Chrome and see how that affects the speed.
Stability. Some bloggers are also saying that Chrome is more stable. After several years of use I have found Safari to be very stable. True that it gives you the beach-ball once in a while but even when that happens you just Force Quit and restart. Again, I do not have a benchmark on this but the stability of Safari was never a concern for me personally. If anything, Chrome for Mac is at present the more unstable product. Google initially released version 5.0 of Google Chrome for Mac on its Developer channel to correct bugs in previous product releases (read the Google blog post here). I saw a bunch of complaints from users that had stability issues with Mac Chrome.
Dedication to Mac users. Since the initial Chrome Beta release over two months ago, Google has not removed the Beta status. Many of the features in Chrome for Windows have not made it to the Mac. Chrome for Mac does not have native Mac Help; when you activate the Help option for Chrome you are routed to the Google website. It appears that Google is not treating the Mac user community as seriously as it treats the folks with Windows. Safari on the other hand is developed by Apple as a 100% native Mac application.
RSS Support: Chrome on the Mac does not support the RSS browsing features offered by Safari.
Merge all Windows: This is one my favorite Safari features (when you have multiple windows open you can merge them into one window with multiple tabs). Chrome does not have it.
Top Sites thumbnails: in Safari 4.0, thumbnails of your most viewed websites are displayed when you open a new tab. The thumbnails are refreshed to display the real-time view of the website. In Chrome the thumbnails are not updated and will display views that can be weeks old.
Incognito Browsing: Google Chrome users make a big deal out of this feature, but this is the Private Browsing option that Safari has had for a long time.
Bookmark Sync: This is a nice new feature which allows you to sync your bookmarks on multiple machines using your Google account. Safari does not have this.
Tab icons. This is a nice feature in Chrome which shows mini-icons of the website in each tab. Safari does not have this.
Several readers commented on my first blog post and most of them seemed to favor Chrome. I think that there is a certain amount of hype surrounding Google’s Mac browser (as with most Google products) and Google promoted this product heavily (and continued to do so today with its new support of extensions). Chrome surpassed Safari in browser usage. But when you put the hype aside, there is no compelling reason to leave Safari, which is a very good Internet browser and is sure to stay at the top of the class with the release of iPad.
What are your feelings about the Google vs. Apple browser war? Did you make the switch to Chrome or did you stay with Safari? Does the support of extensions mean a lot to you? I’d like to know.
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