Google Chrome for iOS Updated with Voice Search, Faster Page Reloading

[rmwebs]

Great!! Probably updated to try even more attempts to dial out and 'sniff' about my system.

My 'Littlesnitch' Application will probably go into meltdown with the 'Update'.

Why does Chrome try to sneak about my system and try to 'Update', when the App is not in use and supposed to be closed...?

Happens all the time and also whilst writing this post...

You'll also notice those 10-15 connections to Apple servers every hour there then. One of which is for system stat logging which can only be disabled from the console app.

Dont try the 'Google are spying on me' nonsense, it's really wearing thin now.

 

[AppleMark]

You'll also notice those 10-15 connections to Apple servers every hour there then. One of which is for system stat logging which can only be disabled from the console app.

Dont try the 'Google are spying on me' nonsense, it's really wearing thin now.

Nonsense, spying, wearing thin...., from who....? Cannot say I have mentioned this before.

My system & applications contact servers all the time. Mail, Safari, itunes, even MS Word etc. The difference is that they do this when the applications are open, opened and in use, not when closed.

I am aware of all connections and Chrome does this even when it is [supposedly] inactive.

It is what it is..., what is wearing thin is perhaps your 'blinker' mentality.

 

[ArtOfWarfare]

I'm curious how google managed to load pages faster...

With the comments Tim Cook made a few weeks ago, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that one of the changes in iOS 7 may be the ability to truly replace some stock iOS apps, IE, replace the calculator with Wolfram, replace Safari with Chrome, Mail with Mailbox, Music with Spotify, and so on.

I think it might not be unrealistic for Apple to only make it so the two stores, Phone, and Settings are the only apps that can't be displaced.

 

[MrDoo]

I'm curious how google managed to load pages faster...

With the comments Tim Cook made a few weeks ago, I don't think it's unreasonable to expect that one of the changes in iOS 7 may be the ability to truly replace some stock iOS apps, IE, replace the calculator with Wolfram, replace Safari with Chrome, Mail with Mailbox, Music with Spotify, and so on.

I think it might not be unrealistic for Apple to only make it so the two stores, Phone, and Settings are the only apps that can't be displaced.

In Boot camp on my mac, Chrome is way faster than Safari in Window 7. Will have to see if Chrome is faster on the mac now.

 

[RedTomato]

My biggest problem with Chrome (and tbh Safari too) is if you:

- have 10+ tabs open.
- go to some different tabs
- go back to your old tab.

Chrome will happily show you a picture of your old tab, then whip it away and require that the whole page be reloaded. If you have no connection then you're stuck with a blank page. Particularly frustrating when the exact info you need is clearly visible in the picture.

Some have said it's to save memory. Hello? I have 100MB RAM free and 10GB of flash free on the phone. How about saving old tabs to the flash memory? It isn't rocket science. No idea why chrome does this, it's clearly happy to save pictures of old tabs, even when I tried it with about to 150+ tabs.

 

[toaster64]

"conversational voice search capabilities"
How are voice search capabilities controversial???
EDIT: Oops, misread the word.

 

[toaster64]

And don't get me started on the Desktop Chrome.

- No decent NoScript replacement.
- Inconsistent Auto-scroll. It's there on Windows, but not on Mac without installing an extension!
- This crap: "This extension is managed and cannot be removed or disabled."

Chrome is terrible on all platforms, but there's always a circle-jerk party for it.

It's second-best in general on Mac but behind Safari by a large margin. My problems are that it's slightly slower than Safari, it lacks features like the Activity Window, it looks really ugly, and it really hogs RAM (like 2X what Safari uses). At least it's not uber-slow like FireFox or retarded like IE or just sketchy like Opera.

 

[reel2reel]

My biggest problem with Chrome (and tbh Safari too) is if you:

- have 10+ tabs open.
- go to some different tabs
- go back to your old tab.

Chrome will happily show you a picture of your old tab, then whip it away and require that the whole page be reloaded. If you have no connection then you're stuck with a blank page. Particularly frustrating when the exact info you need is clearly visible in the picture.

Some have said it's to save memory. Hello? I have 100MB RAM free and 10GB of flash free on the phone. How about saving old tabs to the flash memory? It isn't rocket science. No idea why chrome does this, it's clearly happy to save pictures of old tabs, even when I tried it with about to 150+ tabs.

Ugh YES! This is the most obnoxious thing and there are endless posts over on the Google forums complaining about the forced refreshes. I really hope it's fixed in this update. It's even more annoying when you're on a flaky connection.

 

[toaster64]

But still nowhere near as good as safari.

Haha, true. Reminds me of Gmail websites and apps on all platforms. AWESOME NEW FEATURES... but it only works with Gmail accounts... and it has no system integration.

----------

I'm curious how google managed to load pages faster...

So am I. That has me puzzled.

 

[the8thark]

Best iOS browser keeps getting better.

Best in your opinion. I personally would never poison my iPad with chrome. But I have used chrome on my friends iPad so I know what it's like. And what features it does and does not have.

Everyone is different and has their own favourite iOS browser.

 

[Tmelon]

"conversational voice search capabilities"
How are voice search capabilities controversial???

Controversial ≠ Conversational

 

[bozzykid]

"conversational voice search capabilities"
How are voice search capabilities controversial???

You mean conversational? Probably because you get voice responses when they are a part of the open graph data.

 

[toaster64]

You mean conversational? Probably because you get voice responses when they are a part of the open graph data.

Oh ctm I misread it. I thought it said "controversial".

 

[a0me]

Best?

- Not default (unless you jailbreak), so links don't open in it.
- Slowest (unless you jailbreak and use Nitro).
- Can't "Copy" an image, so you have to copy and paste the link into Safari, then copy the image.

I think I'll stick with Safari.

Chrome is even worse on Android.

- Requires a 4.0+ OS, when most devices are stuck on 2.x or older.
- Requires a very fast device. Have a 1GHz device with 512MB RAM? It still chugs along and freezes frequently. It has thousands of 1-start reviews about how slow it is.

And don't get me started on the Desktop Chrome.

- No decent NoScript replacement.
- Inconsistent Auto-scroll. It's there on Windows, but not on Mac without installing an extension!
- This crap: "This extension is managed and cannot be removed or disabled."

Chrome is terrible on all platforms, but there's always a circle-jerk party for it.

I guess not everybody has the same requirements.
+ Chrome is multiplatform, which is a requirement for all of us that have to use Windows/Linux/Android in parallel with our Mac and iPhones.
+ Chrome -at least in my experience- is more responsive than Safari, particularly if you're using a slightly older device (iPhone 4, 2010 iMac, 2011 MacBook Pro, etc...). I'm not talking about the rendering engine here, only the UI.
+ Chrome's UI is cleaner and the search function in the app settings (desktop version) is unmatched.

- My only real gripe with Chrome is the extensions which request permissions to access all of my data on every site, which means that I'll never install any extension, with the exception of Google's own.

 

[IvanX]

Faster page reloading
- Pages reload faster even when the network is slow or unavailable

I am curious to know how Chrome is reloading pages at any speed, let alone faster, when the network connection is unavailable

 

[JaySoul]

Never liked Chrome on desktop, but LOVE Chrome on iOS.

Just the swipe to other tabs feature makes it a winner, as well as being able to keep open more than 8 lol.

It's actually better on iOS than Android in many respects.

 

[The Phazer]

I am curious to know how Chrome is reloading pages at any speed, let alone faster, when the network connection is unavailable

Well that's the point. It pulls out a greyscale placeholder image of the page from cache and tries to reload it, but given the lack of network connection it fails and therefore you're left without any page at all.

It is annoying.

With a jailbreak and Nitrous installed there are pros and cons for Safari and Chrome. It's just a shame that Apple cripples the brower market on iOS so proper competition can't come about, because I think there are singificant chances to improve on both of them.

 

[RedTomato]

Well that's the point. It pulls out a greyscale placeholder image of the page from cache and tries to reload it, but given the lack of network connection it fails and therefore you're left without any page at all.

It is annoying.

I wish it would just leave the placeholder image in place. Sometimes the information I need is clearly visible in the placeholder image, but Chrome yanks it away when it fails to reload it.

Most common use-case is opening a few webpages for later reference or reading on the tube or for when you will be in an area with no connection. Chrome shafts you when you try doing that.

There's no need to fall over when reloading with no connection - Chrome should just save the page to catche - there's 100MB+ of RAM and 10GB+ of flash space available on the phone!

 

[till213]

... adding conversational voice search capabilities ...

And who gives a Siri! I mean what lunatic people actually WANT to talk to their gadgets!

 

[Keane16]

there's really not much to figure out, the jailbreak community pretty much established that it's simply a matter of enabling it for use outside of safari

it's market control obviously. i'm just surprised that no one has put forth a case against them as was put forth against microsoft years back with internet explorer

Microsoft had 90%+ market share, they used that market share to stifle competition.

Apple is nowhere near as dominant (not even number 1 in the smartphone/mobile OS market) and there are many viable alternatives to iOS - Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone to name a few.

 

[MikBe]

I love Chrome but hate how it deletes what I took ten excruciating minutes typing on my iPad just because I had to jump out to another app to check something. Now I type in Notes and cut and paste into it but I still hate it when I forget to do that.

 

[lildimsum7]

Nitrous fixes all your problems.

 

[sputnikv]

Microsoft had 90%+ market share, they used that market share to stifle competition.

Apple is nowhere near as dominant (not even number 1 in the smartphone/mobile OS market) and there are many viable alternatives to iOS - Android, Blackberry and Windows Phone to name a few.

microsoft however did not have an app approval system in place nor a means of preventing other competing apps from using certain technologies

 

[Keane16]

microsoft however did not have an app approval system in place nor a means of preventing other competing apps from using certain technologies

If people don't like it, they should use something else. Like I said, nothing will be forced upon Apple unless they become dominant, which they're no where near at the moment.

I love the fact their is an app approval process. It takes away so much of the Play Store headache of checking publishers, release notes, reviews etc making sure what I'm buying is legit. I also don't see how having an App store review process is detrimental to the consumer.

Apple can allow or withhold features and APIs as they see fit - devs sign an agreement before developing for the platform. On a related note, Google (and no doubt Microsoft etc.) limit API access too for example: http://www.chainfire.eu/articles/113/Is_Google_blocking_apps_writing_to_SD_cards_/...

 

[sputnikv]

If people don't like it, they should use something else. Like I said, nothing will be forced upon Apple unless they become dominant, which they're no where near at the moment.

I love the fact their is an app approval process. It takes away so much of the Play Store headache of checking publishers, release notes, reviews etc making sure what I'm buying is legit. I also don't see how having an App store review process is detrimental to the consumer.

Apple can allow or withhold features and APIs as they see fit - devs sign an agreement before developing for the platform. On a related note, Google (and no doubt Microsoft etc.) limit API access too for example: http://www.chainfire.eu/articles/113/Is_Google_blocking_apps_writing_to_SD_cards_/...

people are moving on and that's the reason they're not dominant.