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Which is your favorite Mac browser and why?

kioshi

kioshi

macrumors member
Original poster
Jun 30, 2010
55
0
Brazil
Hi guys,

I have to say I'm not happy with any of my browsers on my quite old Mac Mini Core Duo 1.66 Ghz (2GB RAM).

Firefox 4 is awesome but takes forever to open, and after some time like 2 hours it freezes. No biggie, just restart it, it's still my main browser but when just opening a simple link to check something quickly it's no good.

Chrome, Rockmelt, Flock and all these who use the Chromium engine annoy me because pages lock up and 'die' too often (you know when the blue screen appears with the sad-face folder symbol and you have to reload them).

Safari would be awesome if it didn't give me the spinning ball of death for some seconds every time I open a new tab or do some other ordinary stuff.

In the end, I use Sunrise when I just want to check a link quickly but it's way too limited for a main browser. I'm using Choosy so I can select which one to open depending on my needs.

Funny thing is, on my Windows 7 partition I use Firefox and Chrome with no issues (FF opens quite fast and pages don't lock up often in Windows Chrome) - I prefer those two because I have a fast internet connection and they are the ony ones who have the Autopager extension which I love to death.

So which browser is your favorite and why?

Thanks a ton for any answers!
 
Chrome has to be my favorite at the moment. It's the fastest for me and the UI is so clean and simple. Only problem is when I'm running on battery power; I find it drains the battery much faster than if using Firefox. Thats the only downside.
 
I've been using firefox for however many years until recently switching to Safari. I'll end up trying chrome at some point too. Firefox has been a bit of a memory hog recently. Safari feels snappier.
 
Just days ago Chrome 10 was released, with several new features. Running an OCZ Vertex 3 on my 15" 2011 MBP it's really fast.

Also runs very well on my old 2002 G4 PowerBook

A long time Firefox fan there's no turning back now.
 
Since I came from Windows 8 weeks ago, I have been using Firefox 3.x. It's got a memory leak so after so long the memory foot print gets huge.

Chrome does not work correctly on vBulletin boards. Two sites that I frequent use vBulletin for their forums and the drop down menus don't work. So Chrome is out.

I am finding myself using Safari more and more though. It's fast and works everywhere.

I rely on two plugins which are available on Safari . . LastPass and Xmarks.
 
I like chrome but the Adblock extension isn't as good as on Firefox, so Firefox 4 beta 12 for me atm.
 
I'm quite partial to Camino, to be honest. It's rock solid, fast, and compatible.
 
Thanks guys.

I'm test driving Omniweb, it's based on Safari's Webkit but I think it doesn't use the latest version because it's SLOW for loading pages (and I have a 20mb cable connection). Very pretty, doesn't give me the spinning ball like Safari when opening new tabs and stuff but too slow. I'll try Opera next.

I see I'll keep using Sunrise or Stainless for checking quick links like from e-mails because they open instantly and are speed demons but they're too limited to use as main browsers (I use Choosy so I can pick the browser I want for each task).

But I know that for main browsing I'll stay with FF4 (btw someone said they use FF4 beta 12, the RC1 was released yesterday) mainly because of the Autopager extension. So nice not having to click 'next' to see the following page in sites like forums, Engadget and Google (and whatever site people have created Autopager scripts, I created one for a shoe store from Brazil that I like, for example, to browse everything without having to click all the time)... I also love Lastpass and Foxmarks but those are available for Safari too. BTW Lastpass works on Camino for some odd reason, I was surprised to find that out :)
 
I use Safari and Chrome for web development and as my main browsers. Firefox only for web development testing - there are really no true benefits to using it anymore IMO. Chrome and Safari are starting to have really good extensions plus they're generally faster and have much better font rendering.

Overall for the average user any of the major browsers is fine, even IE9 is fairly good on Windows. For the power user like me Chrome and Safari are at the top of the pile for their speed and ease of use as well as good web developer tools right from the box.

Opera was the bees knees until FF3 but now all its best features have been ported to other browser, it's behind the Webkit stuff in supporting some upcoming CSS/HTML5 features. It's also the least user friendly - the developers have tried to update the main UI but all the unwieldy old crap like confusing settings etc. are still right behind it.

If you're having problems with pages crashing or browsers locking, the problem is in most cases something other than the browser. I use them on multiple Macs and the only time I see crashes if some script goes to a loop or some Flash plugin decides to blow **** up (mostly makes Safari hang).
 
I use Safari as my primary browser, works fine for me apart from a few bugs such as when you disable private browsing it crashes every time with out fail, but i don't use private browsing much anyway so it doesn't bother me.

Another for you to try is called TurboWeb which i downloaded of Mac App Store for free and it is a really simple but RAPID web browser.
 
I like Chrome, especially Chrome 10.0. It's really fast. The the thing I like most is it's really safe and reliable. Every tab works as if they are single applications, so that makes Chrome safer (think of macrumors is hacked somehow and hacker put a logger that will steal all of your passwords, if you click on that script on other browsers, you are most likely to be affected. But with Chrome, you are protected from such things.)
 
Yeah I really like Chrome. I think the 'tabs locking up' problem is better now that I'm using stable versions instead of beta or dev ones.

As for page loading speed, IMHO Safari, Chrome and Firefox are on their own league (ok Sunrise and Stainless are fast too but almost no features). I found Opera VERY SLOW, same for Omniweb, which is very pretty, doesn't give me spinning balls like Safari but it must use an older version of Webkit, as it's slower than Camino, Firefox 3 and the ones I mentioned. OTOH Firefox 4 seems to have improved a lot in memory and CPU usage compared to 3.x

Sent from my Motorola Milestone 2 using Tapatalk
 
Safari, FF4brc, Chrome 11, Chromium 11, Rockmelt, Flock, Turboweb, Opera. SRW Iron was good but it now has the same id as chromium and can't be used on the same hd.
 
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