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Chrome 56 Offers Faster Reloads, Better Security, Lower Power Usage, and More
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scottffitch
macrumors newbie
I assume the notion of lower power usage is relative; as in compared to the power usage from Chrome 53 and earlier.
Google has been working fairly hard on reducing resource consumption on macOS since around version 53 in my estimation.
groovyd
Suspended
I hope that they have improved the battery consumption. That's one of the major reasons why I have avoided Chrome for so long. Haven't used it lately, so I'll have to give it a try.
Kajje
macrumors 6502a
newyorkone
macrumors 6502
Ah, I see you're fully drinking the Kool-aid. "Anonymized" data...lol https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2009/09/your-secrets-live-online-in-databases-of-ruin/
You can keep supporting a company that makes over 90% (some stats claim it might even be as high as 99%) of its revenue from advertising. I just choose not to.
Apple 26.2
macrumors 6502a
A good update, me thinks. Chrome is getting better about resource use, so hopefully the big three will push each other to produce better performance.
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Whatever the percentages are, Apple, Microsoft, Amazon, etc., ad nauseam, they all do it... I don't get your beef.
Bart Kela
Suspended
And none of your arguments address Google Chrome's pros and cons.
An annoyingly frequent denial by technologists. NOT ADDRESSING THE SUBJECT.
So tiresome.
I've been testing Chrome 56 for the past hour and it is definitely a solid improvement in battery life. Chrome 55 used, on average 10-14 watts of power during use. Chrome 56 takes that down to 8-10 watts, a considerable improvement.
That said, it's still nowhere near Safari which averages 6-8 watts during general web browsing. In idle (after a web page is loaded and things settle in), Safari gets down as low as 4 watts with screen brightness at about 60%.
Safari is really good at shedding the CPU/GPU load and getting down to a very minimal battery drain state. Apple really has mastered this brilliantly.
That said, it's still nowhere near Safari which averages 6-8 watts during general web browsing. In idle (after a web page is loaded and things settle in), Safari gets down as low as 4 watts with screen brightness at about 60%.
Safari is really good at shedding the CPU/GPU load and getting down to a very minimal battery drain state. Apple really has mastered this brilliantly.
macintoshmac
Suspended
Rumor none, Mac definitely. Since one of Apple's competitors publicly releases an incremental update to a web browser that users of Apple systems can install on their systems, it is good to discuss about how it performs now versus a previous version.
I think you're both right and wrong. The problem for me isn't just the advertising tracking, its that those companies can learn such a vast amount at all - regardless of what is done with it.
The concern over privacy issues and endless debate and discussion over it is extremely healthy for us as individuals and also as part of a society. Yet for some reason the wider privacy discussion is lost in the argument of the pros and cons of advertising tracking, as if thats all there is to the issue. Trying to push the wider discussion gets some pretty interesting results. An ever larger percentage of people experience this odd cognitive dissonance and parrot some very narrow lines. The responses boil down to:
- every company does it (numbers argument)
- I don't care if some company knows what toilet paper I buy (straw man argument based on most ridiculous behavioral example, thereby tarring all concern over pattern analysis with that same brush)
- what do you have to hide? (argument reversal - the problem isn't the tracking company, its the person concerned over being tracked)
These responses are given in every tone ranging from a sing-song "Ah well, what are you going to do, they know everything about you anyway", to a mocking contemptuous dismissal, to outright verbal combat. The Google fans have proven to be the worst with this, in my experience.
Now, I can definitely see some usefulness to advertising tracking - providing it doesn't compromise my privacy. It does, though. Still, that isn't my biggest concern. Its the vast amount of data that is collected on each and every person ongoing.
I took a look at that link you posted. On my machine at least, a popup alert that says I need to enable third party cookies in order to set privacy protections. Clicking "Continue" gets me to a huge list of trackers. It shows that every one of those trackers is "on". Every single one. Even though I have DNT enabled, Ghostery installed, and a few other steps taken to block certain domains. I also shut down cookies after I get signed in to all my forums or whatever, and third party cookies just don't exist on my machine. Yet the way that page reads, on the surface its saying all those cookies are present on my machine, and they're set to "on".
What is the suggested solution? They say you should allow third party cookies so you can set tracking preferences on those particular sites. That is idiotic. By doing this you're saying the door is wide open, come on in, but keep your eyes closed and don't touch anything. Given what cookies are capable of, how do you think that is going to work out? Wouldn't the better choice be to completely block the trackers? Yes, it would, and I do. Care to guess who runs that helpful site?
Now, consider that you can also track users by their browser id strings. Info like browser build, last update, installed extensions, and machine particulars are reported. Add in your ever shrinking local area reported by your ever so helpful ISP. Now add in the times of day you're online, your bit-transfer patterns, and a few other things. Think that information gathering for advertising purposes is the worst thing going on? Nope, not at all. Based on these things, you have zero chance at hiding online.
Most of the Google fans are heavy "OK Google" users. All those people are giving up incredible amounts of information to the MCP (for lack of a better term). Back in the 1950s voiceprint analysis was a new technology that enabled investigators to determine just whose voice was on a recording. Later, they were able to adapt that to include stress analysis of recordings. Now, the amount of data that can be gleaned from those constant voiceprints is truly beyond what you could imagine.
Finally, Google is leading the way in Ai research. People just assume that is referring to a persistent digital assistant that will always be there for you. Providing search results, populating travel maps with points of interest, anticipating what you want...
It is my firm belief that Google, and perhaps Amazon, are working to digitally replicate each of their diehard users in software. It will become easier for them to anticipate what you want, sell your information, and sell products to you. Oh, doesn't that sound great? What about making it easier to manipulate you? What about discovering where your weaknesses are and using that to control you, either actively or passively? Hell, what about just faking you, and using that to accomplish bad things?
Think the feds would not drool over having that level of control over the population? What about third parties? NGOs?
I was just wondering since i'm on the beta update channel if there was any difference in the release version that others see when they installed the new version. Thanks.
-Mike
lysingur
macrumors 6502a
Tab for tab, Chrome is the better of two (vis-à-vis Safari) on macOS in my experience. Opening 15+ tabs on both browsers, Safari invariably becomes unresponsive (especially after clicking Show All Tabs) while Chrome can still grind it out.
Safari is better on iOS though. Show All Tabs with 20+ tabs never causes any problem on my iPad Air 2 while Chrome has only gotten equally stable late 2016.
Depends on the machine you're using I guess. With 4GB of RAM on my 2011 MBA Safari's the faster one and holds more tabs before my Air gets unresponsive. (having ublock ad-blocker on both browsers installed)
lysingur
macrumors 6502a
My point is rather that Chrome can hold more tabs at a reasonable speed while with Safari there is a huge drop off once your reach a certain number of tabs, i.e. it becomes unresponsive.
My experience is also that Safari is consistently faster but what I notice is that Safari has the tendency of showing the web page only after it's been fully loaded whereas Chrome shows a page as it's loading. So it could also be that it just feels faster with Safari.
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Seems for my use the Chrome power disparity with Safari is no longer an issue: I unscientifically surfed using each browser for 3 hours of on screen time keeping 5 tabs open with the other browser closed. At the end of 8 hours my iPad Pro showed Safari had used 45% and Chrome 40% of battery usage.
Not a detailed test I know but enough for my use to discount the old "chrome is a power hog" Safari advantage.
Not a detailed test I know but enough for my use to discount the old "chrome is a power hog" Safari advantage.
My 2 Macs, Mini and Air, have been running Windows 10 exclusively for at least a year, not even an OSX partition, so that would just be opening another whole can of worms! 🙄
We agree I probably wasted a lot of money on Apple hardware, but I still like the Air and the Mini was reasonably priced and cheap to add 16GB memory/ 500gb SSD.
Windows 10 has few shortcomings for media handling and nothing as miserable as dealing with iTunes ......... 😛 Back at you 😀!
I've never understood this... people will trot out all the different pieces of software you can use on Windows in any given category, but for some reason they just can't see past Apple software on a Mac. I gave up on iTunes and I use Infuse now. I will not go back to iTunes unless Apple buys Firecore and make Infuse the basis for the new versions of iTunes. I use Sonos Controller for music and its pretty damn good.
eRondeau
macrumors 65816
I've removed all Google apps including Chrome & Google Earth from all my Macs because of their bizarre autoupdate obsession. I just don't like the way their software is constantly trying to secretly update itself. Call me old-fashioned but these are my computers and I want to know what software they're running, and I want full knowledge & control over when/how they update themselves. Google takes that control away from me so it's always a surprise what is running on my computer. Deleted -- along with all their little hidden autoupdate files & resources.
lysingur
macrumors 6502a
It's been this way for anti-virus software for as long as I can remember and I don't see very many complaining. Since the biggest security threat now comes from the internet via web browsers, Google is taking on the role of internet security companies with constant updates to Chrome in ensuring every security holes are patched in a timely manner. How tedious it would be if every patch requires the user's intervention?
You decide what software you want to put in your computer but the benefits of autoupdate to Chrome far outweighs the drawbacks.