Developer Builds of Google Chrome for OS X and Linux Now Available

[MacRumors]

A Chromium blog post yesterday has announced the availability of developer builds of Google's Chrome browser for both OS X and Linux. The news comes several weeks after the release of initial OS X builds of Chromium, the open source project behind Chrome. The announcement, however, warns that most users should not install the new builds, as they are buggy, unstable, and feature-incomplete.

How incomplete? So incomplete that, among other things , you won't yet be able to view YouTube videos, change your privacy settings, set your default search provider, or even print.

While the release indicates that Google is making progress on the OS X version of Chrome, it does appear that Google has significant work ahead in order to meet its previously-announced plan for launch in the first half of this year. Google Chrome offers three release channels ranging from developer previews to stable releases, indicating that the OS X version of Chrome has several thresholds to pass before it is ready for public launch.

Article Link: Developer Builds of Google Chrome for OS X and Linux Now Available

 

[Andronicus]

Well at least it's progress.

 

[HailToTheVictor]

I've been playing with it since the release. Pretty rough. I do not think that Chome on OSX will take me away from Safari anytime soon, if ever.

 

[Jellix]

Didn't realy look forward to chrome on mac, don't use the windows version either. But it looks like this could be a big competetor of safari, because it's already beginning to beat FF and off course IE7(or 8) on windows.

 

[autrefois]

it does appear that Google has significant work ahead in order to meet its previously-announced plan for launch in the first half of this year.

Since the first half of the year ends on June 30th, that's an understatement!

EDIT: or technically, if you're going by days and not months, they have until July 1st (182 days into the year) or July 2nd (183 days into the year) until the mid-year point.

 

[shawnce]

Didn't realy look forward to chrome on mac, don't use the windows version either. But it looks like this could be a big competetor of safari, because it's already beginning to beat FF and off course IE7(or 8) on windows.

Seeing how it uses WebKit and Google is contributing to WebKit... it really isn't a threat to Safari. It may cut into Safari's market share but it is increasing WebKit's market share while doing so... which is a good thing. I doubt Apple minds at all.

 

[Master Chief]

Didn't realy look forward to chrome on mac, don't use the windows version either. But it looks like this could be a big competetor of safari, because it's already beginning to beat FF and off course IE7(or 8) on windows.

Chrome beginning to beat Mozilla Firefox? What a joke – Chrome barely installs on a Mac, let alone that it doesn't even run halve as smooth as Mozilla Firefox, not to mention the lack of add-ons. Yeah, your post was a pretty ridiculous one.

 

[manu chao]

Stainless

http://www.stainlessapp.com/
I have not compared them in detail but Stainless already seems to offer a lot more than Google Chrome and is build using the same principles (ie, using Webkit, every tab is a new thread). It can even let you login to the same website with two different credentials in two separate tabs (something Chrome cannot). Printing works, it is pretty stable. Maybe the design is not as fancy.

 

[DaBrain]

Chrome beginning to beat Mozilla Firefox? What a joke – Chrome barely installs on a Mac, let alone that it doesn't even run halve as smooth as Mozilla Firefox, not to mention the lack of add-ons. Yeah, your post was a pretty ridiculous one.

Agreed! To even make such a comparison says a lot about the Hype here!

I could say tons more but I'll leave that for someone else.

 

[instaxgirl]

The only thing that makes me want Chrome is the ability to use the address bar (if that's even what it's called) for searching too. The way it does tabs is more logical as well.

It's about the only pc software I've ever missed.

 

[Mal]

Chrome beginning to beat Mozilla Firefox? What a joke – Chrome barely installs on a Mac, let alone that it doesn't even run halve as smooth as Mozilla Firefox, not to mention the lack of add-ons. Yeah, your post was a pretty ridiculous one.

Agreed! To even make such a comparison says a lot about the Hype here!

I could say tons more but I'll leave that for someone else.

What's ridiculous is that you didn't even read his post. The original post said that it was beginning to beat FF on Windows, not on the Mac. I don't know that I agree, but ya'll jumping on him because Chrome isn't yet available on the Mac in any full form is incredibly asinine.

jW

 

[Colrath]

Chrome beginning to beat Mozilla Firefox? What a joke – Chrome barely installs on a Mac, let alone that it doesn't even run halve as smooth as Mozilla Firefox, not to mention the lack of add-ons. Yeah, your post was a pretty ridiculous one.

On a Windows machine. I like Chrome over Mozilla on my Windows machine.

 

[Jellix]

Chrome beginning to beat Mozilla Firefox? What a joke – Chrome barely installs on a Mac, let alone that it doesn't even run halve as smooth as Mozilla Firefox, not to mention the lack of add-ons. Yeah, your post was a pretty ridiculous one.

First of all, i never ever stated chrome was better then FF. I like FF a lot more then chrome.
Second, i think it can become a competitor of safari when the final build arrives. This because of the fact that everyone uses the google search engine. I know people who downloaded chrome because they saw it on the frontpage of google.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

On this site you see that Chrome gains more market share than FF, so those who drop IE will chose Chrome above FF(not that i agree with them).

 

[windywoo]

Chrome is not beating Firefox on Windows. What happened was that it had very heavy downloads in its first few days, more than FF or Opera, but it didn't sustain that level of use. I haven't seen recent figures though, it could have clawed back but I doubt it would catch up with FF's 20% so soon.

 

[DaBrain]

What's ridiculous is that you didn't even read his post. The original post said that it was beginning to beat FF on Windows, not on the Mac. I don't know that I agree, but ya'll jumping on him because Chrome isn't yet available on the Mac in any full form is incredibly asinine.

jW

On the main Page I READ the following:

A Chromium blog post yesterday has announced the availability of developer builds of Google's Chrome browser for both OS X and Linux. The news comes several weeks after the release of initial OS X builds of Chromium, the open source project behind Chrome. The announcement, however, warns that most users should not install the new builds, as they are buggy, unstable, and feature-incomplete.

How incomplete? So incomplete that, among other things , you won't yet be able to view YouTube videos, change your privacy settings, set your default search provider, or even print.
While the release indicates that Google is making progress on the OS X version of Chrome, it does appear that Google has significant work ahead in order to meet its previously-announced plan for launch in the first half of this year. Google Chrome offers three release channels ranging from developer previews to stable releases, indicating that the OS X version of Chrome has several thresholds to pass before it is ready for public launch.

I saw nothing that stated as you quote it was beginning to beat FF on Windows!

So I would say your assumption and jumping on others that post their opinions here is assinine!

 

[ksgant]

I guess I'm one of the few that will be using this as my main browser on the Mac. But that's okay, not all browsers can be all things to all people.

And it will have plug-ins as there's already some for the developers builds on the Windows version such as an ad-blocking add-on and others.

Read about that here:

http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/the_first_google_chrome_extensions.php

 

[atari1356]

Internet Explorer (65.50%)
Mozilla Firefox (22.51%)
Safari (8.43%)
Google Chrome (1.80%)
Opera (0.72%)
Other (1.04%)

Taken from WikiPedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

 

[ksgant]

 

[elppa]

Chrome beginning to beat Mozilla Firefox? What a joke – Chrome barely installs on a Mac, let alone that it doesn't even run halve as smooth as Mozilla Firefox, not to mention the lack of add-ons. Yeah, your post was a pretty ridiculous one.

I've never heard “smooth”, “interface” and “Firefox” all rolled together in one sentence.

 

[Mal]

On the main Page I READ the following:

A Chromium blog post yesterday has announced the availability of developer builds of Google's Chrome browser for both OS X and Linux. The news comes several weeks after the release of initial OS X builds of Chromium, the open source project behind Chrome. The announcement, however, warns that most users should not install the new builds, as they are buggy, unstable, and feature-incomplete.

How incomplete? So incomplete that, among other things , you won't yet be able to view YouTube videos, change your privacy settings, set your default search provider, or even print.
While the release indicates that Google is making progress on the OS X version of Chrome, it does appear that Google has significant work ahead in order to meet its previously-announced plan for launch in the first half of this year. Google Chrome offers three release channels ranging from developer previews to stable releases, indicating that the OS X version of Chrome has several thresholds to pass before it is ready for public launch.

I saw nothing that stated as you quote it was beginning to beat FF on Windows!

So I would say your assumption and jumping on others that post their opinions here is assinine!

Wow, dude. Again, read. From just two posts above you:

First of all, i never ever stated chrome was better then FF. I like FF a lot more then chrome.
Second, i think it can become a competitor of safari when the final build arrives. This because of the fact that everyone uses the google search engine. I know people who downloaded chrome because they saw it on the frontpage of google.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

On this site you see that Chrome gains more market share than FF, so those who drop IE will chose Chrome above FF(not that i agree with them).

And again the original:

Didn't realy look forward to chrome on mac, don't use the windows version either. But it looks like this could be a big competetor of safari, because it's already beginning to beat FF and off course IE7(or 8) on windows.

(Emphasis added).

Seriously.

jW

 

[kironin]

I lost interest in Chrome on the Mac when I realized it was only going to run on OS X 10.5. Not made the move from 10.4 yet and probably won't till get a new machine running Snow Leopard.

I like Chrome on Windows, because it runs fast on WinXP/VMWare Fusion, but don't see a reason to adopt it on OSX unless Safari 4 is still a dog once it leaves beta. Safari 4 beta is consistently seizing up on me, so I have abandoned Safari for now and rely on FireFox 3 and Opera 9. Opera 9 is great for preview web design work because is boots up so much faster than Safari or Firefox. Camino is not bad either, but I just need more often to know how stuff behaves in IE8/7 and Firefox because of their market share than anything else.

this was posted using Opera.

 

[Chase R]

I used to use Chrome on my old Windows machine, it was great. Then I switched to Mac and I think Safari is WAY better. I'll be stickin' with Safari 4 for now. However, Safari 4 for Windows needs some attention.

 

[Sayer]

Chrome has really odd UI quirks. For example the History menu has no history items, its first item is "Show History" which opens a new tab and loads a HTML-ish history showing the names of web pages, a generic icon and that's it. Not very useful.

Also the recent sites page is another boring HTML-ized thumbnail view. Safari 4's is more flashy, but also more usable as the images are larger and "live" in that they update to show new content.

Safari 4 is far superior in the app aspects than Chrome. I also noticed Chrome has weird CSS rendering differences from Safari (which is a pain since my job is to make web-apps and they must look identical across all major browsers).

The competition is nice, as it drives Apple to improve more forcefully.

 

[Eidorian]

http://www.stainlessapp.com/
I have not compared them in detail but Stainless already seems to offer a lot more than Google Chrome and is build using the same principles (ie, using Webkit, every tab is a new thread). It can even let you login to the same website with two different credentials in two separate tabs (something Chrome cannot). Printing works, it is pretty stable. Maybe the design is not as fancy.

I'll be giving Stainless a try when I get off of work.

 

[windywoo]

Don't forget that Chrome had the speed dial before Safari beta, and before Chrome Opera had it.

I dislike this trend of no PPC support but I may just have to get used to it. What price are Intel Minis on ebay these days?