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Google Releasing New Version of Chrome Optimized for Apple Silicon Macs
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Google always just goes their own way. Apple created universal builds so that normal users don't have to answer questions like these. With Universal apps it just works.
Chrome will always be a power hog, because users experience it as faster just because it's always updating all the tabs.
The problem is, thanks to Internet Explorer, Chrome has become a household name. Even the least tech literate person seems to just know to download Chrome. I have relatives who insisted installing Chrome, even though I have proposed them to use either Brave or Chromium Edge. They are all work the same way, due to being the same source (they all even use the same extensions), but people simply think Chrome is what they need.
The actual space is icons, images and other assets that are shared in universal binaries. The actual code is not so big so I don't understand who would make such a decision. It's not like Google doesn't have good servers.
Not surprising because Google doesn't want to upset Apple and lose out on those billions.
In other news: benchmarking shows that Chrome optimized for Apple Silicon runs slower than Safari on Intel.
I posted a question on the Brave forum asking about a timeline. No response.
Oh, good. I thought I read somewhere that Chromium wouldn't even run in Rosetta. Sounds like that's not the case.
You’d be downloading twice the size you needed and it consumes your precious disk space. Universal binaries are useless in the 2020s since they’re really 2000s tech.
App downloads should be universal, upon install only the binary you need should stick around, or the website/App Store detects what version you need and only downloads the binary you need. Then if you restored to another machine, the apps should know to download the alternate binary before launching (if available).
The route chrome have taken, people will be using the x86 binary without knowing they could be using/be better off using the native binary. End Users will not understand the difference especially considering how good Rosette seems to be on these new machines. But nevertheless, it's not ideal.
Microsoft already has a beta available: https://www.macrumors.com/2020/11/12/microsoft-office-for-mac-beta-apple-silicon/
I bet you know if you have a diesel vs gas vs electric.
I was reading an article on wccftech today about how Chrome 87 is implementing some good performance gains. This apparently was implemented on Macs first.
When I bought a diesel VW, the salesperson kept reminding me. Apparently, quite a few don't know the difference between gasoline/gas and diesel fuel.
Yes, this is messy, and almost embarrassing for Google. But it's still nothing to compared to some Linux installations where you need to sift through a dozen or more options of "architectures" and hope you choose the right one.
Nightly and Beta already support it since 13 Nov. 😀 https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/channel/desktop/