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What's all the fuss about Chrome?

runebinder

runebinder

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Apr 2, 2009
904
121
Nottingham, UK
So read several posters in the forums that say Chrome is way quicker than Safari, heard the same from a work colleague today as well, so thought I'd give it a try.

Don't get why some people think it's so much faster and better, couldn't notice any speed difference, pages that do use flash seemed to load slower and it made my MBP switch to the Nvidia 330m which is going to kill some battery life. Confused :confused:
 
I personally love Chrome. I downloaded it when it was a beta and have used it ever since. Though, with the release of Safari 5, I've been using Chrome less and less.
 
TorontoLRT said:
I use Chrome because of the universal searchbar, the great extension support, and the much better history.
Click to expand...

Just a tought...

Before you downloaded Chrome, did you use Firefox or Safari?

Anyways. I have downloaded Chrome but I use very very rarely. I like Firefox, and all the extensions I have downloaded. And the looks, too. Chrome is ugly.

For me it doesn't have a lot of advantages, except private browsing. But since I don't use it...
 
runebinder said:
So read several posters in the forums that say Chrome is way quicker than Safari, heard the same from a work colleague today as well, so thought I'd give it a try.

Don't get why some people think it's so much faster and better, couldn't notice any speed difference, pages that do use flash seemed to load slower and it made my MBP switch to the Nvidia 330m which is going to kill some battery life. Confused :confused:
Click to expand...
The latest benchmarks of Safari 5, Chrome 5, Opera 10.53, and Firefox 3.6.3 shows Safari beating Chrome in three of five benchmarks. They were equal on the fourth. On the fifth, Chrome scored perfect to beat Safari by two (2) points out of 578.

Where Safari won, the margin of victory is significant on a comparative scale. But on an absolute scale the margin of victory was measured in milliseconds. FWIW, Firefox lost and lost badly four of the five tests. On the fifth, it achieved a perfect score equalling Chrome and Opera.

What these tests show is that if the performance difference between Chrome and Safari is important to you, then you need to get a life. Chrome and Safari are both WebKit-based browsers. Whatever one browser can handle, the other will handle with equal aplomb. It is like asking which twin sister is prettier.
 
I use Chrome mostly on Windows, but Safari feels smoother on OSX. Unfortunately Chrome has a much better address bar in every way, I hope Safari extensions will eventually fix that.

I generally stick to Firefox on OSX because it works like I want it to.
 
I have always been an advocate of sticking with Safari. I switched to Firefox a couple times in hopes that it would be a better experience. But I always seemed to notice Firefox seemed to lag in comparison. I even tried the Chrome beta when it was first released and I was not impressed.

But a couple weeks ago I finally gave the official Chrome release a try and I am extremely impressed. It seems much faster than Safari 4 and 5. The universal search bar has me hooked as well.

I stick with Chrome on my mac at home as well as my Windows 7 PC at work.
 
I use chrome for things that need flash, and for Google web apps like gmail.

In fact, I never used chrome at all until a couple of months ago, when one of my computers inexplicably stopped connecting to gmail through Safari 4 for no apparent reason. it just sits there with a blank browser window after doing a couple of strange re-directs. I read some stuff online about it, and cleared out my safari preferences, etc. It was back to working for a week or so, and then broke again. I then downloaded Chrome and tried it, and i was amazed at how much faster gmail loads on the same internet connection.

I also noticed inadvertently how much faster pages with flash load compared to safari. it isn't so much a bandwidth issue (i have 100/100 mb connection at work) as a feeling of "responsiveness."

In fact, some sites with flash load faster on chrome than they do with click4flash installed on safari!

When safari 5 came out, I downloaded that and tried gmail again, and it still won't load.

I refuse to lose all of my settings and such by resetting safari again, so i just use 2 browsers, now. one for google apps and video sites, and one for everything else. I can honestly say that I've been slowly transitioning to chrome more and more. right now i'm typing this on safari, but i have a chrome window open behind this one, too. it doesn't look as nice as safari to me, but it IS faster, no matter what the benchmarks and tests might say.

Just using it for a little while doing things on interactive websites really shows you how much faster it is.

In fact, I did a test on THIS website, and I did this:

open macrumors.com in safari
click on chrome in the dock
type mac...and hit enter when it autofilled in the chrome address bar
see both pages load next to each other.
chrome had loaded the entire site before safari 5, even though it started out way behind.
 
MisterMe said:
The latest benchmarks of Safari 5, Chrome 5, Opera 10.53, and Firefox 3.6.3 shows Safari beating Chrome in three of five benchmarks. They were equal on the fourth. On the fifth, Chrome scored perfect to beat Safari by two (2) points out of 578.

Where Safari won, the margin of victory is significant on a comparative scale. But on an absolute scale the margin of victory was measured in milliseconds. FWIW, Firefox lost and lost badly four of the five tests. On the fifth, it achieved a perfect score equalling Chrome and Opera.

What these tests show is that if the performance difference between Chrome and Safari is important to you, then you need to get a life. Chrome and Safari are both WebKit-based browsers. Whatever one browser can handle, the other will handle with equal aplomb. It is like asking which twin sister is prettier.
Click to expand...

Lol, love your analogy, thanks for the reply. Was wondering if I'd botched the install or something. Think I'll stick with Safari as I prefer the overall experience and it doesn't keep activating my Nvidia GPU.
 
I also have stopped using firefox in my pc and Safari on my Mac.
IMO Chrome is a lot better, it seems way faster and it doesn't crash as often as safari with Flash sites or pages with flash.
And firefox, well it seems to crash all the time for me nowdays so the switch was easy.
 
lewis82 said:
Just a tought...

Before you downloaded Chrome, did you use Firefox or Safari?

Anyways. I have downloaded Chrome but I use very very rarely. I like Firefox, and all the extensions I have downloaded. And the looks, too. Chrome is ugly.

For me it doesn't have a lot of advantages, except private browsing. But since I don't use it...
Click to expand...

All the major browsers have a form of private browsing.
 
I work in Google Adwords and Google Business Center on a daily basis for my job, and Chrome responds much faster to edits and changes than Safari, Firefox, or Internet Explorer.
 
runebinder said:
All the major browsers have a form of private browsing.
Click to expand...

Firefox doesn't let you have both private browsing and normal browsing windows. It requires you to relaunch the app in order to come back to normal browsing.

Chrome, on the other hand, limits the effect of provate browsing to the window only. cmd-N = new window, cmd-shift-N = new provate window.

Safari works as Firefox.
 
lewis82 said:
Firefox doesn't let you have both private browsing and normal browsing windows. It requires you to relaunch the app in order to come back to normal browsing.

Chrome, on the other hand, limits the effect of provate browsing to the window only. cmd-N = new window, cmd-shift-N = new provate window.

Safari works as Firefox.
Click to expand...

Firefox is my main browser on Windows and find the way it and Safari enable Private Browsing to be different. I agree with what you say about Firefox closing all your current tabs and only reopening them when you turn PB off, but I have never found Safari to do it that way.

When I turn PB on in Safari all my current tabs remain the same, they don't close like Firefox, which is annoying. With the way Safari does it I don't see the need to have 2 separate windows open.
 
About the same. However Chrome has some bugs in which pages would time out become stuck at loading if you got a bunch of tabs open.
 
Before Safari 5, Chrome was the fastest but had the most errors. It would load faster but not with 100% accuracy like Safari 4/5. Now Safari 5 is faster than Chrome while retaining it's accuracy, there's no reason for Chrome. IE is complete garbage and Opera isn't far behind. Firefox needs to perform better as both Chrome and Safari is faster than it.

Safari 5 is the fastest and most stable. Chrome is not far behind and Firefox is lagging behind.
 
Firefox is terribly far behind both as others have said, but I prefer Chrome b/c I love the simplicity and search bar.

Safari 5 basically seems to be a Chrome wannabe but it's ok and I use it sometimes. Pretty sure Chrome is just gonna get better and better b/c I believe in Google when it comes to web browsing.
 
Restinbeast said:
Safari 5 basically seems to be a Chrome wannabe but it's ok and I use it sometimes. Pretty sure Chrome is just gonna get better and better b/c I believe in Google when it comes to web browsing.
Click to expand...

Where?, in fact, it seems that the new version of Firefox is a Chrome wannabe.
 
Chrome is a nice browser, but there are a few annoying things about it that keep me with Firefox. Same with Safari.
 
Regardless of whether other browsers are faster, I still use Safari. It's quick enough for me and installing another browser would only waste space - I wouldn't use it.
 
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