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Why Google Chrome > Safari 4

B

Burnsey

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 1, 2007
572
67
Canada
Today I finished my 3 day test of google Chrome for Mac, where I used nothing else, including my former favorite browser: Safari.

Ram Usage
The number one reason why I prefer Chrome over Safari is ram usage. After a long day of browsing, Safari usually ends up hogging ~500MB of Ram (it actually does this much earlier than when the long day is over). This cripples my MBP, especially when using intensive apps like PS along side Safari (as I often do). Firefox is equally if not worse at this (sometimes using over 700MB of Ram), and significantly slower as well. After 3 days of constant browsing, Google Chrome is using a mere 77.9MB of Ram. I've had issues with Safari and RAM since Leopard, every version I've hoped they fixed it, and with every version the problem is as rampant as ever.

Speed
Specifically, launch speed. Launching Safari in the morning leads to a few minutes of unresponsiveness, and the hard drive madly spinning, not to mention the beach ball of death. Google Chrome takes half as long, and when it does become responsive, the web pages actually load. It takes Safari another minute or so after becoming responsive to load the web page. Speed of course depends on many things, but I've had this issue with Safari since Leopard, I hoped a clean install of snow leopard would fix this (and it did at first) but after a few days Safari was back to its slow loading self.

Once Adblock becomes available for Chrome:Mac, I will be saying farewell to Safari. Finally a web browser that just surfs the web in a fast and light weight package.
 
It takes minutes for you to open safari?!

Something is wrong my friend.

Also, buy some friggin ram, its cheap and 2GB just doesn't really cut it anymore. Still, sounds like something is definitely wrong here.
 
NT1440 said:
It takes minutes for you to open safari?!

Something is wrong my friend.

Also, buy some friggin ram, its cheap and 2GB just doesn't really cut it anymore. Still, sounds like something is definitely wrong here.
Click to expand...

Minutes until it becomes usable. I am considering more ram, but a browser shouldn't use that much.
 
Burnsey said:
Minutes until it becomes usable.
Click to expand...

Yeah, you've got other troubles somewhere
Seriously

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
Safari works 90% of the time like a charm here. Sorry to hear you have problems with it. Yes, it is a huge RAM hog, just like FF but it does make it up for its RAM shoertcomings with speed. It IS a speedy racer and definitely the fastest for me.

Also have the Glims Safari plug in installed which brings it up to par with Google Chrome's features.

Chrome is elegant. Pretty much copycat of Safari in terms of feel which is a GOOD not a bad thing. I personally am waiting for the final Mac version to fully test it. The beta felt more like alpha release to me hence I deleted it pretty quickly from my HDD.
 
NEWSFLASH: Chrome makes a process for every tab and window. Each process has it's own memory usage (some portion is shared). What you are all looking at is the 'parent' process with the chrome icon. The other 'Google Chrome Helper' processes are the other tabs which also use up ram.

Hence check this special page in Chrome.
Code: 
about:memory
(in chrome)

I know Safari is quick, on machines other than my own. And I don't want to clean install. So I guess I'm stuck with Chrome (which is effing fast compared to Safari/Webkit)
 
My Chrome is using 66 mb of RAM right now and I've been using it for hours.

I seem to recall WebKit/Safari being significantly higher and would eventually get the beach ball after an hour or so.

So far I really like Chrome they just need to allow the extensions to be enabled for my Mac.
 
Ie 5 > Safari 4

For me at least.. Safari 4 broke all my plugins with the 64 bit-ness... Its as good to me as IE 5... At first I didn't like firefox, but I cant live without its 3 finger up and down page gesture!
 
I switched over to Chrome. I use Firefox on my PCs and wanted something different (and really dont care for Safari). Although I have to use Safari sometimes (Netflix streaming for example).
 
You have serious troubles with your Safari install.

I launch it, it opens, it's usable, end of.

Your Safari install is seriously screwed.
 
I haven't check on the use of ram on my safari but it and my macbook is still blazingly fast (2gb of ram though im upgrading to 4gb in a week)..

I have about 4 tabs open and a torrent, iCal, skype, ichat, and itunes on and it is going great. the tabs on safari opened up very quickly and I haven't noticed any changes really. Maybe you should reinstall safari just in case? I'm thinking about getting chrome but I always have a thing of just sticking to one browser and I'm loving this one so far
 
I always liked Safari and looked forward to use it on my new Mac, but Google Chrome (dev) outclasses my Safari in terms of loading pages and launching the application.

Still, Safari is sexy and something that I look forward to use every now and then, but when I'm with friends I need something that loads up speedy, else they'd say Mac sucks for not loading browsers fast enough. :confused::eek:

I'm bothered by the RAM though, FF certainly uses much more RAM than either of the two -especially when you've got many add-ons installed-, but is Google Chrome really much better than Firefox in handling RAM? I'm really curious about it. The amount of RAM used by the "parent" process is eye catching and sweet, but Google Chrome Helper and the ram per tab annoys me, somehow.

Still, gChrome (with extensions) > Safari (for its sexiness) > Firefox (for taking 7-15 seconds to start up)

OH, and one thing that makes me favor Chrome/Firefox over Safari is the way to switch from one tab to another.

OPT+CMD+left or right arrow.

In Safari I need to SHIFT+CMD+left or right arrow+make sure I'm not focused on a text box, like the address bar
 
Safari is and always will be my top pick. Lightweight and the fastest of any browser out there. For a web browser, it's the best. A web browser is defined as an app that browses the web. To browse the web, you don't need extensions or add ons (apart from Flash, etc).

Once you add in extensions and add ons, Firefox becomes my top pick. It all depends on your usage. I don't use Firefox add ons 100% of the time. But I do utilize the browser's rendering engine and performance 100% regardless.

Something is definitely wrong if Safari takes a few minutes (literally?) to open. Usually, that's Firefox becomes it's the biggest memory hog and is terribly bloated. It should be Chrome or Safari that opens the fastest.
 
Safari comes up in seconds for me and is quite usable right after it comes up.

If you incurring minute or minutes long delays then there's something wrong. While people may debate the merits of chrome over safari. You need to have an even playing field and clearly something is wrong with your system for you to be dealing with such issues.
 
Years ago(hmm that sounds old :p) I used firefox on my pc (IE, need I say more?) and when I got a mac I continued using it. On my MPB I tried every 3 of them but there's one tiny little thing why I prefer firefow, it's the 3 finger gesture to quickly browse up and down (don't ask me why but one way or another I often use it). I know it uses more RAM then the other two but I merely notice the difference and I don't often need all the 4GB of ram so...
As for chrome I tried it some times but I found that there are a lot(<= exaggeration, actually just one, but still one that I visit a lot) of pages that don't load correctly so I stick with Firefox...
 
Right now Chrome would be great if I was at all convinced that it is not a resource hog.
Screen shot 2010-01-13 at 7.48.45 AM.png

Screen shot 2010-01-13 at 7.50.50 AM.png
 
I'm on the fence regarding Chrome right now. It doesn't seem to allow me to load all the bookmarks in a given folder and that's a show-stopper for me.
 
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