Chrome Gets a New Version. No, Not for the Mac.
By Harry McCracken | Wednesday, August 5, 2009 at 9:39 am
Google has released a new beta of the Windows version of its Chrome browser. The company says it’s faster, and it’s also added basic skinning, an improved New Tab feature, tweaks to the Omnibox address bar, and more HTML 5 support.
I say “the Windows version,” but that’s the only version of Chrome to receive a formal release to date, more than eleven months after Google got into the browser business. Developers builds of the OS X version are increasingly polished, though. Wouldn’t it be cool if Google celebrated the browser’s first birthday by finally bringing it to Mac users? (For now, Chrome is the browser I use most often these days when I’m using one of my Windows PCs; when I’m on a Mac, I’m usually a Firefox person.)
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August 5th, 2009 at 9:53 am
Although I loved the comic book type presentation of Chrome, I never actually installed it. The only thing that I found really cool were the “each tab has its own address bar” and “each tab is autonomous” features. But when I look at the level of customization that I was able to reach with Firefox I don’t feel the least bit compelled to find an alternative. Firefox really, really, really rocks. I think I used one less “really” then I should have.
August 5th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Chrome is also my preferred browser in Windows. I’ve been using the Windows 7 RC with the developer version of Chrome and both serve me very well. Converselly, I am stunned at how slow IE 8 is; one would think Microsoft’s browser would be optimized for fast performance on its own operating system.
August 5th, 2009 at 12:32 pm
Can anyone tell me how to stop the automatic updates on Chrome? It keeps triggering my firewall and it *looks* safe, but I’d much rather it asked me if I wanted to update first. I checked the tools/options and couldn’t find any option that way.
August 6th, 2009 at 1:37 am
Harry, how do you manage to use 2 different browsers on the different platforms? I was never a chrome user on Windows, but my main concern when switching to a Mac last year was that I was going to use all the customizations of my FF profile. Then, of course, I found out that there is FF for Mac, which solved my problem. Since then I have tried using Safari, and it is good, but I still find that I am somehow addicted to all the little tweaks that I have done on the Firefox.
August 10th, 2009 at 1:37 pm
I don’t see why they made it for windows at all. Don’t google and microsoft hate each other? It’s time they make chrome for their ally, Linux.