Wednesday, 24 May 2017

Google Chrome's overwhelming popularity on macOS is quite a feat for a non-default browser, but it makes sense. Safari beats Chrome because it's more energy-efficient, better at protecting your privacy, and obviously, works with the Mac environment better. Here's why you should avoid using Google Chrome on Mac.

Eric Petitt, writing for The Official Unofficial Firefox Blog yesterday:

I head up Firefox marketing, but I use Chrome every day. Worksfine. Easy to use. Like most of us who spend too much time infront of a laptop, I have two browsers open; Firefox for work,Chrome for play, customized settings for each. There are multiplethings that bug me about the Chrome product, for sure, but I‘m OKwith Chrome. I just don’t like only being on Chrome. […]

But talking to friends, it sounds more and more like living onChrome has started to feel like their only option. Edge is broken.Safari and Internet Explorer are just plain bad. Andunfortunately, too many people think Firefox isn’t a modernalternative.

In an update posted today, he walked that back:

In my original post I made a personal dig about Edge, IE andSafari: “Edge is broken. Safari and Internet Explorer are justplain bad.” I’ve since deleted that sentence.

It’s true, I personally don’t like those products, they just don’twork for me. But that was probably a bit too flip. And, if itwasn’t obvious that those were my personal opinions as a user, notthose of the good folks at Firefox and Mozilla, then please acceptmy apology.

It’s easy when making an aside — and it’s clear that the central premise of this piece is about positioning Chrome as the Goliath to Firefox’s David, so references to Safari and IE are clearly asides — to conflate “I don’t like X” with “X is bad”. So I say we let it slide.1

But I’ve been meaning to write about Safari vs. Chrome for a while, and Petitt’s jab, even retracted, makes for a good excuse.

I think Safari is a terrific browser. It remains the one and only browser for the Mac that behaves like a native Mac app through and through. It may not be the fastest browser but it is fast. And its energy performance puts Chrome to shame. If you use a Mac laptop, using Chrome instead of Safari can cost you an hour or more of battery life per day.2

But Chrome is a terrific browser, too. It’s clearly the second-most-Mac-like browser for MacOS. It almost inarguably has the widest and deepest extension ecosystem. It has good web developer tools, and Chrome adopts new web development technologies faster than Safari does.

But Safari’s extension model is more privacy-conscious. For many people on MacOS, the decision between Safari and Chrome probably comes down to which ecosystem you’re more invested in — iCloud or Google — for things like tab, bookmark, and history syncing. Me, personally, I’d feel lost without the ability to send tabs between my Macs and iPhone via Handoff. Update: Unbeknownst to me, Chrome fully supports Handoff with iOS devices. Nice!

In short, Safari closely reflects Apple’s institutional priorities (privacy, energy efficiency, the niceness of the native UI, support for MacOS and iCloud technologies) and Chrome closely reflects Google’s priorities (speed, convenience, a web-centric rather than native-app-centric concept of desktop computing, integration with Google web properties). Safari is Apple’s browser for Apple devices. Chrome is Google’s browser for all devices.

I personally prefer Safari, but I can totally see why others — especially those who work on desktop machines or MacBooks that are usually plugged into power — prefer Chrome. DF readers agree. Looking at my web stats, over the last 30 days, 69 percent of Mac users visiting DF used Safari, but a sizable 28 percent used Chrome. (Firefox came in at 3 percent, and everything else was under 1 percent.)3

As someone who’s been a Mac user long enough to remember when there were no good web browsers for the Mac, having both Safari and Chrome feels downright bountiful, and the competition is making both of them better.

  1. What really struck me about Petitt’s piece wasn’t the unfounded (to my eyes) dismissal of Safari, but rather his admission that he uses “Firefox for work, Chrome for play”. I really doubt the marketing managers for Chrome or Safari spend their days with a rival browser open for “play”, and even if they did, I expect they’d have the common sense not to admit so publicly, and especially not in the opening paragraph of a piece arguing that their own browser is a viable alternative to the rival one. ↩︎

  2. Back in December, when Consumer Reports rushed out their sensational report claiming bizarrely erratic battery life on the then-new MacBook Pros (which was eventually determined to be caused by a bug in Safari that Apple soon fixed), I decided to try to loosely replicate their test on the MacBook Pro review units I had from Apple. Consumer Reports doesn’t reveal the exact details of their testing, but they do describe it in general. They set the laptop brightness to a certain brightness value, then load a list of web pages repeatedly until the battery runs out. Presumably they automate this with a script of some sort, but they don’t say.

    That’s pretty easy to replicate in AppleScript. I used that day’s leading stories on TechMeme as my source for URLs to load — 26 URLs total. When a page loads, my script waits 5 seconds, and then scrolls down (simulating the Page Down key), waits another 5 seconds and pages down again, and then waits another 5 seconds before paging down one last time. This is a simple simulation of a person actually reading a web page. While running through the list of URLs, my script leaves each URL open in a tab. At the end of the list, it closes all tabs and then starts all over again. Each time through the loop the elapsed time and remaining battery life are logged to a file. (I also logged results as updates via messages sent to myself via iMessage, so I could monitor the progress of the hours-long test runs from my phone. No apps were running during the tests other than Safari, Script Editor, Finder, and Messages.)

    I set the display brightness at exactly 68.75 percent for each test (11/16 clicks on the brightness meter when using the function key buttons to adjust), a value I chose arbitrarily as a reasonable balance for someone running on battery power.

    Averaged (and rounded) across several runs, I got the following results:

    • 15-inch MacBook Pro With Touch Bar: 6h:50m
    • 13-inch MacBook Pro With Touch Bar: 5h:30m
    • 13-inch MacBook Pro (2014): 5h:10m
    • 11-inch MacBook Air (2011): 2h:15m

    I no longer had a new 13-inch MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar (a.k.a. the “MacBook Esc”) — I’d sent it back to Apple. I included my own personal 2014 13-inch MacBook Pro and my old 2011 MacBook Air just as points of reference. I think the Air did poorly just because it was so old and so well-used. It still has its original battery.

    I saw no erratic fluctuations in battery life across runs of the test. I procrastinated on publishing the results, though, and within a few weeks the whole thing was written off with a “never mind!” when Apple fixed the bug in Safari that was causing Consumer Reports’s erratic results.

    Anyway, the whole point of including these results in this footnote is that I also ran the exact same test with Chrome on the 13-inch MacBook Pro With Touch Bar. The average result: 3h:40m. That’s 1h:50m difference. On the exact same machine running the exact same test with the exact same list of URLs, the battery lasted almost exactly 1.5 times as long using Safari than Chrome.

    My test was in no way meant to simulate real-world usage. You’d have to be fueled up on some serious stimulants to read a new web page every 15 seconds non-stop for hours on end. But the results were striking. If you place a high priority on your MacBook’s battery life, you should use Safari instead of Chrome.

    If you’re interested, I’ve posted my battery testing scripts for Safari and Chrome. ↩︎︎

  3. If anyone has a good source for browser usage by MacOS users from a general purpose website like The New York Times or CNN, let me know. I honestly don’t know whether to expect that the split among DF readers is biased in favor of Safari because DF readers are more likely to care about the advantages of a native app, or biased in favor of Chrome because so many of you are web developers or even just nerdy enough to install a third-party browser in the first place. Wikimedia used to publish stats like that, but alas, ceased in 2015. ↩︎︎

Since most of your working (or even entertainment) time today is spent in your web browser window, it’s likely the most important app on your computer. Without a doubt, there are lots of web browsers for Mac, but not all of them were created equal. So you might be wondering what is the best web browser for Mac.

Download java for mac. Why should I upgrade to the latest version?The latest version contains important enhancements to improve performance, stability and security of the applications that run on your machine. Installing this free update will ensure that your applications continue to run safely and efficiently.What will I get when I download software?The Java Runtime Environment (JRE) is what you get when you download software.

After all, not everyone’s needs are the same. You might be striving for speed or safety, or alternative ways of surfing online. And with Microsoft Edge set to appear on Mac shortly, the competition to become the top browser for Mac is getting fierce — but there’s no need to try them all.

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The browser comparison below will outline all strengths and weaknesses of all the contenders on the market today to reveal the best browser for Mac you need.

What Makes The Best Web Browser

Depending on how exactly you use your Mac browser, you might require different features and specialties. Generally, there are four broad categories that make people sway one way or another.

Familiarity: Use something regularly for a while and you’ll develop muscle memory, which makes it extremely hard to switch to anything else. This is the main reason most people keep using the first web browser they’ve tried. But it’s important to realize that experimenting with alternative browsers is not hard and might present you with much better options in no time.

Speed: Slow speed might quickly kill even the best web browser for Mac. If you think about it, no one has ever asked for their webpage to take more time to load.

Security: A lucky few might have never been the target of a hack or malware with a potential to disrupt or in some cases destroy a computer. But there’s no such thing as being too careful. While some browsers are optimized for ease of use, there are safe browsers too that are secure from the ground up.

Bells and whistles: For some, it’s the little things that matter most. Looking for Chromecast support? Configurable shortcuts? Extension libraries? All best internet browsers try to differentiate themselves in various ways to tailor to particular audiences.

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The top browser for Mac out of the box: Safari

It could be that the best browser for Mac is the one that comes with every Mac already. Apple’s proprietary web browser for Mac, Safari, is preinstalled on all Apple devices and is generally a good choice. No shame here for not bothering to explore alternative browsers at all.

Safari is good because Apple doesn’t do things by half measures. Benchmarks suggest that when it comes to Safari vs Firefox, Safari loads HTML twice as fast, and four times as fast for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Makes sense — no one knows Apple hardware better than Apple, so they have all the trump cards for near-perfect speed optimization. Safari might well be the fastest browser for Mac.

In terms of extras, Safari has a decent support for third-party plugins and integrates perfectly with your iOS and watchOS devices.

What’s great:

  • Blazing-fast speed
  • Already installed on your Mac

Not so great:

  • Lacks Chromecast support and some other plugins

The most popular web browser: Chrome

Chrome is by far the top browser for Mac and other operating systems when it comes to popularity — some reports suggest that 70% of people on the web use it. But does that mean it’s the best web browser for Mac?

It could be. First of all, Chrome is generally one of the fastest web browsers. Second, it uses Google’s proprietary Sandbox security technology, so you’re completely safe running all kinds of websites on it. Third, Chrome’s extension library is the largest on the market, allowing you to transform the browser into the tool for all your needs.

Even better, when you sign into your Google account on any Chrome browser anywhere, it’ll load your bookmarks and logins right away. So if you’re constantly using different computers, Chrome is a great choice (just remember to log out if you’re using public ones).

When it comes to Safari vs Chrome, Safari wins as the best browser for Mac, whereas Chrome takes the crown if you find yourself jumping between operating systems.

What’s great:

  • Fast and secure
  • The best third-party support for browser extensions
  • Travels well by signing into Chrome from anywhere
  • Fully integrated with Chromecast

Not so great:

  • Not as fast as Safari

The underdogfox web browser: Mozilla Firefox for Mac

Though it’s not as commonly used as Safari or Chrome, Firefox is not without its share of devoted fans. It’s been a mainstay in the browser wars for many years now and is maybe the most recognized one of the alternative browsers for people who would rather not support megalithic companies like Apple or Google. So do you want to download Firefox for Mac?

Unfortunately, sometimes the underdog is the underdog for a reason. Firefox is quite a bit slower when it comes to loading webpages. And while you can sign into your Firefox account for bookmarks just like in Google Chrome, the fact that it’s not a standard option on most computers in the way Chrome is makes this feature less useful.

Add to that a busy design that looks at odds with macOS, and when it comes to Safari vs Firefox as the best browser for Mac, Safari is the clear winner.

What’s great:

  • Open-source development
  • Long-established user base
  • Firefox account to sync bookmarks across computers

Not so great:

  • Slow by modern web standards
  • Busy design

The “could be a contender” browser: Opera for Mac

Opera has been around for years, but it’s always been the “also-ran” of the alternative browsers. But things could be different now: Opera today comes with a free VPN, ad-block, and built-in messenger client support right out of the box. The free VPN alone makes this browser worth downloading and checking out.

In the backend, Opera usings the same Blink Engine that powers Chrome, so you can be sure of its speed. Add to that integrated phishing and malware lists and you have a fast and secure browser. Some could argue that given recent Opera innovations it might have surpassed Firefox as the third-best web browser. It also might now be the best new browser for Mac, depending on what you’re looking for.

What’s great:

  • Free VPN
  • Just as fast as Chrome
  • Great default ad and malware blocking

Not so great:

  • Less third-party support compared to Chrome
  • Low adoption

How to change default browser on Mac

So now that you have so many options to try — explore their websites and download the ones that you like. Just remind yourself that you’re not yet fully committed to any single one.

But once you decide which one is your favorite, you need to know how to change default browser on Mac:

  1. Click on the Apple menu ➙ System Preferences
  2. Navigate to the General tab
  3. Find a dropdown menu marked “Default web browser” and click on it to choose from the browsers you’ve installed

The top browser for Mac is what you make of it

In the end, it doesn’t matter too much which browser is the best — if you like it and feel like it does what you need it to do, then everybody’s happy. What matters the most is whether or not you can customize the browser to your needs. That means downloading extensions that make the most of your internet experience.

If you’ve ever been watching a YouTube video and thought, “I wish there was a safe and easy way to download this video,” then you absolutely need to check out Downie.

Capture video from any browser

Try a seamless video downloader that works with any browser. With Downie, you’ll be able to instantly save videos from 1000+ sites.

Downie is an app for your Mac that lets you drag and drop videos from any website onto your computer. It works like magic:

  1. Copy a link from Vimeo or YouTube or anywhere else
  2. Open Downie and hit ⌘ + V to paste the link
  3. The download will start automatically

Even for times when you can’t find a song anywhere but streaming video, use Downie to simply download the audio file. Brilliant!

Want to edit or format that file? Downie blends seamlessly with Permute, which lets you combine videos, edit them down, or convert the file type:

  1. Drag and drop a video onto Permute
  2. Choose to work with Audio or Video
  3. Use the dropdown to choose the file format to convert to
  4. Click Start

Yet another great app to completely unlock your browser is Inboard. Designed to easily capture screenshots from your screen so that you can create collages and moodboards, Inboard lets you cut and paste images from your Mac browser, and even make a Pinterest-style inspiration board from all your captured pictures.

Best of all, Downie, Permute, and Inboard are all available to try absolutely free for seven days when you sign up for Setapp, an app subscription services that gives you over 150 different apps for every possible use case. Now that’s a Mac browser transformed!