So, we’ve been tracking the progress of Google Chrome on the Mac for a while. The daily builds of Chromium seem to be getting better and better, and close to being ready for prime time. One major thing missing however has been the lack of Adobe Flash support in the browser. Well, don’t look now, but it’s finally working — kind of.
Okay, to be honest, you can’t pause or stop Flash videos on sites like YouTube, but the important part is that when you click on a YouTube link, the videos actually play. That is great. I’m very, very close to using Chrome for the Mac on a daily basis already, and this may have just put me over the edge of at least using it as a secondary browser.
It’s clear that we’re getting very close to a release of Chrome for the Mac that is stable enough for regular web surfers to use. If the team has implemented Flash support, I have to believe that they are close to where they want to be in terms of a general release schedule. Of course, they have already released developer versions of the browser for the Mac, but they encouraged people not to use them. I think soon that mentality may change, and we may see a public beta.
What’s taking google so long?
It’s soooo fast. It’s great to have apps that open quickly. Chrome is nearly instant. If they get those dev tools up to scratch I can finally leave Firefox and its under performing ways.
What’s taking them so long to make this?
When can we expect flash for the iphone?
ha. yeah, don’t hold your breath
But u can get flash if u jailbreak
How’s that possible?
If you say so…
It’s coming MG. Despite what you might hear.
On Mac, anyone knows why doesn’t any of the browsers (Firefox, Safari, Opera or Chrome) offer full screen mode?
Lol u forgot IE but that’s understandable lol
He didn’t forget it. IE doesn’t run on Macs. Try reading the comment next time
That statement is counterfactual.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_Mac
Haha. Reminds me of “You forgot Poland.”
Chrome does, you have to enable “Show page and options menus on the toolbar” under preferences. When you click on the spanner icon that will appear on the toolbar it has a full screen mode option available.
That’s good to know.
It’s also in the View menu, you can fullscreen with cmd-f11
Flash for IPhone?… haha good luck. Guess what? Android has it!! Not polished by any means but it works.
Well, the new OS for the HTC Hero has it… But that’s not out in the U.S.
Google is so fast and spy.Want to kill Microsoft.
But BingAhoo! can guard safely to Microsoft.
Riiiiiiight…
What’s the selling point of Chrome on Mac?
Safari runs just as noticeably fast to me. Faster javascript engine? Safari is good enough – not enough for me to port over. Safari stole all of Chromes cool features and did them in a more presentable way, in my opinion (both the pop-out tabs and ‘Top sites’ page look nicer)
The only real reason I can think of is the location bar acting as a search engine. Kind neat, but pressing tab then typing my query is hardly noticeable for me right now.
I do use Chrome on the PC due to it’s speed, but I just haven’t been impressed by it’s speed on the Mac vs Safari. I know I shouldn’t be judging pre-releases, but I’m trying to understand why you could be so excited over this. Am I missing something?
For me it’s the feeling of speed. Whenever I click on anything on Chrome, it seems to respond faster than safari.
Safari 4 seems to crash a lot and new tabs opening can often hang it for a few seconds. I still can’t switch to Chrome though, it’s the tab page. Urgh.
I think Google was hoping that their one-process-per-tab architecture would be their main differentiator (e.g. a crash-proof, exploit-safe browser), but severely underestimated how long it would take their engineers to port to OS X.
Since Chrome’s beta release on Windows, one-process-per-tab has been implemented in the indie Stainless browser, and Safari on Snow Leopard will offer plugin sandboxing (arguably the leading cause of both crashes and exploits).
So, yes, there really doesn’t seem to be a technically compelling reason to switch to Chrome.
No support for Google Gears is one good reason. Overall Safari is not all that great, FF3.5 is much better (though no Gears support either) in terms of stability, the way the tabs work, etc. imho. There is a reason that Safari’s share of browser market is much less than Mac’s share of computer market…
Google Gears supports Mozilla Firefox 3.5.1 (or later).
It works on my computer (2006 Intel Mac Book, 10.4.11)
I think Firefox 3.5 on Mac supports Google Gears fine now? Seems to work for me
It seems the buttons are already working on YouTube with the latest build, but first you must click to give focus to the flash plugin, the second click is sent to pause/full screen.
Have waited this for such a long time. Now 80% of time I will use Chrome on Mac.
It can’t be that hard.
Actually I am able to pause/restart videos on the latest version of Chromium for Mac, you have to click multiple times (and fast). So it’s kind of buggy but kind of working.
That’s odd because I had the same issue on some beta version of FF3.5…
If MobileMe could sync my Chrome bookmarks I’d switch in a second.
Welcome Chrome, to the late 1990’s when flash originally became available, nice to see you are catching up quickly.
Latest Chrome Dev builds are an important (and solid) improvement on XP and Win 7. Fresh Flash install of FP 10 works fine. Silverlight 3? …. not so good …. but I guess that’s to be expected.
Chromium on Mac is meh to me because Safari (and even Firefox) run perfectly well.
Chromium on Linux is the big story (But I guess in TechCrunch’s case, not really since Mac = more page views)
But anyways, Chromium on Linux is going to be the go-to browser because Firefox has always been dreadfully slow. I’ve been using the daily builds for several months now and I’m using it almost exclusively. Flash works, but it crashes a lot so I use Epiphany if I want to view a quick flash video.
Thanks for using a screencap of the Walt Mossberg puppet in the article, MG.
(For those of you curious, the video MG was looking at is here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9eJnz59jDWk)
That’s a pretty funny video.
I’d just as soon them take their time with Chrome and have it be 100% (or as near as possible,) before they release it. The only thing worse than waiting on something to come out is to have a half-working version integrated into daily life and be waiting for this or that to work. It’s certainly a personal preference thing. The fact that it IS taking them so long makes me even more excited about the promise of it being BLAZING fast and lighter than FF on mac.
good news, Flash on Chrome.
firefox 3 it’s too slow for me
I love Chrome on Windows 7, but on the Mac it is still too slow; scrolling is not nearly as smooth as Safari on my Core i7 machine. Hopefully that’ll change when it isn’t a debug-compiled alpha.
How can this be construed in any way as NEWS??
A feature that’s (sorta) working for a browser that’s already launched and fully working on different platform is supposed to be interesting?
Hey MG: I got the latest release today and saw the Flash kind-of-working, but the fix that really caught my eye was the ability to edit bookmarks and with that the ability to use bookmarklets.
I can finally add the LastPass autofill bookmarklet to the bookmarks bar. It’s also just “kind-of” working, as you have to set a bookmark, right click to get the “copy link address” of the LastPass bookmarklet, then edit your bookmark so that it points there. Two minutes of hassle and I have easy access to my passwords.
really useful post and some great comments, thanks
chromium faster than ever.
Goolge Chrome will fit good on Mac especially with flash as of now.