I love Apple products. I hate the Safari browser. I never liked it. So when I heard Chrome was coming to iOS, there was much rejoicing in my head.
Much of the discussion surrounding the release has been the fact that Apple would not allow Google to use the same rendering engine that Safari uses.
Apple famously only makes a sandboxed, slower version of its rendering engine available to developers. What’s slowing this engine down is that , for security reasons (at least that’s what Apple says), third-party developers don’t get direct access to Apple’s Nitro JavaScript engine. According to some developers, UIWebView is often up to 3x slower in rendering pages than Safari. You can find a more in-depth discussion of how this works in practice on Quora.
Given these limitations, chances are that Chrome on iOS will be significantly slower than on other platforms – and also slower than Apple’s own Safari browser.
From my standpoint, I can say this is not true. Granted, I am not running benchmark tests with a stopwatch in my hand. I am merely saying from my own perspective, despite this supposed limitation, Chrome is still faster at rendering pages than the Safari browser.
I have already moved my Safari icon to the back of the list and the Chrome icon has taken its place.
What about you?
Will you load up the Chrome browser or stick with Safari?
You can download it from the Apple App Store.
Brian Alexander says
I just wish that I could get it as a default browser without jailbreaking my phone.
Andy Darnell says
Just did. Thanks for the reminder.
Jonathan says
I’m on Android but just updated my Razr to ICS so I can now use Chrome instead of “Browser”. I haven’t spent enough time with it yet to fall in love, but there are some early UX/UI bits that I like. It’s easier to browse and switch between multiple tabs. And you can have an unlimited number of tabs open apparently, though I’m not sure why you would need more than 5 or 10. Anyway, so far so good.
Oh, and I made it the default browser without root. Because Android rocks like that. =)