Google Throws Chrome for Mac, Linux Out Into the Wild
Google Chrome on Mac OS X. Click the image for a larger view.
Google has released official pre-alpha versions of its Chrome web browser for the Mac and Linux platforms. The announcement cautions that these early version are unstable and lack many features, concluding that really, you shouldn’t download them. Nor we might add, should you think about unicorns right now.
The goal for these early builds is to provide Google with feedback from developers. As Google product managers Mike Smith and Karen Grunberg write on the Chrome blog, it’s best to avoid these builds unless you “take great pleasure in incomplete, unpredictable, and potentially crashing software.”
Naturally, if you tell a webmonkey what that monkey shouldn’t do, the monkey will of course do just that. In fact, we’ve already played with unofficial, pre-release versions of Chrome for Mac and found them to be reasonably stable, if somewhat lacking in features.
The latest (and technically the first officially sanctioned) release still lacks some very basic features like a Flash plugin, the ability to change privacy settings or a way to control the default search engine. There’s also no way to use the bookmark manager or even print a web page.
In short, Google’s “don’t download this” message is actually good, if slightly perverse, advice. Still, what does work in these builds of Chrome is pretty impressive. Page rendering times were on par with, and in some cases (like Gmail), noticeably faster than Firefox 3.5b4, which is currently our browser of choice.
While in our testing Chrome for Mac OS X was reasonably stable, there were plenty of small bugs and general wonkiness. For example resizing and window often caused Chrome to seize up for a few seconds and some pages rendered a bit strangely as Chrome struggled with banner ads and other Flash elements.
So no, Chrome for Mac is not anywhere near being usable on a regular basis, nor is the Linux version which we tested in our Ubuntu virtual machine, but at least the development team is throwing it out there for testing.
If you’re the brave and curious type, head over to the download page and grab a copy (there’s even .deb download for Ubuntu fans). Keep in mind that, on the Mac side, Chrome requires Mac OS X 10.5.6 or later. And be sure to leave the the “send feedback” option checked when you start Chrome so the developers receive feedback whenever Chrome crashes.
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