Google Chrome for Mac Released
Monday, October 26, 2009 at 6:41AM | Print Article Over the past few months the Chromium team (the open source project behind Google Chrome) have slowly been releasing beta versions of Chrome for Mac. They have now reached a milestone with the release of the Developers Preview, which can be downloaded from the Chromium website.
It is important to note that this is not the final consumer release and therefore is expected to still have some bugs/performance issues. With that in mind, let's take a look.
Anyone who is familiar with Google Chrome on Windows will be right at home with the Mac version. The UI is essentially the same, providing a lightweight, streamlined menu system with the iconic tab bar located at the top.
Although showing as version 4.0, Chrome is not as mature as the Windows version and therefore in my experience not as fast at this stage (especially when compared to Safari 4). However it does seem to be compatible with all modern web applications, such as Google Wave and Facebook etc.
This Developers Preview of Chrome brings support for third party plugins (such as Flash), however they do seem to suffer from some performance issues. Although, it is important to keep in mind that this version of Chrome will be followed up by the full consumer release, by which time I would expect these issues to be resolved.
Check out the final two screenshots below showing "bookmarks" and "theme selection".
Overall it looks like Google Chrome is set to continue the success it has had on Windows. Once the final few performance issues have been resolved it will definitely be a major competitor to Safari and Firefox on the Mac. I suggest you download the Developers Preview now from the Chromium website.
