Why Google Chrome on iOS stands a chance | Hacker News Reader

Why Google Chrome on iOS stands a chance

blog.cleartrip.com

16 pointssurdattack23 comments

Misses the most important point: syncing.

I don't know about the masses, but at least that was the biggest reason in my circles why people were excited to have Chrome on iOS.

Yes, definitely the sync was the feature I have been looking forward too. It's a shame that Apple is taking so long to develop their on syncing (just like they're taking their time developing a lot of thing that could be branded an iCloud service).

Shangaslammi Agreed.

Reason #4 has everything to do with this!

Not only does Chrome on iOS sync bookmarks, but it allows you to see what tabs are open on Chrome on all your other devices and what tabs were last open on devices which are currently switched off.

That last feature is already in Mountain Lion/iOS6.

And most importantly: it syncs omnibar history which makes old fashioned bookmarks almost redundant.

Sync is the best feature for Firefox on Android too, it makes all the other bugs and oddities worth dealing with.

It makes me wonder about how many iPad users have Android phones, or iPhone users with Windows (or even Linux) machines, or iPhone users with Nexus 7s etc., you get the idea, anyone not fully inside the Apple sphere is probably going to get a lot of benefit from unifying browsing across platforms.

Why Google Chrome on iOS doesn't stand a chance: because if it succeeds, Apple has the power (and inclination) to simply block it.

which app have they reportedly blocked after it succeeded?

If all you need is one example, then Google Voice.

Let me know if you need more examples... they're not hard to find.

Google Voice is still there: http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-voice/id318698524?mt=8

please, give me an example...

> 5. Chrome will prove to be more developer friendly.

I love V8 infinitely better than Apple's JS engine, but you can't say Safari is less developer friendly than Chrome.

Safari 6 has much more developer tools now (detailed timeline of element renders & JS timers/dispatches), in a nicer package. And, the new Web Inspector in iOS 6 is absolutely marvelous! You open the webpage on iPad and inspect it on Safari's new web inspector (and you can tap on different elements to inspect them, just as you can do in FireBug).

http://adrielservice.com/blog/?p=894

http://taitems.tumblr.com/post/24936855546/what-ios-6-mobile...

> You open the webpage on iPad and inspect it on Safari's new web inspector (and you can tap on different elements to inspect them, just as you can do in FireBug).

That's true of Chrome on Android and even RIM's Playbook with Chrome Developer Tools. There's even talk about Chrome trying to get that working with it's versions on iOS.

> Safari 6 has much more developer tools now (detailed timeline of element renders & JS timers/dispatches), in a nicer package.

The nicer package there has been the biggest problem. I still haven't been able to figure out what all those icons mean. The simplest 'Elements' view (highlight elements to inspect them) now needs to be enabled after three clicks and a lot of time spent hovering over the icons to know that you have the right one. Safari 6's developer tools seem to be designed by designers who don't use developer tools IMHO. It's very pretty but lacks any sort of usability.

You're right about the new design's usability. It's a huge leap from Safari 5's IMO, but still isn't ideal.

And please note that you can use keyboard shortcuts (control,1-8 and control,shift,1-4). That'll saves you a lot of time (I too don't know what those icons mean yet!).

It's still beta though, and many things would change.

Hilarious on every point.

1. If the web browser is redundant then would would anyone make the effort to download Chrome. Nice self-contradiction here.

2. Safari in Mountain Lion has a single URL field with predictive search just like Chrome. So it could be an upcoming feature for iOS6 for all we now.

3. I fail to see what technology apart from maybe SPDY Google has "invented" that allows it to be so dramatically faster than Safari that it can compensate for the loss of JIT. Especially when benchmarks today show Chrome to be pretty slow.

4. Taking the top spot in the App Store is no big deal especially for free apps. There's been some incredibly stupid and pointless apps that have shared that position. Quick. Stop the press. The Talking Ted app is now number 1. Is there something profound to be said about humanity because of that ?

5. This is my favourite. Apple contributed the WebKit DOM inspector that Chrome has been using. And the new one in Safari now is much more "developer friendly" than Chrome.

Regarding point one, if I understand correctly the author means that since most apps open in their own web view rather then opening safari directly the fact that chrome can't be integrated is less of a problem.

The browser is not redundant, as people start it when they want to browse to some random page.

For me I don't agree, I open safari from apps all the time, so lack of integration pretty much guarantees that I won't be using chrome.

BrowserChanger by Ryan Petrich solves that last problem.

I'm assuming Hacker News readers are jailbroken.

Why should they be? I used to jailbreak, but Apple added almost every feature I needed and now it takes JBers 3-6 months to jailbreak the latest iOS, so I don't bother with jailbreak anymore and install iOS 6 the minute it comes out (and profit).

Well, I think it's more reasons than just new features. It's the very idea of escaping the walled garden. You can disable the killswitch, you can install any tweak you please, or even develop your own. You don't even have a filesystem explorer unless you jailbreak, or a console.

The jailbreak tweaks are usually better than Apple's own implementations too, even from the beginning. Backgrounder is far more powerful than built in backgrounding. LockInfo is extensible and beautiful. Winterboard (and originally Summerboard) allow far greater control over theming than Apple allows. A quick settings pane like SBSettings, incredibly useful, and been there for years.

I can't imagine being without a jailbreak. My iPod Touch would be useless to me without.

Sorry if my poor phrasing made you to write this long response :) I almost completely agree with you, and what I wanted to say was "There's no inherent reason why all HN users should be jaibroken. Sure, they should know why it's probably good and how you can jailbreak you iDevice, but it doesn't mean they should all be jailbroken just for the heck of it".

And thanks for reminding (and torturing) me about SBSettings. Actually, that's the only thing I miss terribly from my JB days...

I don't jailbreak/root anymore. If I've hit a point where $device isn't useful to me without fighting against the shipped OS, it's failed me and I'd rather find something more agreeable to my uses.

> Especially when benchmarks today show Chrome to be pretty slow

Do you mean Chrome on iOS or desktop? Which benchmarks are showing Chrome to be pretty slow?

For iOS where Safari is 4x faster:

http://www.buzzfeed.com/jwherrman/the-problem-with-chrome-fo...

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