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All posts tagged "chrome"


Thursday, June 28, 2012

New MacBook Air Freezing Up? Try This...

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 01:45 AM

http://osxdaily.com/2012/06/27/new-...ly+(OS+X+Daily)

"We've discussed some pretty flattering attributes of the new MacBook Air lately, but here's one that's less than pleasant: a sizable amount of users are reporting the machine will completely freeze up seemingly out of nowhere, requiring a hard reset."

The culprit might be the Chrome browser, as that has been running when the freezing occurs. So the solution, if you want to keep running Chrome, appears to be to load the latest Chrome Canary build, which you can find here. Hopefully an update from Google will be coming soon.


Tuesday, December 27, 2011

Is Your Favorite Browser the Best Browser?

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 08:38 AM

http://mac.appstorm.net/general/opi...+(Mac+AppStorm)

"When you purchased your Mac, you probably wanted the best web browser offered, whether it be Chrome, Firefox, Opera, Safari, or some other worthy candidate. After all, quality hardware should also contain quality software. There has been much controversy on what truly is the best browser available for a Mac. Some say that Chrome is, and always will be, the best ever."

For me, I switch between Safari and Chrome. If I want to look at a site that has flash then it's Chrome. Otherwise pretty much going the Safari route due to the functionality it offers with OS X. Regardless, this article gives a pretty good run down on the positives and the negatives of a variety of browsers. Which browser is your browser?


Thursday, June 23, 2011

Flash? Yea, I Don't Miss It...

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 01:00 AM

http://smarterbits.org/post/6759653...onths-flashless

"It has been 7 months since I've followed John Gruber's advice and abandoned Adobe Flash. Put simply, the experience has positively affected almost every facet of using my computer. It's faster, cooler, runs longer and most importantly, it's infinitely less prone to infuriating me."

I pretty much have had the same experience, I don't miss Flash at all, and when I need to use it I just open up Chrome. My MacBook Air 11 inch certainly feels like it runs smoother and faster without dealing with Flash, and for the few times I need it, it is pretty simple to just switch to Chrome. Has anyone else out there gone "Flash-less", and if so, how has your experience been?


Monday, January 17, 2011

Google Removing H.264 Support in Chrome

Posted by Joe Johaneman in "The Competition" @ 07:00 AM

http://www.tuaw.com/2011/01/12/goog...port-in-chrome/

"In a move likened to converting the US from English to Esperanto, Google has announced that its web browser, Chrome, will be removing support for direct HTML5 playback of H.264 video in the coming months, in favor of Google's WebM media container (which leverages the VP8 video codec, also supported by Flash Player and used in the new Skype beta's multiparty video conferencing). This is a blow to the adoption of Apple's preferred video standard, as well as a hint that the Web may see some continued churn within the video format arena."

I was actually quite shocked, and to be honest, a tad annoyed, when Google made this annoucement. H.264 is, at this point, an industry standard. And while you may not think that it makes a huge difference on the consumer end, it does. Most devices that have built in video encoding or decoding use hardware specifically designed to use H.264. Anything else can be done in software, but that uses more processing power and is more likely to drain batteries. Even Android devices don't have hardware designed to speed up encoding/decoding of WebM. I also question Google's motives. They claim they want to only use open standards and yet they install the Adobe Flash player with every Google Chrome install. Last time I checked, Flash was proprietary. It's going to be a huge problem for Apple and other manufacturers, though, if Google decides that YouTube will no longer support H.264. It'll be interesting to see how this develops over the next few months.


Monday, November 15, 2010

1Password Updated to Work With Chrome

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 06:00 AM

http://thenextweb.com/apple/2010/11...ially-released/

"Let's face it, remembering passwords rots. If there is any single reason that people choose terrible passwords (or use the same password for everything) it's because remembering them is a royal pain."

I use 1Password all the time, and now it will work with Chrome. Update to v3.5 and it includes an extension for Chrome so you can get the same functionality if you tire of using Safari and prefer using Chrome. I like how they have done this version, as it gives you more information than the way it's done on Safari, but don't take my word for it. You can go to the Agile blog and read all about it.


Tuesday, November 9, 2010

Flying During the Holiday Season? It's Free WiFi Time Again From Google

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 03:00 AM

http://www.maclife.com/article/news..._your_stockings

"That's right, kiddies. Every year it's the most magical time of the year when all the good little boys and girls who have to travel during the holidays are rewarded with wide open WiFi, free of charge, from those jolly elves in Mountain View."

Free Wi-Fi from Google Chrome, from November 20th through January 2nd, 2011, but not only with Virgin America. This time they have added AirTran and Delta to the free Wi-Fi deal, via Gogo Inflight WiFi. You can find out more info at the Google blog, or go right to the source and read the details at the Free WiFi site.


Friday, November 5, 2010

Flash Drains the Battery, Costs You Two Hours of Your Battery Life

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Laptops" @ 11:00 AM

http://gigaom.com/apple/flash-sucki...(GigaOM:+Apple)

"Steve Jobs has repeatedly insisted that Flash is a resource-hog. A review of the 11-inch MacBook Air conducted by Ars Technica shows he's quite right. The new Air shows a drop in battery life with Flash installed, at a cost of around two hours of use."

Losing about a third of your battery life to Flash is annoying, but you can just install ClickToFlash and solve that problem. Or you can use this fix from Daring Fireball to avoid Flash issues. It appears a bit is needed to initially set it up but it does solve the problem of having Flash running in the background. How do you work around Flash, or do you?


Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Google Chrome for OS X now a "Stable Release"

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 12:01 PM

http://www.insanely-great.com/news....nely+Great+Mac)

"Company announced Tuesday that its Chrome browser for the OS X is now available as a stable release."

Let the downloads begin!


Wednesday, May 5, 2010

Google Chrome is on the Move

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 07:00 AM

http://www.cultofmac.com/chrome-bro...t=Google+Reader

"As Microsoft's Internet Explorer falls to just under 60 percent of the browser market, Google's Chrome has jumped ahead of Apple's Safari, indicates a new survey released Tuesday. Although Mozilla's Firefox took the largest percentage of the market lost by Microsoft, Google's Chrome took 6.7 percent, versus 2.5 percent for Apple's Safari."

In two years, dropping 20% is not a good sign. Now Chrome has pushed aside Safari and heading upwards towards Internet Explorer. They have a long way to go to catch up to the roughly 60% market share that IE has but they have fired a warning shot over the bow it appears based on the new data. Personally, I pretty much stick with Safari, mainly because of the MobileMe syncing of bookmarks over several machines.


Monday, February 15, 2010

Google Chrome Update

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 09:00 AM

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-2...subj=News-Apple

"Google released a new version of Chrome for Mac OS X on Thursday that restores a key feature, extensions, that had been missing for weeks."

According to Chrome programmer Mark Mentoval, "With this new version, you'll be able to install any of over 2,200 extensions (and counting!) currently available in Chrome's extensions gallery." This version also fixes some Adobe stability issues as well as including some new multitouch support. The new beta version should get some Firefox users to switch now that it has extensions I would imagine. You can download the latest beta version here, and if you currently are using Chrome, they expect an automatic update within the next few days. Still not sure? Check out the Macworld run through of the latest beta here.


Tuesday, January 5, 2010

Chrome Edges Safari in Browser Wars

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 12:00 PM

http://www.macobserver.com/tmo/arti..._browser_share/

"Apple's Safari Web browser lost its third place market share slot to Google Chrome in December 2009, ending a multi-year run as the third most popular Web browser according to data from Net Applications. Chrome's lead over Safari isn't by much with 4.63 percent of the market compared to Safari's 4.46 percent. If, however, Chrome can continue to outpace Safari's growth, it won't take long for that gap to widen."

The info was from Net Applications, and December 2009 is also the first month that Google has been available for Mac OS X. According to the survey this is only a rough estimate of the actual number of surfers, but even so, Chrome is on the fast track to really give Explorer a run for their money. What browser do you use? I'm still using Safari and am happy with it once I fixed the annoying Adobe Flash problem that was causing me to lock up frequently.


Wednesday, December 9, 2009

Google Chrome for Mac Beta Available Now

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 08:00 AM

http://www.macworld.com/article/144...l_mwnws_h_crawl

"As promised, the Google Chrome for Mac beta has just made it in under the wire for a 2009 release. Of course, it's still just a beta, not a first release-and, as we know, it's missing some features-but it's a step beyond what we've seen so far."

A little over a week ago we posted a report that said it was coming out soon, and now it has. Google Chrome for Mac Beta is now available for download. The download is 17.6MB and requires Mac OS X 10.5 or later as well as an Intel processor.


Tuesday, December 1, 2009

Google Chrome for Mac Soon?

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 07:00 AM

http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/2...ch+(TechCrunch)

"We know that a beta version of Chrome for Mac is due at least by the end of December, but today brings more confirmation that it may be even closer than that. Mike Pinkerton, the guy leading the Chrome for Mac team, has just tweeted out that there are only '8 remaining M4 Mac beta blockers! Go team!'"

Even better now, if you check out the status page it only shows 5 bugs remaining. So it appears that it is on track for the December, correction "early" December release that was talked about on the Google Groups page. Anyone out there going to switch and move to Chrome, or at least give it a try?


Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Google Updates Chrome for Mac, Still Not Beta Ready

Posted by Jeff Campbell in "Apple Software (OS X)" @ 12:00 PM

http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-1...subj=News-Apple

"Google released an update for Chrome to fix compatibility problems with Snow Leopard on Monday, which along with other fixes shows the gradually maturing state of the Mac OS X version of the browser."

I pretty much stick to Safari, although I did download Opera 10 to give it a try. The main reason for Safari for me is the integration with the iPhone and bookmarks. But if you are a Chrome user, brave soul that you are since its not out in even beta form yet, version 4.0.203.4 is now available to fix some minor problems with a garbled text bug when used with Snow Leopard. If you want to experiment with it, Google has more info on their Chrome page.


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