Forgive me, Apple: I prefer Chrome to Safari

Because I worship at the altar of all things Apple'ish (my wife and I have two iPhones, a Macbook Pro laptop, an iMac desktop, an iPad, and Apple TV), sometimes my brief acquaintance with Catholicism as a kid leads me to confess to the Great God Apple when I feel that I've sinned.

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Dearly beloved lord of my cyberspace connections, praise be to your marvelous omniscience, which was manifested most recently in my life by a smooth upgrading to the Mountain Lion operating system on both of our Apple computers.

I am so happy that I converted from the Microsoft dark side. Back in those evil days every Windows upgrade was fraught with terror, since the horrendous Blue Screen of Death would regularly visit me.

But I am a flawed Apple devotee. 

It pains me to confess my transgressions, but I must. Forgive me, for I have sinned. After installing Mountain Lion, I finally made Safari my default browser, even though I've been happily using Chrome for quite a while.

I wanted so much to become purer, more faithful, a stronger Apple acolyte. I'd heard that Safari 6 had some cool new features. I figured that since Mountain Lion is an advance over Lion, Safari 6 would be better than Safari 5.

Perhaps the failing is in me.

Perhaps I lack the clear vision to behold Safari 6's superiority over Chrome and other browsers. Since you, my dear Apple, are so ascendent over other technology companies, it may well be that I am an ignorant fool who cannot discern how Safari is likewise the best browser.

Yet I must confess my sin honestly. 

I tried... oh, yes, I tried. For a couple of days. Then I backslid to Chrome again.

I didn't like the look of Safari. So gray. So blah. Chrome just seems lighter, brighter, more friendly. And Safari has never worked as well for me in TypePad's compose editor as Chrome does. Text in the editor looks too small in Safari. And scrolling in the compose editor is iffy; sometimes I couldn't scroll at all.

Plus, I couldn't find a way to easily transfer bookmarks from Chrome into Safari, whereas when I switched to Chrome a year or two ago, it was simple to import my Safari bookmarks. In general, Safari seems to be an Apple afterthought, a browser that could, but isn't. 

And yet... perhaps this confession has opened my heart to a deeper understanding of Safari.

I just Googled "Chrome vs. Safari Mountain Lion" in hopes of finding arguments to support my sinning, and found that users of Safari 6 in Mountain Lion are quite happy. See here, here, and here. They make some decent points.

Maybe I'll give Safari 6 another try. I can always use Chrome for TypePad blog posts, and Safari otherwise. Anyway, thanks for hearing my confession, Almighty Apple.

(Here's some previous confessions: "Firefox, forgive me. I'm in love with Chrome," and "Forgive me, Apple, for I am forsaking the iPad.")

Comments

[Robert Paul Howard]

Dear Brian,

Maybe you really do need to get over your childhood Catholicism.

Robert Paul Howard

[David Johnson]

I continue a love-hate relationship with both browsers. You might try Blog It for Safari extension:
http://everything.typepad.com/blog/2010/08/blog-it-for-safari.html

[Mort Persky]

Yes, Mr.Hines, I think you should get off your knees in front of the Apple gods and own up to the possibility that Chrome may be the better browser, and one that's always being improved on just as Apple and its acolytes claim for everything Apple.

Must everything Apple be better? Isn't Cupertino allowed to fall a notch short of perfection, as Apple certainly did when it sprang its first Lion on us, filled with little problems that required untold hours of reconnoitering, and trips to Apple Forums to find out how to paddle beyond whatever shoal had us stymied?

And before that was fully done, along came Mountain Lion a scant few months later, if I recall, in my eyes threatening much more paddling, so I've just held off, avoiding problems that might be caused by the "improvements."

I just can't believe Steve Jobs would have let the kids drive Lion out of the garage in that condition, much less bring along an OS with another oh-so-tough-animal name a seeming five minutes later. But maybe that's just me, and like you I think Chrome is the best browser out there.

Which is, I think, probably why Apple may have planned what happened (at least to me) as soon as I and a few thousand others downloaded Lion: my Chrome browser could not be made to keep working at all, much less flawlessly, and it took several weeks for Google to come up with a version that was compatible with Lion.

Just what are the edges Safari claims to have over Chrome, which is obviously my favorite too? All the best, Mr. Hines, and thanks for giving me a most interesting post to read on a Friday night. --Mort Persky in NYC

[Brian Hines]

Mort, since I got my 13 inch retina MacBook Pro I've gone back to Safari. So the Apple gods are happy with me. Here's some of the reasons:

Chrome isn't as well adapted as Safari to retina displays. Text in Chrome is decidedly grayer. I came across a post which showed enlarged fonts in both Chrome and Safari. Chrome uses thinner lines, so letters don't look as distinct. Once I noticed this, I wasn't happy using Chrome, as I read a lot online.

I also really like Safari's "eyeglass" feature -- can't remember what it's called; that's the icon on the very left of the bar, eyeglasses. It's an easy way for me to keep track of web pages I temporarily want to remember rather than bookmark. Chrome doesn't have anything like that.

The more I use Safari, the more I like it. I do prefer the look of Chrome, retina display drawback excluded. But Safari seems just as fast and reliable to me, if not more so.

[Mort Persky]

Thanks for the heads-up, Brian. Not sure if I'm gladder to hear Safari's better or sadder to hear that Chrome's falling behind. One thing about the Chrome team, though -- they're always at it, so Chrome is eternally a work in progress. Of course, the same thing has gotta be true of Safari.