
Google Chrome already No. 1 among free iOS apps - mtgx
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1023_3-57463546-93/google-chrome-already-no-1-among-free-ios-apps/
======
rkudeshi
Just another data point: Opera Mini also hit #1 in every country when it was
released.[1]

Is anyone still using it?

[1] [http://www.gadgetsdna.com/opera-mini-goes-rampant-tops-
all-2...](http://www.gadgetsdna.com/opera-mini-goes-rampant-tops-all-22-app-
store-chart/2217/)

~~~
superasn
The difference for me at least is that I have replaced the default Safari icon
(in the dock bar) with Chrome.. something which I did not do with Opera. A
friend of mine did too as I noticed today. So it definitely has better chances
of sticking with at least the people I know.

(A little OT but right now the Chrome icon it looks ugly as hell. The black
just doesn't seem to mix well with green and blue for some reason)

~~~
myko
Yeah it's too bad the iOS guidelines don't allow for Chrome's traditional
icon. This seems like the best compromise they could come up with to maintain
their branding.

~~~
Xuzz
Something like this might have worked and fit inside the iOS frame:
[http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/132/3/1/chrome_11_flu...](http://fc06.deviantart.net/fs70/i/2011/132/3/1/chrome_11_flurry_icon_by_ibnadem-d3g5ucn.png)

~~~
te_chris
That's really nice, if you did that congratulations!

~~~
Xuzz
Just Googled for "square chrome icon" and copied a link to the first relevant
image I found, hah.

------
dhawalhs
I find the default browser on iPad very limiting. First of all you can only a
have limited number of tabs open and if you open more tabs it closes the
earliest opened tab. Another drawback is that you can't search from the
address bar. In fact, the pop-up keyboard hides the space bar key. I have been
spoiled by the Chrome omnibox.

~~~
sirn
> If you open more tabs it closes the earliest opened tab.

This is the case with Chrome for iOS too. At least on my original iPad, Chrome
trash the first tab after I open the 4th tab (tested this with Reddit front
page) where I can open up to the 9 tabs limit in Mobile Safari. I guess this
is just the original iPad showing its age. Things seems to works better on
iPhone 4, but my point is Chrome for iOS do trash tabs.

~~~
ajross
Really? I've never seen Chrome close a tab on the Galaxy Nexus. I've gotten it
up into the low teens on several occasions...

~~~
sirn
This is more likely an issue with Chrome for iOS and the first iPad than
Mobile Chrome as a whole though, as I don't get any trashing on my iPhone
either. I closed all apps in the background and it seems to be able to handle
a little bit more:

<http://cl.ly/2y0K0K2P0R0E1D1C3h0s>

------
f055
Which is ironic, because it really is just a webkit view, not even running the
latest js engine that native Safari has access to. In short, it's not very
good, this Chrome.

~~~
rryan
Well, there's more to Chrome than its pure rendering and JS speed you know?

Predictive prefetching makes sure Chrome already has the page data before you
finish typing. It can still beat Safari with tricks like this.

Chrome Sync syncs your profile (credentials, tabs, bookmarks, omnibox typing
model, etc.) across all your devices.

The user interface for managing tabs is also very slick.

Auto-update is gimped by the app store approval process, but at least you know
that the Chrome team takes security very seriously and will take the minimum
possible time to patch security flaws.

Those are some things that I would want over Mobile Safari.

~~~
Samuel_Michon
_"Predictive prefetching makes sure Chrome already has the page data before
you finish typing."_

As a website owner, I really hate that 'feature', it really screws up the exit
rate in my site stats (I don't run ads on my sites.)

~~~
joshuahedlund
I always assumed prefetching just grabbed html output... does it run
javascript too?

~~~
bzbarsky
Prefetching just grabs HTML.

Chrome also does prerendering in some cases, which runs JS, fetches
stylesheets, etc. The user may or may not ever see the result, of course.

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superasn
Hopefully this will force Apple to maybe think about giving users a choice of
setting default web browser as more and more people (like me) write to them
complaining about it.

Just like they denied Sparrow of push notifications at first but as more and
more users started pestering them about it, they finally had to give in.

~~~
Xuzz
Sparrow tried to position it like that, but that was not the real story: it
was not Apple "blocking" them, it was that they did not want to put in the
effort to setup a real push service, and instead wanted to run all the time on
the device (using battery) to maintain an open connection. Which, of course,
not having every app doing that is _exactly the problem_ that push
notifications, as implemented by Apple, were designed to solve.

~~~
thomasjoulin
Actually they don't want to access your email, so they can't run a push
notification service. And Apple Mail.app does the pulling thing, so allowing
to change default Internet app or Mail app would not cause a problem : another
app pulls, that's it

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binaryorganic
This won't be a win for customers until they can (1) set their preferred
browser and (2) work out the security implications of letting apps use Nitro.

~~~
jonny_eh
You could always do this as a temporary workaround:
<http://blog.jonabrams.com/post/26099585134/open-in-chrome>

~~~
biafra
Doesn't that break https-urls?

I use

javascript:location.protocol='googlechrome'

~~~
jonny_eh
Apparently not, using the protocol 'googlechromes' will open the page using
https.

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tvon
Well, let's see where it is in a week or a month, there are a lot of curiosity
installs here...

~~~
rkudeshi
Indeed. I downloaded it to try it out, and it is very interesting, but there's
no way I'm going to even think about really using it until I have the option
to set it as the default browser.

~~~
melvinmt
Why do you care if it's the default browser or not? Most of my browser
interactions are by intent (that's me pushing the Chrome app icon to get on
the internet) the other times when it defaults to Safari, I still get a decent
experience - nothing breaks.

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MikeCapone
iCab is currently my main browser on the iPad. I've installed Chrome and like
it so far, but I'm not sure if I'll stick with iCab or switch over yet..

I do wish that Apple would make Safari's javacript engine available to third
party browsers OR allow them to provide their own javascript engine. I don't
even care about the ability to open links from other apps with a third party;
just give it a level playing field when it comes to speed.

~~~
jrockway
It's a security thing. Making a dynamic language (or even a static language)
perform well means that you have to generate machine code at runtime, because
much of the information required for optimization is only available then. But,
to run those instructions, you need a writable and executable page of memory.
The problem is that having writable and executable pages means that a poorly
written loop or string operation can also write code to memory and execute it.
So Apple made the decision to W^X (write xor execute) app memory that's not
their Safari app so that poorly-programmed apps don't leak user data or
compromise the OS. It also conveniently prevents apps from running code that
Apple didn't approve, which is probably what they really care about.

Anyway, Apple's business model seems to preclude neat software. Use Android or
a laptop if you want a good Chrome experience.

~~~
revelation
Do not pretend this is anything but political. The only way to get a page that
is both writable and executable is by specifically requesting one. So no, no
loops becoming sentient any time soon.

~~~
jrockway
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W%5EX>

~~~
fmap
What is your point? There are optimizations for dynamic languages which are
typically implemented as self modifying code (e.g. polymorphic inline caching)
and need writable and executable pages. Without this you could still create
writable pages, compile the code and then mark the pages read only and
executable. The performance penalty is negligible compared to not using a just
in time compiler at all.

On the other hand, with address space layout randomization this is almost
impossible to exploit. Furthermore, without ADSR and stack canaries you can
use return oriented programming to circumvent the lack of writable &
executable memory.

~~~
jrockway
The comment I replied to is nearly incomprehensible ("loops becoming
sentient"?), so I sent him over to Wikipedia to read about W^X.

I personally don't care what Apple does because I own no Apple products and
never intend to. Yes, you're right that Apple could allow executable pages
without much security loss. But remember, address space randomization and
canaries are all compile-time options, and they don't trust their developers
to enable those.

------
durga
Chrome is the best browser out there on laptops. Naturally a lot of people are
interested in trying it out on the iPhone.

The app store ranking is determined by number of downloads in the last 5-6
days. Since it just launched, a spike in downloads and a subsequent rise in
rankings is expected. Whether it stays on top in the coming weeks/months will
determine how it compares to other apps.

~~~
Karunamon
>Chrome is the best browser out there on laptops.

Only if you have as much memory as a desktop. Chrome is _painful_ to use on
anything with limited memory, even with very limited plugin use. (Roughly 20
megs per extension and 50 megs per tab).

I've had much better luck with Safari, even the Windows version. No lastpass
for Safari Windows though :(

------
khangtoh
Hopefully Chrome iOS gets to stick around for a little bit and soon get better
Safari for iOS. A little competition is always good.

------
currywurst
Amazing stamp of approval of the Chrome brand! I didn't realize that people
were so curious about another browser on iOS.

~~~
blorenz
I don't think this is much of a stamp of approval as it is curiosity. I
wouldn't read into this as signing-off from Safari but just to see what Chrome
offers.

~~~
rogerchucker
He/she said it's a stamp of approval of the Chrome brand - not the iOS app
itself. As a brand, Chrome dwarfs Safari and hence the high curiosity.

------
dewind
Does the Chrome browser use its own V8 JavaScript engine and WebKit? Or is it
sitting on top of Apple's UIWebView?

~~~
pgambling
It's still using Apple's UIWebView unfortunately.
<https://developers.google.com/chrome/mobile/docs/faq>

------
tnorthcutt
I was hoping Chrome would offer word wrapping when zoomed in like Android
does, but it doesn't.

~~~
dorianj
Chrome is using the UIWebView control (same as Safari, sans NitroJS), so I
don't know if that's even possible.

------
abjr
Why does Apple allow competing browsers in the App Store, but not competing
mail clients? For me the iPhone's mail app has terrible IMAP support, but
there aren't any other options.

~~~
rococo
Have you tried Sparrow? Phenomenal email app for iPhone and iPad soon as well.

~~~
abjr
Cool, thanks. Guess I haven't searched in a while. I know at one point there
were no competing mail apps ... just folder/organizer type apps.

------
cema
I think they run it on reputation, not on the actual quality of the
application. Users do not yet have enough experience to judge on the basis of
its actual performance.

------
ddon
Tried to use Google Docs and got this message: The browser you're using may
not support all features of the desktop version of Google Docs.

------
rogerchucker
I wonder what will happen if Google and a few other big hitters publicly
encourage people to jailbreak their iOS devices in order to get the best
experience (by avoiding Apple's lame restrictions).

Like suppose Larry Page goes up on stage at Google IO and saying "here's the
next version of Chrome for iOS and btw, we suggest you jailbreak you iPhone to
get the one with our awesome V8 engine".

I wonder if Apple can take any action against Google after that (other than
kicking out current Google apps).

~~~
cabalamat
> if Google and a few other big hitters publicly encourage people to jailbreak
> their iOS devices

Why would Google do that? They'd rather people use Android devices.

~~~
rogerchucker
I think Google realizes that iOS has a higher stickiness than Android

