

Why I've switched from Chrome to Safari - timrogers
http://timrogers.co.uk/2014/02/09/why-ive-switched-from-chrome-to-safari/

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swang
Didn't syncing/sharing across devices a more recent thing? Not something that
came out of the box in 2008.

Chrome syncing was never a problem for me with iOS, I find it more annoying
that Google keeps changing the UI and I can't find/figure out how to view tabs
from other machines.

Safari visually looks much better, I don't know if Chrome's font problems
apply to MacOSX or if Apple is able to tailor Safari for MacOSX/iOS. Overall
scrolling feel the same for me.

The stuff he mentions as missing in Safari though are huge dealbreakers for me
to switch over. I use the "View as Desktop mode" in Chrome and I need
Developer Extensions

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j2kun
iOS user complains that Apple doesn't allow third parties to make better iOS
apps, and blames the third party.

Back inside the fence with you!

~~~
jinushaun
I also switched from Chrome to Safari for similar reasons to parent: Gmail is
lightning fast in Safari, compared to Chrome. In fact, gmail is unusably slow
in Chrome sometimes. This makes no sense to me, considering Google, Inc. runs
on MacBook Pros.

I eventually switched back to Chrome when it was fast on gmail again. (Because
Safari's UX is awful for people that understand right click) That's the
problem with chrome: frequent automatic updates offer you no quality
assurance.

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kevingoslar
Add to that the butter smooth scrolling of Safari on Retina displays.

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mrsteveman1
I tried this for a while. Before, I was using chrome on OS X and safari on
iOS, just tolerating the lack of bookmark sync. I switched to safari on OS X
because chrome was being slow, and images would suddenly stop loading. But
using safari full time made me run screaming in the other direction on all
platforms and I just switched back to chrome, I'm even using it 100% on iOS
now that I worked around the problems in the article.

Safari on OS X has so many annoying little behaviors that become a problem in
constant use. Things like accidentally closing a tab (or a whole window with
40 of them) and being unable to get them back without scrolling through
history, or the poor handling of the tab bar, forcing you to click the drop
down to get to the rest of them when there are too many to fit on screen at
once. One that constantly bit me: right click a selection and search with
google. In chrome it's in a new tab, in safari it blows away what you were
doing in the same tab.

I also found out TLS client certificates on a websocket cause the connection
to fail in Safari on OS X, it never authenticates and it shows up in a non-
obvious way. I lost a whole 2 days of dev time on that thinking I did
something wrong, only to notice it worked in chrome.

Safari was also crashing all the time, both in the middle of important things
like writing a few paragraphs in a text box (and having them vanish), but also
on stuff that is a major core function of the browser like typing in the URL
bar.

I do like iCloud Keychain but it still works on iOS because Chrome on OS X
puts passwords in the keychain and they get synced. It may not autofill in
chrome on iOS (edit: it does I just tried) but I haven't noticed, I only have
to enter passwords 1-2 times every few weeks, the rest of the time sessions
stick around.

Safari also made me realize I needed bookmark sync on iOS very badly, so I had
to get that feature back with Chrome.

The main problems in the article about chrome on iOS - lacking the fast JS
engine, and inability to set chrome as the default browser (which leads to
other problems) - were solved by jailbreaking and I'm absolutely pleased with
the result I'll never give it up now. My stuff still syncs (yay bookmarks!),
and chrome now handles all links from other apps and emails so I actually end
up using it instead of accidentally ending up in safari. And it does a lot of
little things better, like the reappearance behavior of the URL/tab bar during
scrolling, VERY nice. Plus chrome dev tools are low friction for me, while
safari again annoyed me to no end.

Something about google being a company whose developers spend a lot of time on
the web doing development, and dogfooding chrome in the process, has resulted
in Chrome being low friction in ways safari isn't.

~~~
kevingoslar
In Safari you can always press [Apple]-Z to undo the accidental closing of a
tab.

