
Chrome for iOS - yottabyte47
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/chrome/id535886823?mt=8
======
bri3d
Chrome for iOS doesn't use V8 or the Chromium fork of WebKit, just UIWebView.
[0] Because it's using WebViews, it's about 3x slower than the OS's Safari
browser [1], because WebViews in sandboxed apps don't get the "Nitro"
JavaScript JIT from iOS 5 onwards (presumably for mark-executable security
reasons).

Unless the tab-sharing feature is crucial to more people than I thought, I
don't think this app is going to be a runaway hit.

0: <https://twitter.com/viviancromwell/status/218402587760795648> 1:
[https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/21843446275153920...](https://twitter.com/stroughtonsmith/status/218434462751539200)

~~~
moe
_feature is crucial_

A crucial feature for me would be password-manager support (lastpass,
1passwd). The (lack of) password management on the iPad is driving me nuts.
The half-baked external apps that let you copy/paste don't cut it for me. Nor
the awfully slow and constantly crashing "LastPass browser".

Does Chrome finally bring relief?

~~~
pooriaazimi
Hmm... I never thought of that.

Safari 6 added a new preferences panel for saved passwords. Unfortunately
there's not an equivalent iPad setting (just checked on iPad 2, iOS 6 beta 1),
but this might change between now and fall...

Maybe you should file a bug report?

~~~
moe
I didn't have much success with the bugs that I filed at apple over the past
years. They all went into a black hole, never received as much as a response.

The thing is that I don't want the iPad to just save passwords. It already
does that, although somewhat unreliably for me. I want it to use my existing,
_ginormous_ list of passwords stored in LastPass.

I don't even try anymore to do anything that requires a login on the iPad,
it's an exercise in frustration. Sometimes Safari remembers the password that
I painfully transcribed for a site, usually it doesn't.

It's such a blatant oversight for a device that is touted no least as "the
internet in your hands" that I keep wondering why I so rarely see other people
mention it.

~~~
damncabbage
_It's such a blatant oversight for a device that is touted no least as "the
internet in your hands" that I keep wondering why I so rarely see other people
mention it._

I was with you up until this last sentence. People who know what LastPass _is_
(let alone use it) are in a tiny minority.

Given how they treat the development community (hello Xcode nightmare), which
I'd wager is a much larger group, I don't think it's entirely surprising that
something like password manager support would be further down in the list of
priorities.

------
webwright
The bummer here for Google (and anyone else who'd like to provide an
alternative to Apple's apps on the iOS platform) is that there's no way to set
your default browser. Or email client. Or calendar. It'll be hard to use
chrome if Safari opens up every time I click a link in email or any other app.

~~~
cloudwalking
It is a bummer you can't make Chrome your default browser. However, if you
move Safari to a folder and put Chrome in your launch bar, Safari being
default won't bother you too much.

~~~
brntn
Until you click a link in an email or app.

------
srik
Thanks. Chrome doesn't show up on Appstore search. The Appstore could really
use an overhaul in my opinion.

~~~
swang
You have to search, "Google Chrome" and it's the last result (of 25).

At least when searching through App Store on the iPhone.

~~~
culturestate
As of now, it's #1 when searching for "Chrome."

------
mofle
Add this as a bookmark in Mobile Safari to be able to quickly open pages in
Chrome:

    
    
        javascript:location.protocol='googlechrome'

------
sirn
I have high hope for Chrome for iOS to be like the Google Search app[1] which
is simply fun to use. Instead, on an iPad, what we got is just a desktop UI
slab on top of touch interface… and seems to trash old tab faster than Mobile
Safari. It's kind of sad.

Edit: I was wrong about tab trashing, seems like old tab reloads when you come
back from Incognito mode.

[1]: [http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-
search/id284815942?mt=...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/google-
search/id284815942?mt=8)

------
mtgx
This could be a nice "trojan horse" into the iOS ecosystem. Get Apple users
hooked enough on Chrome, that they will want to switch to Android for the
"real Chrome experience". I know a lot of people are not using iPhones because
they can't live without the Gmail app for Android.

~~~
k-mcgrady
It's possible but I seriously doubt users would switch to Android because of a
browser. Especially when they've already spent a lot of money on iOS apps and
are familiar with the iOS ecosystem. I also doubt any mainstream user will
understand that Chrome on iOS is slower than it could be because of Apple's
rules.

~~~
azakai
> It's possible but I seriously doubt users would switch to Android because of
> a browser. [..] I also doubt any mainstream user will understand that Chrome
> on iOS is slower than it could be because of Apple's rules.

Yes, it seems more likely that the opposite of what GP said will happen: iOS
users will try Chrome, and seeing it is 3-4x slower than the default Safari,
will assume that Chrome would be slow on Android too - it has the exact same
name after all - so they'll stick with iOS.

------
danvk
Autocompletion in the omnibox is way more aggressive than in Safari. You
typically only need to type one or two characters to get to the sites you
visit most frequently. In a lot of cases, this will more than make up for any
JS performance differences between Chrome and Safari.

------
10dpd
Chrome now tops the iOS App Store charts

[http://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/topfreeapplications/limit=10/...](http://itunes.apple.com/us/rss/topfreeapplications/limit=10/xml)

------
zanny
On my 3gs Chrome is showing some significant slowdown over Safari, in JS, page
loads, and scrolling - all are delayed. The reasons have already been
explained, but it is still sad. The omnibar makes it worth it though, gosh I
have missed thee.

------
toddn
I'm excited to use this, but wow, the sign in flow for people using 2-factor
authentication is awful.

~~~
smackfu
It's bizarre. Why is a Google app using an application specific password
instead of your authentication code? The only reason an app should not use the
two factors is if it's some legacy protocol that only takes a single
userid/password pair. WTF.

------
JBiserkov
After a few hours of heavy usage:

-I had forgotten how AWESOME omnibox is. You can speak to it!!

-Safari habits die hard

-The only thing I'm missing is the 'Reader' feature.

~~~
e_proxus
The lack of an OmniBox is what disturbs me the most about Safari on iOS right
now. The most common use case being entering one of the boxes, realizing I
don't have the URL in my head and need to search (or vice versa). Also,
Chrome's OmniBox let's you search your history at the same time as you search
the web and enter URLs... priceless.

------
MarkMc
Several problems:

1\. Not very robust - it keeps forgetting the Google passwords I've typed in

2\. Why do I need to enter two Google passwords - my 'main' password AND an
application-specific password?

3\. Not very easy to use. For example, where's the option to see my browsing
history on Chrome for iPhone?

~~~
icarus_drowning
2\. Do you use 2-factor authentication? I do, and so I'm used to seeing this
on applications that don't fully support the 2-factor authentication, which
is, I assume why it was asking.

------
AlexMuir
"the item you tried to buy is no longer available."

That was brief.

------
yalooze
After using it for a while now it's made me realise there's a ton of features
I've been missing when using mobile Safari:

-New tab with Most Visited and Recently Closed -Google Sync for bookmarks but more importantly it instantly empowers my Omnibox -the keyboard has an extra character row at the top that includes hyphens (simple but nice) -Swipe between tabs -find in page -Open in new tab defaults to opening in the background (I've missed this a lot) -unlimited tabs

I realise some of these aren't unique to mobile Chrome but as far as I'm aware
they are missing from mobile Safari and they're the reasons I'll be sticking
with Chrome.

------
forbes
I love that it opens tabs behind, unlike Safari. Only thing I don't like is
the address bar using up too much room (not disappearing).

~~~
sgrytoyr
Yes, it’s very strange (and annoying) that it doesn’t disappear. With the
swipe-to-switch-tabs gesture, there’s even less reason to show it permanently
than in Mobile Safari.

------
thethimble
Can someone please explain Apple and Microsoft's insistence to push Safari and
IE respectively? It seems that they have little to gain.

In this case, why does Apple mandate the use of UIWebView instead of allowing
a native implementation of Webkit+V8? It just seems like Apple is being
stubborn as usual.

------
chris_engel
It doesnt have the reader feature that i like in safari. Fine, I thought -
lets get the readability bookmarklet.

Turns out Google Chrome doesn't support bookmarklets... What the hell, Google!

~~~
chris_engel
Just found out: the bookmarklet works if you manually copy and paste it into
the url bar, but not, if you selct it from the bookmarks list...

------
dvdhsu
Chrome doesn't support blocking of third party cookies. You either have them,
or you don't.

<http://db.tt/ldZUNuJo>

------
nathan_f77
If this lets me have my passwords and bookmarks on my iPhone, I'm definitely
saying goodbye to Xmarks and Lastpass.

------
draz
I downloaded it, and I like it. I wish they also had the swipe-to-right to see
the browsing history.

~~~
knes
This. Drive me nuts that I can swipe left & right on my mac touchpad but can't
on my iPad?! I don't want to tap those tiny arrows anymore :(

------
dewiz
finally a solution to open more than 10 tabs. I was quite excited to have a
way to open those 30+ news to read while traveling on the underground.... sad
news, when I switch tab the browser reload the page and lose the content...
wtf! back to safari :(

~~~
e_proxus
Safari does that all the time as well.

------
dewiz
just tried to install and it looks like the app has been removed? anyone that
could confirm?

~~~
dansingerman
Yes, just got "The item you tried to buy is no longer
available"...hmmmm...[https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-VzS7TgKtYRE/T-zQMcuxLXI/A...](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-VzS7TgKtYRE/T-zQMcuxLXI/AAAAAAAAAE0/BbZDTzExC-M/w497-h373/2012-06-28)

------
abcd_f
Can't imagine the amount of arm twisting that was involved in getting this
into the App Store. Must've really come down to the ultimate "No Google for
you" argument.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Eh, I doubt Apple would reject it. IIRC Mozilla already did something similar.

~~~
gcp
Care to explain?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
They did a similar tab sync app skinned like a different browser. Of course,
WebKit, not Gecko.

~~~
gcp
Do you mean this? <http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mobile/home/>

It doesn't even pretend to be a browser AFAIK.

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Yeah, Yahoo! Axis would be a better comparison.

------
adiM
How does it compare with Opera Mini browser?

~~~
rplnt
Not an answer, just an elaboration on differences: Apple doesn't allow
"duplicating functionality" or something along those lines and as other
comment already mentioned, Chrome is a stock browser with different UI. That's
also why there is no Opera Mobile on iOS. Opera Mini on the other hand
bypasses this rule by being application which shows already preprocessed web
(similar to Turbo function on Desktop or Mobile).

------
username3
Reopen closed tab? Google Chrome for iOS.

~~~
username3
Recently closed on New Tab page

------
jfhollingworth
Unless I'm mistaken Nitro is actually enabled as of iOS 5.

~~~
Synaesthesia
No, sorry it's not, for security reasons. Thus it probably won't be enabled in
the future either.

------
dakimov
Somewhy I could not find it with the search in the app store on iPad itself.

Just installed it. Sweet. Finally I've got the same browsing experience on my
iPad as on a desktop.

