I’m breaking up with Chrome.
If you’re using Google’s Chrome on macOS, believe it or not, the chances are you’re not doing yourself any favours…
Most, if not all of us are aware of the popular web browser called Google Chrome. Its one of those major, well-known popular web browsers out on the market that nearly everyone opts in to be their default. In fact, as of early 2020, Chrome for desktop computing has captured a whooping market share of 68%!
It definitely is a great and most-often non-default alternative that has an easy user interface, a reputation for speed and a decent library amount of extensions to enhance your browsing experience.
For many years, Chrome has been my preferred web-browser of choice; immediately opting it in to be my default for all my browsing.
Its ease of use, smart allocation of resources (under the hood stuff), it’s lightweight and fast was said to be better than Apple’s Safari and Mozilla’s Firefox, the other popular contenders.
However, I reached a point, albeit a realisation, that as I continued to use Chrome, I found myself restless, a bit annoyed and in need of a refresh, that brought me be back on the web browser market …and for good reason.
Chrome is obsessed with too many things, and it comes at a price, a high price that I don’t necessarily want to pay. So here are my pain points:
- Its a drain on my battery which for the most part, isn’t a good thing because… you’re on battery = limited power = limited laptop run (read: on) time. Think web apps,
- It hogs my memory; Chrome gets too hungry too fast. It does this to ensure it maintains being fast by dumping data in the Ram rather than the hard drive (why? access to ram is faster). This is the sacrifice.
- Its extensions come at a (hidden) price, both real estate space (yes this matters) and contributing resource hogs — CPU & ram.
- Under load, which isn’t hard to do on actions such as research; it heats my MacBook up like it’s sunbathing in the Bahamas!
- There’s also a privacy concern and where Chrome is concerned, it mean’s I (the user) am the product, rather than the customer (due to Google’s structure and how it brings in revenue).
- Endless bloat — I’m a big advocate for working in clean, tidy, minimal workspaces which extends to digital, having that minimal desktop calls on a sense of creativity. Chrome got bloated with extension after extension.
On that last point, while I could simply go through and cull the extensions with having Chrome on a diet, it wasn’t going to solve that want for a refresh.
So with those first-world computing problems, I was back on the market. Fortunately, the market search was short lived as I didn’t have to spend much time shopping around or that is to say look very far.
Because I am invested (read: chained) to the Apple ecosystem, I thought I would revisit Apple’s web browser Safari considering improvements to the browser was inevitable if it was going to still be around.
I decided to go with Safari and here’s why I think you should too if you are using macOS.
If it isn’t obvious already, Safari works really well (better in fact) in the Mac environment (makes sense right). Safari just works seamlessly across all Apple devices; the iPhone, iPad and the Apple TV thanks to the apple ecosystem features; Airplay and the iCloud. It’s great for keeping passwords, history, browsing tabs and _saved_ reading lists ensuring they are always up to date, no matter the device.
Paying for things online with Apple Pay off my iPhone is another great advantage, attracting an easier yet secure way of paying. And, like most of you, my iPhone is always with me, no further than my mouse.
Privacy and security is an important and big fundamental for Safari — and I respect that. A great piece of mind in minimising any potential breach. Tick.
Safari improves the battery life compared with Chrome by 3–4 hours extra depending on usage which is massive and means I inherit those extra 4 hours without the need of plugging in. That in itself is a strong reason to hang the towel up on the ‘browser wars’ for Mac. Gotta love that battery life.
There’s another impact that Safari has left with me and it has to do with the simplicity of the design and user interface. I love the clean minimal interface which encourages me to not only work (read: browse) effectively and calmly (in an age full of demand and distractions), but enjoying the *user* experience (something I get a lot from using Apple products).
There is only one thing I’ve found that falls short in using Safari (so far), and it has to do with Youtube’s 4k resolutions. Unfortunately, any resolution higher than 1080 isn’t supported using Safari. This is because YouTube only encodes 4k videos with their proprietary VP9 codec, but the question should be raised why doesn’t Google serve industry-standard 4k video? After-all, Safari supports all international standards. Perhaps this is one valid reason to keeping Chrome aswell…
Chrome is a great web browser and while it has its place (i.e your preference), for the most part, focuses on speed yet Safari focuses on efficiency with improved battery life. It’s understandable if you’d rather have a faster web browsing experience: that’s all some users care about. But there are some very good reasons to focus on efficiency.
I will continue to hold onto Chrome as my secondary web-browser. If you must use Chrome, then I highly recommend using “The great suspender” extension that puts any inactive tabs to sleep which will in-turn free up resources.
If you are going to use Safari, or perhaps you already are, then the following are some great extensions found over on the Apple App Store: Safari Extensions.
My top 8 Safari extentions are;
- Turn off the lights — The webpage around the video are immediately dimmed once turned on,
- Dynamo — Increase video speed on all webpage video,
- Grammarly — Spell and grammar checker,
- PiPer — Picture-in-picture video,
- Adblock Plus — Block advertisements to increase page load speed,
- InstaSave — Alternative service to Pocket; save webpages for viewing later,
- Liner — Webpage highlighter,
- Dashlane — Password manager.
