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Better Browser Than Safari For Mac

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Mac

Flexible privacy settings. Web trackers collect data about how you interact with a site. On the Mac OS X, the default browser is Safari, but there are a lot more browsers available for download, with more features than Safari. The following is a list of the Internet's best web browser for Mac. Another browser based on Mozilla Gecko, Camino is one of the oldest Mac OS X browsers.

Most Mac users are browsing the web using either the built-in Safari browser or they have installed Google's Chrome browser. Both browsers have their advantages. Each works well within their own Apple or Google ecosystem. Safari has some clear advantages when it comes to MacBook battery life and privacy. Chrome works better for Google Apps users and those that also have Android or Windows devices.

Check out Which Browser Is Better On Mac: Safari Or Chrome? at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.

Better browser than safari for macbook air
Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's compare Safari and Chrome and figure out which browser is best for the Mac. MacMost is brought to you thanks to its contributors. Join us and get exclusive content at macmost.com/patreon.So Safari is the builtin browser for your Mac. Often I see Mac users go right to Chrome and use that instead. They've heard that it's better, it's faster, that they should be using it instead of Safari. But is that true? Which browser is actually best for you.One of the primary factors is speed. So I did hundreds of comprehensive tests between Safari and Chrome to see which is fastest. No, just kidding! I didn't do any of that. I just looked at a lot of sites that did comparisons over the years. What I found is there is not really much difference. Some sites say Chrome is faster and some actually say Safari is faster. Most of them say they're pretty comparable in speed.Most people agree that Safari has the advantage in privacy. There are a lot of great privacy features and most of them stem from the fact that Apple isn't trying to advertise to you where Goggle is. Goggle makes some of its money through advertising so, of course, it has an interest in collecting information and using information to serve ads to you. Apple doesn't care about that. Safari works in the Apple ecosystem so it's using iCloud to sync things like your passwords, like your bookmarks, and if you're using iPhones, iPads, and Macs then all of that is pretty much automatically synced between your devices. You can even see what Safari tabs are open in other devices. So you can leave our Mac, go to your iPad and then jump right into a tab that you had opened on your Mac.Safari also has something called Reader View. It takes an article that you're viewing and gives it to you without distractions. So just the main text and images. It's great for reading news online. You don't see it in Chrome because of course Goggle has an interest in making sure you view the ads that are there. Rumors are that it's coming to Chrome soon but it's been in Safari since 2010.Safari's biggest advantage is specifically for MacBook users. If you have a Mac with a battery in it most experts agree that Safari is far better for conserving power. As a matter of fact you hear people complain online that their MacBook battery isn't lasting as long as they think it should. A lot of times it boils down to the fact that they're using Chrome and when they switch to Safari they find out their batter lasts a lot longer. Safari is really built for conserving battery power.So, of course, there's the thing that Safari is build for the Mac. It's built by Apple. It's going to be integrated well with the operating system, with iCloud, and the interface is going to be the most Mac-like. Plus, of course, Safari is built in so there's nothing you need to do to get it. Whereas Chrome you would have to download and install Chrome and it's another app you need to keep updated. For Mac users that want to keep it simple you can just use Safari. You've already got it.Chrome also has its advantages. Chrome syncs using the Goggle ecosystem. So this works really well if you're using android devices, tablets, and phones. It also works really well if you have Windows machines because there is no Safari for windows. But there is Chrome for Windows. You can sync your bookmarks from Mac to Windows by using Goggle Chrome. Goggle Chrome is probably the best browser to use if you're using Goggle Docs a lot. So using Goggle Docs, Goggle Sheets, you know all the Goggle apps, then you're probably not going to get a better experience than using them in Chrome. They work fine in Safari but Chrome is probably the winner. I know sometimes they have new features and those new features only work in Chrome since Goggle has control over both the browser and the apps. Chrome updates often. You can see here we're at version 74 currently. There always seems to be new versions of Chrome coming out and this can be good and bad. It's good because new features and fixit's appear quickly. But sometimes bugs can also be introduced. If you like browser extensions then you probably can't beat Chrome. There's a ton of them and it's easier for developers to distribute whereas Apple has tighter control. So this is both good and bad. There's a lot of junk in terms of extensions and Chrome apps and things like that. If you're a developer there are tons of tools for both Safari and Chrome. But Chrome probably has a lot more.Now I'm just looking at Safari and Chrome here because they're the two I see the most. But there are other options including Firefox as well. So my conclusion is that Safari is best in most situations on a Mac especially if you're using a MacBook because you're going to get better battery life if you're using Safari. Safari is also the clear winner if you're concerned about privacy and you want to stay in the Apple ecosystem using iCloud and using all Apple devices.Chrome is the winner in a couple situations. One is if you happen to have an android phone and you use a Mac computer. In that case Chrome will allow you to sync up your browsing between your devices. Also if you use Goggle apps a lot then Chrome is the better solution for using those. A lot of times I will go and use Chrome when I know I have to work for awhile in Goggle Docs or Goggle Sheets. But there's no reason why you can't have both browsers. So a reasonable solution for a lot of people is to use Safari for most things and switch to Chrome for certain situations.
Related Subjects: Safari (107 videos)
Related Video Tutorials: Using the Dock As an Alternative To Browser Bookmarks ― Column Browser and iTunes Remote Return To macOS

Will we ever be able to live with just one web browser on our Macs? It seems unlikely for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, no one browser works with all sites. What chokes in Safari might render properly in Firefox. And Opera or iCab might handle what fails in the other browsers. Although web standards are more closely adhered to than in the past, we all know the 'try it in another browser' routine.

With the arrival of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Safari 2, I thought I could finally settle in with one browser. With version 2, Safari reclaimed the speed advantage that it had lost to Firefox in OS X 10.3.x, and I was hooked on Safari's new RSS integration.

Firefox

But the occasional site incompatibility and web development work would bring up the need to use an alternate browser. Most of the time, Firefox would fill that need.

Firefox's Gecko rendering engine is widely compatible, and this open source, standards-based browser is remarkably consistent across all major platforms (Mac, Windows, and Linux). It's the second most popular browser on the Web and gaining in market share all the time.

The only problem is that Firefox is not very Mac-like, even with the 'enhanced Mac OS X support' in version 1.5. In the interest of platform portability, Firefox includes a lot of its own libraries designed compile easily on multiple operating systems.

This means that Firefox doesn't have the OS X look and feel that Mac-only apps have. Aesthetically, it feels more like a Windows or Linux app ported over to the Mac.

Since it doesn't tap into OS X's native interface element widgets, it has to load its own. This makes Firefox more resource intensive than other Mac browsers.

Mac

Camino

But the Gecko environment is available in a native Mac OS X app, in the form of the wonderful and often-neglected Camino browser. [Camino was updated to version 2.1.2 in March 2012 and is now dormant – yet it is compatible through OS X 10.9 Mavericks.]

I was a big fan of this project (originally known as Chimera) in the pre-Safari days. The original goal was one that the Firefox team took and ran with – to take the browser component out of the large Netscape/Mozilla suites and create a lean, fast, next generation Gecko-based browser.

Before January 2003, Camino was far and away the fastest browser on the Mac. Even after Safari shipped, Camino had more features. Tabbed browsing, for instance, didn't appear in Safari for a couple of months after its 1.0 release.

With Safari and Firefox providing stiff competition, Camino lay dormant for a long while. But as time went by and a small faction of users began to complain about Firefox's lack of optimization for the Mac platform, the project came back to life. Not too long ago, I decided to download the latest nightly build of Camino to see how it's doing these days.

Better Than Firefox

Suffice to say, I was very impressed. This is the Mac browser that Firefox could easily be. In my experience on a 1 GHz PowerBook G4, Camino blows the doors off Firefox 1.5 in rendering speed and overall interface snappiness.

Browsers Better Than Chrome

Being built as a native Cocoa app, Camino takes full advantage of being a full-fledged Mac app. Interface elements and widgets look beautiful and familiar. It also demands less of your CPU and RAM than its more popular cousin.

Better Than Safari

Beyond that, the sheer performance of the Gecko engine really shines. Although a few months ago I didn't think anything could top Safari 2's speed on my Mac, to my eyes Camino now has a nice edge in the speed department. Your mileage may vary, but it can't be argued that Camino does what it does very well and very fast.

The development team isn't content to simply make a Mac-ified Firefox. Some of the best features of Safari have been incorporated, including the ability to reset the app and empty the cache from the Camino menu. There's also a nice implementation of Safari's bookmark manager/history browser.

Unique Features

Camino keeps a 'Top 10 most visited sites' list in 'Show History' that I have found to be really neat. We all have a pretty good idea of what sites we visit most often, but nothing beats actual statistics.

Some features that Camino shares with Firefox that Safari doesn't have include a more flexible popup blocker. You can specify which sites can allow popups while blocking them at all other sites. Safari simply lets you turn popup blocking on or off.

Missing Features

One Firefox feature sorely missed in Camino is extensions. The multitude of extensions for Firefox and other Mozilla-based browsers provides an amazing amount of browser customization.

However, some of the best of these extensions have been wrapped into CamiTools,* which adds a new pane to Camino's preferences window. Among its many features, CamiTools takes care of two things I miss most from Firefox's extensions – ad blocking and adding additional sites to the website search box (in addition to the standard Google search).

Now if someone could port the Web Developer Toolbar to Camino, I'd be in heaven.

Better Browser Than Safari For Mac Catalina

If you'd like a change of pace – and perhaps a faster web browsing experience – go and get yourself a recent build of Camino. I'm enjoying it so much I've made it my default browser for now and gone back to Net News Wire Lite for my RSS needs.

Update Mac Browser Safari

* Camitools is incompatible with versions of Camino going back to at least 2008, so we have removed the link to it.

Macbook

Flexible privacy settings. Web trackers collect data about how you interact with a site. On the Mac OS X, the default browser is Safari, but there are a lot more browsers available for download, with more features than Safari. The following is a list of the Internet's best web browser for Mac. Another browser based on Mozilla Gecko, Camino is one of the oldest Mac OS X browsers.

Most Mac users are browsing the web using either the built-in Safari browser or they have installed Google's Chrome browser. Both browsers have their advantages. Each works well within their own Apple or Google ecosystem. Safari has some clear advantages when it comes to MacBook battery life and privacy. Chrome works better for Google Apps users and those that also have Android or Windows devices.

Check out Which Browser Is Better On Mac: Safari Or Chrome? at YouTube for closed captioning and more options.

Video Transcript: Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Let's compare Safari and Chrome and figure out which browser is best for the Mac. MacMost is brought to you thanks to its contributors. Join us and get exclusive content at macmost.com/patreon.So Safari is the builtin browser for your Mac. Often I see Mac users go right to Chrome and use that instead. They've heard that it's better, it's faster, that they should be using it instead of Safari. But is that true? Which browser is actually best for you.One of the primary factors is speed. So I did hundreds of comprehensive tests between Safari and Chrome to see which is fastest. No, just kidding! I didn't do any of that. I just looked at a lot of sites that did comparisons over the years. What I found is there is not really much difference. Some sites say Chrome is faster and some actually say Safari is faster. Most of them say they're pretty comparable in speed.Most people agree that Safari has the advantage in privacy. There are a lot of great privacy features and most of them stem from the fact that Apple isn't trying to advertise to you where Goggle is. Goggle makes some of its money through advertising so, of course, it has an interest in collecting information and using information to serve ads to you. Apple doesn't care about that. Safari works in the Apple ecosystem so it's using iCloud to sync things like your passwords, like your bookmarks, and if you're using iPhones, iPads, and Macs then all of that is pretty much automatically synced between your devices. You can even see what Safari tabs are open in other devices. So you can leave our Mac, go to your iPad and then jump right into a tab that you had opened on your Mac.Safari also has something called Reader View. It takes an article that you're viewing and gives it to you without distractions. So just the main text and images. It's great for reading news online. You don't see it in Chrome because of course Goggle has an interest in making sure you view the ads that are there. Rumors are that it's coming to Chrome soon but it's been in Safari since 2010.Safari's biggest advantage is specifically for MacBook users. If you have a Mac with a battery in it most experts agree that Safari is far better for conserving power. As a matter of fact you hear people complain online that their MacBook battery isn't lasting as long as they think it should. A lot of times it boils down to the fact that they're using Chrome and when they switch to Safari they find out their batter lasts a lot longer. Safari is really built for conserving battery power.So, of course, there's the thing that Safari is build for the Mac. It's built by Apple. It's going to be integrated well with the operating system, with iCloud, and the interface is going to be the most Mac-like. Plus, of course, Safari is built in so there's nothing you need to do to get it. Whereas Chrome you would have to download and install Chrome and it's another app you need to keep updated. For Mac users that want to keep it simple you can just use Safari. You've already got it.Chrome also has its advantages. Chrome syncs using the Goggle ecosystem. So this works really well if you're using android devices, tablets, and phones. It also works really well if you have Windows machines because there is no Safari for windows. But there is Chrome for Windows. You can sync your bookmarks from Mac to Windows by using Goggle Chrome. Goggle Chrome is probably the best browser to use if you're using Goggle Docs a lot. So using Goggle Docs, Goggle Sheets, you know all the Goggle apps, then you're probably not going to get a better experience than using them in Chrome. They work fine in Safari but Chrome is probably the winner. I know sometimes they have new features and those new features only work in Chrome since Goggle has control over both the browser and the apps. Chrome updates often. You can see here we're at version 74 currently. There always seems to be new versions of Chrome coming out and this can be good and bad. It's good because new features and fixit's appear quickly. But sometimes bugs can also be introduced. If you like browser extensions then you probably can't beat Chrome. There's a ton of them and it's easier for developers to distribute whereas Apple has tighter control. So this is both good and bad. There's a lot of junk in terms of extensions and Chrome apps and things like that. If you're a developer there are tons of tools for both Safari and Chrome. But Chrome probably has a lot more.Now I'm just looking at Safari and Chrome here because they're the two I see the most. But there are other options including Firefox as well. So my conclusion is that Safari is best in most situations on a Mac especially if you're using a MacBook because you're going to get better battery life if you're using Safari. Safari is also the clear winner if you're concerned about privacy and you want to stay in the Apple ecosystem using iCloud and using all Apple devices.Chrome is the winner in a couple situations. One is if you happen to have an android phone and you use a Mac computer. In that case Chrome will allow you to sync up your browsing between your devices. Also if you use Goggle apps a lot then Chrome is the better solution for using those. A lot of times I will go and use Chrome when I know I have to work for awhile in Goggle Docs or Goggle Sheets. But there's no reason why you can't have both browsers. So a reasonable solution for a lot of people is to use Safari for most things and switch to Chrome for certain situations.
Related Subjects: Safari (107 videos)
Related Video Tutorials: Using the Dock As an Alternative To Browser Bookmarks ― Column Browser and iTunes Remote Return To macOS

Will we ever be able to live with just one web browser on our Macs? It seems unlikely for a number of reasons.

First and foremost, no one browser works with all sites. What chokes in Safari might render properly in Firefox. And Opera or iCab might handle what fails in the other browsers. Although web standards are more closely adhered to than in the past, we all know the 'try it in another browser' routine.

With the arrival of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger and Safari 2, I thought I could finally settle in with one browser. With version 2, Safari reclaimed the speed advantage that it had lost to Firefox in OS X 10.3.x, and I was hooked on Safari's new RSS integration.

Firefox

But the occasional site incompatibility and web development work would bring up the need to use an alternate browser. Most of the time, Firefox would fill that need.

Firefox's Gecko rendering engine is widely compatible, and this open source, standards-based browser is remarkably consistent across all major platforms (Mac, Windows, and Linux). It's the second most popular browser on the Web and gaining in market share all the time.

The only problem is that Firefox is not very Mac-like, even with the 'enhanced Mac OS X support' in version 1.5. In the interest of platform portability, Firefox includes a lot of its own libraries designed compile easily on multiple operating systems.

This means that Firefox doesn't have the OS X look and feel that Mac-only apps have. Aesthetically, it feels more like a Windows or Linux app ported over to the Mac.

Since it doesn't tap into OS X's native interface element widgets, it has to load its own. This makes Firefox more resource intensive than other Mac browsers.

Camino

But the Gecko environment is available in a native Mac OS X app, in the form of the wonderful and often-neglected Camino browser. [Camino was updated to version 2.1.2 in March 2012 and is now dormant – yet it is compatible through OS X 10.9 Mavericks.]

I was a big fan of this project (originally known as Chimera) in the pre-Safari days. The original goal was one that the Firefox team took and ran with – to take the browser component out of the large Netscape/Mozilla suites and create a lean, fast, next generation Gecko-based browser.

Before January 2003, Camino was far and away the fastest browser on the Mac. Even after Safari shipped, Camino had more features. Tabbed browsing, for instance, didn't appear in Safari for a couple of months after its 1.0 release.

With Safari and Firefox providing stiff competition, Camino lay dormant for a long while. But as time went by and a small faction of users began to complain about Firefox's lack of optimization for the Mac platform, the project came back to life. Not too long ago, I decided to download the latest nightly build of Camino to see how it's doing these days.

Better Than Firefox

Suffice to say, I was very impressed. This is the Mac browser that Firefox could easily be. In my experience on a 1 GHz PowerBook G4, Camino blows the doors off Firefox 1.5 in rendering speed and overall interface snappiness.

Browsers Better Than Chrome

Being built as a native Cocoa app, Camino takes full advantage of being a full-fledged Mac app. Interface elements and widgets look beautiful and familiar. It also demands less of your CPU and RAM than its more popular cousin.

Better Than Safari

Beyond that, the sheer performance of the Gecko engine really shines. Although a few months ago I didn't think anything could top Safari 2's speed on my Mac, to my eyes Camino now has a nice edge in the speed department. Your mileage may vary, but it can't be argued that Camino does what it does very well and very fast.

The development team isn't content to simply make a Mac-ified Firefox. Some of the best features of Safari have been incorporated, including the ability to reset the app and empty the cache from the Camino menu. There's also a nice implementation of Safari's bookmark manager/history browser.

Unique Features

Camino keeps a 'Top 10 most visited sites' list in 'Show History' that I have found to be really neat. We all have a pretty good idea of what sites we visit most often, but nothing beats actual statistics.

Some features that Camino shares with Firefox that Safari doesn't have include a more flexible popup blocker. You can specify which sites can allow popups while blocking them at all other sites. Safari simply lets you turn popup blocking on or off.

Missing Features

One Firefox feature sorely missed in Camino is extensions. The multitude of extensions for Firefox and other Mozilla-based browsers provides an amazing amount of browser customization.

However, some of the best of these extensions have been wrapped into CamiTools,* which adds a new pane to Camino's preferences window. Among its many features, CamiTools takes care of two things I miss most from Firefox's extensions – ad blocking and adding additional sites to the website search box (in addition to the standard Google search).

Now if someone could port the Web Developer Toolbar to Camino, I'd be in heaven.

Better Browser Than Safari For Mac Catalina

If you'd like a change of pace – and perhaps a faster web browsing experience – go and get yourself a recent build of Camino. I'm enjoying it so much I've made it my default browser for now and gone back to Net News Wire Lite for my RSS needs.

Update Mac Browser Safari

* Camitools is incompatible with versions of Camino going back to at least 2008, so we have removed the link to it.

Keywords: #camino #caminobrowser

Short link: http://goo.gl/fcKade

Better Browser Than Safari For Mac Pro

searchword: caminobrowser





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