Which browser is really the best for Mac?

Today, we spend hours and hours on the Internet, so it is important for us to have a good browsing experience. There is a good selection of browsers for all platforms now. So what one is best for the Mac? Which one is fastest and the easiest to use?

Now, you are all probably thinking “its Safari, duh.” Well let’s find out. Now, I have come to this conclusion from my personal preferences, so everyone’s browser of choice here will be different. My personal preferences are, speed of loading pages and simplicity.

So, how did I test all these browsers equally and fair? I used Peacekeeper, a browser benchmark. It tested you browsers JavaScript functionality. I tested Firefox, Chrome, Opera and Safari. So here are the results...

As you can see, Chrome is the fastest browser when it comes to JavaScript fuctionality. I was amazed on how much it out performed them by. But, is that my preference? Not really, I like chrome but I have found it crashes far too much for my liking. It just would not respond, I downloaded it twice and both times I had the same problems.  Sure, its simple and easy too use. But, I am not going to use something that I can’t rely on.

I had the same problems with Opera as well, actually it was worse. I found it was just not responding. So maybe I got a bad batch of Chrome and Opera? So, if you use either of those two, does it happen to you?

Safari is pre-installed on every Mac and I would say is one of the most popular browsers for Windows users. When I saw the results for Safari I was a little shocked. I thought it being the ‘official’ Mac browser it would out perform the competition by a large margin. One problem I have had with it is my flash player never seems to work; maybe it is because of Apple’s support for HTML5? Nevertheless, I really like Safari; it’s simple, elegant and easy to use. It’s like any Apple product, really.

Firefox came dead last in my benchmark run, by a lot. But, I found it didn’t crash once and it was very simple to use. So does that mean, slow and steady wins the race?

No, I would recommend all us Mac users stick with Safari, its made for our machines. Its like Internet Explorer for windows, except it works and it’s not painfully slow.  

If I have missed anything or you want to know more, please leave a comment and I will happily answer you question.

Review: Opera Mini 5 Beta for Android

Opera Mini 5 for Android is my most used app on my phone. It is a fantastic web browsing experience and I would take it over the Dolphin Browser. The one thing I do miss from the standard browser and Dolphin Browser is multi-touch. I really hope Opera decides to fix this! I also would like to see the option to make this the primary browser. It is pretty annoying to use the Google Search button and have it take you to the standard Android browser.

But overall, I give this browser a good 4.5/5. See you all in the next post.

Opera Mini 5: Android App Review

Personally, as a year long Android user I have to say that I am particularly amazed at how great the Android OS has come along in this past year. Wednesday morning, the company that has created the somewhat popular Opera browser have released their beta version of their new Opera Mini Browser for the Android OS. It has been known for quite some time how the default internet browser on android devices are lacking in substance. It would seem that Opera has stepped up and proven that their Opera Mini 5 Beta browser is a contestant amongst the few popular browsers on the Android OS such as the Dolphin Browser. Here is a video of my review of the Opera Mini 5 Browser for Android, hope you enjoy!

Opera for the iPhone -- Will it make it to the App Store?

Opera recently made a Blog post announcing that during the 2010 Mobile World Congress in Oslo in a few days, Opera will be showing off what they have planned for Opera Mini on the iPhone. Now, whether or not Apple will release it in the iTunes App Store is a completely different story. Opera may have plans to release it, but we'll see if Apple will deny it. They may come up with the Google voice excuse and saying that users already have safari, so why need Opera Mini? Honestly, I would hate for that to happen. I'm sure Opera put a lot of work into releasing a mobile web browsing application, so I hope Apple approves this.

I really can't wait for the app to be released, and let's hope Apple approves it, because after seeing only one picture I'm excited about what Opera Mini for the iPhone has to offer.