Chrome comes to iOS | Hacker News Reader

Chrome comes to iOS

arstechnica.com

63 pointsblinkingled16 comments

The iOS version of Chrome is a wrapper around a UIWebView. You get the Chrome UI and syncing, but not Chrome's out of process rendering or the V8 Javascript engine (not allowed by the App Store).

If only they would create a version with those features I'd be delighted to build it, sign it, and install it myself. Though I understand why they don't.

Compare the amount of effort it would take to create such a port against the number of users who would build, sign, and install it themselves.

And then re-do the process every three months when their provisioning profile expires.

I've had a couple apps that were dev-install only because they were banned from the app store. They didn't last long. The friction for keeping them on my phone was too high when compared with the benefit the app brought.

"What we don't know is if Chrome on iOS is still using the system-provided WebKit and JavaScript engine, or is using Google's own fork of WebKit and its V8 JavaScript engine."

It's definitely NOT using V8 or Google's fork of webkit.

This is still really cool though. I'm waiting for Internet Explorer for iOS now.

It also can't use iOS' JIT compiler nor can it be set as the default browser. The Chrome UI will need to be pretty excellent to compensate for those limitations.

For what it's worth, if you jailbreak you can change the default browser. Though having done that and used Atomic Browser for awhile as the default, I can say that the performance hit isn't compensated for by the nicer tabs, user agent switching etc.

> It also can't use iOS' JIT compiler

Last I heard this wasn't true as of iOS 5 I believe. They didn't initially open the JIT to UIWebView apps but they have by now.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong.

Nope. iOS 5 enabled the JIT for web apps saved to the home screen from Safari (which then open in a full-screen browser app), but not for third-party native apps that use UIWebView:

"One caveat, though, is that third-party apps that load webpages in a WebKit view still won't take advantage of Nitro's fast JIT execution."

http://arstechnica.com/apple/2011/06/ios-5-brings-nitro-spee...

That's why I hate where the industry is going. The modern mobile devices have so powerful hardware, yet are so limiting for doing any real hacking because of the so called "security concerns". The apps go through reviewing in the app stores anyway, which makes me think that restrictions come from the political/marketing considerations rather than worrying about security.

UI is gorgeous, shows how much Apple has been dropping the ball lately in their mobile browser design.

I really wish Apple would allow Nitro on UIWebViews. It's making an entire generation of apps that rely on UIWebView (like... Facebook) artificially slow.

I anticipate having strong feelings about this, but I haven't figured out what they are yet.

So the only real compelling reason to buy the Google tablet is being released on iOS. We knew it was coming, but I expected it to be staggered by six months or something at least. As a desktop Google Chrome user I am happy, but it is sure a puzzling move by Google.

sidenote: is the name of the browser 'Google Chrome', or 'Chrome'? Both are trademarked by Google.

As the other shave pointed out, it's just the Google Chrome UI wrapped around the iOS browser. I would hardy call that "the only real compelling reason to buy the Google tablet".

It's really quite interesting why Google would bother bringing this Mobile Safari theme to iOS.

Are they that afraid of being kicked off as the default search engine, after losing the position as the default maps provider? So much so, that they risk diluting the Chrome brand like this?

I think it has to do with helping to keep iOS users, who are numerous and often technical, inside the google service infrastructure by providing chrome syncing to their iPhone/iPad.

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