Google Chrome for Mac is a Hack

Those who simply cannot wait for Google to release the official version of Chrome for Mac have the option now of checking out CodeWeavers’ free Chromium download, a proof of concept project to get Windows executables to be run as-if-natively on Intel-based Unix operating systems such as Linux and Mac OS X.

Sound like fun?

Those interested in previewing the Chromish experience on the Mac should understand, first, that it only works on Intel CPU architecture – no PowerPC – and has no auto-updater, so if you’re a security skeptic, forewarned is forearmed.

Chromium is built from the open source Chrome code base, however and CodeWeavers helpfully provide a tarball for the source code for those who like to get under a browser’s hood, but, there are still some fairly significant reasons to think hard about whether Google’s browser is for you, even if the official Mac version was on offer.

As presently built, Chrome’s “porn mode” – a feature that allows one to browse the Internet without passing identifying information to visited web pages – is not supported on sites such as Facebook, nor is Chrome capable of being used to collaborate via Google’s own Google Docs application, as an article Sunday at TechCrunch points out.

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So, if you’re just insatiably curious about what they’re up to down in Mountain View and you want to give Windows developers a leg up on marketing their wares to the Mac community, go get you some Chromium.

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