How does that help when Safari is slow and is a memory hog?
If it was "slow" it would use up more CPU time to perform a task and use more battery power.
Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X
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Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X
#62Safari on Yosemite also shows power usage per tab which is great for identifying rogue websites.
Also... TIL that some sites take more power to render than a 1080p stream!
This also of reinforces the argument for installing an ad blocker -- less elements to process on each page means less power used. µBlock is particularly promising as it's very lightweight.
Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X
#63No surprises there, Apple controls both Safari and OS X. Microsoft has done the same thing with Edge on Windows 10. Does that mean I use Safari on my Mac or Edge on my Windows 10 machine? No.
All of the optimizations done to Safari are available for Chrome as well. They simply haven't done it.
Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X
#64Its seems the defacto standard is to assume the world runs osx, but windows still is the most installed os. Might be interesting to test the world popular browsers on the most popular os non?
Macbook pros are some of the best selling laptops out there. And this comparison really only makes sense on a laptop, as the power usage wouldn't have a noticeable impact on desktop.
Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X
#65Note that these tests were conducted on a MacBook – presumably running OS X. Apple invested a lot of time optimizing Safari and OS X for low power usage, so it's not exactly surprising that Safari wins in most cases. It would be very interesting the see a comparison with Windows and Linux (if possible on the same hardware).
Hasn't Don Melton discussed in a number of podcasts that Apple places a priority on energy efficiency? Battery life is a key selling point for Apple devices. Chrome's priorities have simply been different.
Yes, I believe this is the episode of Debug that you are thinking of: https://overcast.fm/+I_IAnJ5Y
(Couldn't find a link on imore)
Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X
#66Note that these tests were conducted on a MacBook – presumably running OS X. Apple invested a lot of time optimizing Safari and OS X for low power usage, so it's not exactly surprising that Safari wins in most cases. It would be very interesting the see a comparison with Windows and Linux (if possible on the same hardware).
Lots of other commenters have remarked about the lacking rigor and narrow scope of the tests. It would be interesting (and time consuming) to re-run this test with many more parameters: * Fresh install of OSX vs fresh install of Win8.1/Win10 on capable Macbook. (I'm unsure about Linux or other distros running on Macbooks, add that to the test if it's feasible.) * Javascript enabled and disabled. * Flash enabled and d…
Desktop PCs don't have battery concerns, certainly, but electricity still costs money, and if you can reduce the power usage of your computer by a significant amount, that can translate directly to saving money.
Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agree. My experience matches the test, but that's not surprising: I'm sure Office runs better on Windows, too...
There is nothing magic about Safari. People have been complaining for years, the only reason for Chrome to use that much more CPU is that they clearly don't care. Whether they're not telling OS X when they're idle and can sleep or they're using inefficient older APIs or what, Google needs to fix it.
There is quite a bit of magic that Safari is doing. One example is that it complies javascript down to byte code in LLVM.
Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X
#68No surprises there, Apple controls both Safari and OS X. Microsoft has done the same thing with Edge on Windows 10. Does that mean I use Safari on my Mac or Edge on my Windows 10 machine? No.
All of the optimizations done to Safari are available for Chrome as well. They simply haven't done it.
Yes, but when Mavericks launched the emphasis on power optimization features was new. There are also many performance compromises in Safari because of all the throttling.
Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X
#69I'm thinking of switching to Safari for most browsing, not so much because of battery, since I'm usually plugged in, but because Chrome is painfully slow to scroll on complex sites, especially on the Retina display -- while Safari is as smooth as butter. I would guess these issues are related, since Chrome is presumably doing a lot of unnecessary things (reflows?) with the CPU that could better be handled by the graphics system.
Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X
#70I believe it's actually worse on a 15" MacBook Pro which has a dedicated GPU along with the Intel GPU. Chrome seems to force using the dedicated GPU over the onboard even at app launch which I assume drains even more power.
https://gfx.io/ will let you lock it in onboard gpu mode. I only use the discrete card for games and video editing.