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Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X

blog.getbatterybox.com

81–90 of 112 posts

Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X

#81
post #71

For a long time I have been trying to switch to Safari, but the UI just does not work for my use case. I really need tabs with site icons, and an address bar that goes side to side and does not auto center text. Are there any good alternatives to Safari that also use WebKit? Something that would be more efficient, but with a more traditional interface. To each his own, of course, but it would kill apple to make some…

I've also been wanting to switch but god, the Xcode inspired dev tools make me weep in comparison to Chrome's.

Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X

#82
post #78
post #71

For a long time I have been trying to switch to Safari, but the UI just does not work for my use case. I really need tabs with site icons, and an address bar that goes side to side and does not auto center text. Are there any good alternatives to Safari that also use WebKit? Something that would be more efficient, but with a more traditional interface. To each his own, of course, but it would kill apple to make some…

I like the UI, especially after they adopted Chrome's "don't resize the tabs when the mouse is in the tab bar and the user is closing tabs" feature. The only thing I really miss in Safari is searching websites using a prefix.

Give the OmniKey extension a look, for prefix searches

Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X

#83

I think it's important to highlight that these benefits aren't exclusive to Safari; they encompass all of WebKit on OS X. Unlike Google who has inexorably tied Blink to Chrome, Apple pours most of its efforts into WebKit itself. As such, any developer using WebKit, especially on OS X, gets these benefits. A great example is how each browser handles per-tab processes: with Chrome, this architecture is part of Chrome i…

Does that mean these findings should hold true for iOS as well?

Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X

#84

I think it's important to highlight that these benefits aren't exclusive to Safari; they encompass all of WebKit on OS X. Unlike Google who has inexorably tied Blink to Chrome, Apple pours most of its efforts into WebKit itself. As such, any developer using WebKit, especially on OS X, gets these benefits. A great example is how each browser handles per-tab processes: with Chrome, this architecture is part of Chrome i…

Does that mean these findings should hold true for iOS as well?

Every browser on iOS uses Webkit.

Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X

#85
post #45

Note 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.

Except battery life is really bad on Apple devices. Compared to Samsung at least (my Galaxy Note4 that has a 3-day battery life).

Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X

#86
post #71

For a long time I have been trying to switch to Safari, but the UI just does not work for my use case. I really need tabs with site icons, and an address bar that goes side to side and does not auto center text. Are there any good alternatives to Safari that also use WebKit? Something that would be more efficient, but with a more traditional interface. To each his own, of course, but it would kill apple to make some…

For me it's the other way round, i've been trying to use Firefox but the "pinch to zoom" feature in Safari is so smooth, and so crappy in Firefox, that i always keep coming back to Safari... If you read a lot of text on a Macbook, being able to zoom quickly and efficiently becomes a high priority. Things like this are much more important for me than energy-efficiency.

You may want to get a checkup from an optometrist. No joke. I think almost everyone is affected by age-related degeneration of their vision at some point or another.

Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X

#87

YouTube sends VP8 or VP9 videos to Chrome, whereas on Safari it uses h264, which can be decoded in hardware. That alone will have a huge difference in power associated with it.

Would be interesting to see the YT tests redone with add ons that force h264 for Firefox and Chrome.

Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X

#88
post #85
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Except battery life is really bad on Apple devices. Compared to Samsung at least (my Galaxy Note4 that has a 3-day battery life).

This is baloney, Apple has consistently delivered great battery life on laptops, phones, tablets and beats the Note 4 in several categories:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/8613/the-samsung-galaxy-note-4...

Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X

#89
post #4

I wonder how using ublock and umatrix affect battery life.

Ublock Origin I already use but I hadn't heard of umatrix, that looks like a very handy tool, thanks!

I just tried an experiment turning my various blockers off - I've got uBlock, Ghostery and Flashcontrol and had 26 tabs open with random stuff in Chrome. Doing nothing user cpu was about 4 point something percent with them off vs 1 point something with them on.

Re: Safari is more energy-efficient than Chrome and Firefox on OS X

#90

I think it's important to highlight that these benefits aren't exclusive to Safari; they encompass all of WebKit on OS X. Unlike Google who has inexorably tied Blink to Chrome, Apple pours most of its efforts into WebKit itself. As such, any developer using WebKit, especially on OS X, gets these benefits. A great example is how each browser handles per-tab processes: with Chrome, this architecture is part of Chrome i…

Does that mean these findings should hold true for iOS as well?

Yes. Safari is much more efficient on iOS
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