Safari vs Chrome – will Handoff make you switch?
The author has switched primary browsers multiple times over the years, moving from Internet Explorer to Netscape, Safari, Firefox, back to Safari, and finally to Chrome, where he has remained comfortably for over 5 years. He notes that browser choice has become less critical in terms of stability and features, making the decision primarily one of personal preference.
The author settled on Chrome because it offered features others lacked at the time and he appreciated its user interface. Switching browsers requires significant effort due to password management, cookies, and developing new muscle memory with the UI, so a compelling reason is needed to justify the change.
iOS 8 and OS X 10.10 Yosemite introduced Continuity and Handoff features, which the author found "truly amazing" for mail and messages. He considered switching back to Safari to gain browser handoff capabilities but ultimately decided against it due to his strong preference for Chrome's interface design.
The critical difference, according to the author, involves tab placement and functionality. Chrome positions tabs above the address bar, which he finds "more usable and also logical." In contrast, Safari places tabs below the address bar. The author explains that since most browser interactions involve tabs, their positioning significantly affects efficiency.
Chrome's most important feature for his productivity is displaying favicons within tabs. This allows him to "scan tabs and without reading the tab title" identify target tabs quickly among many open tabs. Safari plugins attempting similar functionality provide inferior results because Safari's design doesn't accommodate them efficiently.
The ability to pin tabs in Chrome creates mini app-switchers for daily-use web applications on a secondary monitor, further enhancing productivity. The author states this feature makes "such a difference to my productivity I can't justify a switch back to Safari."
The author also criticizes Chrome on iOS, calling it "perhaps the worst user interface Google have ever created." Additionally, iOS doesn't allow setting a default browser, limiting handoff functionality with Chrome.
He expresses sadness about not using handoff for browsers and proposes that "someone creates a handoff translator app — a tool that fools the OS into making my phone think my desktop Chrome is in fact Safari."
Update January 20, 2015: Chrome Canary (Version 42.0.2281.0 and above) supports handoff between Chrome on Mac and Safari on iOS.
Update April 24, 2015: Handoff in Chrome moved out of beta into the main Chrome app (Version 42.0), working "pretty flawlessly" with bluetooth enabled.