Daniel Hruska Apple Safari, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome and Opera have so far been the four main players in the field of web browsers for OS X. Maxthon version 1.0 has also recently appeared for download, but it is still more of a public beta. But let's remember what Chrome looked like during its debut on OS X in 2009.
Although this browser may be completely unknown to some Apple users, it has a decent user base of 130 million on Windows, Android and BlackBerry. It was also released in March of this year iPad version. So Chinese developers have some experience with Apple and its ecosystem. But will they be able to succeed in OS X, where Safari and Chrome are firmly in power?
Of the latter, Maxthon will probably be compared the most, as it is built on the open-source Chromium project. It looks almost identical to Chrome, behaves very similarly, and offers almost identical extension management. So far, however, their number in Maxthon Extension Center can count on the fingers of both hands.
Similar to Chrome, it offers support for video playback in standard formats without the need to install plugins. For example, without Adobe Flash Player installed on your Mac, you will not encounter any problem. All videos will play correctly, exactly as you would expect.
In terms of page rendering speed, the human eye does not recognize any major difference compared to Chrome 20 or Safari 6. In raw tests such as JavaScript Benchmark or Peacekeeper, it ranked bronze among the three, but the differences were by no means dizzying. I personally used Maxthon for three days and I have not a single negative word to say about its speed.
Cloud solutions are slowly starting to move the IT world, so even Maxthon can synchronize between devices. With five platforms supported, this is basically a must-have. Synchronization of bookmarks, panels and history can be done transparently by Safari and Chrome, so Maxthon must necessarily keep up. Under the square blue smiley in the upper right corner is the menu for logging into the Maxthon Passport account. After registration, you are assigned a nickname in numerical form, but luckily you can change it to something more human if you like.
Like Safari, I like the reader feature that can pull the text of an article and bring it to the foreground on a white "paper" (see image above). Maybe the graphic designers at Maxthon could think about the font used. After all, Times New Roman has far behind its successful years. It doesn't have to be Palatino as in Safari, there are certainly many other nice fonts. I appreciate the ability to switch to night mode. Sometimes, especially in the evening, a white glowing background is not the most pleasant experience.
Conclusion? Maxthon will surely find its fans… in time. It's certainly not a bad browser, but it still feels under-tuned. You can also make your own image, Maxthon is of course free and takes only a few seconds to download. Let's be surprised what they come up with in the next updates. For now, though, I'm going back to Chrome.
[button color=red link=http://dl.maxthon.com/mac/Maxthon-1.0.3.0.dmg target=""]Maxthon 1.0 - Free[/button]
What is Maxthon other than a Chrome and Safari hijacker?
Why robbed? Chromium is open-source, it has nothing to do with Safari.
Well, the point is that I make a Chromium clone, rewrite the name and Boom!, I have my own browser!
Wait a moment and see who uses Maxthon on Windows knows…
I'm happy with Maxthon on Windows, and Maxthon for OS X made me happy - I won't have to change browsers when switching to MAC :-)
chrome, safari, opera, that's Maxthon and I've been looking for that for a long time. Thanks
Well, considering that when Maxthon started, it was called MyIE2 - or a copy of Internet Explorer. Here it is a copy of Chrome. In other words, its developers like to "keep up" with the most popular browser in the world.
Now I showed it to 3 people and they all told me that it's Chrome. So, I guess.
And what about Safari... I have already seen the Reader Mode that Maxthon has somewhere.
It was not a copy of IE, but a significantly improved IE. People mainly used it for its advanced features. A change came with Maxthon 3, it was a simple browser (similar to Chrome), but the developers are trying to add the best features from Maxthon 2 quickly but sensibly and user-friendly. Maxthon for Mac is just the beginning.
Just to remind you, Maxthon was for example the first browser to support favorites/bookmarks synchronization (Maxthon 1.3 - year 2005!). And there are many other things that Maxthon brought before Chrome or any other browser…
I wonder though, (Maxthon as Samsung), if it is so awesome, why does it always copy the most successful product in its industry? :-)
I have the PC version and I'm more than satisfied :) I'll try it on the iPod as well