When I first heard about Google Chrome a while back all I would hear is that it was better. I would ask people why and they would just say that it was better. So I decided to switch over from Safari to Chrome and I was pleasantly surprised. It was better, faster, cooler, and easier to use. So to help you I am going to convert you from a Safari user to a Chrome user by giving you my top four reasons to why you should switch.

Speed

Speed that was the first thing that I noticed with Chrome was that it opened faster than Safari. Not just that, but websites would load faster too from using the Google DNS servers. Also you can have the same amount of tabs open and have it load faster with Chrome than Safari. If you try Chrome you will see what I mean.

Syncing Bookmarks

For those of you who have a work computer and a home computer this is a great tool to use. It allows you to sync your bookmarks from one computer to another. So instead of having to manually copy your bookmarks from one computer to the other you can just sync your computer. You do this by going to Preferences, then to Personal Stuff, click on Set Up Sync, and login to your Google Account.

Customization

This was a very nice addition by Chrome, which is partly what set it apart from Safari. Chrome will allow you to choose from themes created by artists or generic themes that Google made. To do this you must go into Preferences, then to Personal Stuff, and go to the bottom where it says Get Themes. Having themes might not have any practical reasons, but being able to customize Chrome is just nice to have because you can customize it to your own style.

One Search Bar

For all of you people out there using Safari you might think that you like having a Google Search Bar and a Web Address Bar, but trust me once you get use to having one search bar you will never want to go back. It is great because it is a two in one search bar. For example you can type in “the real mac genius” on Chrome and it will search it in Google for you or you can type in “therealmacgenius.com” and it will bring you to our website. I can assure you after a week that you will be hooked on this.

Switching Over

Switching over is a breeze with Chrome because you can transfer your bookmarks from Safari to Chrome by clicking on Chrome and scrolling down to Import Bookmarks and Settings. Then to make everything else similar to your old Safari all you would have to do is go into Preferences under Chrome and switch things like what you want your main search engine to be or your homepage. Its obvious that Chrome is better because of its speed, syncing bookmarks, customization, and sweet search bar. Plus if you use it and don’t like it you can just delete it.

Stay connected at my new twitter handle to stay updated 24/7 @TRMGaveragejoes and @realmacgenius

What do you think? Let us know in the comment section.

First of all, let’s talk about Safari. What is Safari? Safari is a web browser. It is designed to remove the majority of distractions by having a browser frame that is a single pixel wide. The scroll bar appears only when needed. Safari works on iPad, iPhone, iPod touch, Mac, and PC. Safari Reader removes distractions such as ads and helps you focus on the online articles you want to read. Safari also has Private Browsing, which makes it so Safari does not remember information such as your history and cookies.

Now let’s talk about iTunes. What is iTunes? iTunes is a free application that runs on Mac and PC. It organized your music and movies into a library. iTunes can play your music, movies, videos, and TV shows on your Mac or PC. iTunes also has the iTunes Stores, a marketplace that sells music, videos, movies, and TV shows for you to download for a cheap price. iTunes also makes it easy to sync your music and videos onto your iPod, iPad, and iPhone. iTunes can also wirelessly sync your iTunes library to your Apple TV.

There have been rumors that iTunes is going to the Cloud with Safari. Apple may be preparing to merge Safari and iTunes. In December 2009, Apple bought the company Lala for $80 million. Using the technology from Lala, Apple will be able to incorporate iTunes into Safari and permanently make iTunes a web-only application that is exclusive to Safari. If this happens, Safari will most likely become a more popular web browser.

If iTunes goes to the cloud, there will be advantages and disadvantages. The advantage of iTunes going to the cloud is that you will be able to access your whole entire library from anywhere where you have access to the internet. The disadvantage of iTunes going to the cloud is that you won’t have access to your library from your computer alone. All the music, videos, movies, and other stuff that you purchased from the iTunes store would not be stored onto your computer if iTunes goes to the cloud. If iTunes were to shut down, all the money you put into buying the music and videos would go to waste.

What do you think? Is this a good idea or a bad idea?

[Image Source 1] [Image Source 2]

A standard browser is not optimal for these apps when you’re constantly using them. They take up browser space, don’t stay loaded when closed, and don’t appear in your dock. Fluid is not the first site specific browser (SSB), (Mozilla’s Prism has been around for a while) but it is the only one designed specifically for OS X.

Simply launch the app and give it the URL and a name for each app you want. The web page is saved in your Applications folder, and treated like any standard app- ready to bounce in your dock, open at login, and take your relationship beyond the ‘browsing’ level.

Fluid has the standard browser features with tabs and the like, but options to change the theme to ‘chromeless’ (hiding the browser bars all together) turns your web app into a true application. You can lock an app to the desktop, change transparency, and there are tons of plug-in options as well.

Fluid uses the sites Favicon by default, which is pretty worthless as its insanely blown-up and pixilated, but you can choose a custom option, and their library of icons online even enables notification badges for sites like Facebook and Gmail.

The ability to set default window sizes and automatically find high-res default icons would be nice touches, and I’m not positive exactly what value plug-ins could add, but it’s really hard to find complaints for Fluid. The simple SSB provides easy and uncluttered access to your constantly used websites (apps).

Check Fluid out here – and as always, if you have any alternatives, share the knowledge in the comments.

Search doesn’t solve everything; even Google instant can’t ensure you’ll always be able to find that skateboarding dog, and when you visit that genius mac blog 15 times a day the act of dragging your finger away from the trackpad to type the letter ‘t’ is a time suck. ‘Cmd-D’ has always been the solution, but that just adds to the mess of bookmarks lost and forgotten in folders on my toolbar.

Read It Later has been around for a while, but I never realized its abilities beyond storing interesting blog posts for reading on your next trip to the loo. I finally gave it a try (once my Google reader badge was an intimidating 1000+) and installed the 3^rd party browser extension Postponer. It enables you to name, tag, and store pages from a popup window within the address bar. The toolbar icon displays another popup window listing your recent articles where you can search, filter, and ‘mark as read’ your bookmarked sites – you can even read a plain text version of the site from right within the window.

Being able to add and name a bookmark without any right clicks, dragging and dropping, or keyboard shortcuts is good enough for me, but Read it Later provides much more. The tagging and instant search provide a perfect setup for creating shopping lists, managing project research, or grouping sites you visit consistently but not frequently enough to warrant a bookmark in your toolbar. When you stumble upon those new headphones you need to have, tag the URL ‘buy’, and then when you have time to do your online shopping, just search ‘buy’ and there’s your list. There’s a pro version with interesting analytics and auto-organizing features, and the mobile apps provide some sexy-interfaced reading functionality. If you want to get to your sites without digging through years of bookmarks, or if you want some more room in your browser window give it a try. Grab a browser extension here, if you have Chrome go for Postponer.

Similar tools like Instapaper exist; does anyone know how they measure up?

Don’t you want to watch your favorite YouTube videos on the go without having to wait for it to load the whole way? With a couple of easy steps and a few minutes you’ll have them on your iPhone in no time. The first step to this is launching Safari and opening up the YoutTube video that you want to download. Then (even if it is still loading) you go up to “Window” and scroll down to “Activity” and click on it. You will see a list of stuff that is helping to load the video, but the only one that you will need to click on is the largest file that should probably be in megabits you can select the file even if it is still loading, and to select the file press “alt” and left click. The video then will download into your “Downloads” and the last step is to drag bring it into iTunes. To do this you will need to download an application to convert the file to allow it to play on your iPhone or iPod. The application you will download is HandBrake. After you finish downloading HandBrake open it and select the “videoplayback” and click start. When the video is done converting name it and drag it into iTunes. The video should then be under “Movies” in iTunes and then after that just sync it up with your iPhone of iPod.

Are you ever at a website and it has a link to a different page and want to read it later? Usually, it opens the link in a new window in front of what you are currently reading. Frustrating I know. I have a little trick for you, but this only works with Safari. Launch the Terminal application (Applications>Utilities) and get ready to rock. You will need to type the command exactly as it is here (Note: To be a Real Mac Genius, type it) :

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

and of course if you want to undo type:

defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool false