Chrome + Mac = Shiny Mac?

Touchdown! This is fantastic news!

Since first using it at work on a PC, I’ve been waiting for Chrome to be available on Macs for months, and it’s finally here. Oh, this is just great news.

Related posts:

• Google Chrome for Mac and Linux Finally Hits Beta; Very Fast, Pretty Stable [Downloads] (lifehacker.com)
• Web 2.0: Google’s Sergey Brin admits Chrome for Mac delays are disappointing (digital.venturebeat.com)

UPDATE! Well, it only took me five minutes at home before I realized that I was jumping the gun. Google Chrome is only supported on Leopard and later operating systems, making my MacBook with OS X insufficient. Kind of a bizarre move to close out so many possible users, right? Here’s what Andrew Heining of CSMonitor.com said about the move:

Most times when folks talk about the speed of computers, it’s Moore’s law – the theory that processor speeds double every two years. But this development has us pondering the speed of obsolescence. Has it really increased that much? (Or are our computers really that old?)

When it launched Chrome for Windows in October of 2008, Google stipulated that it supported anything Windows XP and newer. XP was released seven years before, in October of 2001. If that timetable is applied, Chrome for Mac should support OS 10.2 Jaguar, which came out in late-summer 2002. But Jaguar, Panther (October 2003), and Tiger (April 2005) have all been left out in the cold by Chrome.

It should be noted, however, that between Panther and Tiger, Apple undertook a significant change to its OS architecture, switching from PowerPC to Intel processors. Many applications, including Apple’s own OS, have dropped support for pre-Intel Macs. But that was over four years. With Chrome for Mac, even-handed Google is taking a new product and saying that to use it, users must have purchased new hardware or software in the last two years.