Chrome for iOS has been updated to 21.0.1180.82 and is now available in the App Store.  This version brings compatibility with the new iPhone 5, along with fixes for Gmail on iOS 6.  You can get the update via the App Store, or from the update prompt inside of Chrome.  Known issues are available on the Chrome support site. If you find a new issue, please let us know by filing a bug.

Putting aside the issue of Apple not allowing other browsers to bring their own engines to the table in iOS, there's more to a great browser than just its engine, and there are plenty of great browsers for the iPhone and iPad. Deciding which one is the best for you is a matter of taste, but we asked you last week which ones you thought were the best. Then we tallied your nominations and took a look at the top five iOS web browsers and put them to a vote. Now we're back to highlight the winner. More »

Safari may be the default browser for iOS, but it's far from the only one. There are plenty of great web browsers for the iPhone and iPad, and depending on the features you want—whether it's third-party plugins or tab syncing with your desktop, you have options. Last week we looked at the five best Android browsers, and this week we're going to look at the five best for iOS. More »

iOS: Google took the wraps off of Chrome for the iPhone and iPad today, complete with the omnibar that allows for instant searches, pre-fetching pages, and swipe gestures to manage and close tabs, all on your iPhone or iPad. More »

 

iOS/ChromeOS: If you've been waiting for offline document editing in Google Docs, wait no longer. Google announced offline editing at Google I/O today, and Google Drive, Google's Dropbox-like competitor, picked up native apps for iOS and Chrome OS which allow you to view and edit documents in full screen on your iPhone, iPad, or Chromebook. More »

Macquarie Equities Research released a report stating that Google’s Chrome browser might be coming to iOS device. The report does not state when it might arrive on the Apple’s app store, however, it states that  it could be as soon as Q2 of 2012 and if it doesn’t land on the app store by that time, it is definitely arriving by the end of this year.

As much as we would like to see the Chrome browser on iOS devices — iPhone, iPad, and iPod Touch, Apple doesn’t allow third party browser app to be set as a default app for the device which limits the usability of the app. For example, any links within an email, text messages will open on default browser (Safari) on any iOS devices.

Chrome browser on desktop is highly successful browser with about 18.57% of browser market share falling only slightly behind Mozilla Firefox. Google, also, recently released Chrome Beta for its own mobile operating system, Android. With the release of Chrome on iOS Google also might be able to get away with the huge chunk of money it spends on Apple for Google search on Safari browser. With Chrome browser, all the money that it will earn from the search, Google will be able to keep them with themselves.

However, we do not think Chrome for iOS will make it big for a simple reason that Apple does not allow third party apps to be set as default browser.

According to a note published by Macquarie Equities Research, Google is working on an iPhone and iPad version of its Chrome browser, slated for launch sometime this year.More »

Android: Previously mentioned browser tab-migrating SendTab now has an unofficial Android app, allowing you to easily send tabs from Chrome, Firefox, or Safari to your Android device and back again. While Android and Chrome users have Chrome to Phone, SendTab's service doesn't lock you into one browser or device and makes it easy to go between all your devices with just a few clicks or taps. More »

While the iPhone syncs with Safari and Internet Explorer, it can't grab bookmarks from Chrome or Firefox out of the box—and most versions of Android can't sync bookmarks with any browser. Here are a few ways to get your desktop bookmarks on your smartphone without any hassle. More »

Web/Chrome/Android/iOS: Springpad is a free service that allows you to save places, notes, itemsand more to your account for future reference. The service just got a lot more social with today's update: now you can connect Springpad to your Facebook account to automatically show you items that your friends like, places they visit, and more in case you want to save them to your account. More »

With its iPhones and iPads, Apple has led people toward a new way of operating digital devices that relies on direct manipulation of items with finger gestures, not a mouse and scroll bars. App icons are arrayed front and center, not buried deep in a file system or limited to a strip at the bottom of the screen.

iOS: iChromy stands out from the pack of iPad browsers in both looks and features. Built to resemble Chrome, it also offers tabbed browsing, an incognito window, and an omnibox (a shared box for typing in URLs and search terms).More »

iPhone: If you're traveling to a country that doesn't speak your language and you want to be able to communicate without dedicating most of your free time to learning the language, TripLingo can help. It's an iOS app that teaches you useful phrases you'll actually need when traveling, and you can learn different variations so you can speak formally, casually, or like one of the cool kids.<!-- %JUMP:More »% --> More »

Apple mobile iOS devices (iPads, iPhones, and iPod Touches) are used by 130 million people, but they present a huge blindspot to advertisers. All Apple mobile devices use the Safari browser, as do millions of Apple laptop and desktop computers. Safari blocks third-party cookies by default, which is good for privacy and good for consumers. But it is bad for advertisers who rely on browser cookie tracking to measure the effectiveness of their ads.

Marin Software, which offers a way to manage paid search advertising, conducted a study it provided to TechCrunch which shows that 80 percent of the time iOS devices don’t count paid-search conversions (i.e., clicks) because cookie-tracking is turned off. On the Mac, the undercounting occurs 50 percent of the time. All told, when you count all browsers, 38 percent of all paid-search clicks are not being counted.

Ten days ago Google discovered that apparently innocuous Android apps were in fact infested with “DroidDream” malware that included an Android rootkit, with the apparent intent of creating a smartphone botnet. It infected more than a quarter of a million devices before Google intervened. The thriller writer in me immediately began to wonder what would happen if black hats built a wildly popular game that doubled as a botnet beachhead. Imagine if Angry Birds was secretly the world’s biggest botnet: even without root access to its install base, those hypothetical black hats could grab private data from tens millions of people, and/or probably DDoS every wireless network in the developed world, especially if it ran as a background service with location access.

Most Desktop and Mobile Platforms: There's no shortage of digital comic book readers out there, but new service Graphic.ly stands apart: instead of downloading CBR files, you build up a library from their web store and sync it across all your devices. More »

The world's most graceful and simple solution for pushing links to your smartphone has just emerged. It's called Site to Phone, and it works for every major Web browser. Theoretically, it works for every smartphone OS, too; iOS, webOS, Android, Windows Phone 7, BlackBerry -- and maybe even Symbian.

Instead of requiring Chrome, or being restricted to just Android or iOS, this solution uses the most basic technologies ever: a JavaScript bookmarklet, and a website bookmark on your phone. It's so stupefyingly simple: the bookmarklet sends your current website to Site to Phone, and when you click the bookmark on your phone, you are redirected to that site. You put the Site to Phone bookmark on your phone's home screen, so it's always just one tap away.

If you don't want to use a bookmarklet, you can just visit the Site to Phone website and paste a link in -- once you save it, the link is immediately active on your phone. There is also a Chrome extension or Internet Explorer add-on, if you prefer.

It's hard to describe just how well it works; it's best if you just give it a go yourself. You don't even have to register: just visit Site to Phone, begin the process, and then type a unique URL into your phone. So, so easy.

Looking over the tech news today, you’d think Chrome OS is dead. Nevermind that it hasn’t even officially launched yet. Dead.

Early reviews for the Cr-48, the prototype device (which Google has no plans to officially release) running Chrome OS, have ranged from mediocre to poor. And Paul Buchheit, the man often credited with creating Gmail for Google back in the day, kicked up the firestorm this morning when he predicted that Chrome OS would be “killed” next year in favor of Android.

So that’s it, right? Not so fast.

Before I begin, remember that I’m the person who wrote perhaps one of the most scathing long reviews of the Cr-48 and the initial build of Chrome OS. Simply put: neither that device nor the OS are anywhere near where they need to be if Google wants to release these devices to the public. But we knew that would be the case. And Google had to as well. It’s a little bit odd just how many Cr-48s they’re sending out, but they really seem to believe that third-party developers will help solve some of their woes.

I don’t know about that. But I do know that at it’s core, Chrome OS remains a good idea. And it seems like one that ties directly to Google’s entire essence. If they put the resources necessary into it, and give it time, I do think it has a good chance to succeed.

Of course, both of those are pretty big “ifs”. One issue is that Google, like every other large tech company before it, seems to be spreading itself too thin. Despite some spin to the contrary, the company still essentially makes all of its money from one thing: search advertising. Other revenue sources are starting to emerge, but the actual potential of those businesses is still a bit cloudy — namely because there is a lot of competition in places like display advertising, local, and mobile.

Google may not win all of those spaces. Hell, they may not win any of them. That doesn’t mean they won’t be money-makers, but if they don’t win in the same way they’ve won search and search advertising, none of those businesses will be anywhere near the size of the core business. And that makes Google vulnerable.

But this concern isn’t stopping Google from pushing full stream ahead on dozens of projects ranging from books to self-driving cars. You could argue that all of that stuff is eventually in Google’s interest both from a product and business perspective, but no one, including Google, knows for sure. And because they’re dividing their awesome engineering talent between all of these various projects, they’re making it hard to nail any single project — such as Chrome OS.

My sense is that it’s becoming an empire divided. Sort of like Microsoft. There’s just too much going on, and too many people who aren’t on the same page — or even know what’s going on in other areas of the company. That doesn’t seem to be the case right now at the smaller tech companies like Facebook and Twitter. And perhaps that’s part of the reason why Google is losing talent to those places. Talent like Chrome OS’s chief architect.

But back to Chrome OS. While there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical, there’s also plenty of reason to believe in it. Again, fundamentally, it seems to be the closest product to what Google is at its core. That is, the web.

Android is not that. Android is a company Google smartly acquired when they realized that the mobile web was not going to be good enough, fast enough for the smartphone revolution. There needed to be native applications. It will probably go down as the smartest acquisition Google ever made.

But saying that Android will kill Chrome OS is myopic. Right now, apps are all the rage. But again, that’s because web technologies are not yet where they need to be. Apple found this out at first when they asked developers to create web apps and not native applications for the original iPhone. A year later, they had to open up native development. But the original idea was web apps.

And there’s a pretty solid chance that this will still be the future. The web governing bodies move too slowly, but they do move. And eventually mobile web apps should be on par with their native counterparts. And if that’s the case, developers will have a huge incentive to develop once for one unified platform, rather than three or four different ones.

We’ve already seen this happening on the web at large. Web apps are eating into traditional desktop apps for this very reason (along with others like ease of distribution, etc). Mobile is just a newer and different beast. One that has to be tamed natively first.

It seems as if all of this is cyclical. Native apps are the rage on mobile now. Walled gardens are hot because they make it easier to nail user experience — especially on the limited dimensions that mobile devices offer. But open will come charging back. I don’t know when. But I know it will.

And that’s likely to be the web. Again.

And the web is Chrome OS. In following up on his earlier post, Buchheit noted his surprise that an OS with roughly “zero users” had so many fans. But that’s not really the case. Chrome OS already has millions of users — because Chrome OS is just Chrome. Say what you will about the OS, but that’s what it is. It’s Chrome with a few little bells and whistles to make it so that you don’t need all the bloat that Windows has forced down our throats over the years.

In many ways, Chrome OS is the anti-OS. And that’s refreshing. It’s not where it needs to be yet, but when and if it gets there, it could be really, really great. Imagine a computer that boots in two seconds. Imagine one that lasts for an entire day on a single charge. Imagine one that costs less than $100. It could change the world.

Just think about what you use your computer for these days. There’s a very good chance that it’s mainly to use the web. I’m at a cafe right now. Looking around, every single screen has a web browser open. That’s important. That’s why Chrome OS was created.

Again, as I said in my Cr-48 review, unlike Google CEO Eric Schmidt, I don’t believe we yet live in a world fully ready for Chrome OS. So the key is for Google to keep the dream alive long enough for us to get there. That could mean several years of backlash and questions as to why they continue to work on it when Android is exploding. But the answer is because Chrome OS — at least the concept behind it — will eventually win. And when the time is right for that to occur, Google will be in prime position to really hit Microsoft where it hurts — in the wallet.

It’s a nuclear bomb that has been dropped, but could take years to explode.

That’s not a popular concept in today’s instant gratification world. Especially for a publicly traded company that has to answer to shareholders. But if Google does kill Chrome OS next year, mark my words, someone else will create it down the road. And Google, in full Microsoft-mode by that point with Android, will scramble to copy it. And they will lose.

Apple’s $1 billion data center in North Carolina made headlines when the project was revealed in May 2009. New reports indicate that the facility is set to open for business “any day now,” according to local officials talking to Data Center Knowledge. It also looks like additional construction might double the facility’s size, as recent rumors had suggested. But what is the size increase for?

In my coverage of the OS X Lion preview Wednesday, I wondered how the app resume feature would work. I noticed that in the preview, the activity indicators in the Dock (those white dots) were all gone. Poof. I squinted at the image below until I was certain that my eyes weren’t playing tricks on me. Then I realized: You never see activity indicators in iOS.

See, no glowing white things!

If Apple’s goal is to bring the good from iOS into OS X, then this move makes sense. iOS’s multitasking behavior would allow you to open applications like normal until you run out of RAM, then the app resume model kicks in and applications will start suspending themselves in memory, available quickly if you need them, making activity indicators redundant.