In my belief, Google Chrome is by far the best day-to-day browser around for Mac or PC. In fact, I use it for most of my daily browsing. Safari is my daily workhorse for work, but, for casual browsing and searching I find Chrome to be much nicer to use. No one was happier than me when the news broke that Google would be releasing an iPhone and iPad friendly version.

I tried downloading it as soon as it was released yesterday evening. Sadly, I kept getting a “temporarily unavailable” message in the App Store. So, I got it on to my two devices this morning.

First impressions are very good. Tab management is very simple and intuitive, thanks to a great swiping gesture to dismiss read tabs. You can also open up an “Incognito Tab” which works in a similar way to the private browsing mode in Safari. Nothing you do in that tab will be tracked, or stored on your device. Once it’s closed, it’s like it never happened. Perfect if you’re shopping for your wife/friend/family member’s birthday and don’t want to leave any trace of what you’re up to.

However, my favorite feature is the additional row above the keyboard for commonly used characters in URL-land. Whether it be forward slash, “.com” or a colon, you can insert it by tapping the relevant key. And, as always with Chrome, you need not insert an entire web address. Simply type in your search query, and it’ll take you straight to the Google search results, or alternatively it shows you the most likely web sites as you type in a small list below the address field.

Gallery (Click to Enlarge)