With Microsoft’s Internet Explorer long out of the picture, Apple’s Safari, Mozilla’s Firefox and Google’s Chrome have been left to duke it out in recent years, each one hoping to become the favored web browser of Mac users everywhere. Into this passionate combat comes Maxthon, which serves up a Chromium-based browser with a handful of unique features -- but are they enough for Mac users to abandon their favorites?
Despite having more than 130 million users on Windows, Android (including Kindle Fire and NOOK) and BlackBerry, Maxthon is largely unknown to Mac users -- until now. Having previously tested the Apple waters with an iPad version on the App Store, Maxthon finally arrives on the Mac, and for the most part ties neatly into the tablet version, as well as the variety of other platforms supported by the browser.
For those already using Chrome for Mac, Maxthon may not be quite a godsend -- it looks and behaves nearly identically to Google’s own browser, having been built upon the search giant’s open-source Chromium project. Maxthon offers similar support for extensions, plug-ins and add-ons, although at launch these are far more limited than Google’s virtual shelves. Available extensions include LastPass, Facebook Notifications and the rather comprehensive AddThis for sharing web pages with your social networks.
Like Chrome, one of Maxthon’s marquee features is the ability to play video files using preloaded standards -- no plugins necessary. To test this, we uninstalled Adobe Flash Player and visited a number of Flash sites around the web. These sites all worked exactly as expected, despite the absence of Adobe’s frequently criticized plug-in.
Maxthon mostly lives up to its bold speed claims, clocking 187.6ms on the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark; however, Chrome 20 trumped that with 154.1ms and Apple’s latest Safari 6 running under OS X Mountain Lion performed better yet at 149.0ms. The story was virtually the same with Peacekeeper, ranking Maxthon third at 3906, Chrome second with 3792 and Safari 6 again the champ at 2498.
One of Maxthon’s stronger traits is its ability to cloud sync tabs, history, favorites and settings across all of the platforms it supports. Users must first sign up for a free Maxthon Passport account using an email address, which assigns the user an all-numeric nickname reminiscent of the ICQ days -- but don’t worry, this is easily changed to any name you’d like in the profile section.
After signing in, bookmarks can be imported from your default browser (Safari 6, in our case), which are then synced to the cloud along with your other browser data. We installed Maxthon Web Browser for iPad and also the Android version on a Nexus 7 and within moments of signing in, our bookmarks appeared there as well, ready to browse. We had less luck syncing open tabs from the Mac to these mobile devices, however.
Otherwise, Maxthon is a reasonably full-featured affair. Reader Mode strips away ads and presents web articles in a clean, easy-to-read page, while “Magic Fill” takes the work out of juggling usernames and passwords. That’s a good thing, because Mac stalwarts like 1Password do not yet support Maxthon; we also received an error when trying to install Xmarks, our favorite solution for keeping bookmarks in sync across browsers.
MX Credits may be one of the more bizarre aspects of Maxthon for many Mac users. A “virtual asset” similar to a reward system, Maxthon awards users with credits for registration, email verification, friend invites and other tasks, but the encouragement of phony money is essentially worthless right now. However, the company promises “new ways to spend credits for all kinds of goods” in the future.
Finally, a caveat for OS X Mountain Lion users: The currently-available release of Maxthon for Mac is not signed for Gatekeeper, and you’ll get a warning as such when attempting to launch it. Thankfully, this can be circumvented by holding down the Control key, clicking the Maxthon icon and selecting “Open,” then confirming that you wish to do so. Here’s hoping the developers fix this little faux pas with a future update.
The bottom line. Web browsers are a unique experience in the software world. Since they’re all completely free to use, our allegiance to one over another is largely dependent upon which most closely fits our lifestyle. We can’t say that Maxthon is entirely a comfortable fit for ours, nor is there anything inherently bad or wrong with it. That said, it doesn’t yet offer a compelling reason to switch from Chrome itself unless you need to frequently hop between mobile platforms.
of 5
Mac OS X 10.6 or later
Mac full-screen support. Cloud sync to other platforms, including mobile apps. Wide range of video playback without the need to install plugins.
Not quite as fast as Safari 6 or Chrome 20 in our speed tests. Extension support limited. No support yet for browser add-ons like 1Password or Xmarks. No OS X Mountain Lion Gatekeeper support.
