Mac users can rejoice as the bleeding-edge version of Google Chrome commits digital harakiri, taking myriad open tabs with it, because Google Chrome Canary is now available for OS X.
Google software engineer Mark Mentovai unveiled the release on the Chromium Blog, and said it followed the same philosophy as the Windows original, enabling the "bravest Chrome users" to battle untested builds and provide feedback to Google: "Chrome Canary […] automatically updates more frequently than the Dev channel, and does not undergo any manual testing before each release. Because we expect it to be unstable and, at times, unusable, you can run it concurrently with a Dev, Beta, or Stable version of Google Chrome."
In expanding the bleeding-edge Chrome to Mac users, Google is even more likely to ensure its ambitious release schedule rolls out on time; according to the Chromium Development Calendar, version 16 of the browser is due in October. We recently reported that Mozilla aims to match Chrome in terms of development speed, and that Microsoft is already hard at work on IE10, despite IE9 only having recently been released. While on the surface, this provides more moving targets for web designers, the reality is that silent updates should lead to more users running browsers that support cutting-edge web standards. Additionally, behind-the-scenes competition between vendors will ensure we don't return to the bad old days of stagnant browsers and standards being held back to sluggish release schedules.
