iCab Mobile 1.0: Great, easy to access features
and, yes, porn mode too…
iCab is the love child of Alexander Clauss, a browser that’s built around the same advanced WebKit underpinnings as Apple’s Safari. At the same time, iCab comes in flavors for PPC OS X, as well as Mac OS Classic, including Motorola 68K Macs, making it the only browser still in active development for Apple’s long lapsed operating system.
The most interesting development recently from Clauss is a decidedly cutting edge endeavor, iCab Mobile 1.0, a $1.99 browser designed to not just run on Apple’s iPhone and iPod touch but to push envelope in terms of features and performance.
iCab Mobile has features that are both unique and immediately available. That is, this browser supports full screen mode, easy preferences access, one touch search and a “tabbed” interface that’s user customizable. For example, whereas Safari’s features are buried inside Settings, well outside the browser itself, iCab’s controls are right up front and easily accessible from within the app—brilliant.
Also, iCab’s full-screen mode is easy to invoke and just a little shake (ie motion sensor aware) brings you back to normal viewing mode, with the browser’s tools right where they’re useful.
Another thoughtful touch is the choice of Google and Yahoo, but also Lycos, Wikipedia and eBay as your default search engines compared to Safari’s offering of just the big two.
And, private browsing (aka porn) mode? It’s easily accessed and invoked via iCab’s preferences—it will keep your browsing history clear of the diamond ring you want to buy your honey or any untoward references to Miss May. Further, the preferences screen gives you easy access to “Delete Cookies” and “Delete History” buttons, which are things that Safari makes you dig for in Settings.
Lastly, and this is a real time saver, iCab Mobile includes form auto completion, which makes logging in to wi-fi access points or your favorite web forum as easy as it would be on your Mac.
Conclusion
As of now, iCab Mobile is my browser of choice on my iPod touch and for $1.99 it could be yours, too. Honestly, I daily spend more on coffee and chocolate that doesn’t make me feel anywhere near as good.
Check out iCab Mobile 1.0 (iTunes) for yourself…
Save 15% on Griffin Technology gear using the coupon code GOODSTUFF09 today.
Filed under: Mac, Software, iPhone, iPod
iCab Mobile clearly blows mobile Safari out of the water. It is fast, includes vastly more features and all-in-all is excellent. Definitely worth the money, and especially so if you find mobile Safari excruciatingly limited (and limiting).
One point in your review needs clarification, however. iCab also has a global settings screen, like Safari, in the Settings “application”. The in-browser preferences allow you to toggle some of these on and off on the fly, but the global settings will take precedence otherwise.
Also, you failed to mention that iCab can be set to save your browsing session so that it will restore all open tabs when you next launch it, which is a massive time saver and its killer feature for me.
From my experience it also loads pages faster than Safari too (perhaps it uses a later version of WebKit or has better caching, or it could be down to perception as loading isn’t as staged as Safari’s). However, you can make it definitely load faster than Safari as it also has ad blocking and the ability to turn off image loading, both of which together will shave off several seconds of time.
The one major downside is stability – although it is also pretty dire in Safari when you open more than one or two tabs, the fact that it is very easy to open 4 or more at a go in iCab mobile means that it is quite prone to running out of RAM to work with and its stability can suffer as a result. Generally speaking, if you stick to a 4 to 6 tab limit at any one time (especially with ad blocking and images off), it will run fine but 6 to 8 tabs plus is asking for trouble, in my experience.
Frankly, and no offence meant by this, I am appalled that the major Mac news sites haven’t done more to review and promote this browser as it puts Safari to shame and is clearly the leader of the iPhone browser pack by a gaping chasm of a margin.
[...] also: — One in five App Store titles available on pirate sites … — iCab Mobile 1.0: Great, easy to access features and, yes, porn mode too… — InstallerApp: Put whatever apps you want on your [...]
[...] also: iCab Mobile 1.5: The best iPhone, touch browser gets better iCab Mobile 1.0: Great, easy to access features and, yes, porn mode too… var mu_affiliate = 5287; // your affiliate number var mu_alternate_url = “”; // if no promo is [...]
[...] See also: — iCab Mobile 1.5: The best iPhone, touch browser gets better — iCab Mobile 1.0: Great, easy to access features & porn mode too… [...]