A new stable build of the Chrome web browser is available for all supported platforms today, including OS X computers, where Google decided to finally add 64-bit support.

A notice on the Chrome Releases blog reveals that “The Chrome team is delighted to announce the promotion of Chrome 39 to the stable channel for Windows, Mac and Linux.”

Available for all platforms

The search giant confirms that Chrome 39.0.2171.65 packs a great deal of fixes and improvements, but only mentions a handful of those (the more important ones, as usual).

For starters, the browser finally gets 64-bit support on Macintosh computers. This may not sound like much to the average folk, but if you happen to be wielding a Mac with a 64-bit processor, you’ll notice a substantial improvement in rendering and loading speeds.

A number of new apps/extension APIs are also included in the new Chrome, this time for all users (Mac, Windows, and Linux), and the same goes for a bunch of changes under the hood that promise to enhance stability and performance. As usual, “a partial list of changes” can be found in the official changelog.

Google further mentions that Chrome 39 Stable patches a total of 42 vulnerabilities that were recently discovered by security researchers, and not only. In typical fashion, the Mountain View giant lists the most important fixes (and the respective rewards) and directs interested parties to the Chromium security page for more information about the security side of Chrome.

What 64-bit means for Mac users

A 64-bit processor has a 64-bit address space, which means that the system isn’t limited to just 4 GB of RAM. Obviously, the more RAM you have installed on your Mac, the better any app will run (not only the ones that support 64-bit).

There are actually three major advantages of 64-bit computing (compared to 32-bit). In addition to extended address space, 64-bit also paves the way for capacity increase and a bigger number of general-purpose registers.

Depending on the type of app that takes advantage of this architecture, the improvements are more or less noticeable. In the case of a web browser, the advantages are improved speed when dealing with graphics and video, better security (can take advantage of the new security features embedded in the newest OSes), and improved stability, because 64-bit rendering engines are about twice as stable as 32-bit engines when it comes to handling web content.

Download Google Chrome for Mac OS X

Download Google Chrome for Windows

Download Google Chrome for Linux