The Fixes That Google Chrome OS Still Needs To Make

CowboyRobot writes "Thomas Claburn at Information Week opines that Google's Chrome OS is actually morphing into the Windows-style os that it intended to make obsolete. There's still room to grow, and here are his suggestions for how to make it better: Get better hardware, Include a Web-based IDE, Support local storage, Allow offline apps. 'When Chrome OS was launched in 2010, Google SVP of Chrome and apps Sundar Pichai declared, "Chrome OS is nothing but the Web." Now, if you peer behind the browser pane, it's clear that Chrome OS is looking beyond the Web. It's not a complete repudiation of Google's bet on the appeal of a thin-client system that keeps user data in the cloud. But it is a concession to the realities of a market that's more comfortable with the familiar desktop metaphor.'"

Suggested improvement: kill Chrome OS...

[sootman]

... and devote the resources to something else. Seriously. The market for "I need a laptop that can run a browser and nothing else" is 1) ridiculously small and 2) can be fulfilled with nothing more than a properly-configured Linux distro. Netbooks, while popular in some areas, were NOT the sales success that many people thought they would be. An even more limited netbook will not likely fare better.*

Laptops are already pretty cheap. The theoretical savings of making a stripped-down laptop that just runs a browser are not offset the costs of such low-volume production.

Tablets are the way to go. The market has spoken. "Simplicity" in computing does not mean "I want to run everything in a browser", it means "I want to click giant icons and run one, fullscreen, sandboxed app at a time." Sorry, Chrome OS team--you went the wrong direction.

In other news, I literally LOLed when some guy at Google was talking about how a Chromebook (that is, one particular piece of hardware) would actually "get faster over time" due to its automatic software updates (which would presumably bring increased efficiency and performance.) BULL SHIT. Why is the Web largely unusable on anything less than 1 GHz anymore? Oh right, because web pages are getting fatter all the time! Does anyone REALLY think that Google will make the OS more efficient faster than web pages will become more bloated?

Seriously Google: KILL THAT SHIT and let those employees work on something worthwhile.

* and before anyone mentions the iPad: yes, it is more limited in some ways, but it's also more powerful in others. On the other hand, I can't think of a single thing a Chromebook can do that a Netbook can't also do, but a Netbook can do literally everything that any other computer can do, while Chromebooks are limited to "I can do some things that happen within a browser."

Re:Data capacity of offline apps

[Danzigism]

I love the CR-48. However I have mine running FreeBSD-9.0 with Fluxbox. All the hardware surprisingly works. When I had Chrome OS on there, it ran very well. People tend to forget that these things run Linux, so if you want actual programs physically installed to the hard drive, then put the sucker in developer mode and get crankin. However to give this functionality to your average Joe who knows nothing of computers, defeats the entire purpose of these devices. The only people complaining are the savvy users anyway.