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Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
- matheweis 10y agoNot surprised ... Apple hasn't put out a laptop with up-to-date specs for years. I'm a lifelong Mac user and I'm unhappy with their current specs.
- duaneb 10y agoSomehow I don't think that their hardware is as much an issue as their price point. As a developer you'd still be a fool (or just loaded with elbow grease) to attempt developing with a chrome book.
- jkot 10y agoWhats wrong with Pixel? 16GB RAM, i7 CPU... I was seriously considering it as my primary dev machine.
- esturk 10y ago32GB and at most 64GB. Ok if you use it as advertised. But in this thread's context if you were to install Crouton/Ubuntu on it, that's small.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- arcticfox 10y agoWhy? I've developed 100% on a cloud VM for years. All I need locally is a browser. Obviously wouldn't work for some things, but as a full stack developer: no problem.
- Scarbutt 10y agoHow is the web ssh client experience, do you miss anything from a real terminal? I would imagine there would be some keybindings conflicts when using vim or emacs.
- jauer 10y agoI haven't encountered any keybinding conflicts or unusual behavior with the standard SSH app (nassh), when using vim and tmux or anything else.
- geofft 10y agoI've been using an unrooted Chromebook with the SSH client (NaSSH) / the mosh app for about two years for development, and it's pretty great. If you put the app in maximized mode, CrOS routes just about all keybindings to the app. In fact there are a few that don't get routed to the OS that I wish were (I think Alt-Tab is one of them).
- arcticfox 10y agoI use the Cloud9 IDE, and it's great! I've had a few issues over the years, but fewer than when I used to develop locally. And I can log on from anywhere.
- jzymbaluk 10y agoYou can even get a full Ubuntu installation in a chroot very easily using a neat tool called Crouton[1]. Crouton lets you jump in and out of chromeos and ubuntu with a keyboard shortcut. I had a very good experience running crouton+ubuntu on my Acer c720, and I imagine it'd be even better on a higher powered computer [1]https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
- duaneb 10y agoIf your internet connection sucks, or you need hardware access, or you're doing anything that requires a low latency, or you want to run the software locally for any reason, cloud VMs won't work. I can only imagine it working for a small subset of app developers. It's hardly a full stack solution.
- arcticfox 10y ago> If your internet connection sucks Not a problem for me, and it's pretty hard for me to develop when my internet connection sucks anyways (no modules, no documentation, no cloud access, etc.). > or you need hardware access Yes, this is the primary valid reason I see. > you're doing anything that requires a low latency Low latency from what? My cloud machines have super low latency to each other and to the net. > you want to run the software locally for any reason Running it in my cloud machine is locally, to me. The only reason it would need to be truly local if you're doing something regarding hardware / peripherals / etc., as you mentioned.
- millstone 10y agoHow do you test your website in other browsers, on a Chromebook?
- jonknee 10y agoWith a cloud based VM no doubt. Something like https://www.browserstack.com/ https://www.browserstack.com/ would fit the bill.
- millstone 10y agoHey, that's really cool! That's great for finding layout bugs. Though some of my WebGL doesn't work, and it's too slow to judge things like whether an animation is smooth, so you'll probably want some lab machines. Still, it seems strange that a web developer would prefer to develop on an OS that only supports one web browser!
- vox_mollis 10y agoAs a developer you'd still be a fool (or just loaded with elbow grease) to attempt developing with a chrome book The Chromebook Pixel running Fedora is a lovely development platform.
- colecut 10y agoI strongly disagree with this. I've used a chromebook as primary development laptop for years. Chrome shell works great. c9.io is a great IDE when I want something prettier / easier to work with than vim in a terminal Whether you're running ChromeOS, or Crouton, or GalliumOs, chromebooks (even cheap ones) are great dev machines.
- deleted 10y ago[deleted]
- moron4hire 10y agoI know several developers whom I consider very good at their jobs who use Chromebooks exclusively for work.
- stephenr 10y agoSmart people can still make bad decisions for a variety of reasons.
- moron4hire 10y agoRight, because some rando on HN knows better than them what works best for their situation, based on a one sentence comment by-proxy.
- johansch 10y agoThe Tim Cook version of Apple is all about milking the now, with no view towards the future. I think it was an insanely crappy decision for Steve Jobs to hand the controls of Apple to a logistics expert.
- justaman 10y agoCook is a logistics genius. Jobs put Cook in charge to keep Apple afloat until the next "idea guy" comes along.
- justaman 10y agoThe macbook is a real turd. It doesnt take long in the store to realize its not something you want to buy.
- LeifCarrotson 10y agoTheir MacBook Pro line does have (and has had for some time) some of the best hardware available. Perhaps it doesn't match purpose-built gaming notebooks, and definitely not desktops, but they usually are the first to have a new Intel processor, have newish graphics hardware, pioneered mainstream PCIe storage and high-resolution displays...You might pay a lot for what you get, but there's no doubt it's good hardware.
- SyneRyder 10y agoNot sure about being first with the new processors. I don't think the MacBook Pro has got Skylake yet, has it? Though with all the power management problems on the Surface Book, Apple may have dodged a bullet by being slow on Skylake. As for the graphics chips, you're limited to Intel integrated graphics unless you get the high-end 15" MBP with the Radeon. I generally like my MacBook Pro, but I'm less convinced it's superior to PC hardware as it used to be. It feels like Apple has lost interest in the Mac, and PC vendors are selling comparable hardware for about half the price.
- taurath 10y agoThey don't have skylake yet - but its been about 370 days since the last refresh. If they don't update at macworld next month they'll give up half their damn market share.
- vetinari 10y agoMacBook Pro is one of the few notebook lines that doesn't have Intel Skylake CPUs and GPUs or NVMe SSD yet.
- qubex 10y agoI disagree. The early 2016 MacBook (just refreshed) with the maxed-out BTO m7/512GB config is entirely satisfying.
- electic 10y agoThis might be due to the fact that a new Macbook Pro is coming. Everyone I know has held off upgrading until the new form factor comes out at WWDC.
- oblio 10y agoAre people in education really the target market for Apple's most expensive laptop? :)
- vox_mollis 10y agoThe problem there is that Google will likely release an updated Chromebook Pixel soon, also. With coreboot enabling installation of Linux on the Pixel for developers (And stock ChromeOS for regular users, of course), there is no reason to prefer MBP over the Pixel.
- codingvelocity 10y agoRequiring apple hardware to develop for ios is a pretty big reason to prefer mbp over pixel. Even if you aren't an ios developer, a development shop that does mobile will most likely deploy macs to their developers.
- SyneRyder 10y agoSimilarly, if you develop cross-platform, having a MacBook Pro that can do Windows, Mac, iOS, Android & Linux development all from one device is really compelling.
- curun1r 10y agoAlso, older MBPs are still more than usable. I'm tying this on a 2012 retina MBP with 16GB RAM. There's really nothing I can't run comfortably on it. Even when they rev the MBP, there's still a ton of people who've bought retinas in the last 4 years for whom it will make no sense to upgrade.
- grillvogel 10y agoI wonder how much cheaper macs would be if their primary purpose was tracking users to deliver ads
- blacksmith_tb 10y agoI haven't seen any suggestion that Chromebooks are somehow directly subsidized by Google - are Samsung, Toshiba, etc. getting some kind of kickbacks for making and selling the hardware? ChromeOS itself is free to license for vendors [1] But most have fairly low-end CPUs, not much RAM, and small SSDs, so I don't think they compete with Apple for features, per se. 1:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromebook#Sales_and_marketing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chromebook#Sales_and_marketing
- Mark222 10y agoI think you answered your own question: > ChromeOS itself is free to license for vendors If it's free, it's for a reason.
- geofft 10y agoThat same logic applies to the Linux kernel, right?
- grillvogel 10y agoChrome OS is not open source.
- xyzzyz 10y agoChromium OS is, though. https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os
- grillvogel 10y agoyeah but how many of these K-12 educational chromebooks are going to get that installed on them? these just allow google to start tracking people even earlier in life than they may have otherwise been able to.
- mamurphy 10y agoReddit[0] attributes this largely to Chromebooks snatching up most of the K-12 education market from iPads, with Google vaulting ahead while Apple was under-prioritizing that market. Motivations school districts might have for switching: (1) Cheaper, (2) Keyboards are nice for typing, (3), More resilient over time due to easy software updates, and (4) Easier to debug (similar to prior point; nothing is stored locally, so a 3 minute re-image fixes most software problems) In addition, folks in that thread think that tablets are generally the worst of both worlds as compared to laptops and phones (phablets?), whereas Chromebook are everything that tablets should be. [0] https://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/4k234g/chromebooks_outsold_macs_for_the_first_time_in/ https://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/4k234g/chromebooks...
- grillvogel 10y agoreddit comments are a source now?
- zig 10y agoYes, of course. The poster is sharing information that shaped their opinion. The location is irrelevant. In such an informal setting, the quality and worth of the source are up to the consumer; particularly when it is such a simple investigation. Do you trust or distrust the source? That belief guides your consumption of the poster's opinion.
- oblio 10y agoSome subreddits are better than Wikipedia.
- pdpi 10y agoDon't think of it as being an authoritative source. "While we're having this discussion over here, another group had a similar discussion and reached these conclusions" is valuable input just the same
- mrpippy 10y ago> Keyboards are nice for typing More than nice, they're generally a purchasing requirement for taking standardized tests
- SwellJoe 10y agoThat's hard to believe (I believe it, but it struck me as incredible at first). I don't know anyone with a Chromebook, and it's such a different way of computing that it's hard to believe it's taken off so much in such a short time. I think it is reflective of a new generation whose first computing experience was with phones and tablets. The idea that nothing of importance lives on the device is a huge paradigm shift, and I don't know that old folks are comfortable making the shift yet (I'm not entirely there, and, despite being middle aged, I like to think I'm way out front on the technology curve). The mention of Chromebooks in schools lends some credence to this notion. Anyway, I think it's great. A Chromebook is so much more empowering than an iPad or tablet (which is what I think this is actually mostly replacing for folks, rather than high end laptops). A keyboard opens up the door to really building and creating, USB ports allow expansion, and Chrome OS is hackable in ways tablets are not.
- shemnon42 10y ago> I don't know anyone with a Chromebook That may be because of who is buying them. They are making huge inroads to public schools (a former apple stronghold). The "Cloud Everything" bit solves a large "where's my data" problem that used to plague our kids WRT school work. No more taking the wrong thumbdrive to school problem.
- azernik 10y agoYeah, if I had kids, and they weren't using Chromebooks, I'd advise them to do everything on Google Docs anyway.
- Shivetya 10y agowell I am glad an inexpensive but useful item is making inroads. I remember the day when it seemed nearly every damn local politician was lining up to congratulate themselves on putting for the idea to give every student iPads before making sure the roof wasn't falling in. Technology is very important to learning but there are so many useful and inexpensive ways to do this but this requires those in charge to look past the marketing power some companies wield
- 10y ago
- johansch 10y agoEvery current Mac laptop user: "Why the hell don't you release a retina macbook air? (A toy 'macbook' does not count.)
- auggierose 10y agoIf you feel the need for such a thing, why not just buy a MacBook Pro 13inch?
- johansch 10y agoI did. It's way too heavy for no apparent reason.
- _JamesA_ 10y agoThis current Mac laptop user bought a toy 'macbook' for portable development. It's replacing an aging MacBook Pro 17. I am running IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate and Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise (in a Windows 10 Fusion VM) without any issues. The lightweight portability and 12" retina screen are amazing.
- qubex 10y agoI second this. I'm using a just-refreshed 12" Retina MacBook ‘toy’ (BTO m7/8GB/512GB) and it is an utterly perfect, ‘nervous’ little machine that suits my varied computing needs perfectly (local databases, spreadsheets, data exploration, symbolic mathematics in Mathematica, general productivity word-processing/email and assorted browsing & multimedia). This is a machine that deserves respect.
- jghn 10y agoIs this one of the new macbooks? I'm strongly considering doing exactly this but figure at this point I might as well see what they have in store for MBP, or even MBA if they don't can the product line.
- _JamesA_ 10y ago
- adpirz 10y agoAs someone who works in a K-12 setting, I'm not surprised. 1:1 chromebook initiatives are exploding across the country, and with it, a flurry of new edtech apps for K-12. At the end of the day, Chromebooks win over both iPads and Macbooks on price and functionality -- 21st century skills include being able to type and work your way around a computer. On top of that, Google's provisioning and management systems are so far the best, but definitely not perfect yet.
- jrcii 10y ago>Google's provisioning and management systems are so far the best So far my experience with that is trying to get an Active Directory server to sync with Google Apps for Education, for which they provide this tool: https://support.google.com/a/answer/6027781?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/6027781?hl=en It's beyond buggy, it's plain broken. It clearly hasn't been touched in years. I'm going to have to write the glue code myself.
- mattmcknight 10y agoWhy do you have to use the school one? Isn't GADS enough? https://support.google.com/a/answer/1263028 https://support.google.com/a/answer/1263028 If you really need to sync passwords, they have have GAPS. https://support.google.com/a/answer/2611859?hl=en https://support.google.com/a/answer/2611859?hl=en
- arihant 10y agoI am using one since mid-2014 and it has made my iPad bite the dust. It's just as quick access as iPad and does so much more and faster. Browsing is miles faster than on iPad. So while a lot of people think it's a PC that does less, I think it is more a tablet that does more.
- bluedino 10y agoI'd be curious to see how long the lifetime is of a Chromebook compared to a MacBook
- inthewoods 10y agoI bought my wife a first gen chromebook from Samsung years ago - still working great.
- conail 10y agoForever. I'm happily using an original HP11 with no issues at all. I bought it because I was spending most of my time in ssh/emacs and I wouldn't be too worried about losing a Chromebook. Three years later the joke's on me. As others have noted, crouton is super and updates are seamless. I use it locally way more than I'd anticipated. IMO the standout feature is the keyboard.
- conail 10y agoI should also snarkily add that every mac I've owned failed spectacularly within 60 days of AppleCare expiring. Humbug. Also, AppleCare costs more than a Chromebook.
- rebeccaskinner 10y agoI volunteer with a nonprofit running their internal IT and we use chromebooks for all volunteers who need an organization provided computer. We have a couple of windows laptops that were donated that get used for people who need to use Office for writing grant proposals. We're looking to expand into a physical building and will be providing a space with machines for community members to use for creating resumes/job applications/etc. and we'll almost certainly be using either chromebooks that can be checked out, or the chromeOS desktops systems. All our infrastructure runs through google, the machines are really affordable for a small non-profit, and given that many of our volunteers and the people we serve are not very technologically literate they are far easier to manage and help people do what they need to do. As an individual I don't know that I'd ever buy a chromebook- I have the advantage of being able to afford a regular laptop and I would rather throw money at a laptop than deal with the inconveniences of areas where web everything just doesn't work, but I can see them continuing to gain traction in institutional settings like nonprofits, schools, and even workplaces for people who don't need access to a lot of applications or local processing power.
- yardie 10y agoI'm curious, but is a Chromebook useful in offline mode? My family and I have been on sabbatical sailing half the planet so far. Internet has been a big headache as Iridium tops out at 2400bps. And data plans in developing countries and islands can be extremely expensive, up to $1/MB. I've found our android tablets to be more crashy offline as apps that can't get an internet connection go braindead, blank, or just kick you out. Based on my Android experience I've been reluctant to get a chromebook even though I know they are popular in schools. As a parent I'm also concerned about the privacy aspects. I believe schools get a special Chromebook that cuts back on the tracking, does this hold true for their retail models?
- mixedmath 10y agoThe short answer is no. But if you are a bit confident in your Linux skills, then I would recommend looking into Crouton [1], which allows you to easily access a fully functional Linux. I'm not sure what you're after, but this is what I use, and it satisfies all my needs. [I mean, it's just a Linux laptop, but that's what I need]. [1]: https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
- yardie 10y agoWe're already running Debian onboard. Just wanted to see if ChromeOS would be more useful since schools are using it.
- keithpeter 10y ago"...on sabbatical sailing half the planet so far... Internet has been a big headache as Iridium tops out at 2400bps..." Interesting use case. How about a solid refurbished laptop (or rooted Chromebook) with a set of Debian stable DVDs (you can install thousands of packages offline) and a local install of Wikipedia[1] and a dump of Project Gutenberg[2]? Save that couple of kilobauds for email. [1] http://xowa.org/home/wiki/App/Import/English_Wikipedia.html#Option_2:_Download_the_wiki_from_archive.org http://xowa.org/home/wiki/App/Import/English_Wikipedia.html#... [2] http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/12311/how-to-download-all-english-books-from-gutenberg http://webapps.stackexchange.com/questions/12311/how-to-down...
- plg 10y agoand ford focus sales outnumber bmw 3-series who cares
- jdeibele 10y agoA couple of weeks ago I bought an Airport Capsule for backups. Thursday, I got the "your backup can't be verified" message, meaning that Apple threw away my backups. This is Apple product backing up to Apple product. I tried fixing it with fsck_hfs but it wasn't finished when I went to bed. Today, I woke up and my MacBook Air is doing a nice loop where it lets me log in, then reboots. It's done that 10 times. I've tried resetting the PRAM, going single-user, logging in as a different user and finally re-installing the OS. Still doing it. My wife and I have MacBook Airs and there's a shared Mac Mini in the family room. We got it mostly because the older kids needed Microsoft Office. It's attached to a 22" screen but is rarely used. The schools are using Google Docs and rarely print anything out. My 3 kids love their Chromebooks. They use them for Youtube and reading fan fiction and things like that. I'm typing this on a 2013 Chromebook Pixel which I bought off someone on Craigslist because I was curious to see what the build quality was like. My MacBook Air has been sucking wind with 4GB of memory and I've been waiting to see what the new MacBooks look like. I take a lot of photos and I find that the Chromebook doesn't handle looking at 700 photos very well. But for 95% of what I do, the Pixel is better than the MBA. It's got bad battery life but then my MBA does, too. I had it hooked up to an external screen because I wanted more resolution and using the charger too much wrecked the battery. Almost everything I want to do is shared online. I want my kids (and parents of other players/students) to have access to photos. I bought a family version of ARQ (highly recommended) because I wanted to do local data, physical off-site (at my mom's every couple of months), Airport Capsule and stored on Amazon's servers. Now I'm trying to figure out how to re-invent things where I just use a Chromebook. Maybe I just use the Mac Mini for copying photos off SD cards to Flickr and onto a hard drive. Anyway, point is that I don't think my kids will ever be very interested in spending their own money on a Mac even though they love their iPhones.
- ksec 10y agoI think the iPad is what suppose to replace the Chromebook, although Apple were a little late with the Keybroad attachment. Seriously, Apple needs to rethink Airport Capsule. Either make everything iCloud Backup, or make Airport Capsule actually safe and consumable.
- cliveb 10y agoChromebook give me a bash$ https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1n0wyA608k4eWGd9-NUh8CeUebjGPdCHTZCnfkTcb6tU/edit#slide=id.gebd32916_033 https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1n0wyA608k4eWGd9-NUh8... My 2008 Macbook died in March, that triggered me to mostly use my 2013 Pixel for dev. Although I do have an 27 iMac at home. My dev is mostly Web Dev + GCP and moving to Firebase (canonically all front end dev). Hence even though I have Ubuntu via Crouton, I rarely need a local Fuse file system. For node work and CLI work I spin up a GCP VM. The VM costs about $13 per month, but I turn the VM off and pay pennies for storage.
- pkaye 10y agoIs this the Google Cloud Storage? Is it accessed as a remote file system?
- spb 10y agoFor apps written against the "native" Chrome API, Google Drive is presented as a filesystem the same way as the local filesystem - any service can expose itself similarly via the [chrome.fileSystemProvider API][1]. [1]: https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/fileSystemProvider https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/fileSystemProvider
- cliveb 10y agoGoogle Compute Engine--Debian VM--for remote dev machine. I'm using Google Cloud Storage for static web sites. It is accessed as a remote file system. https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/hosting-static-website#objectives https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/hosting-static-website...
- chiefalchemist 10y agoProof that people just want to have their needs met. Nothing more. Nothing less.
- chiefalchemist 10y agoChromebook is just a non touch table. Compared to the cost of an Apple device, where is the surprise?
- ewindisch 10y agoI've become a full-time Chromebook convert over the past 8 months despite having had Powerbooks & Macbooks over the prior 15 years. So what happened? It's simple: * Everything runs inside Linux containers with reasonably secure seccomp profiles. * SecureBoot provides some reliability against attacks. (I do not use Cruton or feel the need for it despite doing development) * It's inexpensive. Arguably, buying my machine was free when considering the credits for Google drive, Google Play, and Gogo-inflight wifi. * It does everything I need, with the caveat that "everything it doesn't do" is something I can do on a server or VM running in the cloud (or a closet). Honestly, I see the Chromebook as a secure thin-client. That's good because I don't think it could be much fatter and secure. I certainly don't trust running anything on a Windows, Mac, or Linux desktop.
- towndrunk 10y agoWhich Chromebook are you using or which one would you recommend?
- ewindisch 10y agoI'm using the Toshiba Chromebook 2 which I purchased because it was the best performance / value / screen-quality. I didn't want anything with less than a 1080p display. Today, I'd buy (and probably will buy) the HP Chromebook 13. It starts at $499 but includes a QHD+ panel ("Retina") and an "Intel Core m" CPU (or higher). Only one model of the range is available right now, but options will include Pentium, m3, m5, m7 CPUs and up to 16GB of RAM. It is thinner, lighter, and cheaper than the Macbook Air.
- slantaclaus 10y agoIts the economy, stupid! (not calling anybody stupid)
- j2kun 10y agoI think it's hilarious how little the HN community knows about Chromebooks. Every time it pops up, there's a wave of people saying "I don't know a single person who has one!" and "They seem useless without an internet connection!" and "I wonder how they compare to mac books." People forget that most of the world doesn't write code, and doesn't need native applications. They write email, take selfies, and write extremely simple spreadsheets. It's way more important to have cheap, reliable, accessible, safe hardware. You'd be amazed how many people encounter a problem with their computer and give up because "it's mad at me." This isn't an educational problem. The technology is failing them. Wrestling with an operating system sucks. And then there's all of these amazing up-coming technologies like WebAssembly and WebRTC. If we can have the security and uniformity of a Chromebook and run Photoshop and Quake and BitTorrent directly in the browser with no overhead, then there's absolutely no point for users to deal with the muck and grime of whatever bad state they get their local filesystem into.
- zobzu 10y agoit is actually an educational problem - specially in the US. Educated people will favor the more flexible operating systems to create things (don't think just programming, think video, pictures, whatever), dumb people will care about "selfies" and "email". That said the reality is that the majority of people are the ones that do not want to learn, and thus to be successful it is necessary to cater to them. It makes sense and make their life easier. But do not fool yourself thinking it's not an educational problem for the "feel good" statement. Learning photoshop is a big deal and it's not because of UX. It's because of the concepts behind the editing.
- comboy 10y ago> Educated people will favor the more flexible operating systems to create things (don't think just programming, think video, pictures, whatever), dumb people will care about "selfies" and "email". It seems like a pretty biased view. Apart from the fact that even in HN-like circles for many people most part of their job is just answering e-mails, there's tons of people who don't need anything more than web. I wouldn't consider somebody who mostly does research, reading a lot of stuff and being satisfied with a simple editor "dumb". (there are even quite fine online latex editors too)
- gregpilling 10y agoI have a Chromebook and a Macbook Pro. I use both, they have their places. I feel much happier traveling with the Chromebook - I don't care if it gets stolen or destroyed. It was only $300 and nothing is stored locally. The Macbook I worry about more.
- jalami 10y agoAs I've written earlier, ChromeOS doesn't interest me. It's a tightly locked down linux-y distro as a vector to peddle Google services. It's not complicated, it's very cheap and almost impossible to mess something up because it's so easy to wipe and all your data is on the cloud. That's the appeal and why they're booming in schools, but I find it dangerous for multiple reasons. I wrote at more length about it in yesterday's ChromeOS post[0]. I don't think it's the year of the linux desktop anymore than Android is the year of the linux phone. Sure, there's a kernel somewhere deep, but the userspace is locked-down, weak and anti-consumer. I find the book itself more interesting. Netbooks were crap for a long time, but things have gotten cheaper and I enjoy the form factor. Writing this from an Acer C720 running GalliumOS as we speak, but I'm in the super minority of Chromebook users. Read the Amazon reviews once of a Chromebook and you'll see what they find irritating or glorious. Hint: It's not the lack of a good IDE or inability to install gvim. Also, anyone that says Chromebook sales are great because their such an 'open hardware ecosystem' is fooling themselves [1]. [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11735326 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11735326 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11735762 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11735762
- Leszek 10y ago> I don't think it's the year of the linux desktop anymore than Android is the year of the linux phone. Sure, there's a kernel somewhere deep, but the userspace is locked-down, weak and anti-consumer. Perhaps Stallman has a point when asking people to talk about Linux as GNU/Linux.
- kuschku 10y agoThis decade has shown that Stallman was about right about everything. And that’s not a good thing. Especially Google’s actions have been quite literally towards unlawful-evil.
- gizmo385 10y ago> Sure, there's a kernel somewhere deep, but the userspace is locked-down, weak and anti-consumer. I don't necessarily think that an operating system being locked down is equivalent to anti-consumer. For the vast majority of consumers, I think that opening up the full complexity of linux would just be too much hassle and not worth the gains.
- washadjeffmad 10y agoMy sister works in a semi-developed area of Africa where electricity is unreliable in quality and presence at the best of times, and it's turned out the computer equipment she brought over years ago was pretty ill suited to the conditions and developed problems immediately. She went with all Apple because that was the craze at the time, and most of it was inoperable by the end of the third year. After listening to her describe the conditions and her needs, I suggested a few changes: transition to lower wattage mobile equipment, integrate redundant, portable power, and more effective use of solar. This boiled down to Chromebooks, portable APs, and certain smartphones, marine and other LA batteries, and lots of lithium USB power packs. In return, she shipped me her old Mac hardware, which I opened up and emptied of all dust, sand, and scorpions before diagnosing most as damaged from overheating. It was awful how poorly those glossy screens held up to environmental abrasion, and the one unit that survived, the smell still hasn't left completely. The Chromebooks (K1 based), which held charge on testing for 8-10 hours under heavy use, are light yet durable, have no moving internal (or servicable) parts, are or can be sealed against the environment, and are passively cooled. They also run the full Docs suite offline, take excellent dictation for transcription, can remote into her other computers, and they look nice. The model was just under $300 and had a 1080 screen, better than decent speakers, and most importantly, it plays x264 video so she can catch up on her shows. My only concerns were for the lack of non-removable batteries and the very narrow cylindrical DC plugs the chargers use, but battery diagnostics have been great, and since they never all have to be charged at the same time, about half of the chargers can break (though none have, yet) and not cause any issue. I don't know how most people on HN live, if they have good electricity, air conditioning or potable running water, whether they own vehicles that they can drive to pick up and haul perishable groceries around in, or if they can cheaply or quickly replace equipment that dies sooner than it should, warranty or no, within their countries. But for anyone who doesn't have all of those things, I'd say Chromebooks would be an exceedingly appropriate choice.
- AnAfrican 10y ago>if they have good electricity, air conditioning or potable running water Even in Africa, not having those and having good, stable and cheap internet is a really weird case.
- partiallypro 10y agoDoes it bother no one else that this is so locked to the Google eco-system? Perhaps more than any other device on the market is locked to an eco-system, including Apple's iOS walled garden? I also fear that between this and iOS, we are starting to see a divide between production and consumption devices more than ever. I don't consider that a good trend.
- shirro 10y agoNot really. Ideally you go into these things with your eyes open. I can see our house going from five heavily used Apple devices to zero in the next couple of years. If the barriers were as bad as people pretend we could not do that. It probably helps that I have an awareness of the issues involved and haven't bought in too heavily to the more restrictive services. I likely will have to buy some of the kid's games again for Android but they have outgrown a lot and as they grow older anyway. Having a device with a keyboard that can run minecraft pe, or access the web or be used for school work, or run a linux chroot seems like a huge leap forward over iPads. My Chromebook was surprisingly hackable and getting a shell is pretty trivial. You can easily live in a chroot on a model with better hardware. Sometimes selling a tiny bit of freedom or privacy for trivial entertainments or day to day practicality is a reasonable tradeoff.
- partiallypro 10y agoThe problem is that most people aren't you, they don't know how to migrate their services and there is just enough of a barrier to make it difficult that most people won't. Apple's walled garden is less of a concern to me than Google's services lock-in.
- shirro 10y agoI bought a cheap Chromebook to play with and for a lightweight disposable travel machine but ended up using it for programming/web development for a time. A nice secure reliable browser environment plus secure shell in combination with online services isn't perfect but it is doable. They work better as a secondary device for power users but I suspect the number of people who can use them as a primary device isn't negligible and will increase as the platform matures. I have mostly retired my Chromebook for a higher spec laptop running a full linux desktop. But I can see a lot of potential for Chromebooks and with some nicer models coming along with access to the Android store I can see them replacing both laptops and tablets for family. They are secure, practical and low maintenance and I am not at all surprised that they have done well in education and I expect higher specced ones have a very good chance in enterprise.
- openfuture 10y agoDoesn't surprise me, chromebooks are so much better value than anything else! I was going to get a dell xps 13 when that power saving bug was unveiled so I ended up getting a toshiba chromebook 2 and a 256gb SSD for <600$ Now I'm running native linux via seabios and loving it. I hate the spacebar screen on startup but I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay 500$ to get rid of it.
- kstenerud 10y agoI had a chromebook for about a year. I tried to make it my main laptop. I really did. But online only apps just don't work for me (I'm not always close enough to an internet connection). The native apps weren't usable enough, and often froze the whole desktop. Crouton, while cool, is flaky. I never did get audio working on it, and it also froze the system once or twice a day. And the lack of local storage became problematic. I could plug in a USB flash drive, but some stuff HAS to be on the main drive, and shuffling things around is a pain, especially on their file manager (which is SLOW, although not quite as horrible as Mac's file management). I gave it to my dad, who just loves it! He uses it for his email, browsing, document editing, photos, and videos. If that's all you do, then Chromebook is the system for you.
- yesplorer 10y agoThat's interesting, and seems like a direct opposite for the experience I have with my Asus 13 inches chromebook. It is now my main laptop, I use it for days and it never freezes. I have crouton on it and this comment was typed in firefox on crouton. Whenever I need to, I switch to Chrome OS to use Chrome. I had problem with getting audio to work in the beginning but to be fair that was around the same time I really didn't know how to switch between Crouton and Chrome OS. It would do with more storage but I have a 32gig sd card in it which gives me a little more mileage than depending only on the internal storage. Honestly the only REAL work I do on it is learning Javascript even though I got it specifically to learn PHP but things seem to require a lot of tweaking when installing PHP and even setting up ur webserver that I gave up and decided to learn Javascript, which only requires a browser. But I'm sure that's my problem with Linux and not Chromebook. I have never had an "Ultrabook" before so I really enjoy the sleek nature of this and I don't think I'm going to ever buy any laptop bigger than this ever and the all day battery life makes it awesome. Apart from the usage above, everything else is like your dad's though. Maybe crouton may have jx gotten better since your experience
- holri 10y agoThere is no cloud, just other people computers.