12 ms·

I was an intern at Microsoft the day that ChromeOS was announced. Conveniently, a few days later the head of Windows was giving a talk to all the interns. Overa

by mabbo 8y ago

I was an intern at Microsoft the day that ChromeOS was announced. Conveniently, a few days later the head of Windows was giving a talk to all the interns. Overall, spoke well, but during Q&A someone asked him what he thought about ChromeOS. He laughed. He said it was a joke. He made it very clear that he didn't understand what Google was even thinking. And that stuck such a sour chord on me. Here's a company well known to be hiring the brightest people in the world, and they've announced a direct competitor to what you're doing... and you're laughing? It was like seeing an experienced chess player playing against a rumored-to-be-brilliant child prodigy and laughing at the stupid move the child was making. I spent the next summer working on the ChromeOS team.

ChrisSD 8y ago
It's not like they haven't got a history of doing this. Remember when the iPhone had "no chance" of "any significant market share"?[0] [0] https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-04-29-ballmer-ceo-forum-usat_N.htm https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2...
- ianai 8y ago
  They also spread plenty of FUD around all things Linux too.
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    It went quite a bit further than just FUD.
- fjsolwmv 8y ago
  And when the Web was irrelevant. Bill Gates and patent troll Nathan Myrvhold wrote a while book unironically displaying their utter lack of vision about the industry. Their while business is a mix of making bland weak copies of more popular software to run on their decades old Windows entrenchment, Xbox, and a few nice keyboard and mice. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Bill_Gates_book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Bill_Gates_b...
  - reaperducer 8y ago
    I read an old magazine article a few weeks ago where Bill Gates was talking about how the internet isn't necessary outside of businesses. That having a computer use a phone line to dial up to a central server once or twice a day is all anyone needs. This was back when 2400 baud was considered super fast. Steve Jobs may have had some bad qualities (many of them irrationally amplified in the "Jobs-bad-Woz-good" revisionist history SV jealousy echo chamber), but he was one hell of a futurist.
    - danso 8y ago
      What revisionist history?
      - nailer 8y ago
        A lot of people discredit Jobs' creative vision due to disliking his personality, and, if they're engineers, like to overemphasize Woz because he's an engineer.
        colordrops 8y ago
        Maybe 10 years ago that was true.
        nailer 8y ago
        What do you think changed those people's minds? My feeling is that in the years post Jobs' death negative stories about his personality have been increasingly common. For the record: I believe Jobs definitely deserves the credit, I'm just observing the mud that has been slung his way.
        danso 8y ago
        Stories about his negative side are likely more common because people feel more free to talk about them, now that Jobs, being dead, can no longer respond or retaliate against people with grievances, such as the daughter he disavowed [0]. I perhaps unfairly read negative connotations in your use of "revisionist", but I see nothing wrong with adding Jobs' uglier side to the historical record. It doesn't change what he accomplished, and it's something we can learn from. I do question the idea that Woz has been irrationally overemphasized. By the time the iPod was dominant, and a year before the iPhone, Woz felt so left out of the historical record that he published his autobiography to set the record straight, particularly about the misconception that Jobs himself invented/built the Apple I and ][ machine. Even then, Woz gives clear credit to Jobs for having the entrepreneurial sense and vision to make Apple a company, whereas Woz was perfectly content to work at HP for all his days. After the iPhone, Woz became even more a part of Apple's ancient, forgotten history. He was a bit character in the Jobs' movies came out, and AFAIK, no movie yet has been made about Woz's life. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/sep/01/daughter-steve-jobs-denied-lisa-brennan-jobs https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/sep/01/daughter-stev...
- reaperducer 8y ago
  FTA: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get." I wonder what the maximum penetration was for Windows OSes on phones. "...my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune." What's a Zune? /s
  - isostatic 8y ago
    <i>What's a Zune?</i> It's the think starlord got at the end of guardians of the galaxy 2. Still, at least it didn't suffer like the ipod -- it had No wireless and Less space than a Nomad. It was "Lame".
    - mattkevan 8y ago
      But you could ‘squirt’ songs from one Zune to another. The Zune was a litany of poor decisions, but that word choice must have been the worst.
      - reaperducer 8y ago
        I think you are correct. Though, I also found the word "squircle†" amusing, and still use it when the opportunity arises. The Zune was the first time I'd heard it used outside of math nerds trying to out-nerd each other. † https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squircle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squircle
      - mixmastamyk 8y ago
        From the company that brought you “wince.”
        mattkevan 8y ago
        And MicroSoft
- awucs 8y ago
  People often quote that, but I don't think he was necessarily wrong. What happened wasn't really so much between Apple and Microsoft, as Google giving away Android. That made all the other, arguably better, offerings redundant. Also letting Apple take a lot more market share because of quality and fragmentation issues. Almost no one makes any money from smart phones. Microsoft is probably fourth in terms of profit (from patents and such) behind Apple, Google and Samsung. Though Microsoft might have lost more in terms of influence and maneuvering. Addition: Which part, if any, are the downvoters objecting to? From the people I have talked to in the industry that is exactly what happened and why a lot of companies got out of it.
  - ChrisSD 8y ago
    The iPhone was beating MS phones before Android was even a thing[0]. They were certainly way more than "2% or 3%" in the markets they operated in. I can't see how Ballmer's statement was even slightly correct. [0] https://www.macrumors.com/2008/02/05/iphone-with-28-of-u-s-smartphone-marketshare-for-q4-2007/ https://www.macrumors.com/2008/02/05/iphone-with-28-of-u-s-s...
    - awucs 8y ago
      I don't think "2% or 3%" was very realistic, but you have to remember that when the iPhone first came out it wasn't very good. I didn't have 3G, GPS or App Store (nor a couple of other things). Apple was certainly ahead, but the market also wasn't ready nor big at that. When it actually matured there were a couple of solid offerings including from Microsoft, which among other things had arguably better design than Android. But at that point the market was moving on. The non-Apple market was no longer about selling the operating system or phones but apps, ads, components or accessories. If people want to go "Haha Microsoft" I guess that is fine, but they didn't lose to Apple.
      - IkmoIkmo 8y ago
        > (nor a couple of other things). Some other fun ones to mention: didn't let you copy/paste text (for the first 2 years of iPhone), didn't let you record video, and didn't let you make a selfie while looking at the screen. (no front-facing camera)
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Scoping_dindus 8y ago
ChromeOS IS trash though. The pixelbooks are the only ones worth half a shit. I've used my Acer 11 quite a bit. And I can say that I'll ever buy a Google device again. Between constant updates to crouton issues to weird display issues to trackpad weirdness, it's just awful. I haven't got around to picking up a Surface laptop yet, but when it's time for my next upgrade, that's what I plan on getting. Google is also definitely not hiring the brightest people in the world. Its easy to think that because that's what they want people to think, but writing code on a whiteboard and getting overpaid is not a sign of intelligence. The brightest people in the world work for the US govt, unfortunately.
paulsutter 8y ago
Reminds me of Steve Ballmer literally laughing at the iPhone in a 2007 interview[1]: > There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-steve-ballmer-thought-about-the-iphone-five-years-ago-2012-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-steve-ballmer-tho...
godzillabrennus 8y ago
First they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. - Microsoft should have known this but they had made too much money for too long.
- dpark 8y ago
  Yes and no. Just because they laugh at you doesn’t mean you’ll eventually win. Lots of shitty products get laughed at deservedly.
- supernovae 8y ago
  Microsoft makes more money today than they ever had. They're on their way to Trillion dollar valuation. Lets not forget Google said the surface line was a disaster too.. They all poke at each other
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Right, that's why now we all use Cuil for searches and look up information about various subjects on Cpedia.
mikejb 8y ago
Not understanding what your competitor is thinking, but dismissing them anyways it is arrogant at best, potentially dangerous. If you choose to ignore a competitive product, you better be able to explain why that product won't endanger your business - that includes understanding the goal of said product.
osrec 8y ago
If it wasn't for Office and the ecosystem around it, I don't think many firms would opt for Microsoft products. In my firm, we're purely Linux, but have Windows VMs, just for Excel. As an aside, we run a business management app called Bx (https://usebx.com/app https://usebx.com/app) and have recently started making some money. We're putting aside some cash to fund the development of a feature-rich, cross-platform spreadsheet app (I wished OpenOffice Calc would suffice, but it simply doesn't, and is unstable at times), so that we can finally ditch the Windows VMs we run! Something about Microsoft's historical ethos makes me abhor development on their platform, and targeting their browser is a nightmare in its own right (with Safari a close second).
- adrianN 8y ago
  I hope you consider funding the improvement of Libre Office instead of trying to write your own spreadsheet app. There has been an incredible amount of work poured into it, starting from scratch doesn't make much sense imho.
  - osrec 8y ago
    Not denying the amount of work gone into LibreOffice, however I'm not sure if I agree with you on the approach (this will probably be an unpopular opinion). I find the entire ecosystem of LibreOffice a bit clunky, and it wouldn't surprise me if there is a lot of technical debt that would need to be understood before we could make any sort of contribution. Don't know why, but my gut says starting afresh would allow us to build something more useful, faster. It would make sense to use the LibreOffice code base as a guide though.
    - adrianN 8y ago
      Well, if you fail at improving Libre Office to a state where you're satisfied with it, you still improved Libre Office. If you fail to write something better than Calc, all effort is lost.
      - osrec 8y ago
kerng 8y ago
I think it's a sign of not being prepared and not having an answer. I am certain that the guy knew this was a smart move by Google, even right at that time. But it needs a certain skill to behave appropriate and professional in such situations. It reflects that the person certainly is not of the humble kind.
bitL 8y ago
Alright, you like a challenge, so what's the purpose of a ChromeBook outside of a plastic cutlery-equivalent of a device destined to quickly end up in a landfill, contributing to unnecessary damage of environment? Do you feel good about working on an unsustainable disposable device, meditating how much of a chess master you are these days? Did you meet people that actually decided to move forward with this project and understood their real, not stated motivations? Did you truly align with it?
- NegativeK 8y ago
  I've downvoted you due to the combative tone of your question.
  - bitL 8y ago
    And? I am giving a strong negative feedback so that author might incorporate it to their own biological reinforcement learning system. Being nice and agreeable doesn't do anyone favor, it just allows bad decisions to continue unobjected. Similarly as you use downvotes for disagreeing, with which I completely agree (to disagree).
- detaro 8y ago
  Where's the data that chromebooks have shorter useful lives than other laptops in the same price class? Other laptops on average? It's possible that's the case, but not obvious to me.
  - bitL 8y ago
    How much of a lifetime could a device with soldered on 2GB of RAM and 32GB of eMMC storage have? How much repurposed could it be? Pricier Chromebooks with HiDPI screens and Core-M or better processors are still castrated in one way or the other comparing to general computing devices, yet approaching their price levels. What's the point for a developer? "It just works"? "It's just safe!" due to mandatory secure boot and BIOS reflashes? "Hey, look ma, a cheap computer, let's buy it as a gift!" for regular Joes?
wrs 8y ago
Pre-Satya Microsoft had an odd combination of paranoia and blindness regarding the rise of browser applications. Blindness: I was in a Microsoft VP’s office when he said he was downsizing the IE effort because “the browser is done”, enterprise users were satisfied, and consumers don’t generate significant Windows revenue. I think that was IE6. Paranoia: I was present for many early-00s decisions where a Microsoft exec weakened the ability to write rich applications in the browser to avoid devaluing Win32. So they were at least scared of the idea of a “browser OS” in the abstract. Although...at the same time, Office was pushing for browser application capabilities, which is where we got XHR, which is a big reason browser applications became practical. Sometimes you’d never guess Office and Windows were the same company.
- bena 8y ago
  In a lot of ways they aren't/weren't. Office does a lot of things their own way and without a lot of the cross-compatibility that's a feature of most Microsoft products. That's why you'll find you'll be able to do something in Office, but other Microsoft programs won't. Or vice versa. Like Notepad and Internet Explorer are pretty much just containers for certain Windows controls. Controls Office don't use. They roll their own. Or at least, used to. Wouldn't surprise me to find out that Office had their own browser rendering engine that didn't rely on anything in IE.
  - krn 8y ago
    > Office does a lot of things their own way and without a lot of the cross-compatibility that's a feature of most Microsoft products. That's probably because unlike most Microsoft products, Office is cross-platform and has to support multiple operating systems, including MacOS, iOS, and Android.
    - gmueckl 8y ago
      Isn't Office for Mac a completely diverged fork from an old Windows version of Office? I remember some blog posts from the understaffed Mac Office team stating that much several years ago. I don't know if they rebased it in the meantime. The posts read as if the big Office team was focused entirely on Windows and everything else was done by understaffed teams struggling to keep up.
awucs 8y ago
I don't think that is ever a good idea. But Google does also have a reputation for getting things wrong. Plenty of their product never make it anywhere, because they don't have to. You have been able to get a cheap Windows laptop for probably almost ten years. Recently e.g. the Lenovo IdeaPad and before that there were netbooks. I think there could be merit to ChromeOS, but for now it seems like a placeholder so no one else can take that position in the market.
on_and_off 8y ago
It reminds me of Microsoft organizing a burial for Android when they launched a new Windows Phone version .. Both are extremely bad reactions at face value but also show how clueless the company can be (at least if you believe it is indicative of the company's mindset)
- donarb 8y ago
  That was actually a funeral for the iPhone. They even rented a hearse and had pallbearers walking a iPhone casket through the streets of Redmond. https://www.cnet.com/pictures/microsofts-funeral-for-the-iphone-photos/ https://www.cnet.com/pictures/microsofts-funeral-for-the-iph...
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    That seems so pathetic in retrospect.
  - on_and_off 8y ago
    oh indeed iPhone and Blackberry. Anyway, even if it had been Blackberry and WebOs, it would still have been pretty awful.
gd2 8y ago
I also remember that for a few season, MS did the vaporware thing. Spreading false rumors that they would be releasing a Surface in a few months that would cost about $200, and be better real computer compared to the new Google backed toy. Then after a few delays the surface limited devices came out at nearly $500, and were soon abandoned.
- supernovae 8y ago
  The surface 7" device was supposed to be priced around 200(ish) but we cancelled because 7" devices are largely rejected by the industry. The 399 go is a step in the right direction. BUT, i do wish we had a legit 7" that wasn't a Chinese malware knockoff or a really outdated Samsung or Android 5.0 devie. The 7-8" formfacter is such huge utility for pilots, GPS navigation and ebook reading. Shame even apple doesn't update the ipad mini anymore :(
emodendroket 8y ago
I mean frankly that's still kind of my attitude to Chromebooks. I've never seen someone using one and I can't see the point.
apozem 8y ago
Speaking of companies laughing at competitors they shouldn't, my father has a great story from his time at IBM. He was in a meeting where they were talking about Amazon Web Services, which had just launched. He said an IBM executive called it "stupid" and asked, "Who would ever pay for a server with a credit card?" This blew my mind, because now that AWS is crushing IBM's cloud offerings, the answer to his question is tons of people.
- notatcomputer68 8y ago
  The transaction cost of fully automatic flow and pay with credit card is unbeatable. For a big project it may not matter but for a small one it does.

by mabbo 8y ago

ChrisSD 8y ago

It's not like they haven't got a history of doing this. Remember when the iPhone had "no chance" of "any significant market share"?[0] [0] https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2007-04-29-ballmer-ceo-forum-usat_N.htm https://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/companies/management/2...

ianai 8y ago
They also spread plenty of FUD around all things Linux too.
- jacquesm 8y ago
  It went quite a bit further than just FUD.
fjsolwmv 8y ago
And when the Web was irrelevant. Bill Gates and patent troll Nathan Myrvhold wrote a while book unironically displaying their utter lack of vision about the industry. Their while business is a mix of making bland weak copies of more popular software to run on their decades old Windows entrenchment, Xbox, and a few nice keyboard and mice. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Bill_Gates_book) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Road_Ahead_(Bill_Gates_b...
- reaperducer 8y ago
  I read an old magazine article a few weeks ago where Bill Gates was talking about how the internet isn't necessary outside of businesses. That having a computer use a phone line to dial up to a central server once or twice a day is all anyone needs. This was back when 2400 baud was considered super fast. Steve Jobs may have had some bad qualities (many of them irrationally amplified in the "Jobs-bad-Woz-good" revisionist history SV jealousy echo chamber), but he was one hell of a futurist.
  - danso 8y ago
    What revisionist history?
    - nailer 8y ago
      A lot of people discredit Jobs' creative vision due to disliking his personality, and, if they're engineers, like to overemphasize Woz because he's an engineer.
      - colordrops 8y ago
        Maybe 10 years ago that was true.
        nailer 8y ago
        What do you think changed those people's minds? My feeling is that in the years post Jobs' death negative stories about his personality have been increasingly common. For the record: I believe Jobs definitely deserves the credit, I'm just observing the mud that has been slung his way.
        danso 8y ago
        Stories about his negative side are likely more common because people feel more free to talk about them, now that Jobs, being dead, can no longer respond or retaliate against people with grievances, such as the daughter he disavowed [0]. I perhaps unfairly read negative connotations in your use of "revisionist", but I see nothing wrong with adding Jobs' uglier side to the historical record. It doesn't change what he accomplished, and it's something we can learn from. I do question the idea that Woz has been irrationally overemphasized. By the time the iPod was dominant, and a year before the iPhone, Woz felt so left out of the historical record that he published his autobiography to set the record straight, particularly about the misconception that Jobs himself invented/built the Apple I and ][ machine. Even then, Woz gives clear credit to Jobs for having the entrepreneurial sense and vision to make Apple a company, whereas Woz was perfectly content to work at HP for all his days. After the iPhone, Woz became even more a part of Apple's ancient, forgotten history. He was a bit character in the Jobs' movies came out, and AFAIK, no movie yet has been made about Woz's life. [0] https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/sep/01/daughter-steve-jobs-denied-lisa-brennan-jobs https://www.theguardian.com/global/2018/sep/01/daughter-stev...
reaperducer 8y ago
FTA: "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get." I wonder what the maximum penetration was for Windows OSes on phones. "...my 85-year-old uncle probably will never own an iPod, and I hope we'll get him to own a Zune." What's a Zune? /s
- isostatic 8y ago
  <i>What's a Zune?</i> It's the think starlord got at the end of guardians of the galaxy 2. Still, at least it didn't suffer like the ipod -- it had No wireless and Less space than a Nomad. It was "Lame".
  - mattkevan 8y ago
    But you could ‘squirt’ songs from one Zune to another. The Zune was a litany of poor decisions, but that word choice must have been the worst.
    - reaperducer 8y ago
      I think you are correct. Though, I also found the word "squircle†" amusing, and still use it when the opportunity arises. The Zune was the first time I'd heard it used outside of math nerds trying to out-nerd each other. † https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squircle https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Squircle
    - mixmastamyk 8y ago
      From the company that brought you “wince.”
      - mattkevan 8y ago
        And MicroSoft
awucs 8y ago
People often quote that, but I don't think he was necessarily wrong. What happened wasn't really so much between Apple and Microsoft, as Google giving away Android. That made all the other, arguably better, offerings redundant. Also letting Apple take a lot more market share because of quality and fragmentation issues. Almost no one makes any money from smart phones. Microsoft is probably fourth in terms of profit (from patents and such) behind Apple, Google and Samsung. Though Microsoft might have lost more in terms of influence and maneuvering. Addition: Which part, if any, are the downvoters objecting to? From the people I have talked to in the industry that is exactly what happened and why a lot of companies got out of it.
- ChrisSD 8y ago
  The iPhone was beating MS phones before Android was even a thing[0]. They were certainly way more than "2% or 3%" in the markets they operated in. I can't see how Ballmer's statement was even slightly correct. [0] https://www.macrumors.com/2008/02/05/iphone-with-28-of-u-s-smartphone-marketshare-for-q4-2007/ https://www.macrumors.com/2008/02/05/iphone-with-28-of-u-s-s...
  - awucs 8y ago
    I don't think "2% or 3%" was very realistic, but you have to remember that when the iPhone first came out it wasn't very good. I didn't have 3G, GPS or App Store (nor a couple of other things). Apple was certainly ahead, but the market also wasn't ready nor big at that. When it actually matured there were a couple of solid offerings including from Microsoft, which among other things had arguably better design than Android. But at that point the market was moving on. The non-Apple market was no longer about selling the operating system or phones but apps, ads, components or accessories. If people want to go "Haha Microsoft" I guess that is fine, but they didn't lose to Apple.
    - IkmoIkmo 8y ago
      > (nor a couple of other things). Some other fun ones to mention: didn't let you copy/paste text (for the first 2 years of iPhone), didn't let you record video, and didn't let you make a selfie while looking at the screen. (no front-facing camera)

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Scoping_dindus 8y ago

ChromeOS IS trash though. The pixelbooks are the only ones worth half a shit. I've used my Acer 11 quite a bit. And I can say that I'll ever buy a Google device again. Between constant updates to crouton issues to weird display issues to trackpad weirdness, it's just awful. I haven't got around to picking up a Surface laptop yet, but when it's time for my next upgrade, that's what I plan on getting. Google is also definitely not hiring the brightest people in the world. Its easy to think that because that's what they want people to think, but writing code on a whiteboard and getting overpaid is not a sign of intelligence. The brightest people in the world work for the US govt, unfortunately.

paulsutter 8y ago

Reminds me of Steve Ballmer literally laughing at the iPhone in a 2007 interview[1]: > There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance. It's a $500 subsidized item. They may make a lot of money. But if you actually take a look at the 1.3 billion phones that get sold, I'd prefer to have our software in 60% or 70% or 80% of them, than I would to have 2% or 3%, which is what Apple might get. [1] https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-steve-ballmer-thought-about-the-iphone-five-years-ago-2012-6 https://www.businessinsider.com/heres-what-steve-ballmer-tho...

godzillabrennus 8y ago

First they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win. - Microsoft should have known this but they had made too much money for too long.

dpark 8y ago
Yes and no. Just because they laugh at you doesn’t mean you’ll eventually win. Lots of shitty products get laughed at deservedly.
supernovae 8y ago
Microsoft makes more money today than they ever had. They're on their way to Trillion dollar valuation. Lets not forget Google said the surface line was a disaster too.. They all poke at each other
emodendroket 8y ago
Right, that's why now we all use Cuil for searches and look up information about various subjects on Cpedia.

mikejb 8y ago

Not understanding what your competitor is thinking, but dismissing them anyways it is arrogant at best, potentially dangerous. If you choose to ignore a competitive product, you better be able to explain why that product won't endanger your business - that includes understanding the goal of said product.

osrec 8y ago

If it wasn't for Office and the ecosystem around it, I don't think many firms would opt for Microsoft products. In my firm, we're purely Linux, but have Windows VMs, just for Excel. As an aside, we run a business management app called Bx (https://usebx.com/app https://usebx.com/app) and have recently started making some money. We're putting aside some cash to fund the development of a feature-rich, cross-platform spreadsheet app (I wished OpenOffice Calc would suffice, but it simply doesn't, and is unstable at times), so that we can finally ditch the Windows VMs we run! Something about Microsoft's historical ethos makes me abhor development on their platform, and targeting their browser is a nightmare in its own right (with Safari a close second).

adrianN 8y ago
I hope you consider funding the improvement of Libre Office instead of trying to write your own spreadsheet app. There has been an incredible amount of work poured into it, starting from scratch doesn't make much sense imho.
- osrec 8y ago
  Not denying the amount of work gone into LibreOffice, however I'm not sure if I agree with you on the approach (this will probably be an unpopular opinion). I find the entire ecosystem of LibreOffice a bit clunky, and it wouldn't surprise me if there is a lot of technical debt that would need to be understood before we could make any sort of contribution. Don't know why, but my gut says starting afresh would allow us to build something more useful, faster. It would make sense to use the LibreOffice code base as a guide though.
  - adrianN 8y ago
    Well, if you fail at improving Libre Office to a state where you're satisfied with it, you still improved Libre Office. If you fail to write something better than Calc, all effort is lost.
    - osrec 8y ago

kerng 8y ago

I think it's a sign of not being prepared and not having an answer. I am certain that the guy knew this was a smart move by Google, even right at that time. But it needs a certain skill to behave appropriate and professional in such situations. It reflects that the person certainly is not of the humble kind.

bitL 8y ago

Alright, you like a challenge, so what's the purpose of a ChromeBook outside of a plastic cutlery-equivalent of a device destined to quickly end up in a landfill, contributing to unnecessary damage of environment? Do you feel good about working on an unsustainable disposable device, meditating how much of a chess master you are these days? Did you meet people that actually decided to move forward with this project and understood their real, not stated motivations? Did you truly align with it?

NegativeK 8y ago
I've downvoted you due to the combative tone of your question.
- bitL 8y ago
  And? I am giving a strong negative feedback so that author might incorporate it to their own biological reinforcement learning system. Being nice and agreeable doesn't do anyone favor, it just allows bad decisions to continue unobjected. Similarly as you use downvotes for disagreeing, with which I completely agree (to disagree).
detaro 8y ago
Where's the data that chromebooks have shorter useful lives than other laptops in the same price class? Other laptops on average? It's possible that's the case, but not obvious to me.
- bitL 8y ago
  How much of a lifetime could a device with soldered on 2GB of RAM and 32GB of eMMC storage have? How much repurposed could it be? Pricier Chromebooks with HiDPI screens and Core-M or better processors are still castrated in one way or the other comparing to general computing devices, yet approaching their price levels. What's the point for a developer? "It just works"? "It's just safe!" due to mandatory secure boot and BIOS reflashes? "Hey, look ma, a cheap computer, let's buy it as a gift!" for regular Joes?

wrs 8y ago

Pre-Satya Microsoft had an odd combination of paranoia and blindness regarding the rise of browser applications. Blindness: I was in a Microsoft VP’s office when he said he was downsizing the IE effort because “the browser is done”, enterprise users were satisfied, and consumers don’t generate significant Windows revenue. I think that was IE6. Paranoia: I was present for many early-00s decisions where a Microsoft exec weakened the ability to write rich applications in the browser to avoid devaluing Win32. So they were at least scared of the idea of a “browser OS” in the abstract. Although...at the same time, Office was pushing for browser application capabilities, which is where we got XHR, which is a big reason browser applications became practical. Sometimes you’d never guess Office and Windows were the same company.

bena 8y ago
In a lot of ways they aren't/weren't. Office does a lot of things their own way and without a lot of the cross-compatibility that's a feature of most Microsoft products. That's why you'll find you'll be able to do something in Office, but other Microsoft programs won't. Or vice versa. Like Notepad and Internet Explorer are pretty much just containers for certain Windows controls. Controls Office don't use. They roll their own. Or at least, used to. Wouldn't surprise me to find out that Office had their own browser rendering engine that didn't rely on anything in IE.
- krn 8y ago
  > Office does a lot of things their own way and without a lot of the cross-compatibility that's a feature of most Microsoft products. That's probably because unlike most Microsoft products, Office is cross-platform and has to support multiple operating systems, including MacOS, iOS, and Android.
  - gmueckl 8y ago
    Isn't Office for Mac a completely diverged fork from an old Windows version of Office? I remember some blog posts from the understaffed Mac Office team stating that much several years ago. I don't know if they rebased it in the meantime. The posts read as if the big Office team was focused entirely on Windows and everything else was done by understaffed teams struggling to keep up.

awucs 8y ago

I don't think that is ever a good idea. But Google does also have a reputation for getting things wrong. Plenty of their product never make it anywhere, because they don't have to. You have been able to get a cheap Windows laptop for probably almost ten years. Recently e.g. the Lenovo IdeaPad and before that there were netbooks. I think there could be merit to ChromeOS, but for now it seems like a placeholder so no one else can take that position in the market.

on_and_off 8y ago

It reminds me of Microsoft organizing a burial for Android when they launched a new Windows Phone version .. Both are extremely bad reactions at face value but also show how clueless the company can be (at least if you believe it is indicative of the company's mindset)

donarb 8y ago
That was actually a funeral for the iPhone. They even rented a hearse and had pallbearers walking a iPhone casket through the streets of Redmond. https://www.cnet.com/pictures/microsofts-funeral-for-the-iphone-photos/ https://www.cnet.com/pictures/microsofts-funeral-for-the-iph...
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  That seems so pathetic in retrospect.
- on_and_off 8y ago
  oh indeed iPhone and Blackberry. Anyway, even if it had been Blackberry and WebOs, it would still have been pretty awful.

gd2 8y ago

I also remember that for a few season, MS did the vaporware thing. Spreading false rumors that they would be releasing a Surface in a few months that would cost about $200, and be better real computer compared to the new Google backed toy. Then after a few delays the surface limited devices came out at nearly $500, and were soon abandoned.

supernovae 8y ago
The surface 7" device was supposed to be priced around 200(ish) but we cancelled because 7" devices are largely rejected by the industry. The 399 go is a step in the right direction. BUT, i do wish we had a legit 7" that wasn't a Chinese malware knockoff or a really outdated Samsung or Android 5.0 devie. The 7-8" formfacter is such huge utility for pilots, GPS navigation and ebook reading. Shame even apple doesn't update the ipad mini anymore :(

emodendroket 8y ago

I mean frankly that's still kind of my attitude to Chromebooks. I've never seen someone using one and I can't see the point.

apozem 8y ago

Speaking of companies laughing at competitors they shouldn't, my father has a great story from his time at IBM. He was in a meeting where they were talking about Amazon Web Services, which had just launched. He said an IBM executive called it "stupid" and asked, "Who would ever pay for a server with a credit card?" This blew my mind, because now that AWS is crushing IBM's cloud offerings, the answer to his question is tons of people.

notatcomputer68 8y ago
The transaction cost of fully automatic flow and pay with credit card is unbeatable. For a big project it may not matter but for a small one it does.