18 ms·

Chrome OS has stalled out

155 points by randomerr 7y ago

ramenmeal 7y ago
Dumb question: > constant crashes, an insanely slow single-core Intel Atom processor, and questionable build quality would make it clear to anyone that it was very much a product built for dogfooding, not as a replacement for your Windows or Mac notebook This use of "dogfooding" confuses me, wouldn't the chromebook being used for dogfooding mean it was meant as a replacement for your windows/mac notebook? Or if not, how does it relate to whether the chrombook was meant to replace windows/mac notebooks?
- abrowne 7y ago
  I think they mean it wasn't ready as a product to be sold to the public.
  - netsharc 7y ago
    Seems like the author doesn't really know the meaning of that term (or well, is using that term not in the way you and I understand it). That word is even linked to the Wikipedia page, but it says: > This can be a way for an organization to test its products in real-world usage. Hence dogfooding can act as quality control, It smells like the author wanted to use a fancier term for "beta-testing".
    - 13hours 7y ago
      He also doesn't seem to know quite what "delusional" means. He uses it to describe people that don't agree with him.
- sly010 7y ago
  Perhaps he meant it's table scraps?
  - gruez 7y ago
    No, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dogfood#Verb https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dogfood#Verb
    - war1025 7y ago
      What the above commenters are getting at is the way the sentence is phrased, it seems to be implying something different from traditional "dogfooding". Something like table scraps does seem more appropriate in that sentence to me. Unless there is some context that I am just not picking up on.
      - Redoubts 7y ago
        Dunno, I can only hazard thinking ‘intentionally underpowered to force our developers to think more ‘
- pgeorgi 7y ago
  That paragraph refers to the Cr-48 pilot device. Dogfooding seems to be an apt description of what it was for. (Disclosure: I work on Chrome OS firmware, but started later, so I never saw one of the Cr-48s)
- toyg 7y ago
  I think he meant that it was a replacement for windows/mac but only in enterprise settings with very limited requirements. To be honest, I’ve never seen “dogfooding” used in such negative terms, but this seems the most likely explanation.
- whywhywhywhy 7y ago
  Atom processor might not be a restriction out of choice but out of limitations. Building a x86 laptop, sourcing processors from Intel is actually much harder than you’d expect if you’re new to the game and doing smaller runs.
- timw4mail 7y ago
  The build quality of the Cr48 was pretty decent, especially for a machine they were giving away. The only part on mine that really failed was the display hinge, after I dropped it. The keyboard is pretty decent. The atom processor and the 2GB max of ram is what really was the problem with it. All that said, they supported the Cr48 for a long time after it was sent to people, especially considering it was basically public beta test hardware.
pgrote 7y ago
Since 2013 the main computer I used was the Acer C720. i3, 4 gig of RAM chromebook. Never had an issue with it. Runs as fast now as it did then. It quit receiving updates in June of 2019. Never understood the thought process behind this as supporting the machine is probably negligible given the platform. I looked at other chromebook solutions, but unless I wanted to spend close to $1000 there was nothing close performance wise. There are ways of getting chromeos on the machines left behind, but it didn't interest me. Decided to move on to a refurbished Windows 10 pro dell laptop. I do miss the safety I felt with the chromebook.
- tytso 7y ago
  The Acer C720 used a 3.8 Linux kernel, as documented at [1]. Updating to a new kernel would have required a full QA of the hardware to make sure that the device drivers in a newer kernel still worked correctly with that hardware. [1] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f... Support costs aren't too bad so long as you don't have to update the kernel and requal everything. But newer userspace starts to use kernel features to provide better functionality and better security (consider the massive vulnerabilities associated with Spectre and Meltdown, and obviously none of the remediations would have been in the 3.8 kernels). So you have to consider the costs of doing a requal of all of the hardware platforms using a 3.8 kernel to something newer, versus the costs of continuing to backport security fixes to older kernels, and the costs of testing the userspace components against older kernel, and providing workarounds for the lack of features in newer kernels. A six year support lifetime is a long time; and Windows 10 has also stopped supporting older laptops on newer releases, so you will also see Microsoft not providing updates to older hardware[2][3]. [2] https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/360008642799-Windows-10-Support-of-older-hardware https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/3600086427... [3] https://www.cio.com/article/2972791/why-you-should-be-very-wary-of-windows-10-if-you-own-an-older-pc.html https://www.cio.com/article/2972791/why-you-should-be-very-w...
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    The Asus laptop I got in 2009 with Windows 7, has gone through all Windows updates, is now using the very latest Windows 10 version.
jonahbenton 7y ago
Meh. Nah. Chromebook growth has been phenomenal, full stop. There is still plenty of headroom, because the price point continues to beat phones and laptop competitors. Note also the growing success of premium Chromebooks. Classic bottom-up innovation/disruption story. In terms of making use of the hardware, Android is a necessary stopgap strategy, but webassembly is coming to bring native app performance and security to the web platform. That's not to say Google is marching from strength to strength. Their product management discipline is poor to non-existent, and from the outside there seems to be a fundamental monetization tension between ads and subscriptions, when the same human flips between being product and/or customer, particularly for the kid/ed sector.
- therobot24 7y ago
  >> Chromebook growth has been phenomenal, full stop. There is still plenty of headroom, because the price point continues to beat phones and laptop competitors. Note also the growing success of premium Chromebooks. Classic bottom-up innovation/disruption story. I completely agree. Both my mother-in-law and cousins (that are college age) have switched to chromebooks because of the price point to accomplish what are basic needs for most laptop users.
- ReverseCold 7y ago
  Yup, chromebooks are huge in K12, and there really isn’t any promising alternative. Even students at schools without chromebooks often buy them independently because of their low price. These things are a massive success, even if not in the way that google wants just yet.
pjmlp 7y ago
Technically Chrome OS has some interesting bits, like its use of virtualization, containers, based on Rust and Go. As general purpose OS, I never got the point of it. Any OS other OS is able to offer browser juggling support alongside the benefits of having a proper OS, better hardware that a Web browser is capable of (does not matter how good is the GPU, Web GL 2.0 can only do so much). And the security story is kind of meaningless when everything that matters is stored in someone else's computer, with the traffic going through Google's servers.
- zamadatix 7y ago
  It's not targeting the general purpose OS market it's purpose built for specific kinds of customer use cases. Once you get past that it makes a lot of sense. Well not as in "it makes a lot of sense for you personally to go out and by" but it makes a lot of sense why it exists and sells so much.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    That is the thing, it doesn't sell at all outside US School system, as the article points out.
    - zamadatix 7y ago
      Decently popular at SMB as well. The point is it doesn't need to outsell Windows it just needs to have markets it targets and updates for those markets. That it doesn't have updates for markets it doesn't target is irrelevant unless they've maxed out all the markets they target (they haven't yet).
- ailideex 7y ago
  I got one for my mom and I'm very happy with how low maintenance it is.
  - pjmlp 7y ago
    Are you also happy that your mum's stuff lives on Google servers? 'Cause I steer my folks away from such stuff.
omnifischer 7y ago
I really like a stalled out OS. Really give me 20 year stability. Do not change interface and add eye candy every year just to sell new stuff. Just security updates. Really hope there is RHEL (10+ year release) type ChromeOS.
hocuspocus 7y ago
I really wanted to buy my mom a Pixelbook (and then the Go), but it's literally sold in three countries: US, Canada, UK. Pretty much like the Pixel phones that still ignore a few major markets after all these years. What should I feel about a company that doesn't even try to sell its hardware seriously? Meanwhile, any 2nd tier Chinese OEM will manage to have its products sold at the electronics shop down the road.
thecrumb 7y ago
My daughter's school just switched from iPads to Chromebooks.
accosine 7y ago
I got the original Cr-48 Chromebook back in the day. That thing was phenomenal good at just-surf-the-web™️. If ChromeOS was really stalled out, I could use it as something else than a paperweight.
Kipters 7y ago
I often see price being cited as a selling point for Chromebooks, but I have never found them to be really cheap. Maybe it's a regional thing? Looking now on Amazon (.it) I can find a Pixelbook equipped with a measle i5-7Y57, 8 GB of ram and 256 GB SSD for 1999 €. That's crazy. For that kind of money I could get a 10th gen i7 (where applicable) 16 GB ram/512 GB SSD Surface Laptop 3, Surface Pro 7 or Surface Pro X (including type cover and pen for the Pros) with money to spare. How is this considered cheap? It's insane
- utopian3 7y ago
  I've seen some models in the $200-400 USD range, occasionally they have a sale, but their specs are pretty awful, even by smartphone standards. I don't think I've seen a pixelbook priced at 1999 €, I wonder if that's higher due to cost of tax/tariff/import?
  - Kipters 7y ago
    I can see the seller is from the UK, according to hocuspocus it's one of the countries where it's officially sold. I'd expect some markup from them, maybe higher shipping fees, but since it's still within the EU there shouldn't be anything else. I forgot to mention that in Italy prices already include taxes, so 1999€ is exactly how much I would pay.
    - avian 7y ago
      I’ve seen Pixel phones sold on Amazon UK and shipped to EU countries where Google doesn’t officially sell them at almost 2x markup.
- lllr_finger 7y ago
  That's probably more directed towards the sub-$300 market, which has at least a handful of options. I've got my wife, kids, and parents all on these devices because they're cheap and easy to use. I'd prefer spending $300 on something like a refurbished Thinkpad for myself, but realize that might not serve my family's desires.
teddyc 7y ago
I personally like the Chromebook, but it's relegated to fun, not work. It worked well to help me establish a boundary b/t work and home life, as I'd have to pull out my MacBook to do any actual work. I played around with Crostini Linux, but I've had it die on me twice and been forced to do a clean install of Crostini, which would be awful had I used it for anything important. The Chromebook is also a great way to get out of supporting friends and family with technical issues. It's an affordable device and my tech support has been limited to getting it setup with the printer. (Though cloud printing is being killed later this year IIRC.)
- choward 7y ago
  You must be doing something wrong if reinstalling your OS causes you to lose anything important. For starters it helps making your /home directory a separate partition.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
    Does Crostini play nice with a separate /home ?
darren0 7y ago
I bought a pixelbook last year as I was excited to play with the early native Linux integration. The technology that has been built is an amazing amount of work (crosvm, Wayland support, etc) but at the end of the day it's really only useful for simple use cases. This is a common theme for everything in ChromeOS. I've given up on ChromeOS for the time being as been capable of any serious work I do. The more frustrating part is my kids have Chromebooks and as they've gotten older they've become a real detriment. They can't accomplish anything on them beyond school work. My kids are showing a lot of interest in graphic design and programming and both tasks are too hard or almost impossible on a Chromebook.
- deltron3030 7y ago
  Try Codesandbox and Figma (both run in the browser) with your kids. Figma is really underrated as a general graphic design tool, the pen tool for vector shapes is top notch, and you can use blend modes for images. Google fonts are already integrated, it can be used to learn e.g. logo design.
- DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
  Slightly OT, but is getting your kids a traditional Linux laptop an option?
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- jayd16 7y ago
  Hmm how hard did you try? If you turn on the linux integration you can install a lot of things. If you turn on the Android integration you can install a lot of things. If you need a mac or windows machines...well no luck there. To me, the biggest drawback is most Chromebooks (not even the pixels) don't have a good GPU not that you can't get things to run.
- turtlebits 7y ago
  What are you trying to do? I have VS code installed and regularly develop in js, python and go on my Pixelbook.
dgellow 7y ago
> In 2019, a public space, restaurant, or even a shopping center without free Wi-Fi is basically unconscionable. The author isn't familiar with Berlin's cafes and restaurants ;)
- bagacrap 7y ago
  I too have been to popular coffee shops without WiFi. You wouldn't have known just by looking. Everyone was tethering. Lumping restaurants in there seems a bit bizarre unless he's just talking about SV.
rckoepke 7y ago
ChromeOS is also used for all docker instances on Google Cloud Platform (GCE)...so I doubt development is dead in the water.
- herohamp 7y ago
  This seems pretty crazy, can I get a source on this?
  - jcastro 7y ago
    https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized-os/ https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized-os/
williamstein 7y ago
The new Pixelbook Go only comes with a low resolution display, except for the most expensive model (see [1]). This is significant change for Google, since their previous Chromebooks had 4K-ish displays. This move from high end to low end reminds me of the Pixel 3a phone [2]. I loved the idea of Chromebooks, and hoped ChromeOS was a way that Linux would finally be "mainstream" on laptops. I've bought at least 10 Chromebooks since 2013, including all of the Google flagship models, since I use them as my main dev machine and at tradeshows. My next laptop is either going to be a Dell XPS 13 with Linux or (shudder) some random Windows 10 laptop. [1] "1080p on a 13.3-inch display works out to 166 pixels per inch, a far cry from the 235 ppi on the first Pixelbook and the impressive 293 ppi on the Pixel Slate. Google does offer the Go with a 4K screen, but that option is only available if you get the top-of-the-line model, which costs an eye-popping $1,399." https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/25/google-pixelbook-go-review/ https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/25/google-pixelbook-go-revi... [2] I won't ever buy another Google phone -- I bought a Pixel 3a and it completely broke by dropping it 3 feet with a screen protector and highly protective case, due to the very cheap display tech they used. I searched youtube for stress test videos about the 3a and could only find one where somebody's pixel 3a shattered after being dropped 1 foot; in comparison phones like iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S10plus have dozens of videos with high end equipment testing dropping under rigorous conditions.
- therobot24 7y ago
  >> [2] I won't ever buy another Google phone -- I bought a Pixel 3a and it completely broke by dropping it 3 feet with a screen protector and highly protective case, due to the very cheap display tech they used. I've got a 3a and haven't experienced this. My kid has dropped my phone everywhere (from the cart at the grocery, from his high chair, his car seat, etc.) - note the phone isn't playing anything, he just likes to hold it and pretend he's talking to 'oma' or 'gigi' - and I just have a cheap rubber cover. To each their own though.
  - exhilaration 7y ago
    I have a 3A as well (I got as soon as it went on sale to replace my Pixel 1) and I'm embarrassed to admit that I drop it all the time but nothing has broken so far.
ArtWomb 7y ago
The counterpoint to this argument is that there are many users who want a super-lightweight OS that is not bloated, but very high performance with long batter life. I use my Samsung Chromebook 3 for gsuite, gcloud management through the web console, linux (beta) shell based development, gcloud cloud shell, putty type chrome terminal and fairly hardcore web app testing (webgl 2.0 compute, magenta, tensorflowjs). It works phenomenally well. And I've definitely noticed a lot of Google employees using the Pixelbook as their work laptop. Looking ahead and making predictions for ChomreOS in the 2020s. I could even see a Stadia style pipeline for more processor intensive apps. Run Creative Cloud / Maya type tools on dedicated cloud gpus. And just send the video frames to the client browser tab. I've been thinking a lot about how 5G adoption really can be leveraged to offload computation from the device and will introduce whole new classes of interactive media.
- hajile 7y ago
  I've been using a pixelbook as my mobile dev platform (mostly web and server dev) ever since my 2015 macbook (15 inch) died. Overall, the experience as a developer has been quite good. The hardware is second to none. The trackpad is (IMHO) better than the one on my macbook, the keyboard is way better than Apple's recent keyboards, and having a touchscreen has been very nice for mobile testing. Passive cooling is a mixed bag. I like being completely silent and solid-state, but running a complete test suite takes a really long time because it must downclock (running the tests for my current files isn't bad though). The 3:2 aspect ratio also gives a ton of extra height over a lot of other systems. The ChromeOS UI has been 2 steps forward and 1 step back. In preparation for their tablet launch, they re-worked the launcher. This was mostly fine, but they made the poor choice to merge settings and notifications to be like Android. They used to sit side-by-side and viewing lots of notifications was much easier. It used to be really buggy too, but now it's mostly just a worse experience for no good reason. On the other hand, they finally added workspaces that are pretty similar to macOS. They work great and my only complaint is that they haven't made a gesture to switch between them yet (just a keyboard shortcut or expose then select). When I switched, you had to put the machine into dev mode and run Crouton. This made everything work more-or-less like a normal Linux machine, but made for annoying startups (make a mistake and your machine will wipe and reset) while also getting rid of the security the OS provides. Crostini has been an amazing advancement and they're making very fast progress. Support for VPNs was my primary issue, but that's been fixed for months. Sharing between the main OS and Crostini used to be a bit painful, but that's easy now too. GPU acceleration can now be enabled and works decently most of the time opening the way for most Debian apps. Tabs for the terminal would be nice, but I usually use tmux anyway. My only particularly annoying issue is UI scaling of Linux apps, but that's not entirely their fault. On the high-dpi screen, things can look really small because most apps aren't optimized. The really annoying issue for me at the moment is third-party APKs in Android. They simply do not allow them unless you want to go back into dev mode. If that isn't something you do, I guess that's not an issue at all. I'm currently hoping for a pixelbook 2 which simply adds another inch of screen and shrinks the bezels a bit. Other than that and maybe adding thunderbolt, there's not much I'd want to change.
scarmig 7y ago
I don't know how I feel about ChromeOS's market position. I do know that Crostini is the best innovation in the laptop space from the last half decade.
andrewmutz 7y ago
I use Chrome OS daily to do my job and I think it is fantastic. IMO it is the ultimate work machine for your average knowledge worker. At my company, all the software that we use is web-based (SaaS), with the exception of software engineers, who are using local tools to develop web based applications. For non-engineers, the OS provides an extremely simple client to use to do their job. The OS is a slightly better web browsing experience than the Mac, and since all you need to do your job is a browser, it works great. The OS presents your google drive cleanly as a local filesystem, so you can even avoid any local storage completely. The OS is security-first, and is far more resistant to malware than a Mac or Windows machine. For engineers, you get all of the above and a well functioning linux distribution on which you can build software. Since everything we deploy is on linux, it's closer to our production environment than the mac. The best part of the experience is how the cloud oriented nature of the OS lets me treat my laptops like cattle rather than pets. If you lose your device, just grab another one. All your stuff is up in the cloud. Strange bug? just power wash the machine and start over. I also think that journalists or hobbyists may have a hard time appreciating the OS. Yes, it is terrible at things like video editing, games, audio editing, etc. But for a work machine in an enterprise environment, it's fantastic.
- derefr 7y ago
  > At my company, all the software that we use is web-based (SaaS), with the exception of software engineers, who are using local tools to develop web based applications. And interestingly, Google has a clear "complementary solution" to ChromeOS for software-engineering use cases: Google Cloud Shell (https://cloud.google.com/shell/docs/ https://cloud.google.com/shell/docs/), which gives you a "personal POSIX environment as web-app." I feel like ChromeOS and GCP have an obvious idiomatic relationship to them, sort of like Windows and Azure do.
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
- ghaff 7y ago
  I increasingly travel with a ChromeBook. There's very little on my MacBook that I have to run locally and I find that GSuite works pretty well offline. (And that's where a lot of my files would be even if I were carrying a full laptop.) Yes, ChromeBooks make you somewhat more dependent on networks. But, truth be told, I'm not getting a lot done other than reading or maybe writing if I don't have a network connection anyway whatever device I'm carrying. There's not much I do day-to-day on my laptop that requires anything other than a browser.
FloatArtifact 7y ago
It seems like to me I would be better off if chrome OS was actually part of Android. The experience of switching to a desktop could be as simple as plugging in your phone into a keyboard screen shell with a battery USB ports. Why spend 800 bucks on your phone and laptop. Third parties have tried to implement such systems with minimal success but I wonder what it would look like with Google backing it.
mikece 7y ago
This would correspond with the rumors that Google is quietly pulling engineering resources from Android and ChromeOS to work on Fuchsia which is supposed to replace both and be the Google IoT operating system of the future. It's rather open that Pixelbooks support the current builds of Fuchsia; what's less published but not hidden if you ask the Nest engineers that the Google Home runs on Fuchsia with its apps written in Flutter. Fuchsia's browser is Chrome and has an Android compatibility layer which allows running Android apps on Fuchsia (how long they keep that in is another question).
thibran 7y ago
Long battery life, cheap, can write some code in Linux -> perfect travel device
smt88 7y ago
What Google product doesn't feel stalled? (Serious question)
Medicalidiot 7y ago
I've used Chromebooks for 8 years now. Anecdotally what I've noticed is that the sheer amount of bugs has increased dramatically after they started implementing the ability to use Android apps. Right around that time it seemed like Google went from trying to make the best browser based operating system to something else. With new updates things seem to spontaneously break and the amount of effort that went into tracking down bugs diminished. I'm using a MBP now, instead, partly due to the quality issues and partly because Google's privacy stance has made me more uncomfortable as time goes on.
dreamcompiler 7y ago
The utility of ChromeOS for me is that it enabled the creation of cheap Linux laptops. For $300 plus a 128GB A2-rated SD card, I can boot GalliumOS from the SD card and have a nicely functional Linux development machine with all my important stuff backed up to Dropbox and/or Github. If the laptop gets stolen I don't much care; I just buy another one and reinstall and I haven't lost any data. (I don't use Google's builtin Linux because it's too limited--you cannot boot it from an SD card.)
- oscargrouch 7y ago
  This is why i think a OS like Chrome is designed exactly to be this sort of trap. A cloud computing trap, where we are perfectly ok with alienating our digital life/data to third-parties without understanding the depth of the problem we are getting into. The ones who control our digital properties, can control the world (information is power, remember?). They might not, but they can, and also can aid third parties with shady intentions (see all the Facebook fiasco). By the way, we should have learned this lesson already. Also, people often forget how groundbreaking was to have a compiler (GCC) directly embedded with the OS because you could mess with the source and compile it yourself. Its very liberating to have a platform where you can code and modify it. So i think a future where the likes of Chrome OS took over the world, is pretty scary as we ended turning our powerful and liberating computers into a sort of "interactive TV". As i understand it, they will try to make it very easy for us to buy into this platform utopia, the problem is, in my point of view, that in the long term this will lead to some sort of digital feudalism. Lets not forget we are "digitalizing" our lives day-by-day, til the day there are very few useful things we do in the physical world. So in the future if Google for instance want to ban your account, this could have severe problems, as a side-effect of your digital ostracism. (access to capital, bank, employment, etc..)
  - dreamcompiler 7y ago
    I see your point with regard to ChromeOS, but my post made it clear that I was using Linux, not ChromeOS. My use of my Chromebook is not dependent on Google at all, except for the fact that Google made the hardware exist. I'm dependent on github and Dropbox but I trust both more than I trust Google, and I could easily switch them both to servers I manage.
ryuukk_ 7y ago
for OP; but for everyone else, ChromeOS is the perfect OS, it only does what you bought it for no bloated bullshit, no extra useless features unlike windows, it doesn't requires a 512gb ssd to be fast and energy efficient and unlike linux, it doesn't require 50years of experience as a CS slave
Abishek_Muthian 7y ago
Google sent me free Chromebook(Acer 11 N7) ~2 years back, with a request that I speak to their GCP rep; I sent the rep my latest AWS bill with complete break down and asked them to mail me back with equivalent GCP services with price; I never heard back. Well that's about GCP marketing team, as for Chromebook - 1. The power brick broke down with single night plugged into power, that seems to be a problem with that particular model of power brick and the one Acer replaced with doesn't have any problem for ~ 2 years. 2. This particular model is like a tough-book(kids?), I was very impressed with the quality of build for the price ($299). 3. Underpowered Atom CPU, but that meant being fan-less. Fan-less X86 means, I use it as SBC (which it technically is) and it's hard to get a x86 SBC with this spec for this price. as for ChromeOS, 1. I am content with the premise of low end netbook with browser as the frontend (whether that should be Google Chrome is another discussion). 2. I am happy with the updates, first it was vanilla chromeOS, then I received Android App support, then I received notification that my Chromebook is EOL(it was fixed later), then I received Linux support. 3. Android apps compatibility became better but there are some fundamental issues as heavy threaded apps stall when moved out of focus (this may be due to hardware, someone with Chromebook Pixel should comment on this). 4. Good security architecture and regular security updates. Conclusion: As a commercial replacement for MIT Labs OLPC, Chromebook is a clear winner; as for $1500 laptop I think the OP article makes sense.
pengo 7y ago
I was a Google evangelist until the penny finally dropped and I saw that their business model was a disease. Chrome OS is cool, as are many of Alphabet's products past and future. But I no longer use any Google products or have a Google account, and actively take steps to prevent them having even passing access to any of my data. I think there are good use cases for a cloud-based OS, and it's something I could be interested in using, even helping develop. But, like Android and Search, Chrome OS is just another harvester of personal information to feed Google's advertising profit machine.
dfabulich 7y ago
Access to files is the critical issue here. Look at these examples from the article: > Chrome OS doesn't have a robust photo editor? Don't worry, you can download an [Android] app! Chrome doesn't have native integration with cloud file services like Box, Dropbox, or OneDrive? Just download the app! Chrome doesn't have Microsoft Office? App! The problem is that Chrome OS is attempting to be a desktop platform, using web apps and mobile apps. Desktop OSes (Windows, macOS) are all about files. Apps are files. Your documents, photos, and videos are files. Any app can access any of your files. On mobile, you don't normally interact with files. Apps aren't files; you launch apps directly from the app launcher, and they store data internally; when you delete an app, its data is deleted, too. Web apps are like mobile apps: they don't have access to your files. You can't make a web app photo editor that opens a file, makes some changes, and then saves those changes to the file. Instead, you have to "upload" the file to the web app, and then you have to "download" the modified file. Microsoft Office has a web version (Office 365), but it's like Google Docs, lacking access to your local files. Dropbox has a web app, but it just lets you download files one at a time; it's impossible to implement Dropbox-like file synchronization in a web app. Google is aware of this problem, but you might not like their proposed "solution," to develop a cross-browser standard file access API. https://web.dev/native-file-system/ https://web.dev/native-file-system/ Google's currently running an "origin trial," where a small number of web sites have temporary access to the feature to try it out. I think Google's not going to ship it until they convince Apple or Mozilla to approve; it's not clear when (or if) that will happen. Here's the most recent discussion from May. https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/154 https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/154 So file access isn't technically "stalled out," but it's still going to take a long, long time.
pier25 7y ago
Maybe Google had high hopes at turning Chrome OS into Android for desktop but, as the article points out, it failed miserably. At my last job in ed tech we developed and maintained a Chrome OS app for about 3 years. Not an Android app, but a web app for Chrome OS. I had great hopes for the platform for education use but it turned out developing for Chrome OS was a terrible mess. Docs are incomplete and cryptic, there are strange dev restrictions like not being able to use localStore, erratic behaviors of the apps, nowhere to go for help, the chrome web store dashboard was totally obsolete by today's standards, etc. It felt very bizarre seeing Google doing all the marketing on their new flashy Chrome OS devices, Android apps, and Linux support, while at the same time looking at the docs and working on what seemed like an abandoned project. I think ultimately Google will replace Chrome OS with Fuchsia. Maybe Fuchsia took longer than expected so they had to improvise and bring Android and Linux to keep the platform alive for a couple more years.
turtlebits 7y ago
I agree that ChromeOS needs some love. Recent updates have started to make my Pixelbook freeze and self reboot (while using Chrome only), Android support seems half baked still. That said, I regularly use it over my MacBook and still is the best form factor laptop I've ever used.
AcerbicZero 7y ago
Ah yes, Google. Now there is a company I can trust to build a product and not abandon it on the side of the road when they fail to put the effort in to make it successful.
throwGuardian 7y ago
I see googlers in tech talks and at cafes only use MacBook Pros. If their own PC isn't good enough for them, why should anyone else fall for their marketing? The day I buy a Chromebook is the day I read that Google only issues Chromebooks to their employees

155 points by randomerr 7y ago

Dumb question: > constant crashes, an insanely slow single-core Intel Atom processor, and questionable build quality would make it clear to anyone that it was very much a product built for dogfooding, not as a replacement for your Windows or Mac notebook This use of "dogfooding" confuses me, wouldn't the chromebook being used for dogfooding mean it was meant as a replacement for your windows/mac notebook? Or if not, how does it relate to whether the chrombook was meant to replace windows/mac notebooks?

abrowne 7y ago
I think they mean it wasn't ready as a product to be sold to the public.
- netsharc 7y ago
  Seems like the author doesn't really know the meaning of that term (or well, is using that term not in the way you and I understand it). That word is even linked to the Wikipedia page, but it says: > This can be a way for an organization to test its products in real-world usage. Hence dogfooding can act as quality control, It smells like the author wanted to use a fancier term for "beta-testing".
  - 13hours 7y ago
    He also doesn't seem to know quite what "delusional" means. He uses it to describe people that don't agree with him.
sly010 7y ago
Perhaps he meant it's table scraps?
- gruez 7y ago
  No, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dogfood#Verb https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/dogfood#Verb
  - war1025 7y ago
    What the above commenters are getting at is the way the sentence is phrased, it seems to be implying something different from traditional "dogfooding". Something like table scraps does seem more appropriate in that sentence to me. Unless there is some context that I am just not picking up on.
    - Redoubts 7y ago
      Dunno, I can only hazard thinking ‘intentionally underpowered to force our developers to think more ‘
pgeorgi 7y ago
That paragraph refers to the Cr-48 pilot device. Dogfooding seems to be an apt description of what it was for. (Disclosure: I work on Chrome OS firmware, but started later, so I never saw one of the Cr-48s)
toyg 7y ago
I think he meant that it was a replacement for windows/mac but only in enterprise settings with very limited requirements. To be honest, I’ve never seen “dogfooding” used in such negative terms, but this seems the most likely explanation.
whywhywhywhy 7y ago
Atom processor might not be a restriction out of choice but out of limitations. Building a x86 laptop, sourcing processors from Intel is actually much harder than you’d expect if you’re new to the game and doing smaller runs.
timw4mail 7y ago
The build quality of the Cr48 was pretty decent, especially for a machine they were giving away. The only part on mine that really failed was the display hinge, after I dropped it. The keyboard is pretty decent. The atom processor and the 2GB max of ram is what really was the problem with it. All that said, they supported the Cr48 for a long time after it was sent to people, especially considering it was basically public beta test hardware.

pgrote 7y ago

Since 2013 the main computer I used was the Acer C720. i3, 4 gig of RAM chromebook. Never had an issue with it. Runs as fast now as it did then. It quit receiving updates in June of 2019. Never understood the thought process behind this as supporting the machine is probably negligible given the platform. I looked at other chromebook solutions, but unless I wanted to spend close to $1000 there was nothing close performance wise. There are ways of getting chromeos on the machines left behind, but it didn't interest me. Decided to move on to a refurbished Windows 10 pro dell laptop. I do miss the safety I felt with the chromebook.

tytso 7y ago
The Acer C720 used a 3.8 Linux kernel, as documented at [1]. Updating to a new kernel would have required a full QA of the hardware to make sure that the device drivers in a newer kernel still worked correctly with that hardware. [1] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-for-chrome-os-devices https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f... Support costs aren't too bad so long as you don't have to update the kernel and requal everything. But newer userspace starts to use kernel features to provide better functionality and better security (consider the massive vulnerabilities associated with Spectre and Meltdown, and obviously none of the remediations would have been in the 3.8 kernels). So you have to consider the costs of doing a requal of all of the hardware platforms using a 3.8 kernel to something newer, versus the costs of continuing to backport security fixes to older kernels, and the costs of testing the userspace components against older kernel, and providing workarounds for the lack of features in newer kernels. A six year support lifetime is a long time; and Windows 10 has also stopped supporting older laptops on newer releases, so you will also see Microsoft not providing updates to older hardware[2][3]. [2] https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/360008642799-Windows-10-Support-of-older-hardware https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-us/articles/3600086427... [3] https://www.cio.com/article/2972791/why-you-should-be-very-wary-of-windows-10-if-you-own-an-older-pc.html https://www.cio.com/article/2972791/why-you-should-be-very-w...
- pjmlp 7y ago
  The Asus laptop I got in 2009 with Windows 7, has gone through all Windows updates, is now using the very latest Windows 10 version.

jonahbenton 7y ago

Meh. Nah. Chromebook growth has been phenomenal, full stop. There is still plenty of headroom, because the price point continues to beat phones and laptop competitors. Note also the growing success of premium Chromebooks. Classic bottom-up innovation/disruption story. In terms of making use of the hardware, Android is a necessary stopgap strategy, but webassembly is coming to bring native app performance and security to the web platform. That's not to say Google is marching from strength to strength. Their product management discipline is poor to non-existent, and from the outside there seems to be a fundamental monetization tension between ads and subscriptions, when the same human flips between being product and/or customer, particularly for the kid/ed sector.

therobot24 7y ago
>> Chromebook growth has been phenomenal, full stop. There is still plenty of headroom, because the price point continues to beat phones and laptop competitors. Note also the growing success of premium Chromebooks. Classic bottom-up innovation/disruption story. I completely agree. Both my mother-in-law and cousins (that are college age) have switched to chromebooks because of the price point to accomplish what are basic needs for most laptop users.
ReverseCold 7y ago
Yup, chromebooks are huge in K12, and there really isn’t any promising alternative. Even students at schools without chromebooks often buy them independently because of their low price. These things are a massive success, even if not in the way that google wants just yet.

pjmlp 7y ago

Technically Chrome OS has some interesting bits, like its use of virtualization, containers, based on Rust and Go. As general purpose OS, I never got the point of it. Any OS other OS is able to offer browser juggling support alongside the benefits of having a proper OS, better hardware that a Web browser is capable of (does not matter how good is the GPU, Web GL 2.0 can only do so much). And the security story is kind of meaningless when everything that matters is stored in someone else's computer, with the traffic going through Google's servers.

zamadatix 7y ago
It's not targeting the general purpose OS market it's purpose built for specific kinds of customer use cases. Once you get past that it makes a lot of sense. Well not as in "it makes a lot of sense for you personally to go out and by" but it makes a lot of sense why it exists and sells so much.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  That is the thing, it doesn't sell at all outside US School system, as the article points out.
  - zamadatix 7y ago
    Decently popular at SMB as well. The point is it doesn't need to outsell Windows it just needs to have markets it targets and updates for those markets. That it doesn't have updates for markets it doesn't target is irrelevant unless they've maxed out all the markets they target (they haven't yet).
ailideex 7y ago
I got one for my mom and I'm very happy with how low maintenance it is.
- pjmlp 7y ago
  Are you also happy that your mum's stuff lives on Google servers? 'Cause I steer my folks away from such stuff.

omnifischer 7y ago

I really like a stalled out OS. Really give me 20 year stability. Do not change interface and add eye candy every year just to sell new stuff. Just security updates. Really hope there is RHEL (10+ year release) type ChromeOS.

hocuspocus 7y ago

I really wanted to buy my mom a Pixelbook (and then the Go), but it's literally sold in three countries: US, Canada, UK. Pretty much like the Pixel phones that still ignore a few major markets after all these years. What should I feel about a company that doesn't even try to sell its hardware seriously? Meanwhile, any 2nd tier Chinese OEM will manage to have its products sold at the electronics shop down the road.

thecrumb 7y ago

My daughter's school just switched from iPads to Chromebooks.

accosine 7y ago

I got the original Cr-48 Chromebook back in the day. That thing was phenomenal good at just-surf-the-web™️. If ChromeOS was really stalled out, I could use it as something else than a paperweight.

Kipters 7y ago

I often see price being cited as a selling point for Chromebooks, but I have never found them to be really cheap. Maybe it's a regional thing? Looking now on Amazon (.it) I can find a Pixelbook equipped with a measle i5-7Y57, 8 GB of ram and 256 GB SSD for 1999 €. That's crazy. For that kind of money I could get a 10th gen i7 (where applicable) 16 GB ram/512 GB SSD Surface Laptop 3, Surface Pro 7 or Surface Pro X (including type cover and pen for the Pros) with money to spare. How is this considered cheap? It's insane

utopian3 7y ago
I've seen some models in the $200-400 USD range, occasionally they have a sale, but their specs are pretty awful, even by smartphone standards. I don't think I've seen a pixelbook priced at 1999 €, I wonder if that's higher due to cost of tax/tariff/import?
- Kipters 7y ago
  I can see the seller is from the UK, according to hocuspocus it's one of the countries where it's officially sold. I'd expect some markup from them, maybe higher shipping fees, but since it's still within the EU there shouldn't be anything else. I forgot to mention that in Italy prices already include taxes, so 1999€ is exactly how much I would pay.
  - avian 7y ago
    I’ve seen Pixel phones sold on Amazon UK and shipped to EU countries where Google doesn’t officially sell them at almost 2x markup.
lllr_finger 7y ago
That's probably more directed towards the sub-$300 market, which has at least a handful of options. I've got my wife, kids, and parents all on these devices because they're cheap and easy to use. I'd prefer spending $300 on something like a refurbished Thinkpad for myself, but realize that might not serve my family's desires.

teddyc 7y ago

I personally like the Chromebook, but it's relegated to fun, not work. It worked well to help me establish a boundary b/t work and home life, as I'd have to pull out my MacBook to do any actual work. I played around with Crostini Linux, but I've had it die on me twice and been forced to do a clean install of Crostini, which would be awful had I used it for anything important. The Chromebook is also a great way to get out of supporting friends and family with technical issues. It's an affordable device and my tech support has been limited to getting it setup with the printer. (Though cloud printing is being killed later this year IIRC.)

choward 7y ago
You must be doing something wrong if reinstalling your OS causes you to lose anything important. For starters it helps making your /home directory a separate partition.
- yjftsjthsd-h 7y ago
  Does Crostini play nice with a separate /home ?

darren0 7y ago

I bought a pixelbook last year as I was excited to play with the early native Linux integration. The technology that has been built is an amazing amount of work (crosvm, Wayland support, etc) but at the end of the day it's really only useful for simple use cases. This is a common theme for everything in ChromeOS. I've given up on ChromeOS for the time being as been capable of any serious work I do. The more frustrating part is my kids have Chromebooks and as they've gotten older they've become a real detriment. They can't accomplish anything on them beyond school work. My kids are showing a lot of interest in graphic design and programming and both tasks are too hard or almost impossible on a Chromebook.

deltron3030 7y ago
Try Codesandbox and Figma (both run in the browser) with your kids. Figma is really underrated as a general graphic design tool, the pen tool for vector shapes is top notch, and you can use blend modes for images. Google fonts are already integrated, it can be used to learn e.g. logo design.
DoofusOfDeath 7y ago
Slightly OT, but is getting your kids a traditional Linux laptop an option?
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
jayd16 7y ago
Hmm how hard did you try? If you turn on the linux integration you can install a lot of things. If you turn on the Android integration you can install a lot of things. If you need a mac or windows machines...well no luck there. To me, the biggest drawback is most Chromebooks (not even the pixels) don't have a good GPU not that you can't get things to run.
turtlebits 7y ago
What are you trying to do? I have VS code installed and regularly develop in js, python and go on my Pixelbook.

dgellow 7y ago

> In 2019, a public space, restaurant, or even a shopping center without free Wi-Fi is basically unconscionable. The author isn't familiar with Berlin's cafes and restaurants ;)

bagacrap 7y ago
I too have been to popular coffee shops without WiFi. You wouldn't have known just by looking. Everyone was tethering. Lumping restaurants in there seems a bit bizarre unless he's just talking about SV.

rckoepke 7y ago

ChromeOS is also used for all docker instances on Google Cloud Platform (GCE)...so I doubt development is dead in the water.

herohamp 7y ago
This seems pretty crazy, can I get a source on this?
- jcastro 7y ago
  https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized-os/ https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized-os/

williamstein 7y ago

The new Pixelbook Go only comes with a low resolution display, except for the most expensive model (see [1]). This is significant change for Google, since their previous Chromebooks had 4K-ish displays. This move from high end to low end reminds me of the Pixel 3a phone [2]. I loved the idea of Chromebooks, and hoped ChromeOS was a way that Linux would finally be "mainstream" on laptops. I've bought at least 10 Chromebooks since 2013, including all of the Google flagship models, since I use them as my main dev machine and at tradeshows. My next laptop is either going to be a Dell XPS 13 with Linux or (shudder) some random Windows 10 laptop. [1] "1080p on a 13.3-inch display works out to 166 pixels per inch, a far cry from the 235 ppi on the first Pixelbook and the impressive 293 ppi on the Pixel Slate. Google does offer the Go with a 4K screen, but that option is only available if you get the top-of-the-line model, which costs an eye-popping $1,399." https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/25/google-pixelbook-go-review/ https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/25/google-pixelbook-go-revi... [2] I won't ever buy another Google phone -- I bought a Pixel 3a and it completely broke by dropping it 3 feet with a screen protector and highly protective case, due to the very cheap display tech they used. I searched youtube for stress test videos about the 3a and could only find one where somebody's pixel 3a shattered after being dropped 1 foot; in comparison phones like iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S10plus have dozens of videos with high end equipment testing dropping under rigorous conditions.

therobot24 7y ago
>> [2] I won't ever buy another Google phone -- I bought a Pixel 3a and it completely broke by dropping it 3 feet with a screen protector and highly protective case, due to the very cheap display tech they used. I've got a 3a and haven't experienced this. My kid has dropped my phone everywhere (from the cart at the grocery, from his high chair, his car seat, etc.) - note the phone isn't playing anything, he just likes to hold it and pretend he's talking to 'oma' or 'gigi' - and I just have a cheap rubber cover. To each their own though.
- exhilaration 7y ago
  I have a 3A as well (I got as soon as it went on sale to replace my Pixel 1) and I'm embarrassed to admit that I drop it all the time but nothing has broken so far.

ArtWomb 7y ago

The counterpoint to this argument is that there are many users who want a super-lightweight OS that is not bloated, but very high performance with long batter life. I use my Samsung Chromebook 3 for gsuite, gcloud management through the web console, linux (beta) shell based development, gcloud cloud shell, putty type chrome terminal and fairly hardcore web app testing (webgl 2.0 compute, magenta, tensorflowjs). It works phenomenally well. And I've definitely noticed a lot of Google employees using the Pixelbook as their work laptop. Looking ahead and making predictions for ChomreOS in the 2020s. I could even see a Stadia style pipeline for more processor intensive apps. Run Creative Cloud / Maya type tools on dedicated cloud gpus. And just send the video frames to the client browser tab. I've been thinking a lot about how 5G adoption really can be leveraged to offload computation from the device and will introduce whole new classes of interactive media.

hajile 7y ago
I've been using a pixelbook as my mobile dev platform (mostly web and server dev) ever since my 2015 macbook (15 inch) died. Overall, the experience as a developer has been quite good. The hardware is second to none. The trackpad is (IMHO) better than the one on my macbook, the keyboard is way better than Apple's recent keyboards, and having a touchscreen has been very nice for mobile testing. Passive cooling is a mixed bag. I like being completely silent and solid-state, but running a complete test suite takes a really long time because it must downclock (running the tests for my current files isn't bad though). The 3:2 aspect ratio also gives a ton of extra height over a lot of other systems. The ChromeOS UI has been 2 steps forward and 1 step back. In preparation for their tablet launch, they re-worked the launcher. This was mostly fine, but they made the poor choice to merge settings and notifications to be like Android. They used to sit side-by-side and viewing lots of notifications was much easier. It used to be really buggy too, but now it's mostly just a worse experience for no good reason. On the other hand, they finally added workspaces that are pretty similar to macOS. They work great and my only complaint is that they haven't made a gesture to switch between them yet (just a keyboard shortcut or expose then select). When I switched, you had to put the machine into dev mode and run Crouton. This made everything work more-or-less like a normal Linux machine, but made for annoying startups (make a mistake and your machine will wipe and reset) while also getting rid of the security the OS provides. Crostini has been an amazing advancement and they're making very fast progress. Support for VPNs was my primary issue, but that's been fixed for months. Sharing between the main OS and Crostini used to be a bit painful, but that's easy now too. GPU acceleration can now be enabled and works decently most of the time opening the way for most Debian apps. Tabs for the terminal would be nice, but I usually use tmux anyway. My only particularly annoying issue is UI scaling of Linux apps, but that's not entirely their fault. On the high-dpi screen, things can look really small because most apps aren't optimized. The really annoying issue for me at the moment is third-party APKs in Android. They simply do not allow them unless you want to go back into dev mode. If that isn't something you do, I guess that's not an issue at all. I'm currently hoping for a pixelbook 2 which simply adds another inch of screen and shrinks the bezels a bit. Other than that and maybe adding thunderbolt, there's not much I'd want to change.

scarmig 7y ago

I don't know how I feel about ChromeOS's market position. I do know that Crostini is the best innovation in the laptop space from the last half decade.

andrewmutz 7y ago

I use Chrome OS daily to do my job and I think it is fantastic. IMO it is the ultimate work machine for your average knowledge worker. At my company, all the software that we use is web-based (SaaS), with the exception of software engineers, who are using local tools to develop web based applications. For non-engineers, the OS provides an extremely simple client to use to do their job. The OS is a slightly better web browsing experience than the Mac, and since all you need to do your job is a browser, it works great. The OS presents your google drive cleanly as a local filesystem, so you can even avoid any local storage completely. The OS is security-first, and is far more resistant to malware than a Mac or Windows machine. For engineers, you get all of the above and a well functioning linux distribution on which you can build software. Since everything we deploy is on linux, it's closer to our production environment than the mac. The best part of the experience is how the cloud oriented nature of the OS lets me treat my laptops like cattle rather than pets. If you lose your device, just grab another one. All your stuff is up in the cloud. Strange bug? just power wash the machine and start over. I also think that journalists or hobbyists may have a hard time appreciating the OS. Yes, it is terrible at things like video editing, games, audio editing, etc. But for a work machine in an enterprise environment, it's fantastic.

derefr 7y ago
> At my company, all the software that we use is web-based (SaaS), with the exception of software engineers, who are using local tools to develop web based applications. And interestingly, Google has a clear "complementary solution" to ChromeOS for software-engineering use cases: Google Cloud Shell (https://cloud.google.com/shell/docs/ https://cloud.google.com/shell/docs/), which gives you a "personal POSIX environment as web-app." I feel like ChromeOS and GCP have an obvious idiomatic relationship to them, sort of like Windows and Azure do.
deleted 7y ago
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ghaff 7y ago
I increasingly travel with a ChromeBook. There's very little on my MacBook that I have to run locally and I find that GSuite works pretty well offline. (And that's where a lot of my files would be even if I were carrying a full laptop.) Yes, ChromeBooks make you somewhat more dependent on networks. But, truth be told, I'm not getting a lot done other than reading or maybe writing if I don't have a network connection anyway whatever device I'm carrying. There's not much I do day-to-day on my laptop that requires anything other than a browser.

FloatArtifact 7y ago

It seems like to me I would be better off if chrome OS was actually part of Android. The experience of switching to a desktop could be as simple as plugging in your phone into a keyboard screen shell with a battery USB ports. Why spend 800 bucks on your phone and laptop. Third parties have tried to implement such systems with minimal success but I wonder what it would look like with Google backing it.

mikece 7y ago

This would correspond with the rumors that Google is quietly pulling engineering resources from Android and ChromeOS to work on Fuchsia which is supposed to replace both and be the Google IoT operating system of the future. It's rather open that Pixelbooks support the current builds of Fuchsia; what's less published but not hidden if you ask the Nest engineers that the Google Home runs on Fuchsia with its apps written in Flutter. Fuchsia's browser is Chrome and has an Android compatibility layer which allows running Android apps on Fuchsia (how long they keep that in is another question).

thibran 7y ago

Long battery life, cheap, can write some code in Linux -> perfect travel device

smt88 7y ago

What Google product doesn't feel stalled? (Serious question)

Medicalidiot 7y ago

I've used Chromebooks for 8 years now. Anecdotally what I've noticed is that the sheer amount of bugs has increased dramatically after they started implementing the ability to use Android apps. Right around that time it seemed like Google went from trying to make the best browser based operating system to something else. With new updates things seem to spontaneously break and the amount of effort that went into tracking down bugs diminished. I'm using a MBP now, instead, partly due to the quality issues and partly because Google's privacy stance has made me more uncomfortable as time goes on.

dreamcompiler 7y ago

The utility of ChromeOS for me is that it enabled the creation of cheap Linux laptops. For $300 plus a 128GB A2-rated SD card, I can boot GalliumOS from the SD card and have a nicely functional Linux development machine with all my important stuff backed up to Dropbox and/or Github. If the laptop gets stolen I don't much care; I just buy another one and reinstall and I haven't lost any data. (I don't use Google's builtin Linux because it's too limited--you cannot boot it from an SD card.)

oscargrouch 7y ago
This is why i think a OS like Chrome is designed exactly to be this sort of trap. A cloud computing trap, where we are perfectly ok with alienating our digital life/data to third-parties without understanding the depth of the problem we are getting into. The ones who control our digital properties, can control the world (information is power, remember?). They might not, but they can, and also can aid third parties with shady intentions (see all the Facebook fiasco). By the way, we should have learned this lesson already. Also, people often forget how groundbreaking was to have a compiler (GCC) directly embedded with the OS because you could mess with the source and compile it yourself. Its very liberating to have a platform where you can code and modify it. So i think a future where the likes of Chrome OS took over the world, is pretty scary as we ended turning our powerful and liberating computers into a sort of "interactive TV". As i understand it, they will try to make it very easy for us to buy into this platform utopia, the problem is, in my point of view, that in the long term this will lead to some sort of digital feudalism. Lets not forget we are "digitalizing" our lives day-by-day, til the day there are very few useful things we do in the physical world. So in the future if Google for instance want to ban your account, this could have severe problems, as a side-effect of your digital ostracism. (access to capital, bank, employment, etc..)
- dreamcompiler 7y ago
  I see your point with regard to ChromeOS, but my post made it clear that I was using Linux, not ChromeOS. My use of my Chromebook is not dependent on Google at all, except for the fact that Google made the hardware exist. I'm dependent on github and Dropbox but I trust both more than I trust Google, and I could easily switch them both to servers I manage.

ryuukk_ 7y ago

for OP; but for everyone else, ChromeOS is the perfect OS, it only does what you bought it for no bloated bullshit, no extra useless features unlike windows, it doesn't requires a 512gb ssd to be fast and energy efficient and unlike linux, it doesn't require 50years of experience as a CS slave

Abishek_Muthian 7y ago

Google sent me free Chromebook(Acer 11 N7) ~2 years back, with a request that I speak to their GCP rep; I sent the rep my latest AWS bill with complete break down and asked them to mail me back with equivalent GCP services with price; I never heard back. Well that's about GCP marketing team, as for Chromebook - 1. The power brick broke down with single night plugged into power, that seems to be a problem with that particular model of power brick and the one Acer replaced with doesn't have any problem for ~ 2 years. 2. This particular model is like a tough-book(kids?), I was very impressed with the quality of build for the price ($299). 3. Underpowered Atom CPU, but that meant being fan-less. Fan-less X86 means, I use it as SBC (which it technically is) and it's hard to get a x86 SBC with this spec for this price. as for ChromeOS, 1. I am content with the premise of low end netbook with browser as the frontend (whether that should be Google Chrome is another discussion). 2. I am happy with the updates, first it was vanilla chromeOS, then I received Android App support, then I received notification that my Chromebook is EOL(it was fixed later), then I received Linux support. 3. Android apps compatibility became better but there are some fundamental issues as heavy threaded apps stall when moved out of focus (this may be due to hardware, someone with Chromebook Pixel should comment on this). 4. Good security architecture and regular security updates. Conclusion: As a commercial replacement for MIT Labs OLPC, Chromebook is a clear winner; as for $1500 laptop I think the OP article makes sense.

pengo 7y ago

I was a Google evangelist until the penny finally dropped and I saw that their business model was a disease. Chrome OS is cool, as are many of Alphabet's products past and future. But I no longer use any Google products or have a Google account, and actively take steps to prevent them having even passing access to any of my data. I think there are good use cases for a cloud-based OS, and it's something I could be interested in using, even helping develop. But, like Android and Search, Chrome OS is just another harvester of personal information to feed Google's advertising profit machine.

dfabulich 7y ago

Access to files is the critical issue here. Look at these examples from the article: > Chrome OS doesn't have a robust photo editor? Don't worry, you can download an [Android] app! Chrome doesn't have native integration with cloud file services like Box, Dropbox, or OneDrive? Just download the app! Chrome doesn't have Microsoft Office? App! The problem is that Chrome OS is attempting to be a desktop platform, using web apps and mobile apps. Desktop OSes (Windows, macOS) are all about files. Apps are files. Your documents, photos, and videos are files. Any app can access any of your files. On mobile, you don't normally interact with files. Apps aren't files; you launch apps directly from the app launcher, and they store data internally; when you delete an app, its data is deleted, too. Web apps are like mobile apps: they don't have access to your files. You can't make a web app photo editor that opens a file, makes some changes, and then saves those changes to the file. Instead, you have to "upload" the file to the web app, and then you have to "download" the modified file. Microsoft Office has a web version (Office 365), but it's like Google Docs, lacking access to your local files. Dropbox has a web app, but it just lets you download files one at a time; it's impossible to implement Dropbox-like file synchronization in a web app. Google is aware of this problem, but you might not like their proposed "solution," to develop a cross-browser standard file access API. https://web.dev/native-file-system/ https://web.dev/native-file-system/ Google's currently running an "origin trial," where a small number of web sites have temporary access to the feature to try it out. I think Google's not going to ship it until they convince Apple or Mozilla to approve; it's not clear when (or if) that will happen. Here's the most recent discussion from May. https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/154 https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/154 So file access isn't technically "stalled out," but it's still going to take a long, long time.

pier25 7y ago

Maybe Google had high hopes at turning Chrome OS into Android for desktop but, as the article points out, it failed miserably. At my last job in ed tech we developed and maintained a Chrome OS app for about 3 years. Not an Android app, but a web app for Chrome OS. I had great hopes for the platform for education use but it turned out developing for Chrome OS was a terrible mess. Docs are incomplete and cryptic, there are strange dev restrictions like not being able to use localStore, erratic behaviors of the apps, nowhere to go for help, the chrome web store dashboard was totally obsolete by today's standards, etc. It felt very bizarre seeing Google doing all the marketing on their new flashy Chrome OS devices, Android apps, and Linux support, while at the same time looking at the docs and working on what seemed like an abandoned project. I think ultimately Google will replace Chrome OS with Fuchsia. Maybe Fuchsia took longer than expected so they had to improvise and bring Android and Linux to keep the platform alive for a couple more years.

turtlebits 7y ago

I agree that ChromeOS needs some love. Recent updates have started to make my Pixelbook freeze and self reboot (while using Chrome only), Android support seems half baked still. That said, I regularly use it over my MacBook and still is the best form factor laptop I've ever used.

AcerbicZero 7y ago

Ah yes, Google. Now there is a company I can trust to build a product and not abandon it on the side of the road when they fail to put the effort in to make it successful.

throwGuardian 7y ago

I see googlers in tech talks and at cafes only use MacBook Pros. If their own PC isn't good enough for them, why should anyone else fall for their marketing? The day I buy a Chromebook is the day I read that Google only issues Chromebooks to their employees