Chrome OS Introduces Aura Window Manager

An anonymous reader writes "Don't look now, but Google has officially revealed their intentions to go after Windows and OS X. Chrome OS 19 has arrived for Samsung Series 5 and Acer AC700 Chromebooks running the developer channel, and the changes it brings may shock you. The new Aura window manager has landed, bringing with it a number of features that you'd expect from a traditional OS. For starters, there’s the Shelf along the bottom of the screen. It’s set to hide when you’ve got a browser window maximized by default, but you can choose to have it always on top or auto-hide, too, just like the Windows taskbar or OS X dock."

Comments

Still working on it.

[Anonymous Coward]

It surprises me they are still working on Chrome OS. Its probably not too bad, but I don't exactly see a huge demand for it, especially since they also have android which would work nearly as well for what they want to do with Chrome OS.

I kinda wish they pushed for Wave harder. That looked like something I would use.

Re:Still working on it.

[jmorris42]

Yea, worst of all worlds. It only runs web apps but few are so totally 100% always on that they are going to be comfortable with that. So now they add a desktop but it has fewer apps than any other possible system and will for a while unless they dump a ton of cash into it. Even Linux (as in a typical Linux/GNU/X distribution) has tons more apps.

The problem is the whole net centrism of Chrome OS. By definition it can't offer anything that any other platform that can run Chrome the browser can't also run. So that means anything developed for Chrome OS also runs everywhere Chrome the browser runs. Which means Chrome the OS, by definition, runs a pure subset of what every other Chrome the browser platform can run. Every other platform gets 100% of Chrome OS's app pool + it's own. And since they were stupid enough to put Intel chips in the machines they don't even get a power/battery life advantage. In fact an ARM based netbook/laptop running Linux + Chromium (Don't think Chrome itself is available on Linux/ARM but the unofficial Chromium almost certainly is.) probably would be a better deal

Re:Still working on it.

[jmorris42]

> it's for Enterprises and Educational institutions.

In other words, wouldn't they be happier with TERMINALS? That is what we are talking about after all, reinvent terminals and centralized computing, the priesthood and all that stuff people snuk in Apple ][ machines all those years ago to escape from? Only instead of VT102 escape codes we are using HTML5 on much more capable terminals. And now there is a cool video by some hipster douche telling us we don't want a computer anymore, we just want to use Google's instead of a blue suited IBM rep selling a mainframe.

But it is the same siren song, users with computers is dangerous, expensive, etc. Let US take all that away... for low monthly payments.

Re:Still working on it.

[slack_justyb]

In other words, wouldn't they be happier with TERMINALS?

I'm with you, of course, I'm of the opinion that the trends are but a pendulum between central and distributed. I'd say we're still on the waxing side of the central ethos, but give it time and people will eventually want their data back.

However, I think it's all pretty neat. I for one am tired of the two decades of Microsoft that we are waking up from. People are seeing that the field of computers is much more diverse (which comes as no surprise for the people here on Slashdot, but now Grandma is asking "PC or Mac?")

We all are thinking "yawn" but c'mon, the industry needed a big shake up, and while technically we all here see this becoming nothing more than what we had in the 1970. We are changing the vendor from being one to anyone on the Intertubes. We are changing the equipment from being just a terminal to anything that can have a web browser. We are changing the people who create the content from those locked in a warm basement with punch cards, to a varity of diverse people from artist to programmers and everything in between. However, more importantly, this is showing the general consumer that there isn't just one computer to rule them all.

Slashdot users can smirk all they want about how this was already crystal clear to us, but the fact that even Microsoft's position is now challenged, forecasters say that Apple cannot stay at the top, and Google is all over the place unpredicable; means that the rule of alpha vendor may just be in fact ending, hopefully.

Re:Still working on it.

[Artifakt]

If you're going to be precise, we're not talking a move back to dumb terminals with Chrome, but a less restrictive move to more specialized computing devices instead of a general purpose computer. We are discussing putting limits on users, and limits that many here on slashdot would chafe under, but they aren't as drastic as the terms you chose.

For one thing, an OS such as Windows already has some of the same limits. Using the box for art may mean either a lot of expense for a legitimate copy of Photoshop or running pirated copies, or using something like the Gimp that may not be compatable with the next service pack and may never have good support. High prices for lots of business, math or music software similarly mean a lot of users can't afford to legally build the tool that can focus on some of those "General Purpose" uses. Keeping system hooks and APIs and such secret is a separate cause of making machines into non-general purpose computers, or specialty boxes, or whatever you want to call them. Apple's walled garden approach is effectively a vector pointed away from "General Purpose" computers in similar ways. Even Linux has some of this problem when you look at the whole package, i.e. what people mean by saying designers are 'dumbing down' the Gnome interface is precisely the same as saying they think less variety of purposes are suitable under it.

However, if you call those limited boxes terminals, I suspect the people pushing Chrome OS, Cloud Computing, and other things will both point out the differences from those old 'green on black texty thingees' until the similarities are obscured, and keep treating the base Windows or OS X type system as though it were a totally pure "General Computing" environment and the browser based systems were just a small step down from that purity. We do better to stress that even the baseline OSes have many, many points where they veer away from the idea of supporting a box that can do anything the user wants, (at least if it has the raw computing power to handle that task). Most users have run into the problem of not being able to do some task or other any better, even on a much more powerful machine than they once used. Or they remember being able to do something on an older machine that they can't do at all anymore. Warning them that these browser focused 'solutions' will have more of that sort of problem is something many of them will understand.

Re:Still working on it.

[swillden]

I'm blessed with a glut of computing hardware, I suppose, but I have a desktop, a laptop, a chromebook, a tablet and a smartphone. Oh, and I have a bluetooth keyboard which can be used with the tablet or the phone. With all of those options, I would have predicted that I'd never use the chromebook. It seems like if I need a full keyboard I'd use the laptop or desktop, while if I just need to do something small, I'd use the tablet, or the phone.

In fact, I find the Chromebook fills a couple of important niches in my life. First, it's what I reach for when I want to look something up on the web, fast. It's more portable than the desktop, quicker to get running than the laptop and more useful (for web-based stuff) than the tablet or the phone. Second, it's my "shareable" computer. I'm not handing my laptop to anyone. I wouldn't even if it weren't a company laptop and therefore forbidden to be shared with non-employees. My tablet and my phone are even less shareable.

But the Chromebook? I log out, hand the little machine over and say "just log in with your Google account". And for people who use lots of web apps, all their apps are "there". If they use Chrome on other computers and use Chrome Sync, when they log in all of their bookmarks, etc., are all on the Chromebook already.

The combination of instant access, super battery life, built-in 3G data and shareability makes my Chromebook one of the most-used computers in my house.

(Disclaimer: I work for Google, but have no particular interest in selling Chromebooks. I just quite like mine -- though I probably wouldn't have one if Google hadn't given it to me.)

Re:Just cut it out

[PCM2]

Most of you people who say "there's no use for this" have probably never used a Chromebook. I have -- and though my initial reaction was not too far off from yours, I have to admit that I ended up using the thing way more than I ever expected I would.

My particular use case can be described as: "Eehhh, I guess I'll just leave it in the bedroom for when I need to look something up real quick."

Now, previously I might have done the same thing with some old laptop. But the genius of the Chromebook is that it's a Chrome browser and nothing but, so it never bothers you with anything that would go along with being able to do more than that. It never tells you there's a security fix for the printer driver, or asks if you want to upgrade to the latest Ubuntu distro (which changes the entire UI). If you have a few PCs lying around the house, you've probably rolled your eyes at least once when Microsoft's Patch Tuesday rolled around. That never happens here. It's just a Web browser that sits on the dresser.

There are security updates and it even gets new features, but it all happens behind the scenes, while you aren't paying attention, just like it does with the Chrome browser. Which is totally what you want when you really don't plan to use it for anything but browsing the Web.

Now, I'll go ahead and point out that this makes the Chromebook sort of a luxury item, because for most people who live in today's real world it's going to be a secondary computing device. You're going to buy another computer first, and then you'll buy one of these. But that's fine -- they aren't that expensive, and wasn't that pretty much the case with the entire netbook category, too?

You might say "but a netbook can do a lot more than a Chromebook, a Chromebook can hardly do anything" -- but I have no plans to do anything with it but surf the Web. Could I get a netbook and install Chrome on it? Yes, but that wouldn't be as convenient. Here, I grab it off the dresser, open the screen, and I've got a browser window. Three seconds.

It really is a pretty neat product. Google just hasn't done the best job of marketing it. Maybe that's because, unlike tablets, it looks like something you already have -- a laptop -- even though it's not one.

It may be that the price just has to come down even further. If Chromebooks sold for $199 and still had reasonable build quality, would that seem like a value to you?