The Fixes That Google Chrome OS Still Needs To Make

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

Comments

Chrome already supports most of that

[The MAZZTer]

Local storage via several APIs (virtual filesystem, SQL database, simple localStorage) and offline apps (HTML5 offline, completely locally installed apps, and recently storing any file on the virtual filesystem was added) are already fully supported. Just because no one is making them doesn't make it Google's fault. There are a few Web based IDEs out there, assuming stuff like Cloud9 and jsFiddle. As for better hardware, Google seems to have already upped the hardware from their initial spec (Cr-48 is not getting Chrome 19, I can only assume it doesn't meet the requirements).

Data capacity of offline apps

[tepples]

Local storage via several APIs (virtual filesystem, SQL database, simple localStorage) and offline apps (HTML5 offline, completely locally installed apps, and recently storing any file on the virtual filesystem was added) are already fully supported.

But how much space is allowed for offline apps and local storage? Can a 100 MB game be installed locally and played offline? Can a 1 GB video be downloaded to local storage and played offline?

Re:Data capacity of offline apps

[Danzigism]

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

No big surprises in the article.

[DuckDodgers]

I think his laundry list of recommended changes is obvious to anyone that's been paying attention.

1. Better hardware. No kidding - right now Chrome OS is aimed at schools and businesses, which if they need a locked down browser environment should be okay with what they have now. But if they want consumer adaptation, offer at least the option of better hardware. I'll buy a Chomebook when I can get Sandy Bridge or a Tegra 4 (yes, I meant 4) processor and a graphics chip that supports at least one external monitor and really good WebGL.

2. Web-based IDE. Again, I think this would spur power user adoption of Chrome OS, though I consider this the least essential of the features.

3. Support local storage. No kidding. It will be a while before HTML5 storage is available at all the websites people routinely use.

4. Offline apps. No kidding yet again. I don't want my device to be useless for my family every time our internet connection has a hiccup.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[mcgrew]

I don't like the "thin client" at all. "Thin clients" used to be called "terminals". We moved away from terminals to PCs for very good reasons, such as if the network or server goes down you can still get work done. You're not beholden to the server's rules.

Lots of IT people like thin clients because it means job security and control of users.

I'll stick with Linux and my own network. The internet and networks in general are for sharing data, nothing more.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Robert Zenz]

I'm all for Thin Clients if they make sense. F.e. if the workstations need to access a database on the server anyway to get work done, you make them Thin Clients in the first place. On the other hand, thin clients are abused on places where they do not belong...and vice versa. I've seen many abuses of workstations, too.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Barbara, not Barbie]

right now Chrome OS is aimed at schools and businesses

Judging from the ultra-lame marketing, it's not aimed at any particular market - it was just another Google "let's throw some more web sh*t at the wall and see if it sticks" experiment. And it's failed.

Schools won't buy them - they weigh almost 3x as much as an iPad, and battery life sucks. And they're more expensive than either the iPad2 or a full-blown laptop, so forget schools.

Businesses? Same deal and then some - add in that not every business wants to trust Google with their internal documents - financial forecasts, marketing plans, internal emails, client price lists, legal consultations, hiring and firing decisions, training manuals, product specs and proprietary formulas. Now throw in that in some fields it's not even legal to share information with any 3rd party because of the types of data involved. Heck, many businesses don't want employees on the web at all during business hours.

So no, take this stupid chromebook, throw a red shirt on it, and have Dr. McCoy come out and say it's dead, already.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Altanar]

The internet and networks in general are for sharing data, nothing more.

Funny. Sharing data is 99% of my computer use. Without the Internet, I might as well not own a computer.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[theurge14]

I'd really like to know how many offices in the year 2012 can "still get work done" without a network connection.

And what's wrong with IT people liking it? Considering the monumental amount of work done putting out fires every day due to user error it affects the company bottom line eventually.

Re:No big surprises in the article.

[Y-Crate]

In many ways, Google seems to have fallen victim to the same pattern of innovative ideas leading to half-baked products that cursed Apple back in the '90s.

They're always throwing random new products out there, and you get the idea that they don't really believe in them from Day 1, and have little confidence in their ability to succeed. More often than not, the products are quietly dropped and early adopters are told essentially: "Thanks for giving it a shot!"

Google Wave was interesting, except that Google didn't know how to tell people what it was, how it would benefit them or how to use it. An 80 minute instructional video is as useful as no video. It betrayed a lack of understanding of the market.

GoogleTV was a kinda neat idea that appeared dead on arrival as an actual product.

Apple's biggest achievement has been shedding the complex of being the company that develops cool stuff that goes nowhere because it wasn't packaged and presented properly. It's the reason it still exists today, while other members of that category like Atari and Commodore are no longer with us in any real sense. Nobody gives a damn if you've created something awesome that exists on a workbench, or in some niche of a niche.

Fanboys will whine that "Company X developed that years ago!" I know this, because I was one of them. I fought for Amigas and later, Macs. But fanboyism is just an excuse for mismanagement on the part of the companies being defended.

Who first developed a feature doesn't really matter. What matters is who developed that feature into a product and got the market interested.

It's the difference between the gamers who want to be the "idea guys" and tell you about that totally cool, awesome, fun game they want to develop, and the ones who sit down and turn those ideas into a cohesive, functional and enjoyable experience.

ipad killed the chromebook

[alen]

i was a CR-48 beta tester and never figured out the point of it. they look like laptops but the OS is gimped. yet cost the same as a netbook. what is the point of buying one?

the ipad does more which is why apple is selling every one they make

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[alen]

so? why would i spend the exact same amount of $$$ on a laptop that does less than a similar spec'd laptop with a different OS

my ipad makes it comfortable for me to use a computer on my sofa, train to work and has a wide variety of applications that no one had dreamed was possible 5 years ago.

the chromebook seems to only be a web browser, something that is going the way of the dodo little by little

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[ffflala]

I picked up a Samsung Series 5 last summer, and it came with 2 years of (minimal backup) 3G service, which when amortized into the total cost made Series 5 a decent budget buy.

3G plus excellent battery life means that it has been very useful as a commuter device -- particularly on trains and planes, or in the middle of nowhere. In these circumstances it's better than a smartphone, and I prefer it to any tablet device I've used so far -- but mainly simply because it has a real keyboard. And I'd already been using google docs as my main office platform already. Had I not been doing so already, I'd likely have found this thing far less useful.

If you're unable, reluctant, or unwilling to try adapt from a desktop model ChromeOS will probably only be maddening. It, OTOH, you find that 90%+ of the time spent on your desktop is in a browser already, it's not a terribly difficult adjustment to make.

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[Electricity Likes Me]

I disagree - or at least, I think the market is not that intelligent about this idea.

I think what we're seeing is a reflection of the fact that people still tend to appreciate the distinction between things which require internet access, and things which do not - even if it isn't that well informed. People want to be able to say "right, this device can do all of these things with no internet access, and contains this data". But they also want to make sure that, from as many places as possible, they can synchronize and update or change that information. To a huge extent, this is what Dropbox - and the LAN sync protocol - is really all about.

The real problem is that for a variety of reasons, companies draw a hazy, hard to distinguish line around these things (and then stuff like the iPhone doesn't let you stick a bookmark on the main screen like it's an app - if you could, I suspect downloads of the Facebook app would drop to near 0 overnight).

Re:ipad killed the chromebook

[kris2112]

Mobile Safari allows you to add any bookmark to the Home screen.

When viewing a page, press the action button in the center of the tool bar and press Add to Home Screen.

This feature has been available for a couple years.

Java web app support

[blahbooboo]

Seriously large omission is a JRE for Chrome OS

Re:Java web app support

[Altanar]

They'll add that when Oracle stops suing Google for using modified Java in Android.

Re:Bummer

[ArcherB]

my ipad has taken over that task with the pluses being real local applications being installed and i can carry around 64GB of data on it as well

How much did the GP spend on his Chromebook, which has a bigger screen, full keyboard and mouse vs your iPad? Also, Chromebooks can connect to external drives, including those NTFS partitions, making your 64GB seem rather pathetic. Yes, your iPad is a bit easier to carry around, but it costs twice as much. For the extra money I can get a nice bag to carry a Chromebook, real mouse and the external hard drive.

Sure, the iPad is really nice and has its advantages, but don't assume that it's more capable or a better value. Personally, I'd prefer to have two Chromebooks sitting around my house than a single iPad.

Re:PowerPoint yes, Word no

[Electricity Likes Me]

At that point the phone is really just a headless desktop (until you dock it).

But I suspect if we were seriously considering that option, then we'd rapidly - and slowly and stupidly - rediscover most of the classic desktop metaphors we enjoy today. They're widespread for a reason.

Ubuntu for Android

[tepples]

At that point the phone is really just a headless desktop

And this is exactly the phone fanboys' point, as I understand it: if a phone or tablet does everything, including act as a headless desktop, why buy a separate desktop PC?

But I suspect if we were seriously considering that option, then we'd rapidly - and slowly and stupidly - rediscover most of the classic desktop metaphors we enjoy today.

Which is why Canonical is trying to get Android phone makers to install chrooted Ubuntu for use when a device is docked.

Suggested improvement: kill Chrome OS...

[sootman]

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

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

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

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

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

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

Re:Suggested improvement: kill Chrome OS...

[couchslug]

"Netbooks, while popular in some areas, were NOT the sales success that many people thought they would be."

Because manufacturers added features and pushed the price into notebook territory.

The turbo button

[tepples]

A separate desktop PC can be leagues more powerful than a cellular phone

But the success of tablets and smartphones and the blurring of the line between netbooks and small laptops has shown that one doesn't need an Extreme Edition CPU to do homework, Facebook, YouTube, and light gaming.

because it's not hobbled by the same frugal power or space constraints.

Power constrained? Make it quad core, with two cores turned off while not connected to a charger. The backlight uses a huge chunk of the power anyway, and a docked PDA or phone can run with the screen turned off. This behavior could even be advertised as the return of the turbo button. Space constrained? So are ultrabooks, and the solution is the same: dock to an external hard drive.

But at least as importantly, a more conventional PC isn't tied to a carrier

Nor is a tablet. Nor is a PDA such as Apple's iPod touch or Samsung's Galaxy Player. Tablets and PDAs use Wi-Fi, which most often connects to a wired last mile, and no wired ISP that I've heard of has run the sort of subsidy model common in the North American cellular market since the dial-up days of i-Opener, WebTV, and PeoplePC. Nor is an unlocked GSM phone, now that (as I've read) AT&T has given up some spectrum in a more commonly used band to T-Mobile USA as compensation for the failed merger.