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Google Play Store and Over a Million Android Apps Coming To Chromebooks (arstechnica.com)
It's official: the Google Play Store is coming to Chrome OS. The company announced on Thursday that it is bringing more than 1.5 million Android apps to Chromebooks. Google adds that zero efforts are required from developers' end for their Android apps to function on Chrome OS. Users will also be able to see notifications and have in-line replies on the desktop. Users on developer channel builds of Chrome OS will get an option to use Google Play and Android apps starting early next month. Regular users on select Chromebook models will have this feature in September. Ars Technica has tons of more details about it. The Verge says Android apps are just what Chromebooks needed.
The only thing my wife needs is a browser (and the occasional casual document editing, which Google Apps can handle). I was strongly considering getting her a Chromebook (specifically the Acer 15) because the performance, battery life and display are quite good for the price, plus it's practically impenetrable to malware, but this news actually wavers me a bit. More stuff ChromeOS has to do means it's slower (keep in mind most Chromebooks have either a smartphone ARM CPU, or the lightweight Intel Celeron), and also it's more prone to malware.
Right now, Chromebooks don't have large amounts of local storage ("It belongs in the cloud!"). Hopefully with Android support (with some games running into the gigs) this will push Chromebooks to offer large amounts of storage (64, 128, etc) and basically make these real laptops, instead of cloudy-laptops. This is great news though, especially for Chromebooks with touchscreens.
Two-factor auth is hardly analogous to a scaled down laptop that's locked down and intended to be a thin client for the cloud. The former is an effort to improve user experience, the latter a power grab.
my next laptop is going to be a shiney new Chromebook!!!, maybe Santa Clause will buy one for all the kids in the family
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
I am back to developing on Linux after a long stint on OS X and one thing I really miss now is the OS X Dashboard widgets.
Ubuntu is way behind OS X here, even if they integrated a Dashboard clone the ecosystem of widgets would be far behind and never catch up. But Ubuntu could leapfrog the OS X Dashboard by absorbing Chrome's support for Android widgets into an integrated Dashboard clone.
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My wife loves her Chromebook. Although it is set up to dual boot to Ubuntu, and she's comfortable with Linux, she has never needed it. ChromeOS does everything she wants to do. I was surprised how good the battery life is, too.
You don't HAVE to run Android apps on it just because you CAN.
So what you're saying is that Google Play is like your mom?
Does this mean we will be able to play Clash of Clans on a Chrome book? I know we can use Bluestacks right now, but it is clunky.
I'm talking about Chrome OS as a whole. It is most certainly a powergrab in the form of driving users to Google's services using cheap hardware and a locked down OS that they know will only be replaced by a small minority of users. Introducing the Android ecosystem is just more shit stirred into the same soup.
They say the cutoff is ~2 years, but the Chromebook 13 is not supported, despite being a less than 2 year old model and having an ARM processor. Perhaps it's because that processor is only 32 bits, but it still sucks.
Eat the rich.
Last time I looked it wasn't possible to get a Chromebook ISO so I could check it out in a VM. Has anyone had more luck than me?
But at least once Android apps are available, it's not all about Google's services. I imagine you can run MSOffice for Android on these as well as any other 3rd party apps. They don't all have to use Google ad delivery services. Maybe you could even use a 3rd party Android web browser.
In any case, the best thing about this is that it's Nexus-like. No OEM skins, and immediate updates direct from Google. That's certainly an improvement over the morass of different versions on Android cellphones. I wonder how much this is baked into the Chrome browser itself - i.e., will you eventually be able to run Android apps anywhere you can run Chrome. I think that was true of the 'android runtime' for chrome that they toyed with last year, but this sounds different. If nothing else, it'd be nice to be able to debug Android apps in Chrome instead of having to fire up a device emulator.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
You know, some of us actually WANT a $150 thin client in laptop form factor to work with our Google apps account.
Some of us are intelligent enough to know the limits and downsides to storing data with Google and have the will power to only place nonsensitive data there accordingly.
Some of us still find Google apps useful even after those limitations are taken into consideration.
Just because you lack those attributes is no call to insult those of us that have them and choose to make he best use of all of the tools available to us, nor to blankety discard the tools as a whole.
Perhaps it is, but you can install custom firmware, and thus Linux on a lot of Chromebooks.
See list.
I'm typing this on a Toshiba Chromebook 2 2015 that's running Void Linux.