Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

chrome.googleblog.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

161–170 of 208 posts

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#161

Post by soyiuz »

Adaptive wrote: post #138
userbinator wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be the contrarian one in a thread full of Google fans, but I'd consider this trend of schools flocking to locked-down and largely cloud-dependent computing devices to be pretty freaking scary . Start them young, get them accustomed to and comfortable with the idea of some huge company having great knowledge of and control over their online lives... it's a great business plan, but one that I would certainly…

I understand this concern. I've helped deploy chromebooks and linux based laptops and pcs at my daughters school. I am pro open source and would love to see lots of digging into understanding the systems. However I am also in favor of chromebooks. Here's why: The alternative to chromebooks isn't a glorious world of non-locked down non-cloud dependent machines. It's a world of poorly managed, crappy windows boxes. A w…

I also want to point out that Chromebooks can easily be turned into Linux machines with Crouton. They are not locked down in that sense.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#162

Post by stephenr »

piyush_soni wrote: post #159
stephenr wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> poorly managed, crappy windows boxes > at least as locked down as a chromebook but much less secure I fucking loathe windows, but Lucy, you've some 'splainin to do. How is a Windows PC "at least as locked down" as a Chromebook? Remember that "locked down" in the case of a chromebook doesn't mean "the administrator has decided what apps you can run and who can use it", it means "the fundamental design of the operati…

I don't know what's inherently so bad about "being a google user". It's mostly paranoia. If the only hypothetical disadvantage you're thinking about it is "Google might shut down one day", then you're not thinking about a very near future. If the TV channels shut down tomorrow, your TVs effectively stop working too, you still buy them. There are hundreds of such devices out there, which you buy because it's pretty ev…

> I don't know what's inherently so bad about "being a google user".

Having every facet of your digital life mined for personal data, for the sake of a mega-corp's bottom line?

> If the only hypothetical disadvantage you're thinking about it is "Google might shut down one day"

Not at all. Its actually more likely "Google might stop supporting X, Y or Z that you depend on".. They, you know, have a history of doing that.

However, let's play along anyway.

> If the TV channels shut down tomorrow, your TVs effectively stop working too, you still buy them.

No. Just. No. I literally don't remember the last time I watched broadcast television (hotels excepted), even when I lived in a country where I could understand what was being said on the broadcast channels. In our last house 1 of 2 TV's was connected to a satellite receiver for when my father in law was in the house. We moved 3-4 months ago. No satellite dish hooked up yet. No terrestrial aerial.

> There are hundreds of such devices out there, which you buy because it's pretty evident the company is not shutting down tomorrow.

I do? Would you care to enlighten me about these devices I apparently buy?

> On the other hand, even if Google shuts down, a lot of things on your Chromebook will keep on working offline

Are you kidding me? In offline-mode, you can't even edit your calendar on a Chromebook.

You're also not thinking about things like e.g. users on the system. It's inherently dependent on Google - you can't just add a local account like you can with a regular computer, you have to be online, with the person sitting there next to you, so they can sign in with their own google account.

> especially with the advent of Android apps now

Right, because apps designed to work on a mobile phone, which generally has it's own data connection independent of whether wifi is available or not, will just naturally assume they need to work offline. Good luck with that.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#164

Post by groundCode »

spot wrote: post #107

from the post: > Schools in the US are now buying more Chromebooks than all other devices combined -- and in Q1 of this year, Chromebooks topped Macs in overall shipments to become the #2 most popular PC operating system in the US*. that's pretty amazing actually. congrats to google & the chromebook team!

Interesting. Does that mean they have relaxed their t&c on how old you have to be to get a google account? I seem to remember a few years back google deleted an email account that some parents had set up for their child to email their grandparents.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#167

Post by millstone »

piyush_soni wrote: post #159
stephenr wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> poorly managed, crappy windows boxes > at least as locked down as a chromebook but much less secure I fucking loathe windows, but Lucy, you've some 'splainin to do. How is a Windows PC "at least as locked down" as a Chromebook? Remember that "locked down" in the case of a chromebook doesn't mean "the administrator has decided what apps you can run and who can use it", it means "the fundamental design of the operati…

I don't know what's inherently so bad about "being a google user". It's mostly paranoia. If the only hypothetical disadvantage you're thinking about it is "Google might shut down one day", then you're not thinking about a very near future. If the TV channels shut down tomorrow, your TVs effectively stop working too, you still buy them. There are hundreds of such devices out there, which you buy because it's pretty ev…

There are some particularly concerning scenarios:

1. Google collects and stores information about my children, and it is released (by accident or otherwise)

2. Google profits off my childrens' education, has financial incentives not aligned with those of my family

but mostly I just think it's really fucking creepy for an advertising broker to be building up a profile of a first grade child, and I think maybe schools shouldn't become reliant on an ad company to help deliver education.

To assuage my concerns, Chromebooks should be usable without creating a Google ID. Or maybe the whole school should have a single ID used by all students.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#168

Post by headmelted »

jshevek wrote: post #62
headmelted wrote: post #17

Obviously there's no-one in the world that didn't know this was coming, but even so, I feel for the Remix OS guys. I assumed at the time their objective was to be acqui-hired by Google, but I can't see why there would be a reason for that now, or how they'd hope to compete in this situation. Congratulations to the Chrome O/S and Android teams. I was briefly on a Chromebook when my laptop packed in, and but for the ab…

"but for the absence of solid developer tools, I'd have stayed forever." Are you saying that Arch or Ubuntu and everything that runs on them aren't enough for you? Or that crouton hadn't evolved far enough at the time? These days you can run crouton in a window or a tab within ChromeOS. Launch an xterm or IntelliJ or whatever each into their own windows, displaying within ChromeOS. I'd say that the 2015 Pixel (plus c…

I must say Intellij was what I was thinking of primarily.

Have you got a link?

Previously when I looked at this, Crouton required me to root the Chromebook and effectively switch to Linux rather than run it under Chrome O/S.

If that's changed (which from your post it sounds like it has), then I need to have another look at this!

Post reply on HN