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Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

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Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#91

Post by conail »

conail wrote: post #90
bluedino wrote: post #37

I'd be curious to see how long the lifetime is of a Chromebook compared to a MacBook

Forever. I'm happily using an original HP11 with no issues at all. I bought it because I was spending most of my time in ssh/emacs and I wouldn't be too worried about losing a Chromebook. Three years later the joke's on me. As others have noted, crouton is super and updates are seamless. I use it locally way more than I'd anticipated. IMO the standout feature is the keyboard.

I should also snarkily add that every mac I've owned failed spectacularly within 60 days of AppleCare expiring. Humbug.

Also, AppleCare costs more than a Chromebook.

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#92

Post by SwellJoe »

marssaxman wrote: post #88
SwellJoe wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it ever actually swung into popular usage, until now, even though a lot of smart nerds wanted it to. So, I don't think a pendulum is the right term for what's happening (or what happened with the NC spec). I think it's a hill that a lot of people and companies have been pushing computing tech up for many years...now we've reached the top, and we're rolling down the other side. Getting to the top require…

The momentum comes from the massive overinvestment in network capacity made as a result of the dot-com bubble. Bandwidth doesn't scale like storage or processing capacity do, though, so I predict the current balance in favor of centralization will eventually reverse as the cost of shuttling data back and forth to the center once again comes to outweigh the cost of doing all the heavy lifting at the edges.

Network capacity, at least in most regards, currently dwarfs the expansion that happened back in the late 90s (unless you're talking about some later "dot-com bubble"). I'm not sure how you can argue that we're still trying to fill up bandwidth built in 1999. Sure, there was some build out during the bubble...but, I don't see any reason to think network infrastructure is going to shrink or that costs will increase remarkably.

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#93

Post by marssaxman »

SwellJoe wrote: post #92
marssaxman wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The momentum comes from the massive overinvestment in network capacity made as a result of the dot-com bubble. Bandwidth doesn't scale like storage or processing capacity do, though, so I predict the current balance in favor of centralization will eventually reverse as the cost of shuttling data back and forth to the center once again comes to outweigh the cost of doing all the heavy lifting at the edges.

Network capacity, at least in most regards, currently dwarfs the expansion that happened back in the late 90s (unless you're talking about some later "dot-com bubble"). I'm not sure how you can argue that we're still trying to fill up bandwidth built in 1999. Sure, there was some build out during the bubble...but, I don't see any reason to think network infrastructure is going to shrink or that costs will increase re…

Makes sense that my specifics would be out of date. I'm not arguing that network infrastructure will shrink; I'm observing that the scaling factors for network infrastructure investment are not nearly so favorable as the scaling factors involved in CPU or storage capacity. We can already build hardware with capabilities greatly in excess of our actual needs. When network capacity becomes a bottleneck, it will be much cheaper to take advantage of all that latent capacity at the edge than to invest many billions increasing network capacity, and we'll see yet another pendulum swing away from thin clients toward fat independent hardware devices. Then the market will change and lots of money will flood into network infrastructure, and for a few years the pendulum will swing back again. It's been going back and forth like this for decades.

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#94

Post by cliveb »

Chromebook give me a bash$ https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1n0wyA608k4eWGd9-NUh8...

My 2008 Macbook died in March, that triggered me to mostly use my 2013 Pixel for dev. Although I do have an 27 iMac at home.

My dev is mostly Web Dev + GCP and moving to Firebase (canonically all front end dev). Hence even though I have Ubuntu via Crouton, I rarely need a local Fuse file system. For node work and CLI work I spin up a GCP VM. The VM costs about $13 per month, but I turn the VM off and pay pennies for storage.

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#95

Post by dogma1138 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #16

That's hard to believe (I believe it, but it struck me as incredible at first). I don't know anyone with a Chromebook, and it's such a different way of computing that it's hard to believe it's taken off so much in such a short time. I think it is reflective of a new generation whose first computing experience was with phones and tablets. The idea that nothing of importance lives on the device is a huge paradigm shift…

Chromebooks are very popular as a first laptop for children and teens these days, they are cheap many can be had under 200$ and they provide basic office and apps/games especially now with the play store.

Effectively Chromebooks are the new "EEE PC"/netbook which were also very popular with children and teens as they were chip as dirt which meant that they were often bought as a gift or when a child needed a 2nd computer to take with them.

So when you have devices that cost 199 it's not that surprising that they outsell devices that cost 899 and upwards.

If the "premium" chromebooks outsold MBP's/MB's it would be as much as a surprise to me as why would anyone want to put a Core i7/i5 CPU and upto 16GB's of RAM in a chromebook in the first place.

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#98

Post by notacoward »

mixedmath wrote: post #63
SwellJoe wrote: post #16

That's hard to believe (I believe it, but it struck me as incredible at first). I don't know anyone with a Chromebook, and it's such a different way of computing that it's hard to believe it's taken off so much in such a short time. I think it is reflective of a new generation whose first computing experience was with phones and tablets. The idea that nothing of importance lives on the device is a huge paradigm shift…

I use a Chromebook. But I also put it in devmode, put on Crouton, and run a full-blown Ubuntu on it as well. Everyone I know with a Chromebook does the same thing. Then it becomes an inexpensive Linux Laptop that handles some things automatically.

Same here. Anybody who repeats the "Chromebooks are for kids who don't do anything sophisticated with their computers" schtick is just showing off their ignorance. A decent Chromebook (e.g. a Pixel or soon one of the HP/Acer models) plus Crouton is a more real development machine than anything Apple ever made, because it's more like the server where you'll eventually deploy. Then, unlike any of the other dozen Linux laptops I've had, it works and continues to work without requiring constant technically-proficient care just to keep things like wifi or suspend/resume from breaking. Mine replaced both an MBA and a Zenbook running Fedora. Haven't looked back since I got it.

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#99

Post by ewindisch »

I've become a full-time Chromebook convert over the past 8 months despite having had Powerbooks & Macbooks over the prior 15 years.

So what happened? It's simple:

* Everything runs inside Linux containers with reasonably secure seccomp profiles.

* SecureBoot provides some reliability against attacks. (I do not use Cruton or feel the need for it despite doing development)

* It's inexpensive. Arguably, buying my machine was free when considering the credits for Google drive, Google Play, and Gogo-inflight wifi.

* It does everything I need, with the caveat that "everything it doesn't do" is something I can do on a server or VM running in the cloud (or a closet).

Honestly, I see the Chromebook as a secure thin-client. That's good because I don't think it could be much fatter and secure. I certainly don't trust running anything on a Windows, Mac, or Linux desktop.

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#100

Post by rmrm »

marssaxman wrote: post #93
SwellJoe wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Network capacity, at least in most regards, currently dwarfs the expansion that happened back in the late 90s (unless you're talking about some later "dot-com bubble"). I'm not sure how you can argue that we're still trying to fill up bandwidth built in 1999. Sure, there was some build out during the bubble...but, I don't see any reason to think network infrastructure is going to shrink or that costs will increase re…

Makes sense that my specifics would be out of date. I'm not arguing that network infrastructure will shrink; I'm observing that the scaling factors for network infrastructure investment are not nearly so favorable as the scaling factors involved in CPU or storage capacity. We can already build hardware with capabilities greatly in excess of our actual needs. When network capacity becomes a bottleneck, it will be much…

Network capacity is a continual bottleneck, and many billions are spent to upgrade the transport network yearly.

Transport signals have gone from 2.5G to 10G to 40G to 100G to 200G per wave, and from 8 waves to 16 waves to 40 waves to 96 waves to 100+ waves per fiber.

The bottleneck has existed for a decade at least, and is invested in to keep pushing it out at the same time all this other stuff is happening.

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