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Paul Buchheit: Chrome OS Will Perish Or “Merge” With Android

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Re: Paul Buchheit: Chrome OS Will Perish Or “Merge” With Android

#31
post #30
post #29

Paul, I will bet 1000 HN karma at even odds on the following prediction: Chrome OS will not be killed or merge with Android in the next year. (if it was in the next two years, I would give 80% odds on the existence of a Google operating system not called Android that was the successor of Android+Chrome)

How exactly would you "settle up"?

IOU's

or something not very likely like myself founding a Y Combinator company making prediction markets using HN karma. It would take a lot to convince pg to allow for direct HN karma transfers. It doesn't mean we can't create a shadow market with words.

I created a similar fake prediction market on Less Wrong.

http://lesswrong.com/lw/1tr/creating_a_less_wrong_prediction...

Re: Paul Buchheit: Chrome OS Will Perish Or “Merge” With Android

#32
The problem I have with this theory is that Android just wasn't written as a general-purpose GUI framework/OS. It's very mobile and memory-constraint centric, and IMO would need a whole new UI layer, if not a major re-write at the OS level. Who would want to write tablet or netbook apps with the whole Activity/Intent structures, and listviews that populate dynamically when scrolling, or apps that the OS may kill at certain thresholds of memory pressure?

Re: Paul Buchheit: Chrome OS Will Perish Or “Merge” With Android

#33

I wonder why this the prediction goes this way. Wouldn't the other way around make more sense? Chrome OS seems much more modern. But maybe too far ahead.

Why is it more modern? Its just a thin layer of Linux with chrom(ium) over the top. True, chrome is modern, but I am not sure the Linus layer is.

Everything works in the cloud. It works from every client. You have all your data everywhere. You have a well defined, powerful, standardized and cross-platform interface to it. All such applications will probably work on every computer also in the next 10 or 20 years.

You don't have those properties for most Android applications (they don't really work that well on your desktop PC even right now).

Re: Paul Buchheit: Chrome OS Will Perish Or “Merge” With Android

#34
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's clear that tablets are huge". I agree but I'd say it's clear that the iPad is huge, and that tablets will be huge. So far there's no competitor to the iPad. I'm not sure why Google are arsing around with the Cr-48 (a netbook/laptop) - they need to get their resources behind a tablet.

Are tablets huge, or are touchscreens huge? To know, we need some decent laptops with touchscreens. It seems like the best of both worlds will clearly be a tablet that docks to the bottom half of a laptop - so we get a laptop with a tablet that can be carried around. I also think it's a fairly good long term bet. At the moment we're in this strange 'appstore' download applications era which is like being back in the…

Microsoft pushed a similar form factor to what you describe, a few years back. The market rejected it.

Personally, I think a keyboard/touchscreen combination sounds great, but apparently we're in the extreme minority on this one.

Re: Paul Buchheit: Chrome OS Will Perish Or “Merge” With Android

#36
Prediction: Windows Phone 7 will merge with Windows 7 or perish. iOS will merge with OS X or perish.

Oh wait, I don't predict either of those things. In each case, one is a desktop OS and one is a mobile OS. Sure, they all include web browsers that use the same rendering engine, but that doesn't mean they need to merge. Mobile and Desktop are two separate problems.

There's a reason why Windows CE laptops were never successful; people don't want a phone OS on their computer.

Re: Paul Buchheit: Chrome OS Will Perish Or “Merge” With Android

#38
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"it's clear that tablets are huge". I agree but I'd say it's clear that the iPad is huge, and that tablets will be huge. So far there's no competitor to the iPad. I'm not sure why Google are arsing around with the Cr-48 (a netbook/laptop) - they need to get their resources behind a tablet.

Are tablets huge, or are touchscreens huge? To know, we need some decent laptops with touchscreens. It seems like the best of both worlds will clearly be a tablet that docks to the bottom half of a laptop - so we get a laptop with a tablet that can be carried around. I also think it's a fairly good long term bet. At the moment we're in this strange 'appstore' download applications era which is like being back in the…

A touchscreen that docks to a keyboard eh? Have you seen the iPad keyboard dock? Aside from lack of mouse (which would be marginally useful in iOS, if at all), that's what an iPad + keyboard dock is.

Compaq and some others made resistive tablets like you might be getting at a decade ago and one of the biggest problems was that they all ran Windows XP and were underpowered, so you just got a smaller, heavier, less capable Windows box you could draw on.

Re: Paul Buchheit: Chrome OS Will Perish Or “Merge” With Android

#39
post #37
post #2

I like that the screenshot says "11 seconds ago". An idle thought while setting up my new MacBook Air became a TC post in record time!

Don't you find it unsettling that comments you make on social sites become 'news'?

As the author, I'd be happy to have a discussion about that.

In my mind, comments made on any public platform, whether it'd be on stage at a conference or on a public account of a social networking service, can constitute news if there's a clear angle.

Re: Paul Buchheit: Chrome OS Will Perish Or “Merge” With Android

#40
post #2

I like that the screenshot says "11 seconds ago". An idle thought while setting up my new MacBook Air became a TC post in record time!

The Facebook mobile app will definitely die in the next year since they already have a website that does everything it has and more!

Oh wait, they're similar products for different devices and customers.

Chrome OS devices are the perfect netbook companion for most people that I know who own one. Many relatives of mine aren't that great with a computer, and they only use it to get to the internet. Anything that gets in the way of that for them is a big deal and can often ruin the whole experience.

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