The comments on that article really make me appreciate hacker news. I had forgotten how bad internet comments could be.
Chrome OS update adds Google's hardware-accelerated Aura UI
11–20 of 28 posts
Re: Chrome OS update adds Google's hardware-accelerated Aura UI
#12I really don't get why ChromeOS should exist .. wouldn't an Android tablet with a keyboard (e.g. Asus Transformer) be a much better choice?
ChromeOS is based off Linux. Android and Linux are going to merge. Chrome is coming to Android. It's not hard to see imagine some interesting collision scenarios and user experiences.
Once Chrome becomes stable on Android and it replaces the stock browser, I don't know why you'd still want ChromeOS on a separate device, or say even dual booting with Android. Would there really that huge of a security advantage to do that, instead of simply running Chrome from Android?
Because besides the security issue, I don't see any advantage at all for ChromeOS in that scenario. And even so, the convenience of having Chrome in Android most likely trumps whatever security advantage ChromeOS has over Chrome on Android.
Re: Chrome OS update adds Google's hardware-accelerated Aura UI
#13Earlier quoted context omitted.
ChromeOS is based off Linux. Android and Linux are going to merge. Chrome is coming to Android. It's not hard to see imagine some interesting collision scenarios and user experiences.
Once Chrome becomes stable on Android and it replaces the stock browser, I don't know why you'd still want ChromeOS on a separate device, or say even dual booting with Android. Would there really that huge of a security advantage to do that, instead of simply running Chrome from Android? Because besides the security issue, I don't see any advantage at all for ChromeOS in that scenario. And even so, the convenience of…
You could probably boot and shutdown ChromeOS 10 times in the time it takes Android to boot.
Re: Chrome OS update adds Google's hardware-accelerated Aura UI
#14I really don't get why ChromeOS should exist .. wouldn't an Android tablet with a keyboard (e.g. Asus Transformer) be a much better choice?
Google started work on ChromeOS before Android became successful in the market and long before it arrived on tablets. Additionally, I don't think Google really wants everybody on an OS that runs native apps. Their speciality is the web. Their money comes from the web and the more time people spend searching and browsing the more money they make. ChromeOS is probably what they wish everybody were using, but they aren'…
Google profits off ads in apps and app sales. If anything it increases their ad market which is good for them.
Re: Chrome OS update adds Google's hardware-accelerated Aura UI
#15Dumb question: so is this just a lightweight X11 WM or is it a brand new windowing system? Or just some sort of directfb hack-job?
Judging from the wikipedia page it says it's a new WM but looking here: http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=chromiumos/platform/window... there's clearly some bits borrowed from x11.
It's not just a new X WM, though we do still use X (at the screen level). Basically, we render everything inside the X root window. It's all composited, using the same compositor we use for web content ("CC").
http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/aura ChromeOS used to have an X window manager (which is what your link is pointing to, the code used in M18 and earlier). The cool thing about the new code is that it runs in Chrome, so it's much easier for more engineers to test and develop for, and it's also platform agnostic (since the only X interface is at the host layer). This means Windows developers like myself can work on ChromeOS WM features since I can effectively build and run the ChromeOS WM on Windows.
Re: Chrome OS update adds Google's hardware-accelerated Aura UI
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
Google started work on ChromeOS before Android became successful in the market and long before it arrived on tablets. Additionally, I don't think Google really wants everybody on an OS that runs native apps. Their speciality is the web. Their money comes from the web and the more time people spend searching and browsing the more money they make. ChromeOS is probably what they wish everybody were using, but they aren'…
Google profits off ads in apps and app sales. If anything it increases their ad market which is good for them.
Oh, Android is extremely good for them. But it's an eggs-in-one-basket deal and Chrome OS helps that.
Re: Chrome OS update adds Google's hardware-accelerated Aura UI
#17Earlier quoted context omitted.
Once Chrome becomes stable on Android and it replaces the stock browser, I don't know why you'd still want ChromeOS on a separate device, or say even dual booting with Android. Would there really that huge of a security advantage to do that, instead of simply running Chrome from Android? Because besides the security issue, I don't see any advantage at all for ChromeOS in that scenario. And even so, the convenience of…
You could probably boot and shutdown ChromeOS 10 times in the time it takes Android to boot.
Heck, you could boot and shut down Windows 8 in the time it takes Android to boot. (I'm using the consumer preview just now, it's very fast)
Re: Chrome OS update adds Google's hardware-accelerated Aura UI
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
Judging from the wikipedia page it says it's a new WM but looking here: http://git.chromium.org/gitweb/?p=chromiumos/platform/window... there's clearly some bits borrowed from x11.
It's not just a new X WM, though we do still use X (at the screen level). Basically, we render everything inside the X root window. It's all composited, using the same compositor we use for web content ("CC"). http://dev.chromium.org/developers/design-documents/aura ChromeOS used to have an X window manager (which is what your link is pointing to, the code used in M18 and earlier). The cool thing about the new code i…
Wow, that's a really cool idea!
Hey wait, could you do that in Metro? Then we could have "Chrome OS" inside Windows 8...
Re: Chrome OS update adds Google's hardware-accelerated Aura UI
#19I had a chance to play around with it and these are my thoughts:
It's definitely pretty. The animations are fairly smooth on the Series 5, which is surprising because the Atom processor chokes on a lot of big websites.
Unfortunately I don't think this greatly helps your productivity while using Chrome OS. It's more convenient for having multiple windows. Perhaps if you were doing some writing in Google Docs you could have 1 window for your writing and research, then another for when you want to take a break. That makes sense. However it seems, and I could be wrong on this, that when you open a new app it opens in a tab within whatever window you were last using.
It feels like something that was designed purely as a "how do we abstract away windows management" and not about usability. They need to do something to make apps be real apps, meaning no tab chrome at all. And they need to intelligently find a way to do that. So perhaps apps launched from the home screen will default to launching in a new window without any chrome, and they would need a good way for multitasking from there (the auto-hide bar is a fair start).
Re: Chrome OS update adds Google's hardware-accelerated Aura UI
#20I really don't get why ChromeOS should exist .. wouldn't an Android tablet with a keyboard (e.g. Asus Transformer) be a much better choice?
ChromeOS/Chrome Web Store seems to be about countering the the trend towards "appification" (the consumption of the web through native clients) by turning the web itself into an app store and giving websites native abilities.
Android is Google's take on the appification model. While there's overlap in that Android has a Chrome browser, I think the distinction is that Android's interaction model means that native apps will be primary method for navigation for the forseeable future since the native Web app model doesn't translate cleanly on a touchscreen device.
The Web is essentially Google's Desktop OS, so it has a vested interest in keeping it alive. ChromeOS is a way of accelerating that process, since the closer it gets to becoming viable alternative to an OS running native apps, the closer the web gets by extension. Creating a standalone OS allows them to frame the problem better than just Chrome browser, since a host OS always has a slight masking effect, even if the observer is aware of it.