Its the economy, stupid! (not calling anybody stupid)
Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
101–110 of 256 posts
Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
#102That'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 comp…
I love my Chromebook, with Crouton you can run Debian on it and for the most part don't have to worry about wonky drivers and the like. I currently work as a Sysadmin and I don't want to carry $800+ dollars of hardware with me while I'm up in ceilings running cable. It allows me to spend my downtime writing code so I can get into development one day. I get over a full day on a single charge. Great little machine. I'd consider one of the premium ones for my next laptop.
Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
#103I'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 machin…
Which Chromebook are you using or which one would you recommend?
Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
#104I think it's hilarious how little the HN community knows about Chromebooks. Every time it pops up, there's a wave of people saying "I don't know a single person who has one!" and "They seem useless without an internet connection!" and "I wonder how they compare to mac books."
People forget that most of the world doesn't write code, and doesn't need native applications. They write email, take selfies, and write extremely simple spreadsheets. It's way more important to have cheap, reliable, accessible, safe hardware. You'd be amazed how many people encounter a problem with their computer and give up because "it's mad at me." This isn't an educational problem. The technology is failing them. Wrestling with an operating system sucks.
And then there's all of these amazing up-coming technologies like WebAssembly and WebRTC. If we can have the security and uniformity of a Chromebook and run Photoshop and Quake and BitTorrent directly in the browser with no overhead, then there's absolutely no point for users to deal with the muck and grime of whatever bad state they get their local filesystem into.
Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
#105I'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 machin…
Which Chromebook are you using or which one would you recommend?
I'm using the Toshiba Chromebook 2 which I purchased because it was the best performance / value / screen-quality. I didn't want anything with less than a 1080p display.
Today, I'd buy (and probably will buy) the HP Chromebook 13. It starts at $499 but includes a QHD+ panel ("Retina") and an "Intel Core m" CPU (or higher). Only one model of the range is available right now, but options will include Pentium, m3, m5, m7 CPUs and up to 16GB of RAM. It is thinner, lighter, and cheaper than the Macbook Air.
Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
#106That's hard to believe (I believe it, but it struck me as incredible at first). I don't know anyone with a Chromebook, and it's such a different way of computing that it's hard to believe it's taken off so much in such a short time. I think it is reflective of a new generation whose first computing experience was with phones and tablets. The idea that nothing of importance lives on the device is a huge paradigm shift…
I use a Chromebook. But I also put it in devmode, put on Crouton, and run a full-blown Ubuntu on it as well. Everyone I know with a Chromebook does the same thing. Then it becomes an inexpensive Linux Laptop that handles some things automatically.
Do you find the anemic storage limiting?
Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
#107Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? I've developed 100% on a cloud VM for years. All I need locally is a browser. Obviously wouldn't work for some things, but as a full stack developer: no problem.
How is the web ssh client experience, do you miss anything from a real terminal? I would imagine there would be some keybindings conflicts when using vim or emacs.
I use the Cloud9 IDE, and it's great! I've had a few issues over the years, but fewer than when I used to develop locally. And I can log on from anywhere.
Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
#108Earlier quoted context omitted.
Chromebooks are very popular as a first laptop for children and teens these days, they are cheap many can be had under 200$ 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 comp…
I love my Chromebook, with Crouton you can run Debian on it and for the most part don't have to worry about wonky drivers and the like. I currently work as a Sysadmin and I don't want to carry $800+ dollars of hardware with me while I'm up in ceilings running cable. It allows me to spend my downtime writing code so I can get into development one day. I get over a full day on a single charge. Great little machine. I'd…
Yeah well you are a "unique" case, I would be surprised if even 10% of Chromebook owners knows what Crouton or chroot is :)
HN users don't see Chromebooks because HN users are a very special subset - highly educated and well paid which works in development and IT at large.
If you look at children and low wage blue collar workers you'll see many more of them those are the people that buy what one would not even consider a budget laptop but an entry one.
Those are also the people for whom Google and Facebook are defacto the internet, I've recently met people that didn't knew "Office" even existed outside of Google Docs.
If you are high school student that only wants to get access to Facebook and maybe be able to write a small paper you don't need more than a Chromebook. If you are a truck driver or a security guard that wants to be able to read email or watch YouTube you don't need more than a Chromebook. And for those people a 150-250$ device makes all the sense in the world.
College students would probably still be able to use a Chromebook for 99% of their tasks, but since Apple has a student discount it's chic Apple most likely will still continue to rule the College class.
Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
#109I think it's hilarious how little the HN community knows about Chromebooks. Every time it pops up, there's a wave of people saying "I don't know a single person who has one!" and "They seem useless without an internet connection!" and "I wonder how they compare to mac books." People forget that most of the world doesn't write code, and doesn't need native applications. They write email, take selfies, and write extrem…
it is actually an educational problem - specially in the US.
Educated people will favor the more flexible operating systems to create things (don't think just programming, think video, pictures, whatever), dumb people will care about "selfies" and "email".
That said the reality is that the majority of people are the ones that do not want to learn, and thus to be successful it is necessary to cater to them. It makes sense and make their life easier.
But do not fool yourself thinking it's not an educational problem for the "feel good" statement. Learning photoshop is a big deal and it's not because of UX. It's because of the concepts behind the editing.
Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US
#110Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why? I've developed 100% on a cloud VM for years. All I need locally is a browser. Obviously wouldn't work for some things, but as a full stack developer: no problem.
If your internet connection sucks, or you need hardware access, or you're doing anything that requires a low latency, or you want to run the software locally for any reason, cloud VMs won't work. I can only imagine it working for a small subset of app developers. It's hardly a full stack solution.
> If your internet connection sucks
Not a problem for me, and it's pretty hard for me to develop when my internet connection sucks anyways (no modules, no documentation, no cloud access, etc.).
> or you need hardware access
Yes, this is the primary valid reason I see.
> you're doing anything that requires a low latency
Low latency from what? My cloud machines have super low latency to each other and to the net.
> you want to run the software locally for any reason
Running it in my cloud machine is locally, to me. The only reason it would need to be truly local if you're doing something regarding hardware / peripherals / etc., as you mentioned.