It's going to be interesting to see how committed Google is to this project. Google seems like a company these days with more ambition than substance sometimes. They have some really good services but they also have a lot of services that have seen very few, if any, significant improvements lately. It does remind me a bit of Microsoft when they had to get their fingers into every category of software even if they weren't offering a particularly good product. It was more about being in that space than actually being the best at it. I hope Google is not trying to go this route because it almost always ends up in mediocrity.
Introducing the Google Chrome OS
171–180 of 180 posts
Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
That sounds cool, but I don't know exactly what you mean... I think you might mean that you could create a Java applet front-end (using "Swing API"), and drive something in GWT with that, if "GWT can handle Swing API input". But how would you create the Swing front-end? What would driving GWT do you? Please join the dots - doing this often reveals gaps that weren't clear before, so it's a good exercise. Taking anothe…
GWT compiles Java to JavaScript, right? So compile the Swing calls into calls to equivalent JavaScript UI library calls. Barf if they try to do stuff you can't do in JavaScript (filesystem), as GWT surely has to do already. (disclaimer: never coded GWT in my life)
thanks!
Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS
#173Using Google Chrome OS, means that we throw Windows and OSX away. Windows or OSX (Desktop-application) are not good, flexible because they are dektop applications, but because they have dozen of years of user experience. Throwing this user experience away, means we are starting the OS history again, which is a lose of time and money. In my opinion!
Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS
#174Some may remember the Forbes ASAP article, excerpted from Gilder's book, touted with the cover, "George Gilder Thinks This Kid Can Topple Bill Gates": http://www.gilder.com/public/telecosm_series/software.html It's taken 14 long years -- and it's Google-Chrome-plus-Javascript rather than Netscape-Navigator-plus-HotJava -- but the browser has finally become a complete alternative to a desktop OS. The article's final s…
The only way Google can make good on their promises of it just working, being virus free etc, is if they lock it down more than Apple did the iPhone. General purpose computing device, or a Google Terminal? That's your choice.
What if one device has a switch on the side: 'locked-down terminal' or 'open general purpose computer'? And via virtualization, the two sides are sealed from each other, but instantly switchable? Why not the best of both worlds?
Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even for a minimalistic web-browser Chromium is still rather lacking. While what used to be butt ugly font-rendering has gotten better, at least to the point of readable, as far as I can tell there is still no plugin support. The only way you can fully configure the browser is still trough running gconf-editor for some parts, and configuring Firefox and then importing settings from there. That being said, my biggest…
> horrible ... unstable Wow - completely opposite from my experience. What are you running on? I'm on Ubuntu 8.10 right now, using the nightly builds. I've had a tab lock up once or twice, but in general it's very nice, way faster than FF 3.0, and pleasant to use. The key bindings are the only thing that seems a bit wonky, but I'm generally happy and at some point may start using it as my main browser, if FF 3.5 isn'…
Also the complete opposite of my experience. I used the nightly builds almost exclusively for over a week on Ubuntu 9.04 and I had no performance issues. Things are certainly incomplete but I was slightly disappointed to go back to the poorer performance of Firefox. I should probably place that blame on the Flash plugin but I think Chrome will handle this problem much better.
Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS
#176I could develop a new netbook OS over a weekend. (Joke. Please don't downvote me again, I'm already at -5.)
promise to be good?
Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yes! Thank you for capturing more of what I could feel in my gut, but could not bring to words when composing my comment. I don't think that anyone at Google set out to be evil. But power corrupts and the legal systems and governments have not exactly struck up a fight for privacy for the individual the last couple of years. I also see scenarios where Google never becomes corrupted by power, but by government mandate…
Indeed Google may never turn to the dark side, but to have that much information under one corporate entity's control is terrifying to say the least. Unfortunately in the digital age, it is hard to achieve any semblance true security for your personal information without acting on what lay-people perceive as paranoia.
This is what really bothers me about it. If it weren't Google, it would be someone else.
What we probably have to worry about is that the base level of privacy that is easy to achieve is in freefall. The incentives for any individual organization are too strong, because of the level of service (to consumers or advertisers or whatever) can be so much stronger. It seems to me that compounding this is the fact that the 'digital age' makes monopolies natural in alot of places, even if only for a short time.
We're already rapidly adjusting to a loss of privacy, and maybe it's a necessary progression and privacy advocates will one day be a quaint historical footnote.
Even so, I'm definitely in the paranoid camp, and if we don't make a conscious effort to have a more active cultural attitude towards privacy, we might not be able to preserve any of it if we have a collective 'oh shit' moment down the road.
Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS
#178The key to supremacy in the enterprise market is to seize control of the entry point. IBM did it in the 1960s and 1970s with the entry point being a highly skilled personalized sales force in an era where relationships established the trust needed for enterprises to commit to large systems. Microsoft did it in the 1980s and 1990s with the entry point being its proprietary API for its desktop OS which, with the help o…
Microsoft's success was based almost entirely on lock-in: they made everyone depend on something that only they could provide. The equivalent strategy for Google would obviously be to hoard the world's data in their private silos, which they are arguably already doing. I would find that scenario more plausible if it weren't for Wave.
Wave, by its nature, will obsolete or radically transform, many of Google's existing web apps: gmail, docs, blogger, picasa, calendar.. anything related to communication or collaboration. Yet, it seems as though they've gone to great lengths to make Wave decentralized, even as far as open sourcing their server implementation. They've done this even though a silo style Wave app would likely be a huge success anyway. I can't fathom why they would allow Wave to exist if they were hoping to control everyone's data, as it clearly represents a threat to the control they already have.
I'm not dropping my guard, but at this point my best guess is that Google is just trying to create an open and fair web ecosystem, in which they will compete based on their momentum and massive resources, and in which their major competitors lose their existing advantage. Either that, or they don't have much of a plan at all and the company is really just a bunch of smart people doing cool stuff with a huge pile of money that fell from the sky.
Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS
#179I could develop a new netbook OS over a weekend. (Joke. Please don't downvote me again, I'm already at -5.)
promise to be good?
But I though that "Mel" sounded "ghastly". Shirley that's unforgivable? :)
Re: Introducing the Google Chrome OS
#180I still think that Opera OS would be a better idea :)