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Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

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Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#191

Post by userbinator »

Adaptive wrote: post #138
userbinator wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I hate to be the contrarian one in a thread full of Google fans, but I'd consider this trend of schools flocking to locked-down and largely cloud-dependent computing devices to be pretty freaking scary . Start them young, get them accustomed to and comfortable with the idea of some huge company having great knowledge of and control over their online lives... it's a great business plan, but one that I would certainly…

I understand this concern. I've helped deploy chromebooks and linux based laptops and pcs at my daughters school. I am pro open source and would love to see lots of digging into understanding the systems. However I am also in favor of chromebooks. Here's why: The alternative to chromebooks isn't a glorious world of non-locked down non-cloud dependent machines. It's a world of poorly managed, crappy windows boxes. A w…

A world where students pass around USB keys.

That's a good thing, if your alternative is "upload files to a third-party server that might not even be in the same state and download them onto a machine sitting a few feet away. I don't believe the "security" argument either; for a long time schools have configured machines with software such that they don't persist changes across reboots, and that easily gets rid of any infection or unwanted changes.

free up time and money (because man are they cheap) to teach programming

That just widens the gap between users and programmers, and leads to the odd phenomenon of people coming out of "learn to code" classes knowing how to open an IDE and write and run code, but are otherwise still mostly computer-illiterate because they skipped the "implicit education" of dealing with the issues arising from normal computer usage. The problem is that the demographic between "normal user" and "coder", the "power users", has disappeared.

in a real computer lab.

Students should be using a "real computer" for everything they do, not just in special classes, as otherwise it leads to a situation where they perceive programming as something special for "approved" circumstances, and not merely a skill a "power user" can use to improve their productivity. It's somewhat reminiscent of http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/right-to-read.en.html

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#192

Post by discordance »

JustSomeNobody wrote: post #69
caffinatedmonk wrote: post #43

I'm curious why they didn't mention something so game changing as this in the keynote.

What game is this changing, really?

Perhaps not game changing, but it is interesting to look at the overall 'universal' app trend between Apple, Microsoft and Google.

Microsoft's UWP platform - for Microsoft it's about bringing users from their strong desktop market to Windows Phone.

Google - Android apps on Chrome OS. Google seem to be doing the opposite of Microsoft and making a play for the desktop market.

Apple and the iOS-ification of OS X - Similar to Google, Apple seem to be preparing to pull in their phone market stronghold onto the desktop.

Seems like Microsoft and Google are directly competing here, and Apple is competing with themselves.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#193

Post by Grazester »

jxy wrote: post #39
sunnyps wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Three Chromebooks are supported initially including the Pixel 2015. Other Chromebooks will be supported later this year. Source: https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/6401474

I'm disappointed that there is no Cr-48 on the list. I'm still using it as a browser/terminal. It sucks on high-res video now, so I have to force low-res on youtube/HBO/…. I really wished I could run some less demanding android apps. Anyone here hasn't tossed it?

My Cr-48 became too slow for even web browsing. I would not want to run Android apps on that!! I threw it out about 2 years ago

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#194

Post by jalami »

microtonal wrote: post #153
jalami wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Congrats on the adoption, although I still don't think it's moving our public institutions in the right direction. It's really just moving a lot more kids into a walled garden. I know Google has been in hot water for collecting student data recently and has since taken steps to fix it. That's their primary business model though. " Anonymizing " promises always follow and then it's a trust game again. I can see a futu…

They took a page from Microsoft's playbook. They know that you have to capture the next generation in schools. I agree with your worries. But it also tells that other parties in the market have utterly failed to compete. iPads used to get traction, but are more expensive, and Apple doesn't provide a complete ecosystem like Google Apps for Education. Microsoft has been sleeping, they have all the pieces but wanted to…

I think it's fair to say that nothing will be as convenient as a single centralized body controlling all the data management, client software/hardware and services under one roof. Nothing, not ever. So its not really an incompetent market so much as an incompetent or lethargic school system willing to make deep present and future concessions for a one click solution. The complete package is the problem, not the solution. You can't provide a modular and open ecosystem of small, single-concern pieces of software and hardware that rivals the single-provider model. When a single-provider model becomes entrenched, it's near impossible for those modular offerings to take root as they won't interop with the defacto Google, by design. Our education system now has a MAINFRAME.

For all the mud Microsoft gets, their ecosystem was pretty modular because that was their business model. They're locking it down and becoming more cloudy every day, but for a long while, Microsoft didn't care what you ran, didn't explicitly track your usage and worked with a wide variety of disparate multi-vendor software. I'm not saying Windows is where we should have been nor that it wasn't a lock-in of a sort, but we're not really better off now. Apple iPads were less open than Windows, but had consistent hardware. Now Google has achieved the complete solution.

I think a large part of it is the framework v. libraries argument all over again in a different package. I think we're on the swing back now where we want to trust providers a lot more than after the corporate IBM fallout. With everyone getting their music from Spotify, movies from Netflix, games from Steam, analytics from GA, chat from Slack, books from Kindle, etc. Schools are asking, why not us too? For a lot of people, schools aren't something you can just decide not to sign the EULA and walk away from though.

These chromebooks are just cheap thin clients for Google services. They're some of the most locked down devices on the market, but thanks to the internet being decentralized by nature and Google seeming like the door to the internet, their centralization doesn't seem so scary. They interop with little else and hold no data, even printing hits their servers first before your school's printer.

Here's to hoping for a swing-back.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#195

Post by jalami »

soyiuz wrote: post #161
Adaptive wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I understand this concern. I've helped deploy chromebooks and linux based laptops and pcs at my daughters school. I am pro open source and would love to see lots of digging into understanding the systems. However I am also in favor of chromebooks. Here's why: The alternative to chromebooks isn't a glorious world of non-locked down non-cloud dependent machines. It's a world of poorly managed, crappy windows boxes. A w…

I also want to point out that Chromebooks can easily be turned into Linux machines with Crouton. They are not locked down in that sense.

It's not really easy depending on who you ask and running Crouton isn't really making it a linux box in this way as you're just running on top of ChromeOS with most of the hardware integration still handled by ChromeOS.

No school would endorse this because I'm sure crouton isn't in their support package. Doing it 'right' often implies opening the case, voiding your warranty, removing the write-protect screw, flashing away ChromeOS with a third party build of SeaBios, installing an unsupported Linux OS on the hardware and praying drivers exist in the mainline kernel for your device, then making due without any of the ChromeOS cloud-goodies your device was given from Google. Not really SOP for organizations buying in bulk with warranties.

I do it because I like small, cheap computers running Linux well and thankfully ChromeOS is Linux-y, but for most people, this is still very locked down. Even being able to unlock ChromeOS devices is probably more a side-effect than a willful desire from Google to be open.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#196

Post by y4mi »

hackaflocka wrote: post #77
caffinatedmonk wrote: post #43

I'm curious why they didn't mention something so game changing as this in the keynote.

Anyone know what would happen if one were to install BOTH the Android AND Chrome OS version of an app (e.g. Gmail)?

urm, there is a gmail app on chromeos?

it just links to gmail.com if i use the gmail shortcut on my tray and i couldnt find another app on the store.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#197

Post by KWD »

zepto wrote: post #150
Bombthecat wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apple was basically in the same position and they lost it to google. Someday there will be something better and people will switch.

Chromebooks aren't better - they are just cheap and familiar looking. Google has done nobody a service except themselves.

I would say they are better at fulfilling this particular role. A Chromebook meets and exceeds requirements for a computer for many, and with the benefit of low maintenance (it just works), so why would they need what Apple offers.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#198

Post by azakai »

izacus wrote: post #176
azakai wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This does, however mean that 1. This depends on closed-source code (libhoudini is Intel code, and it's not open, last I heard). I guess it's not the first piece of closed-source code in Chromebooks, but it's a crucial piece. 2. This code is still not portable, it just runs on 2 archs, unless someone writes a libhoudini for all other archs as well.

What "other archs"? Android only supports 3 ARM architectures (all of them will load armeabi binaries), x86 and MIPS (with 0 MIPS devices or phones being on the market). Chromebooks run only ARM or x86. Again, this is an issue that's relevant to a tiny minority of the applications since vast majority do not ship native binaries.

Even if no official Android devices use MIPS today, that could change tomorrow. And there are lots of Android forks, I would be very surprised if none of them use MIPS.

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#199

Post by pantypants »

discordance wrote: post #192
JustSomeNobody wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What game is this changing, really?

Perhaps not game changing, but it is interesting to look at the overall 'universal' app trend between Apple, Microsoft and Google. Microsoft's UWP platform - for Microsoft it's about bringing users from their strong desktop market to Windows Phone. Google - Android apps on Chrome OS. Google seem to be doing the opposite of Microsoft and making a play for the desktop market. Apple and the iOS-ification of OS X - Simil…

>Apple and the iOS-ification of OS X - Similar to Google, Apple seem to be preparing to pull in their phone market stronghold onto the desktop.

Is this what the relatively recent bitcode stuff with iOS apps is for?

Re: Play Store and Android Apps Coming to Chromebooks

#200

Post by hackaflocka »

y4mi wrote: post #196
hackaflocka wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone know what would happen if one were to install BOTH the Android AND Chrome OS version of an app (e.g. Gmail)?

urm, there is a gmail app on chromeos? it just links to gmail.com if i use the gmail shortcut on my tray and i couldnt find another app on the store.

I was under the impression they had built an offline version of Gmail for Chrome OS. I suppose not.
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