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Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

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Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#191

Post by simula67 »

j2kun wrote: post #104

I 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…

Professional software ( Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, CAD etc ) and a large majority of games only runs on Windows. There is a plethora of software already developed for Windows which will continue to only run on Windows. There is a large number of people who have bet their careers on Windows and Microsoft. Microsoft has billions of dollars of runway even now and they are a very diversified company in terms of how their revenues are generated. I can still see this ending very badly for Google.

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#192

Post by lotyrin »

phamilton wrote: post #113
catskull wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So with Crouton, you don't actually dual boot. It's more like a VM, but it uses the same kernel that Chrome OS uses, so it's more like Docker than Virtualbox. I have a cheap 11" Acer C720 and I probably use it more than my Macbook Pro. I have command line only Ubuntu installed, and the result is a tab I can open to have a full linux shell, much like how you would use a macbook. For all intents and purposes, it's the…

> It's more like a VM, but it uses the same kernel that Chrome OS uses, so it's more like Docker than Virtualbox. I'm amused by this explanation, because I grew up doing chroot before virtualization took off and obviously before Docker. Feeling old.

I don't know if it's age really. I've explained, to developers well older than me things like "well, this practice is bad because here's an article from " or having to translate old fundamental concepts into their latest hip implementations. "this use calls less for virtualization and more for something like a Chroot..." "what?" "Sorry I mean like a Jail... cgroups...? LXC...? sigh Docker." "Oh! Yeah, that makes sense. nods as if they understand"

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#193

Post by Pinckney »

curt15 wrote: post #106
mixedmath wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

I have a similar setup, and ran into storage problems pretty quickly. Eventually I reflashed it and installed Linux natively, and got a fast 64GB SD card for my home partition.

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#194

Post by cheez »

spb wrote: post #137
j2kun wrote: post #104

I 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…

Moreover, Chromebooks, when paired with a good cloud IDE like https://c9.io , are excellent for writing code - more so than any "traditional" OS, since the local system is only dedicating resources toward keeping the interface responsive, and not wasting them on background distractions like local search indexing or filesystem defragmentation. Meanwhile, if you accidentally forkbomb a cloud development server, your mu…

If I can try and get to the root of what you're saying: with Chromebook and cloud-based applications, you do not have the resources of one computer, but many and the one closest to you is dedicated ONLY to making sure you have good interactivity.

Interesting.

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#195

Post by zmmmmm »

mamurphy wrote: post #5

Reddit[0] attributes this largely to Chromebooks snatching up most of the K-12 education market from iPads, with Google vaulting ahead while Apple was under-prioritizing that market. Motivations school districts might have for switching: (1) Cheaper, (2) Keyboards are nice for typing, (3), More resilient over time due to easy software updates, and (4) Easier to debug (similar to prior point; nothing is stored locally…

I have sadly been witnessing my local school investing heavily in iPads and arguing against it. I think iPads are not only not terribly useful for education, but I think for certain kinds of education they actively inhibit it. Especially the most relevant skills of the future - complex manipulation of knowledge and information (software programming being one but just one example). It is no coincidence: the very thing people like about iPads is that they are explicitly designed to reduce cognitive load by simplifying the entire interface. That reduced load is great when you are kicking back on the couch, but it's essential when you are trying to accomplish something complicated. It doesn't help that they are wasting huge amounts of money (if you are going to buy a tablet for children to stab their fingers at and play games on, at least get a cheap one for half the price of an iPad).

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#196

Post by spc476 »

SwellJoe wrote: post #16

That'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 do know someone who has a Chromebook. He's a professional writer [1] and if he loses his computer, all he has to do is get a new one and he's back up and running. He does quite a bit of travel as part of his job so it really works out for him.

And he's not a first time user of computers either. He grew up with an Atari 400 (yup, he was a teenager during the Golden Age of home computers).

[1] That is, he makes all his income from his writing. https://seanhoade.wordpress.com/

Edit: added a bit of history. And a link in case anyone is interested in his books.

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#197

Post by tbirdz »

catskull wrote: post #77
Kluny wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you replace Chrome OS with Ubuntu, dual boot, or run it in a VM? Do you spend most of your time in Chrome OS or in Ubuntu?

So with Crouton, you don't actually dual boot. It's more like a VM, but it uses the same kernel that Chrome OS uses, so it's more like Docker than Virtualbox. I have a cheap 11" Acer C720 and I probably use it more than my Macbook Pro. I have command line only Ubuntu installed, and the result is a tab I can open to have a full linux shell, much like how you would use a macbook. For all intents and purposes, it's the…

>No fans

I think you must be mistaken on this. I own a C720, and there is a fan in it.

You can see it in the upper left of this picture:

https://www.chromium.org/_/rsrc/1381990807648/chromium-os/de...

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#198

Post by nikcub »

simula67 wrote: post #191
j2kun wrote: post #104

I 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…

Professional software ( Adobe Creative Suite, Microsoft Office, CAD etc ) and a large majority of games only runs on Windows. There is a plethora of software already developed for Windows which will continue to only run on Windows. There is a large number of people who have bet their careers on Windows and Microsoft. Microsoft has billions of dollars of runway even now and they are a very diversified company in terms…

It is only a matter of time before the end of Windows only for those apps - the new Microsoft under Nadella is operating system agnostic. Losing out in the mobile space forced the abandonment of "devices and services" and vertical integration to a horizontal "platform first" strategy, but it was always going to happen (and many pundits wanted Microsoft to anticipate it rather than react to it).

The kernel doesn't matter - developers can and will target runtimes not operating systems. Today we're in a situation that would have been infeasible a few years ago: Microsoft producing apps for iOS. The strategy here is all about blocking competitive software from establishing itself against Office (the real cash-cow) and thus Microsoft services (a potential cash-cow) while the runtime is developed and rolled out across all systems.

What used to be vNext is now .NET Core and it is brilliant. It is largely open source[0], builds on open source tools and the runtime is small, fast and portable.

VS Code is an example of this new strategy: if Microsoft can make VS[1] and their developer toolchain (which has always been the best environment, imo) cross-platform then any app can be made cross-platform (this is working, at least in my case - I was never a .NET developer until .NET Core).

The advantage Windows will hold is DirectX and WPF - but for everyone else there is xwt[2] and coincidently (or not) Microsoft just bought Xamarin who wrote their cross-platform Studio product in xwt.

In the interim developers can use the existing cross-platform GUI toolkit: html. Bind to a local port and open the browser and point it to http://localhost:random_port (I just happen to install Sonarr[3] this morning which does this, it means you can distribute cross-platform binaries) or write a thin platform-specific frontend.

[0] https://dotnet.github.io/

[1] https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/code-vs.aspx

[2] https://github.com/mono/xwt

[3] https://sonarr.tv/

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#199

Post by phamilton »

lotyrin wrote: post #192
phamilton wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It's more like a VM, but it uses the same kernel that Chrome OS uses, so it's more like Docker than Virtualbox. I'm amused by this explanation, because I grew up doing chroot before virtualization took off and obviously before Docker. Feeling old.

I don't know if it's age really. I've explained, to developers well older than me things like "well, this practice is bad because here's an article from " or having to translate old fundamental concepts into their latest hip implementations. "this use calls less for virtualization and more for something like a Chroot..." "what?" "Sorry I mean like a Jail... cgroups...? LXC...? sigh Docker." "Oh! Yeah, that makes sens…

The funny thing is, I'm not old. I'm under 30. I just started young, on my own, and fell in with some more experienced sysadmin crowds.

Re: Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US

#200

Post by ekianjo »

conradev wrote: post #183
ekianjo wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed he's not joking, but then that means he changed his mind compared to what he says 1-2 years ago.

3 years ago: https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/dk1aiW4JjHd

In october 2015: http://www.zdnet.com/article/linus-torvalds-would-like-to-se...

> we'll actually see a real ARM (well, preferably ARM64) machine one of these days that you can actually develop on, rather than treat just as a development target. The Rasberry PI's, Beagleboards etc are all fun, and all the cellphones and Chromebooks are clearly selling well, but as a developer I feel something is still missing in the market

I don't know why he keeps saying different things on about every occasion.

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