Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

If you add an OS to Chrome, it's an OS

theregister.co.uk

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–28 of 28 posts

Re: If you add an OS to Chrome, it's an OS

#21

Post by zimbabwe »

theoneill wrote: post #18
greyman wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

TC have been publishing good articles, mediocre articles and quite bad articles. But calling them failure is laughable, I think it's a result of envy combined with fear. TC is their serious competitor, and they know it. If for nothing else, they are usually able to break stories sooner than others. IMHO, Register should better find a ways to improve themselves, their work is not that impressive either.

It's not The Register that has an obsession with TechCrunch, but this particular writer.

Dziuba doesn't have an obsession with TechCrunch, but with snark in general. Once upon a time he wrote balanced articles criticizing things he didn't like. Then he realized that the more negative he was, the more hits he received, and like many weak-minded tech writers before him, he sold out for the sake of a minor celebrity status.

Re: If you add an OS to Chrome, it's an OS

#22

Post by gaius »

jsonscripter wrote: post #19
trezor wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically what you are saying is that google plan to "embrace and extend" the web? While this may be a step which is required to bring the web as a platform forwards, I'm not sure I like the sound of that either.

Sounds fine to me. They aren't locking you into anything. All their technologies are open and free, it's just that no other companies can offer Google's quality and breadth.

That's not really true. Google's range of products is tiny compared to Microsoft's, and while Microsoft's quality is variable (partly due to their wide range) it's not the case that they're universally bad.

Microsoft rely on their closed source, Google rely on physically owning the servers their services rely on. Will you be able to run your own set of Google services on your own kit, or on a third-party VM host and retain the full functionality of Chrome OS? I doubt that somehow.

Re: If you add an OS to Chrome, it's an OS

#23

Post by whughes »

davidw wrote: post #20
pavlov wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Were one to look at his actual point, one might also go back 30 years and wonder if those silly upstarts at Microsoft with their "pee sees" have a chance against serious mainframes, with the millions of lines of code already written for them. That comparison would only make sense if mainframes and PCs cost essentially the same, used the same hardware platform, and the mainframe could run all the software as the PC (b…

It's not an exact comparison. What I'm pointing out is that disruptive innovations are often like this: > In terms of functionality, web apps have been a regression from their desktop counterparts. They're not better - at least not initially. They're good enough . Will web apps follow that path and displace desktop apps? Maybe, maybe not, but it's not as ridiculous a concept as the rant makes it out to be.

His point is not only that web apps are inferior. His point is that web apps are not good enough. Case in point:

TechCrunch goes on to report: "Don’t worry about those desktop apps you think you need. Office? Meh. You’ve got Zoho and Google Apps. You won’t miss Office."

Ah, yes. Corporate IT workers everywhere have to port decades of esoteric business logic codified into Excel macros to Google Spreadsheets, but the real problem is, what are they going to do after lunch? Have you ever tried to use Google Docs for any serious task? In the words of a true hacker, it's like trying to build a bookcase out of mashed potatoes. The Microsoft Office institution will not easily be overthrown by a bunch of jokers writing JavaScript.

Web apps may be disruptive, but that doesn't make them more useful or more likely to take off.

Re: If you add an OS to Chrome, it's an OS

#24

Post by davidw »

whughes wrote: post #23
davidw wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not an exact comparison. What I'm pointing out is that disruptive innovations are often like this: > In terms of functionality, web apps have been a regression from their desktop counterparts. They're not better - at least not initially. They're good enough . Will web apps follow that path and displace desktop apps? Maybe, maybe not, but it's not as ridiculous a concept as the rant makes it out to be.

His point is not only that web apps are inferior. His point is that web apps are not good enough. Case in point: TechCrunch goes on to report: "Don’t worry about those desktop apps you think you need. Office? Meh. You’ve got Zoho and Google Apps. You won’t miss Office." Ah, yes. Corporate IT workers everywhere have to port decades of esoteric business logic codified into Excel macros to Google Spreadsheets, but the r…

Maybe he's right, maybe he's not, but calling people who think differently a bunch of morons isn't what makes his case.

Re: If you add an OS to Chrome, it's an OS

#25

Post by scrame »

greyman wrote: post #17
trezor wrote: post #6

This had me laughing: The canonical example of failure in tech journalism is TechCrunch, a blog that once declared Google's MapReduce to be a system that "reduced the links found on the web into a map that search algorithms could run over." Yes, this will do nicely. While you could say that The register obviously would have an "agenda" to discredit other competing sites, I honestly find The register, despite the snar…

TC have been publishing good articles, mediocre articles and quite bad articles. But calling them failure is laughable, I think it's a result of envy combined with fear. TC is their serious competitor, and they know it. If for nothing else, they are usually able to break stories sooner than others. IMHO, Register should better find a ways to improve themselves, their work is not that impressive either.

I dont think he was calling techcrunch a failure of a website, but as a failure of "blogging as journalism". They regularly print speculative, inaccurate articles, rife with spelling errors. Additionally, they try to explain technical concepts that they do not understand (like the map-reduce description above), and their attitude when someone points out the errors is usually along the lines of "whatever".

Passing techcrunch off as "journalism" is what is laughable. Its just gossip and insider PR-hype.

Re: If you add an OS to Chrome, it's an OS

#26

Post by [deleted] »

trezor wrote: post #6

This had me laughing: The canonical example of failure in tech journalism is TechCrunch, a blog that once declared Google's MapReduce to be a system that "reduced the links found on the web into a map that search algorithms could run over." Yes, this will do nicely. While you could say that The register obviously would have an "agenda" to discredit other competing sites, I honestly find The register, despite the snar…

[deleted]

Re: If you add an OS to Chrome, it's an OS

#27

Post by davidw »

gaius wrote: post #22
jsonscripter wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sounds fine to me. They aren't locking you into anything. All their technologies are open and free, it's just that no other companies can offer Google's quality and breadth.

That's not really true. Google's range of products is tiny compared to Microsoft's, and while Microsoft's quality is variable (partly due to their wide range) it's not the case that they're universally bad. Microsoft rely on their closed source, Google rely on physically owning the servers their services rely on. Will you be able to run your own set of Google services on your own kit, or on a third-party VM host and…

If it's anything like Android, it will be open enough (well, completely open, actually) that you can hack it to make it do what you want. You could hack it to work with Yahoo or Microsoft, or DedaSys, for that matter.

Re: If you add an OS to Chrome, it's an OS

#28

Post by gaius »

davidw wrote: post #27
gaius wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's not really true. Google's range of products is tiny compared to Microsoft's, and while Microsoft's quality is variable (partly due to their wide range) it's not the case that they're universally bad. Microsoft rely on their closed source, Google rely on physically owning the servers their services rely on. Will you be able to run your own set of Google services on your own kit, or on a third-party VM host and…

If it's anything like Android, it will be open enough (well, completely open, actually) that you can hack it to make it do what you want. You could hack it to work with Yahoo or Microsoft, or DedaSys, for that matter.

Well, OK, I have an old Mac SE/30 at home. It's a fine machine for basic word processing etc. I'm running Word 5.1 on it, how old is that? Yet despite it being closed source, Microsoft, utterly unsupported, yadda yadda, it works fine. In 20 years, will I be able to have my own completely independent Google Docs running on a Unix that doesn't exist yet, in a datacentre operated by a company that doesn't exist yet, and have all my old docs still there?

Basically, I don't think this has been very thought through.

Post reply on HN