This is a colossal, market-moving play from Google.
Look at the brand names. TRUE, XOLO, Nexian. Recognise them? Consumers in Thailand, India and Indonesia do - they are local smartphone brands. Look at the promo video. Notice how many Asian faces there are?
This isn't about cheap Chromebooks, it's about a major strategic effort to court the global middle class. As with the Android One initiative, Google are seeking to establish an affordable but capable gateway to their services for middle-income consumers. They're working with local companies to leverage local marketing and distribution resources. In these markets, the Chromebook isn't being pitched as a cheap substitute for a 'real' laptop, but as an upgrade from a smartphone or tablet.
If their strategy for Chrome OS works half as well as their Android strategy, then the industry is going to be unrecognisably transformed over the next few years. A whole generation of consumers could come to see the Chrome OS pseudo-thin-client model as the norm, with full-fat operating systems being a niche curio.
> This is a colossal, market-moving play from Google.
Is it that or is it just an effort to stay relevant? If you can get a laptop/tablet that can do the same thing that this Chromebook does and has a full OS for a few bucks more, would you do it? There are tons of tablets from HP/Dell that cost 100-200$ and run full windows OS and have comparable specs to the Chromebooks. As far as I know they are selling quite well. I am wondering if this is Google responding to that pressure.
It's sad to see folks celebrating computing devices that are more extremely locked down than even the iDevices. A Windows PC/laptop is much more open than a Chromebook.
Can Mozilla even make a Firefox browser for ChromeOS? Only Google can make system and native apps, unlike the iDevices where you can access most of the native functionality even if you have to go through Apple's approval and you're not forced to upload all your information into Google's cloud with paltry local storage like 64GB on even a 1500 dollar machine where the information is mined by Google and is accessible to various parties like the Government. They now even track which retail stores people visit using their Android phones or iPhones. http://digiday.com/platforms/google-tracking/
Looks like user and developer freedom are a big concern only when Apple or Microsoft infringe it(even though Win32 is much more open than ChromeOS, after all Google exploited it with the Chrome browser and bundling it with Flash and Java updates), but Google gets a free pass to lock everything down and still call itself open.
Actually, I upvoted this, but on reflection I think this is wrong. Here's why:
- Most Chromebooks are freely bootloader unlocked, allowing
any operating system to be loaded on them.
- ChromeOS follows the same open source model as Chrome—Most core features open, with things like Flash/Wildvine/API keys held secret.
- There are no native apps on ChromeOS—the correct question
is not "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS", its
"Can Mozilla write an app for ChromeOS" and "Can Mozilla
write a browser for Chromebooks". Both of these
statements are absolutely true.
So I fail to see how Chromebooks are "more extremely locked down" than iDevices.
It's an interesting experiment but I don't think Google is aiming to please the crowd with the need for "native apps" anyways and they wouldn't be terribly interested in keeping the native VLC dependencies alive and/or compatible. It seems pretty obvious to me that Google is trying to push the mainstream consumer market into a "cloud computing/services lifestyle", it only makes sense because their whole business model revolves around web users. So VLC is out, Netflix/Playstore is in.
Not for me, don't get me wrong, I'm not that kind of consumer and it may be safe to state that most people within the HN crowd isn't either. I'm personally following and waiting for the Novena[1] laptop and open hardware to be launched.
Even if chromeOS is removed and Gnu/Linux is loaded instead, chromebooks' keyboards look abysmally ugly and useless to me, otherwise I would at least be excited about the inexpensive hardware.
So yeah, as a consumer I can distill my opinion about this product to "meh...", but as a web developer though, that's a different story, the possibility of Google hardware converting handheld mobile users to desktop-ish mobile users and reaching a broader international audience makes me almost enthusiastic about Chromebooks.
After all, until some potentially better hardware project (Firefox OS [2] or Indie Phone [3], who knows) expands to the netbook-ish form factor ("Lapfox"?/"Indiebook"?), the not-so-open inexpensive Chromebook hardware & affordable by hundreds of millions (potentially billions, we'll see) introduces and welcomes new demographics to the web and is better for the world (in the short run) than almost-fully-open expensive hardware that only a few million can afford (for now), don't you think?
Hmm... If you can port VLC to Chrome OS with ARC, I wonder what happens if you try to shove Firefox for Android into it. Are there fundamental roadblocks that would prevent it from working, or would you just end up with a slow and buggy waltzing bear?
I suspect their sandbox doesn't allow code generation since they statically verify you aren't using instructions they can't protect against and that would break it. That means that while you could probably get a Firefox running, it'd be with a Javascript interpreter, not a JIT.
While I don't work on any of the related pieces, it should be noted that NaCL has dynamic "check this code" support precisely so you can JIT-compile code and execute it safely.
> There are no native apps on ChromeOS—the correct question is not "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS", its "Can Mozilla write an app for ChromeOS"
Exactly - ChromeOS is a browser. "Can Mozilla write a browser for ChromeOS" makes about as much sense as "Can Mozilla write a browser for Chrome" or "Can Google write a browser for Internet Explorer".
The fact that the Chromium process is what's compositing windows is relatively uninteresting to the end user. It's Linux with a different GUI system. Ubuntu is ditching X11 also, as I understand it, so people other than Google appear to be prepared to redo Linux GUIs.
There's Native Client, so you can write native code. I believe there are things like Emacs for NaCl, though Emacs is relatively useless until someone also ports your favorite programming language, version control, etc. to this model. For programmers, it's tough to have to redo everything, and because we tend not to use the ability to run unaudited native code to install viruses on our machine, it seems like a lot of work for no reason. For the end user, though, things are a bit different. It's a long road but ultimately computers that are easier to use and get fewer viruses is a worthy goal, I think.
Someone could port Firefox to ChromeOS if they found it to be interesting. It would probably be quite difficult, however.
I use ChromeOS as my primary workstation because it removes a lot of headaches I have with computers. I hate configuring things. I just want a terminal with Emacs and a web browser. ChromeOS gives me this. I log into my laptop and it has the exact same configuration as my desktop.
ChromeOS auto-updates and takes 8 seconds to reboot afterwards. It doesn't nag me about auto-updates or checking that Windows Defender is up to date. All my work is saved somewhere other than my desktop/laptop, so if I lose the computer or get another one all I have to do is log in again.
It's very much a thin-client thing, which some people hate, but I find quite suitable for my normal workflow. sshing into a Linux box is generally great for doing work. Using the GUIs is an effort in frustration. ChromeOS solved that issue for me. (Yup, I need an Internet connection to get to my ssh-able Linux box somewhere. I always have one.)
If you are convinced Google is out to get you with configuration syncing, SSH clients that run "in a web browser" (but are native code and preserve all keybindings that you're used to), and "cloud storage" then ChromeOS is probably not for you. Enter developer mode (one keypress) and install your favorite Linux distribution instead -- all the patches necessary to make the devices work are in the open source tree, and unlike with Linux on random Windows laptops, your WiFi will work and you'll get the advertised battery life.
I have given ChromeOS laptops to family members where my previous attempts at giving them computers have failed. A year later their laptops are running the latest version of the OS and didn't have any viruses. I even got them using two-factor authentication with security keys! I was surprised.
Disclaimer: I work on ChromeOS as my 20% project. But I work on it because it solved a lot of my computing problems and I find it worth my time. I wouldn't waste my time advocating to help my employer sell $149 laptops.
Apps running in a window can capture whatever keys they want. So Control-W is interpreted by your shell/app, not by the browser (closing the window). In a tab the browser keybindings still exist, so be sure to set "open in new window" by right-clicking the app before running.
Terminal settings are configurable and persistent.
It works on any machine running Chrome. Things don't quite work right on MacOS, I'm told, but it seems native on Windows and Linux. (And CrOS of course.)
I have the i7 model at work and an i3 model at home. Both are fast. I also have a Chromebook Pixel for situations that require a laptop.
As for monitors, both the desktops and laptops handle my 4k monitor OK, but only at 30Hz (because it's a Displayport MST model which are horrible hacks and are thankfully no longer made). At work I use a 24" and 30" monitor. Works as expected.
You can tune the density per-monitor, so you can run your 4k monitor at 1.25x or 2x density and your normal monitor at 1x density and it Just Works.
There's a dialog for setting up resolutions and relative position of the screens to each other. Attaching a screen means that it's automatically fired up with its default settings.
Each screen has the window bar, and clicking on icons there opens the respective website/app on that screen.
When closing the laptop with an attached screen, it merely disabled the display (instead of going to sleep completely) which was confusing the first time but actually makes sense and is how other devices handle the situation as well.
> Can Mozilla even make a Firefox browser for ChromeOS?
Can Google even make a Chrome browser for FirefoxOS?
All of the PR surrounding the creation of FirefoxOS lauded how it was completely open because it was built on standards like HTML/CSS/JavaScript.
But when Google does the same thing, it is an example of "locking everything down while still calling itself open."
Mozilla has been arguing for years that compile-to-JavaScript is good enough (and based their opposition to NaCl/PNaCl on this principle). It is strange to see argument here against Google that "only true native will do", when that argument is what motivated NaCl/PNaCl to begin with.
> when Google does the same thing, it is an example of "locking everything down while still calling itself open."
Well, Mozilla have a proven track record of providing a self-host alternative for their cloud platform (the main reason I'm using Firefox sync -- with Mozilla servers -- is that I could set up a proof-of-concept sync server[1] on my own hw, see that, yes it does work fine. Contrast that with what Google does ("We have a magic database, here's some of the ideas behind it; sorry you can't host your own, so all our service tech will remain proprietary").
I use Chromium from time to time, but I don't use Chrome -- and I avoid logging in to Google services when I can.
I've been waiting for a Cyanogen-mod for my current phone, because I don't like running stock Android in it's sort-a-open, mostly-closed state -- not to mention the amount of spyware that ships with the platform (it doesn't help that Samsung ships its own software too -- which I'm assuming contains its share of bugs).
Try building a working phone kernel+userland with whatever Google+partner have released and try and convince me that they're good at doing "open".
I hope they will keep the dev-mode for all chromebooks -- and that they'll make it easier to boot into custom kernels without a boot-up delay etc -- but I'm not holding my breath.
[1] I actually ran the previous one, but I'll be setting up an updated one, as soon as I move "into" my new server.
Folks aren't talking about FirefoxOS replacing laptops or desktops though, unlike Chromebooks, if you follow this thread. Nor does Mozilla do a lot of cloud business nor is it in the business of tracking users for advertizing purposes.
The PC software ecosystem has been open historically, even with Windows and OS X, and now there's talk of it being replaced by a completely closed alternative
> now there's talk of it being replaced by a completely closed alternative
If Mozilla and Google both do X, but Mozilla's actions are judged as "open" while Google's are judged as "completely closed," then the words open and closed are losing their meaning.
How does Google's other business activities affect whether, in principle, an HTML/JavaScript-based OS is "open" or "closed"?
Yes, it's true that OS platforms are moving towards sandboxing their apps more and more. This is mainly being driven by market forces, because more sandboxed platforms offer important features:
- more resistant to malware
- more secure (one stupid little app can't steal/delete all your data)
But no one is taking away your Windows or OS X boxes. If people keep wanting them, manufacturers will keep making them.
And while mainstream consumer devices are moving towards being more sandboxed, the ability to tinker is being addressed in other ways, like Raspberry Pi, which are very cool in their own way.
You are kind of conflating a few different issues here.
iDevices are locked down for the purposes of Apple maintaining iron-fisted control over the platform at the expense of both developers and end-users. Chromebooks are locked down for end-user security and ease-of-administration.
Chromebooks allow the end-user to unlock the bootloader and/or run them in developer mode if they really want to do that (and this is all well documented by Google, not akin to jailbreaking), and pretty much the only reason a lot of developers even consider Chromebooks as full laptop replacements is for this reason.
Want to run Firefox on a Chromebook? Install crouton (a project developed by a Google employee) and just go ahead and run Firefox, works fine, just like any other Linux app. Google does nothing to stop this (in fact, they go out of their way to make tools to enable it), they just put enough friction into it to let you know that when you do this all bets are off as to the security of the chroot you are running native Linux apps in.
> Apple maintaining iron-fisted control over the platform at the expense of both developers and end-users.
There are legitimate benefits to having a locked down platform which Apple (and developers/consumers) have decided is worth the negatives. There are zero viruses or malware on iOS compared to quite a few on Android. The quality of applications is significantly higher on iOS because (a) developers have a consistent platform to optimize for and (b) majority of iOS users are more than likely on the latest release.
This approach is working so well for Apple that Google, Samsung and Microsoft are all trying to emulate it.
I honestly don't see any real benefits of Apple's lock-down approach compared to ChromeOS's lock-down approach. Users who want the full security of ChromeOS can use it as it ships and be happy, users who want to live on the wild side can fairly trivially (but with enough effort that they don't do it on accident) break the locks.. best of both worlds, user gets to decide how much they want to live in a locked box.
I don't disagree that there are benefits to the consistency of the Apple ecosystem versus that of Android, but all of those benefits are rooted in Google's lack of control of what phone vendors do with the OS (though they have been working to change that), not lack of control of users or app developers.. the entire jailbreaking ecosystem proves that such freedom doesn't harm the people who want the safe thing, it is just a shame they are forced to constantly fight against the phone vendor (on the Apple side) to keep things open whereas Google (usually -- they've been uncharacteristically dickish with Chromecast hardware) usually goes out of their way to allow the user to run free if they want to.
And these advantages are meaningful not just for the companies, but for the end-user. Most users don't want to root their own machines, they just want a machine that can help them live their lives, make ends meet, and learn more about their world. A virus that bricks the machine keeps them from doing that.
Of course, for some 15-year-old girl in Jakarta, "learn more about their world" may in fact mean rooting their machine so they can deal with grotty Unix details and 8 years down the road build on that to for an MEng thesis and then startup.
> Can Mozilla even make a Firefox browser for ChromeOS?
Sure, Native Client's there and should have all the functionality you need. It'll technically be running inside Chrome, but so is everything else like the settings dialog.
Just because you can replace an OS does not mean it's open. It's about the ecosystem too. How much percentage of Chromebooks could be running Crouton or Linux? I wager less than 2%.
And how many Windows users installed Linux? If it's easier to run Linux or use Crouton on a Chromebook, then that's an argument against the view that they're less open than Windows or iOS.
You're wrong. 100% of Chromebooks are running Linux. If you don't want to use Crouton you can bootstrap Linuxbrew and have access to pretty much any program you'd have on any other Linux distribution.
not just Linux, but Gentoo Linux. the one everyone used to make fun of[1] before Google made it acceptable, and the only one not going the systemd route.
You can't release Firefox for an iDevice either as Apple does not allow native code that you need for Gecko so they are about equal in ability to run system apps front.
Chromebooks also run Android apps so in the near future there will be a lot more flexibility in what kinds of either web apps or Android apps you can develop. Firefox already runs on Android and presumably will be available for Chrome OS within this year.
Apple doesn't allow third-party interpreters/compilers if they can run code from untrusted sources (Codea and some Python environments get around it by only running locally written code).
> If you can get a laptop/tablet that can do the same thing that this Chromebook does
That's not remotely true.
When my grandparents and parents ask me what computer they should get, or my in-laws ask what they should get their kids, I'm going to seriously consider Chromebooks. If they need to run Office, or Minecraft, clearly it's not a fit. But for the tweeting / facebooking / gmailing universe, a Chromebook is a very nice box.
And the number of zero-day exploits, viruses, keyboard loggers is way smaller for a Chrome OS machine. And the update process is a painless reboot. And I'm not helping them try to read data off of a dead hard drive (because it's in the cloud.) And if they want a second or a third, all of their data is visible on all of them. And the battery is great, the wifi works great, the build quality is great. Get them hooked up with two-factor protection, and their accounts and data are pretty well protected.
You're viewing the Chrome OS machines and their competitors, from a tech-savvy super-user standpoint. Many people don't need, don't want, and are hindered by that flexibility and power.
The maintenance cost on a "full OS" is higher than the maintenance cost on a Chrome OS. Period.
One of the problems I run into when recommending Chromebooks (I tried to convince my 75 year old mother, for example) is that almost every user turns out to have a need for something you can't do on a Chromebook. It ends up being a 90% solution for 90% of people, rather than a 100% solution for 80% of the people.
The thing is, most people are replacing a junky old Windows laptop that's just too slow/malware-ridden to use anymore, right? Keep that thing around, drag it out when you need that 5% app, and use the Chromebook the rest of the time.
I mean, if you buy a tablet, you don't worry that it can't print out Excel documents, right? It's still the best device for doing what you're doing with it. So with a Chromebook -- it's a better general-web-use device than a Windows laptop, particularly at the price points that Chromebooks live at.
I think most people want one device not two, and they want to improve their experience with everything, not just most things. While a Chromebook met 90% of my mother's needs, the 10% of functionality it lacked was 75% of her usage.
She works as an interpreter/translator and needs to be able to write documents in multiple language systems (e.g. non-Latin alphabets) in a way she understands.
The Google printer "solution" has always struck me as an exceedingly stupid solution. I have a local microcomputer, and a local printer yet the solution is to send my data to the other side of the world and then push it back on to the printer I am stood looking at? Why? It's stupid. Why not talk directly to the printer without the requirement of an Internet connection?
The same goes for sending files via Dropbox to someone next to you on an iDevice. Since it's very difficult for me to send data from my Android device to my wife's iPad or even from my MacBook to my wife's iPad3, the "solution" is to send it to the other side of the world on to Dropbox's servers for her to retrieve it.
Back in thte 50s when people had visions of an interconnected world and a utopian human future, filled with spaceflight and wonder, I am pretty sure they didn't have visions of needlessly sending data through 50+ network nodes just to get it back again on a device right next to them.
It's so stupid; if you had proposed this "solution" 20 years ago they'd have laughed you out of the room, yet today Chromebooks ("store all of YOUR data ELSEWHERE! Struggle to get it back! Find it impossible to send to a device NEXT TO YOU!") and the associated cloud solutions are all the rage.
Good point, but email is understood to indicate remote people, even if in truth your boss is sat next to you.
Printers don't really fit this model - when you tell something to print (for the printer on your desk), getting it sent to the other side of the world just to come back is daft, energy inefficient and wasteful.
> When my grandparents and parents ask me what computer they should get, or my in-laws ask what they should get their kids, I'm going to seriously consider Chromebooks. If they need to run Office, or Minecraft, clearly it's not a fit. But for the tweeting / facebooking / gmailing universe, a Chromebook is a very nice box.
If you really need Office, and not just Google Docs, you can actually run Office on a Chromebook.
With the eventual capability that they'll be able to run Android programs, as well as PNaCl and Emscripten borrowing from each other and getting better offering opportunity for tons of apps to be ported to the web, and then of course HTML5 and Js becoming the technology of choice for all sorts of apps, Chromebooks are the eventual future.
Maybe they're not the present, but they ARE the future.
And this is the main thing - for millions (hundreds of millions, maybe billions soon), a smartphone is their first entry to the internet. Probably an Android. When they see the Chrome logo in a laptop they can afford, and they already like the Android/Chrome ecosystem, they'll buy it, versus Windows which is associated with viruses, scams, piracy, etc...
Keep in mind Googles current business is still search. The net they're casting has nothing to do with the present, they're gunning for 7 billion people to associate them with computing, and to create the new future of computing.
Go to the third world. Yes some families have cheap PCs running pirated XP, but every kid has a cheap smartphone that they can connect to the internet with. They all have Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, etc...
> "Maybe they're not the present, but they ARE the future."
That reminds me of Sun in the early 90's.
I'm not saying you're wrong. But I don't think it's inevitable you're right either. Especially since browser UI toolkits are still stuck in the stone age compared to native counterparts.
Until that gets fixed, I actually think it's probably just wishful thinking.
How ubiquitous is Java? Containers, VMs, etc..., ARE all the rage. Sun was correct as to what technology belongs to the future, they just couldn't position their company properly. Odds are we're all using technology that's part of Sun's legacy...
> Maybe part of some of it, but I'm talking about the Internet Terminal idea.
I'm pretty young, so I was woefully ignorant of this. However the more I read about it, the more it sounds like 'Cloud computing' and 'internet of things'. In fact, Chrome OS isn't too far from their Java Internet Terminal idea.
> Have you tried Web IDEs? They're probably decades behind their desktop counterparts.
I have. My main IDE, and probably my favourite ever, is R Studio which runs in a Webview (or as a webpage) and uses Ace for editing. Two fairly popular upstart IDEs, LightTable and Atom both use web technology. I quite enjoy Caret as well.
Not sure why you think they're decades behind. If anything the fact they're as advanced as they are is impressive, given most have been developed only in the last few years, whereas Visual Studio, Eclipse, etc..., have been around much longer.
Depending on the language and stack you choose, a text editor with a terminal and a REPL may be all you need. I spend most of my day switching between emacs, a terminal and a browser.
Is that because HTML/CSS UIs are more robust and advanced than native UI frameworks? Or because native UI framekits solved all the problems that the vast cornucopia of HTML/CSS UI frameworks are still struggling to solve? Or because everybody looks at all the HTML/CSS frameworks, decides none of them solve their problem, and decides to write their own?
It's because it's so easy to create your own. HTML/CSS is very accessible, well tested by lots and lots of small communities.
There are many HTML/CSS frameworks that are doing really great job and not struggling at all. It all depends of course on what you want to do, but finding a good kit that solves your problem is definitely not the bottleneck of creating a modern HTML UI based application.
Where are the real shipping numbers from Google then? Surely they must know the numbers? Why won't they release it then? The only reason I can think of could be that they aren't all that great.
They probably do, but all those are public companies. They all report sales a certain way. Google isn't going to mess with reporting sales that other companies are making. That's irresponsible.
You can use it in guest mode without a Google account or other authentication. I don't remember if you need to explicitly set it up to do that, though.
I'm sure Google has the numbers since the Chromebooks/Chromeboxes auto-update (part of the whole point, really) so given that they likely have unique device IDs (or ethernet MAC addresses), the 'live devices count' would be rather easy to figure out.
Q3 2013 is a long time ago. According to NPD, Chromebooks had 14% market share in 2014, counting retail and commercial (read: education) channels. Growth was up 85% year over year, too, which is amazing in the context of a stagnant/declining laptop market.
You can spin it all sorts of ways. Keep in mind the 'PC' market includes all those legacy Windows XP computers which are languishing in peoples homes, businesses, corporations, etc...
Chromebook sales are a much bigger part of current PC sales. And vendors do keep expanding their Chromebook lines. If it was a failure they wouldn't.
I just bought a Chromebook for my parents-in-law, even though there were slightly cheaper Windows laptops. The reason? I'm off the hook for support. No malware issues, no backups, no nothing - worst case the thing lets out the magic smoke, you buy a new one and log in again.
And that's why the education sector is flocking to these things. OK, the price is good, but when you factor in order of magnitude less support costs, it's a very compelling proposition.
10 hour battery life ? maybe on idle, I bet this thing doesn't last 10 hours with 50 tabs opened or when playing youtube videos ...
You are right - it's probably more like 8 hours. The older Acer c720 got between 6 and 7 hours streaming Netflix[1]. The Chromebook 13 got 10 hours[2].
Those numbers are with hardware decoding, aren't they. I'd be more intrested in something compute-intensive that was compiled to asm.js. I bet they'll last much less.
That said, these are machines with mobile processors and an OS that is tailored for mobiles. It isn't all that suprising that they are more capable than their normal counterparts.
For my mom/grandmother/dad... They're all using chromebooks... not for the reduced cost, but because the environment is more secure, and fits their needs.
No, I did after the 3rd time I had to remotely remove crapware from my grandmother's computer... when the hdd died, I sent her a chromebook... my mom liked it so much, I gave her one too, and she got one for my dad. They all really like them. They simply work for what they wanted.
Why no Skype? Because the owner of Skype doesn't feel like supporting that. That may make these devices unsuitable for you, but consider that this same owner may want to consider dropping service for you on your other devices, too.
(The ubiquitous presence of an ISA/OS pair is a historical anomaly, and I believe it's on the way out)
You can't log in to a Chromebook for the first time while on a plane.
After initialization, for example the Google Docs suite works pretty well with no connection - and so could any other web app that doesn't rely on connectivity for its base operation: eg. Skype on Windows on a plane will work just as bad as Hangouts on Chrome OS on a plane.
exactly. in the US they also launched with the mobile association. leading them to be mostly ignored by everyone.
the only time i heard about chromebooks in the wild was while walking at low income are shopping malls. the Cricket and att stores would often have a little banner on the floor advertising the "cheap kinda of a computer!"
Heh... wonder what your definition of "everyone" is. Another comment posted above points to data that chromebooks are forming 14% of PC sales in the US. From my personal experience, the local highschool and middle school where I live have basically mandated that each student buy a chromebook -- they don't say chromebook exactly but heavily, strongly suggest it for the low price and maintenance factors. 90+% of the students are carrying around lightweight chromebooks in their backpacks now.
> Recognise them? Consumers in Thailand, India and Indonesia do - they are local smartphone brands. Look at the promo video. Notice how many Asian faces there are?
Me on the other hand see only the hunger for next batch of data collecting on a population that is still "unexplored".
I hope you're right, but past Google initiatives into the developing economy markets (like Android One) haven't been too successful (so far)
There's better options in the $50 - $150 price range for smartphones than Android One. The same with laptops - a $150-$200 x86 laptop running Windows is much better than the equivalent ARM Chromebook right now.
And that's just for new sales. Another reason is the large market for used products - which provide better performance per dollar than most products which needs to be manufactured (and maintain the same 'expensive western brand' status-orientated in cultures, and income unequal economies (which is strongly correlated to consumption of luxury goods).
Oddly enough, though, there's currently no Chromebooks in Thailand aside from greymarket imports. HP, Acer, none of the Chromebook partners officially sell them here. It'd be interesting to have any Chromebooks for sale in Thailand—and at this price point, even more so.
I want to agree, but then I remember that emerging markets are skipping a generation of technology towards cellular phones. In a few ways a laptop is a step back in terms of connectivity and utility right?
I'm just curious... will the laptop be their first device or their second?
I think affordable Chromebooks is key in order to increase adoption, especially if Google is targeting lower-income markets like Africa, South America, etc, And I believe that might be what this is all about. It certainly complements their Loon project (http://www.google.com/loon/ -- 'Internet via balloons') very nicely. I think it's a brilliant move by Google and partners.
> In these markets, the Chromebook isn't being pitched as a cheap substitute for a 'real' laptop, but as an upgrade from a smartphone or tablet.
In Indian due to the import tax Chromebooks are far more expensive than entry level laptops. I had to get it from some come in US as it simply doesn't make any sense to buy them at these inflated prices (Its like 2x the original cost in India for an outdated model).
The middle class in first world countries, maybe. Try spending some time in the developing world. Lower cost of living means that "middle income" families can live comfortably on less income. But the costs of large capital goods, e.g. computers and cars, is not lower.
Imagine your average laptop cost $5k - $15k. Would you consider it a big deal if you could get a decent <$1k laptop? That's the equivalent situation.
I liken it to techies running out and buying a Tesla. You can't put your own turbo on it, you can't do much to improve the performance or customize it, you can't repair the engine in your garage, you can't drop in a new transmission when yours goes out, and it's not a manual transmission, so you're giving up a lot of control in driving it.
That's what an automotive-minded person might believe. Why would you buy an electric car that you can't control when you could have a 1989 Volkwagen Golf getting 30mpg that would last you forever with just a little bit of maintenance? You would make that choice because you don't want to have the responsibility of doing something that makes the car unreliable or unsafe. You don't have the knowledge or the tools to fix it when it does. And you can't be late for work, or fail to pick up your daughter from school because your car wouldn't start. So even though you could get a car perfectly tailored to you and controlled by you for just $5,000, you buy a $60,000 electric car knowing that there's hardly any moving parts, so all you need to do is turn the car on and put your foot down and it will work. You plug it in when you get home, and unplug it when you leave for work. That's all you need to know.
That's how I liken the debate between Android and iOS, or Linux and Windows. People say to me "look at all the customization I can do!" and all I see is a maintenance nightmare. I use Linux at work because that's what it's best at. When I get home, I'm playing video games on my Windows desktop. On the weekends, I'm driving down two-track roads in my custom-built 1998 Toyota 4Runner, but my daily driver is a Fiat 500. When I'm playing around with developing apps, I'll sideload them onto my Nexus 4. But when someone calls my phone number, it rings to my iPhone, which I know will always ring no matter what software I manage to install.
As a consumer, it's not that I don't care. It's that I don't even want it. I know it's there. I know it's cheaper and I know it's more powerful and I know it can be customized. But none of those things are at the top of my list. Reliability, compatibility, and simplicity are my three biggest requirements.
>I liken it to techies running out and buying a Tesla. You can't put your own turbo on it, you can't do much to improve the performance or customize it, you can't repair the engine in your garage, you can't drop in a new transmission when yours goes out, and it's not a manual transmission, so you're giving up a lot of control in driving it.
That is an interesting analogy, but it's pretty misleading. Tesla happens to be locked down but not because it's electric. It doesn't need a turbo, that's like being upset you can't put a new zip disk in your SSD. The engines are fixed ratio, that's a more direct control than using a gear box. Electric cars have either simpler transmissions, or no transmissions at all. In general that means easier replacement, or not having to replace anything, surely a positive, right?
Electric cars are capable of being simpler and more alteration-friendly than ICEs. They just cost more.
Well obviously turbo is just an example. Analogies can only ever approximate their subject, they can never be perfect. The idea is, that's the antithesis of what the guy down at your local garage might look for. It's not terribly moddable, you have less control over the inner workings, it's really expensive, the manufacturer holds tight control over the software, and yours is exactly the same as the one next to it. Those are all the criticisms aimed at iOS when people are saying they like Android better.
What I'm saying is it's not that customers don't understand these points, it's that these points are exactly why some customers don't choose a more open system.
But what I'm saying is that the tight control specifically from Tesla is totally unrelated to it being electric. Nothing stops electric vehicles from being great for modding. Tesla is a lot like Apple but it's not at all about the engine.
And some of the androids are even more expensive than iPhones...
The implicit context for the comment you're replying to, made explicit, is clearly "Consumers have spoken, they do not care [about whether their devices have a 'real' OS or not]." Given that this is the case, your rebuttal is a fairly empty one. It's essentially in the same realm as tautological-ish, no-impact statements, as far its role in this discussion goes...
I disagree, developers can develop native apps for iOS even if they need to go through the App Store. Only crippled web apps are allowed on Chrome OS and only Google can develop really native apps.
Really, we're in a day and age where most people can do their daily activities on the web.
The usual "word processing, research, facebook" student load, for instance? A dedicated physical machine powerful enough to run even MS Word locally is a waste of money in this instance.
Access to the global information network and ability to use things on it is step 0 in getting people into the modern era. All that other stuff that you get from a "real OS" is a step above that.
Not everyone lives in a first-world country where ubiquitous internet access via wifi hotspots has been implemented, and not everyone can afford a 3G plan.
I rarely see working (as in usable, encrypted and not total rip-offs) hotspots in Germany. Anywhere.
Not in Cologne (~1 million) nor Dortmund/Bochum (part of the 'Ruhrgebiet' metropolitan area, which Wikipedia estimates includes about 12 million people).
Guess not a first-world country?
We're probably on the same side: I would NEVER go for a Chromebook. Always online is stupid. Mobile sucks on trains here, so forget about data on the move. Hotspots don't exist. There are still lots of places that I visit that have little to no usable data connectivity.
I have no clue what the Chromebook is for, but it would be a giant failure in my circles and my environment.
In the third world, internet access is more common than you think... My wife's family gets more reliable internet and wireless coverage than they do electricity or plumbing. When I went down there, you could go to a textile shop or open air market and I'd pick up open WiFi hotspots..m
Not to mention that "first-world country where ubiquitous internet access via wifi hotspots has been implemented" doesn't particularly describe, say, the US very well. The picture painted to try to make these contrasts tends to itself stand in contrast to the picture that is real life.
Not that the over-arching sentiment of "you shouldn't take the existence of an always-available network connection for granted" is a bad one. It's just that saying, basically, "These devices aren't suitable everywhere; consider market segments that may be less mature than the big, contemporary Western one you're most familiar with, for example" is a little bit of a weird and not terribly convincing way to express it.
The whole point of a netbook (which is really what a Chromebook is, with the tainted name dropped) is something that has most of its functionality on the web rather than a local device.
Never understood why "netbook" became a bad word. I loved mine; it was sturdy and simple and cheap and I never worried about throwing it in a bag and taking it wherever I was going. My mindset was "so what if it gets trashed, it only cost $250, I'll buy another one!" - but in fact my one netbook lasted five years, and by then the category had disappeared. That one Eee pc outlasted two macbooks!
I think part of it was that there were so many horribly specced Windows devices sold. As in, the specs were not good enough to handle the OS. 2GB, a single core first gen Atom, and a 5200RPM drive is painful to use even Windows 7 on.
Had one of those machines for work. Even after a fresh install, the lag was positively infuriating.
Ah, that makes sense. My Eee came with an SSD, and I installed Linux the day it arrived. I can see how it would have been a different experience with Windows and old-school hard drives.
It honestly wasn't awful. I used an MSI Wind U100 for several years - I actually used it for school until June last year. I gradually transitioned OS's - WinXP, OSX, then Ubuntu 11.04. Ran all of them like a champ, video playback was the only sticking point.
Don't bother, this thread is totally astroturfed by paid googlers. What you can read here is just insane. I can't believe HN is alllowing this. This product is crap,but boy they are selling it hard here.
I too was surprised by how positive some of the comments were. Microsoft's Surface tablet seems widely panned here (unless I am looking at the wrong comments) but if Microsoft had released a Chromebook, everyone would have said "HAHA! What a piece of junk! Who'd buy that???"
When Apple released the MacBook the other week, everyone had the same reaction ("Only one port? Can't plug in a USB stick and the power adapter at the same time? It'd STOOOPID").
But, when Google releases an UNDERPOWERED netbook with abysmal 1990s screen resolution, less storage than a USB stick and that only fully works when you're on a network, it's widely praised. I don't understand it!
In the 1980s with the microcomputer boom, if you'd have told all those kids using BBC Micros at their school that they could only use their computer and the Interword ROM whilst connected to the telephone system, they'd have thought you were stupid.
Yet, essentially this is what Chrome OS offers you. You can upload all your data (as if uploading your 4GB videos to "the cloud" is an enjoyable experience), and then view it periodically when you have a network connection.
I know we normally DO have network connections but the invention of microcomputers was meant to DO AWAY with the need for mainframes, not turn our local powerful microcomputers into dumb terminals for remote corporate-controlled mainframes. If you'd proposed such a solution 20 years ago, they'd have thought you were insane.
But it's true that with ChromeOS the entire usability of the product is massively different without Internet access. All of the "apps" don't work as well without an Internet connection. This doesn't happen with an ordinary machine (if you open Word whilst offline, it isn't crippled).
I think storing all of your data online is foolish, basically as it means that offline you're scuppered.
If you have a windows desktop on your lan, using RDP via the chromebook does okay in a pinch... when I used mine, I'd typically have several SSH windows, and an RDP connection open. Worked really well for me. Though I really wanted VPN, and the ability to run VMs, so broke down and bought a new MBP (my prior one was stolen).
It's basically just a web browser with some tweaks for convenient offline Google Docs. You can unlock a full shell and download some decent editors (Caret is one that I've used), if you want to do JS or Python development. Unfortunately the third-party package manager ("chromebrew") does not have a very robust offering, so you're pretty limited in what you're able to do. You can try building binaries yourself but you'll need to build your toolchain as well.
I also have a cheap, late 2012 Samsung Chromebook with an ARM processor and 2GB RAM, the kind the reviewers like to get down on as horribly underpowered. But over time updates have improved the performance and at this point it's really fine.
They're like fairly-reliable burner laptops. They handle most of the day-to-day things you would ever need a laptop for, but don't leave you worrying that much about price if it were stolen or damaged.
Which is probably why they're so popular with schools. I no longer own one but when I did it was my go to for email and basic web stuff.
I have an ARM Samsung and I really like it; great battery life and runs Linux with Crouton. ChromeOS is fine for browing and most document writing I do. My wife wrote a few books on it in Google docs. No problem...
Yes, it makes me wonder how many people buy a Chromebook and state "never again!". It's like being given an etchasketch as a computer to do "real" work on but with the iron filings only accessible when with a tethering plan.
With all the talk of schools mandating that children have equivalent devices, what was wrong with writing on paper and doing maths on paper? We managed at school.
Look at the brand names. TRUE, XOLO, Nexian. Recognise them? Consumers in Thailand, India and Indonesia do - they are local smartphone brands. Look at the promo video. Notice how many Asian faces there are?
This isn't about cheap Chromebooks, it's about a major strategic effort to court the global middle class. As with the Android One initiative, Google are seeking to establish an affordable but capable gateway to their services for middle-income consumers. They're working with local companies to leverage local marketing and distribution resources. In these markets, the Chromebook isn't being pitched as a cheap substitute for a 'real' laptop, but as an upgrade from a smartphone or tablet.
If their strategy for Chrome OS works half as well as their Android strategy, then the industry is going to be unrecognisably transformed over the next few years. A whole generation of consumers could come to see the Chrome OS pseudo-thin-client model as the norm, with full-fat operating systems being a niche curio.