

Google’s Operating System Arrives - But Not From Google - astrec
http://www.sitepoint.com/blogs/2008/12/02/googles-operating-system-arrives-but-not-from-google/

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citrate
I would think the gOS would be best suited as a spashtop. I doubt it takes
much space or any time to boot, and would be perfect when people do not want
the benefits of a full OS. It would probably help with battery life too.

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jackowayed
The fact that they mentioned that it can be installed alongside another OS is
good, because unless they plan on packaging it with more than just the
browser, it always should be.

I like web apps as much as the next guy, but they can never truly take the
place of desktop apps 100%. There will always be situations where one is
offline, so my computer better still let me word-process offline.

Also, even google docs, the king of web word processors, is slow and buggy.
Whether it's server or connection problems, it often takes me 2-3 tries to get
gdocs to actually let me save so that I can close the document. Sometimes I
change windows and come back to gdocs, and then I start typing and it's in
some weird state where it has a cursor, but what I type doesn't show up.

And has anyone even thought about using some kind of web development
environment? No. We want our editor to be fast and reliable, and we know that
both embedding in a webpage and having to talk to a remote server a lot make
that impossible.

Basically, all web apps still have the problem that the languages that run
them are slower, anything remote is slow, and having to embed them in browsers
--and have them work on all browsers--limit their functionality.

Maybe when more solutions to embedding apps have come round, and the Internet
really is everywhere, this will work, but for now, the browswer cannot
supplant OSes.

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wmeredith
This is the attitude people had about video before broadband was widespread.
As the networks become more reliable and faster, all these problems you're
talking about go away...

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jackowayed
I'm not saying that web apps are horrible. I'm just saying that certainly not
now, and probably never, can they fully supplant traditional desktop apps.
There are too many times when you're on a plane or for whatever reason can't
get internet.

Yes, I understand that they're toying with Internet on planes, but I don't see
any time in at least 10 years that that will be as fast as current broadband,
so you'd still have problems with speed.

Also, Internet goes out. It happens. There's a storm. An internal network
breaks. Power goes out (but laptops still work). I don't want any of the
myriad ways I can lose my connection to the Internet to render my computer
completely inutile.

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Steve0
Cloud's _proprietary application framework_ allows you to run client
applications

ugh....

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vaksel
I don't think that there is a market for another OS.

The hardcore people will continue using Linux, I doubt any new OS can come out
with a must have feature at this point that can't be duplicated, and most
people don't want to try out buggy software, when there is a more successful
option available.

And of course the average person will continue using the Windows that came
with their PC.

So who is left to use the new alternative, that is most likely buggy

~~~
eru
My hard-core alpha-uber-geek friend gave up on Linux long ago. (Except for
games.) He uses some BSD.

