
Chromebook : 4th time trying to do "everything on the web" - yannickmahe
http://window.punkave.com/2011/05/13/you-can-do-everything-on-the-web-fourth-times-a-charm/
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bad_user
Article says people wanted native apps on top of iOS because the Javascript
engine was slow.

That's not the only or the most important reason - the integration of the
browser with core functionalities of the iPhone (like location awareness,
taking pictures, uploading those pictures, handling keyboard input) --
absolutely sucked and still sucks. Creating a web app on the iPhone that has
to behave like a regular app, with some of the core iPhone standard
functionalities, goes somewhere between an exercise in frustration and
impossible.

And another reason - Apple clearly provided (useful) native apps, with which
you could never integrate, or if the integration is available (like dialing a
phone number, or opening Google Maps), iOS doesn't return the user to the
originating app.

Building something like Skype in the browser would be clearly doable, if only
Apple provided the hooks. Otherwise the only web apps you're going to see on
the iPhone are the traditional web apps, minus important functionality
available on the desktop (like you're not able to upload freakin' images, or
focus automatically on freakin' form inputs; how fucked up is that?).

I'm fairly certain that Apple's suggestion (for building web apps) was tongue-
in-cheek, more as in "get off my lawn".

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bitwize
People got native apps because hackers were like "neat!" and cracked that
sucker wide open. Apple stemmed the loss somewhat by offering a path for
native apps.

Then everybody was like "neat!"

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maratd
The difference between then and now is HTML5. Particularly the parts of HTML5
that Google has been pushing. Webcam integration, video, webgl, canvas, svg,
gps, etc etc etc

You can now write software on the web that can do anything non-web software
can do. The only issue for Google has been that it wasn't written yet ... so
they wrote it. That's what Google Apps is about.

They also pushed Angry Birds on Chrome for a reason and made it free. Games
are an integral part of the experience. Ro.me is also along that vein.
Hardware acceleration was the last piece of the puzzle.

They are definitely in position for success, although that is certainly no
guarantee of it.

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hamner
As an analogy, tablet devices took two decades and at least 5 attempts.

~~~
DanI-S
The _steam engine_ took hundreds of attempts and at least 2000 years.

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rl41
I think that leasing plans (such as the $20/mo student plan) and the fact that
all your data is stored on the cloud are bigger factors here.

There's more to Google's new approach than just a browser-based OS. Hardware
is completely interchangeable, and the prospect of accessing all your data
anywhere has become increasingly popular in recent time.

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jorangreef
Apart from the fact that the necessary web APIs have only recently started to
materialize, it's taken this long because it's taken this long for developers
to "get it".

Programming multi-user software that spans the network, i.e. is partition-
tolerant, is different to the last few decades of single-user, single-node
software we've been writing. It's a new paradigm. We've known about the
fallacies of distributed computing for some time. But as developers we're
taking our time coming to understand them.

For example, there are very few web apps today that can manage the
synchronization/consistency/migration/offline
access/memory/authorization/versioning/database implications of say 4GB of
text data per user on multiple devices, whilst facilitating sharing between
hundreds of user accounts.

It's Distributed Systems 101. Up until now, these ideas have been tried out in
privately managed data-centers. Now they must be rolled out to the web and the
code must run in different browsers on devices of varying capability. The
frameworks for doing that do not yet exist. They're being built.

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evilduck
The WebOS example is reaching. It's still an OS with local apps, just with a
web technology stack to build the apps. It also has tight web integration, but
it's not overly different than using webviews in iOS or Android for local apps
except that there was no native architecture language support initially. I
don't think you can blame the HTML/CSS/JS toolset for Palms's lackluster
market performance.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
Yeah, all 4 of the examples are reaching, really. There hasn't been anything
like Chrome. Chrome doesn't offer _any_ non web apps. Even the FileManager is
html/js.

~~~
patrickaljord
Except for NaCl.

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bradly
The Virgin Webplayer (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgin_Webplayer>) was
actually very, very similar to the Chromebook.

    
    
      • It was cheap and even free for many of us 
      • It came with an internet connection included
      • It only ran applications off the web

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zitterbewegung
This article sounds like someone who hasn't actually even used a chrome os
device. The utility of the chrome book vanishes dramatically when you aren't
on the web the notebook is useless.

~~~
nextparadigms
As the guy in charge of the NYT web app said at a Google I/O session a few
days ago "These are the _worst_ web apps you'll ever see. Think about that.",
implying that even the webapps that impress the most right now, are the worst
we'll ever see and we should see much better ones in the near future.

This is just the beginning. Six or 12 months from now we should see a lot more
web apps that use offline cache and be completely usable offline.

I love how you just need to "download" the Angry Birds web app in Chrome, and
later you can play it directly just like you would play a native game on a PC,
offline.

~~~
throwaway32
well as the device exists now, you cannot even finish booting/logging in
without internet access.

~~~
generalk
Untrue. I have a cr48, and after you've done the initial setup it is possible
to boot and log into your Google account before the wifi kicks in.

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dpapathanasiou
This is the fifth attempt, if you count Oracle's Network Computer from the
late 1990s: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_Computer>

~~~
bad_user
The NC was a thin-client, where apps would run over the network.

There have been lots of thin-clients around.

~~~
hernan7
Yes, the NC (or at least the models I saw back in the day) was basically an X
Windows station with a Java engine bolted on.

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throwaway32
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Comput...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fallacies_of_Distributed_Computing)

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zwieback
It's also, in a larger and more historical sense, the bastard child of the
dickless X workstation. Which is quite an achievement for that old eunuch,
come to think of it.

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jsight
It is interesting that he says the Everex machines (from 2007) were "pretty
much intended as a way to get up and running in your Chrome browser".

It's funny how quickly things get ingrained into us, such that we barely
remember not having them (Chrome was introduced in late 2008).

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joezydeco
Isn't NaCl the backdoor into this problem?

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I think NaCl is the least likely product to survive in this equation. It feels
like Google Gears in 2007.

~~~
Andrex
That's a good point, it kinda does.

