
Chromebooks outsold Macs for the first time in the US - chirau
http://www.theverge.com/2016/5/19/11711714/chromebooks-outsold-macs-us-idc-figures
======
j2kun
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 extremely
simple spreadsheets. It's way more important to have cheap, reliable,
accessible, safe hardware. You'd be amazed how many people encounter a problem
with their computer and give up because "it's mad at me." This isn't an
educational problem. The technology is failing them. Wrestling with an
operating system sucks.

And then there's all of these amazing up-coming technologies like WebAssembly
and WebRTC. If we can have the security and uniformity of a Chromebook _and_
run Photoshop and Quake and BitTorrent directly in the browser with no
overhead, then there's absolutely no point for users to deal with the muck and
grime of whatever bad state they get their local filesystem into.

~~~
ginkgotree
Couldn't agree more. It honestly still seems nuts to me that the browser
hasn't taken over the whole OS experience. It's clear that locally installed
software is going away. But it's happening on a system that was designed
decades ago to request a single markup document, and return it in a single
response.

Obviously, the browser has matured. JavaScript has matured. We now have more
protocols to work with than just HTTP (SDP for which WebRTC, perfect example.
WebSockets). But in my mind the Chromebook is the first step in what is going
to become all of personal computing.

~~~
themartorana
Locally installed software is, if anything, _more_ prevalent than ever before.

Let's put aside mobile for a minute that so changed the landscape towards
locally installed that it put Google's revenue model on its heels.

You see WhatsApp, Slack, etc., releasing Electron apps just to try to appear
locally installable. If there wasn't such a high demand for it, and people
weren't clamoring for a stand-alone app instead of a browser tab, companies
would never invest the time and money.

~~~
greggman
Who's clamoring for apps? AFAICT that's only the companies that want the apps
because it lets them spy on their customers in more ways.

~~~
toss1941
Any disk IO intensive application is going to run and/or scale very poorly as
a webapp.

~~~
jsolson
What client workload is actually disk intensive by nature?

------
SwellJoe
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, and I don't know that old folks are
comfortable making the shift yet (I'm not entirely there, and, despite being
middle aged, I like to think I'm way out front on the technology curve). The
mention of Chromebooks in schools lends some credence to this notion.

Anyway, I think it's great. A Chromebook is so much more empowering than an
iPad or tablet (which is what I think this is actually mostly replacing for
folks, rather than high end laptops). A keyboard opens up the door to really
building and creating, USB ports allow expansion, and Chrome OS is hackable in
ways tablets are not.

~~~
mixedmath
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.

~~~
Kluny
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?

~~~
catskull
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 same OS, but it's not.

A few things I particularly like are battery like (maybe 8 hours?), no fans,
matte screen, and macbook like keyboard and trackpad. Also Chrome OS maps the
F1/F2 keys to forward/backward keys in Chrome, which I use all the time
surprisingly.

All in all, I would highly recommend a Chromebook. For development it's great.
If you don't want to use Crouton, a linode server you can SSH into is just as
good as a macbook really. Now that they will be able to run all Android apps,
it's even more tempting.

~~~
phamilton
> 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.

~~~
lotyrin
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 <reasons> here's an article
from <before I was born>" 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_ "

~~~
phamilton
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.

------
washadjeffmad
My sister works in a semi-developed area of Africa where electricity is
unreliable in quality and presence at the best of times, and it's turned out
the computer equipment she brought over years ago was pretty ill suited to the
conditions and developed problems immediately. She went with all Apple because
that was the craze at the time, and most of it was inoperable by the end of
the third year.

After listening to her describe the conditions and her needs, I suggested a
few changes: transition to lower wattage mobile equipment, integrate
redundant, portable power, and more effective use of solar. This boiled down
to Chromebooks, portable APs, and certain smartphones, marine and other LA
batteries, and lots of lithium USB power packs.

In return, she shipped me her old Mac hardware, which I opened up and emptied
of all dust, sand, and scorpions before diagnosing most as damaged from
overheating. It was awful how poorly those glossy screens held up to
environmental abrasion, and the one unit that survived, the smell still hasn't
left completely.

The Chromebooks (K1 based), which held charge on testing for 8-10 hours under
heavy use, are light yet durable, have no moving internal (or servicable)
parts, are or can be sealed against the environment, and are passively cooled.
They also run the full Docs suite offline, take excellent dictation for
transcription, can remote into her other computers, and they look nice. The
model was just under $300 and had a 1080 screen, better than decent speakers,
and most importantly, it plays x264 video so she can catch up on her shows.

My only concerns were for the lack of non-removable batteries and the very
narrow cylindrical DC plugs the chargers use, but battery diagnostics have
been great, and since they never all have to be charged at the same time,
about half of the chargers can break (though none have, yet) and not cause any
issue.

I don't know how most people on HN live, if they have good electricity, air
conditioning or potable running water, whether they own vehicles that they can
drive to pick up and haul perishable groceries around in, or if they can
cheaply or quickly replace equipment that dies sooner than it should, warranty
or no, within their countries. But for anyone who doesn't have all of those
things, I'd say Chromebooks would be an exceedingly appropriate choice.

~~~
AnAfrican
>if they have good electricity, air conditioning or potable running water

Even in Africa, not having those and having good, stable and cheap internet is
a really weird case.

~~~
nl
_Even in Africa, not having those and having good, stable and cheap internet
is a really weird case._

It's true that it is _weird_ from the Western perspective, but it's actually
true.

I work in a building with a company who build Flow-batteries. Their biggest
markets are in South America and Africa where the mobile networks are often
more reliable than the electricity networks because they run batter backups on
their towers.

Communications are often seen as more important than anything else. If you
have access to a phone you can find out where to get clean water.

See for example _More Africans have cellphones than have electricity or piped
water_ : [http://www.timeslive.co.za/scitech/2014/11/19/more-
africans-...](http://www.timeslive.co.za/scitech/2014/11/19/more-africans-
have-cellphones-than-have-electricity-or-piped-water)

------
jalami
As I've written earlier, ChromeOS doesn't interest me. It's a tightly locked
down linux-y distro as a vector to peddle Google services. It's not
complicated, it's very cheap and almost impossible to mess something up
because it's so easy to wipe and all your data is on the cloud. That's the
appeal and why they're booming in schools, but I find it dangerous for
multiple reasons.

I wrote at more length about it in yesterday's ChromeOS post[0]. I don't think
it's the _year of the linux desktop_ anymore than Android is the _year of the
linux phone_. Sure, there's a kernel somewhere deep, but the userspace is
locked-down, weak and anti-consumer.

I find the _book_ itself more interesting. Netbooks were crap for a long time,
but things have gotten cheaper and I enjoy the form factor. Writing this from
an Acer C720 running GalliumOS as we speak, but I'm in the super minority of
Chromebook users. Read the Amazon reviews once of a Chromebook and you'll see
what they find irritating or glorious. Hint: It's not the lack of a good IDE
or inability to install gvim. Also, anyone that says Chromebook sales are
great because their such an 'open hardware ecosystem' is fooling themselves
[1].

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11735326](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11735326)
[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11735762](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11735762)

~~~
Leszek
> I don't think it's the year of the linux desktop anymore than Android is the
> year of the linux phone. Sure, there's a kernel somewhere deep, but the
> userspace is locked-down, weak and anti-consumer.

Perhaps Stallman has a point when asking people to talk about Linux as
GNU/Linux.

~~~
kuschku
This decade has shown that Stallman was about right about everything. And
that’s not a good thing.

Especially Google’s actions have been quite literally towards unlawful-evil.

------
mamurphy
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, so a 3 minute re-image fixes most software problems)

In addition, folks in that thread think that tablets are generally the worst
of both worlds as compared to laptops and phones (phablets?), whereas
Chromebook are everything that tablets should be.

[0]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/4k234g/chromebooks...](https://www.reddit.com/r/gadgets/comments/4k234g/chromebooks_outsold_macs_for_the_first_time_in/)

~~~
grillvogel
reddit comments are a source now?

~~~
zig
Yes, of course. The poster is sharing information that shaped their opinion.
The location is irrelevant.

In such an informal setting, the quality and worth of the source are up to the
consumer; particularly when it is such a simple investigation. Do you trust or
distrust the source? That belief guides your consumption of the poster's
opinion.

------
ewindisch
I've become a full-time Chromebook convert over the past 8 months despite
having had Powerbooks & Macbooks over the prior 15 years.

So what happened? It's simple:

* _Everything_ runs inside Linux containers with reasonably secure seccomp profiles.

* SecureBoot provides some reliability against attacks. (I do _not_ use Cruton or feel the need for it despite doing development)

* It's inexpensive. Arguably, buying my machine was free when considering the credits for Google drive, Google Play, and Gogo-inflight wifi.

* It does everything I need, with the caveat that "everything it doesn't do" is something I can do on a server or VM running in the cloud (or a closet).

Honestly, I see the Chromebook as a secure thin-client. That's good because I
don't think it could be much fatter _and_ secure. I certainly don't trust
running _anything_ on a Windows, Mac, or Linux desktop.

~~~
towndrunk
Which Chromebook are you using or which one would you recommend?

~~~
ewindisch
I'm using the Toshiba Chromebook 2 which I purchased because it was the best
performance / value / screen-quality. I didn't want anything with less than a
1080p display.

Today, I'd buy (and probably will buy) the HP Chromebook 13. It starts at $499
but includes a QHD+ panel ("Retina") and an "Intel Core m" CPU (or higher).
Only one model of the range is available right now, but options will include
Pentium, m3, m5, m7 CPUs and up to 16GB of RAM. It is thinner, lighter, and
cheaper than the Macbook Air.

------
adpirz
As someone who works in a K-12 setting, I'm not surprised. 1:1 chromebook
initiatives are exploding across the country, and with it, a flurry of new
edtech apps for K-12. At the end of the day, Chromebooks win over both iPads
and Macbooks on price and functionality -- 21st century skills include being
able to type and work your way around a computer. On top of that, Google's
provisioning and management systems are so far the best, but definitely not
perfect yet.

~~~
jrcii
>Google's provisioning and management systems are so far the best

So far my experience with that is trying to get an Active Directory server to
sync with Google Apps for Education, for which they provide this tool:

[https://support.google.com/a/answer/6027781?hl=en](https://support.google.com/a/answer/6027781?hl=en)

It's beyond buggy, it's plain broken. It clearly hasn't been touched in years.
I'm going to have to write the glue code myself.

~~~
mattmcknight
Why do you have to use the school one? Isn't GADS enough?
[https://support.google.com/a/answer/1263028](https://support.google.com/a/answer/1263028)

If you really need to sync passwords, they have have GAPS.
[https://support.google.com/a/answer/2611859?hl=en](https://support.google.com/a/answer/2611859?hl=en)

------
yardie
I'm curious, but is a Chromebook useful in offline mode? My family and I have
been on sabbatical sailing half the planet so far. Internet has been a big
headache as Iridium tops out at 2400bps. And data plans in developing
countries and islands can be extremely expensive, up to $1/MB.

I've found our android tablets to be more crashy offline as apps that can't
get an internet connection go braindead, blank, or just kick you out. Based on
my Android experience I've been reluctant to get a chromebook even though I
know they are popular in schools.

As a parent I'm also concerned about the privacy aspects. I believe schools
get a special Chromebook that cuts back on the tracking, does this hold true
for their retail models?

~~~
mixedmath
The short answer is no.

But if you are a bit confident in your Linux skills, then I would recommend
looking into Crouton [1], which allows you to easily access a fully functional
Linux. I'm not sure what you're after, but this is what I use, and it
satisfies all my needs. [I mean, it's just a Linux laptop, but that's what I
need].

[1]:
[https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton](https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton)

~~~
yardie
We're already running Debian onboard. Just wanted to see if ChromeOS would be
more useful since schools are using it.

------
kstenerud
I had a chromebook for about a year. I tried to make it my main laptop. I
really did. But online only apps just don't work for me (I'm not always close
enough to an internet connection). The native apps weren't usable enough, and
often froze the whole desktop. Crouton, while cool, is flaky. I never did get
audio working on it, and it also froze the system once or twice a day. And the
lack of local storage became problematic. I could plug in a USB flash drive,
but some stuff HAS to be on the main drive, and shuffling things around is a
pain, especially on their file manager (which is SLOW, although not quite as
horrible as Mac's file management).

I gave it to my dad, who just loves it! He uses it for his email, browsing,
document editing, photos, and videos.

If that's all you do, then Chromebook is the system for you.

~~~
yesplorer
That's interesting, and seems like a direct opposite for the experience I have
with my Asus 13 inches chromebook. It is now my main laptop, I use it for days
and it never freezes.

I have crouton on it and this comment was typed in firefox on crouton.
Whenever I need to, I switch to Chrome OS to use Chrome. I had problem with
getting audio to work in the beginning but to be fair that was around the same
time I really didn't know how to switch between Crouton and Chrome OS.

It would do with more storage but I have a 32gig sd card in it which gives me
a little more mileage than depending only on the internal storage.

Honestly the only REAL work I do on it is learning Javascript even though I
got it specifically to learn PHP but things seem to require a lot of tweaking
when installing PHP and even setting up ur webserver that I gave up and
decided to learn Javascript, which only requires a browser. But I'm sure
that's my problem with Linux and not Chromebook.

I have never had an "Ultrabook" before so I really enjoy the sleek nature of
this and I don't think I'm going to ever buy any laptop bigger than this ever
and the all day battery life makes it awesome.

Apart from the usage above, everything else is like your dad's though. Maybe
crouton may have jx gotten better since your experience

------
jdeibele
A couple of weeks ago I bought an Airport Capsule for backups.

Thursday, I got the "your backup can't be verified" message, meaning that
Apple threw away my backups. This is Apple product backing up to Apple
product. I tried fixing it with fsck_hfs but it wasn't finished when I went to
bed.

Today, I woke up and my MacBook Air is doing a nice loop where it lets me log
in, then reboots. It's done that 10 times. I've tried resetting the PRAM,
going single-user, logging in as a different user and finally re-installing
the OS. Still doing it.

My wife and I have MacBook Airs and there's a shared Mac Mini in the family
room. We got it mostly because the older kids needed Microsoft Office. It's
attached to a 22" screen but is rarely used. The schools are using Google Docs
and rarely print anything out.

My 3 kids love their Chromebooks. They use them for Youtube and reading fan
fiction and things like that.

I'm typing this on a 2013 Chromebook Pixel which I bought off someone on
Craigslist because I was curious to see what the build quality was like. My
MacBook Air has been sucking wind with 4GB of memory and I've been waiting to
see what the new MacBooks look like.

I take a lot of photos and I find that the Chromebook doesn't handle looking
at 700 photos very well. But for 95% of what I do, the Pixel is better than
the MBA. It's got bad battery life but then my MBA does, too. I had it hooked
up to an external screen because I wanted more resolution and using the
charger too much wrecked the battery.

Almost everything I want to do is shared online. I want my kids (and parents
of other players/students) to have access to photos. I bought a family version
of ARQ (highly recommended) because I wanted to do local data, physical off-
site (at my mom's every couple of months), Airport Capsule and stored on
Amazon's servers.

Now I'm trying to figure out how to re-invent things where I just use a
Chromebook. Maybe I just use the Mac Mini for copying photos off SD cards to
Flickr and onto a hard drive.

Anyway, point is that I don't think my kids will ever be very interested in
spending their own money on a Mac even though they love their iPhones.

~~~
ksec
I think the iPad is what suppose to replace the Chromebook, although Apple
were a little late with the Keybroad attachment.

Seriously, Apple needs to rethink Airport Capsule. Either make everything
iCloud Backup, or make Airport Capsule actually safe and consumable.

------
partiallypro
Does it bother no one else that this is so locked to the Google eco-system?
Perhaps more than any other device on the market is locked to an eco-system,
including Apple's iOS walled garden?

I also fear that between this and iOS, we are starting to see a divide between
production and consumption devices more than ever. I don't consider that a
good trend.

~~~
shirro
Not really. Ideally you go into these things with your eyes open. I can see
our house going from five heavily used Apple devices to zero in the next
couple of years. If the barriers were as bad as people pretend we could not do
that. It probably helps that I have an awareness of the issues involved and
haven't bought in too heavily to the more restrictive services.

I likely will have to buy some of the kid's games again for Android but they
have outgrown a lot and as they grow older anyway. Having a device with a
keyboard that can run minecraft pe, or access the web or be used for school
work, or run a linux chroot seems like a huge leap forward over iPads.

My Chromebook was surprisingly hackable and getting a shell is pretty trivial.
You can easily live in a chroot on a model with better hardware. Sometimes
selling a tiny bit of freedom or privacy for trivial entertainments or day to
day practicality is a reasonable tradeoff.

~~~
partiallypro
The problem is that most people aren't you, they don't know how to migrate
their services and there is just enough of a barrier to make it difficult that
most people won't. Apple's walled garden is less of a concern to me than
Google's services lock-in.

------
shirro
I bought a cheap Chromebook to play with and for a lightweight disposable
travel machine but ended up using it for programming/web development for a
time. A nice secure reliable browser environment plus secure shell in
combination with online services isn't perfect but it is doable.

They work better as a secondary device for power users but I suspect the
number of people who can use them as a primary device isn't negligible and
will increase as the platform matures.

I have mostly retired my Chromebook for a higher spec laptop running a full
linux desktop. But I can see a lot of potential for Chromebooks and with some
nicer models coming along with access to the Android store I can see them
replacing both laptops and tablets for family.

They are secure, practical and low maintenance and I am not at all surprised
that they have done well in education and I expect higher specced ones have a
very good chance in enterprise.

------
matheweis
Not surprised ... Apple hasn't put out a laptop with up-to-date specs for
years. I'm a lifelong Mac user and I'm unhappy with their current specs.

~~~
duaneb
Somehow I don't think that their hardware is as much an issue as their price
point. As a developer you'd still be a fool (or just loaded with elbow grease)
to attempt developing with a chrome book.

~~~
arcticfox
Why? I've developed 100% on a cloud VM for years. All I need locally is a
browser. Obviously wouldn't work for some things, but as a full stack
developer: no problem.

~~~
Scarbutt
How is the web ssh client experience, do you miss anything from a real
terminal? I would imagine there would be some keybindings conflicts when using
vim or emacs.

~~~
geofft
I've been using an unrooted Chromebook with the SSH client (NaSSH) / the mosh
app for about two years for development, and it's pretty great. If you put the
app in maximized mode, CrOS routes just about all keybindings to the app. In
fact there are a few that don't get routed to the OS that I wish were (I think
Alt-Tab is one of them).

------
gregpilling
I have a Chromebook and a Macbook Pro. I use both, they have their places. I
feel much happier traveling with the Chromebook - I don't care if it gets
stolen or destroyed. It was only $300 and nothing is stored locally.

The Macbook I worry about more.

------
rebeccaskinner
I volunteer with a nonprofit running their internal IT and we use chromebooks
for all volunteers who need an organization provided computer. We have a
couple of windows laptops that were donated that get used for people who need
to use Office for writing grant proposals. We're looking to expand into a
physical building and will be providing a space with machines for community
members to use for creating resumes/job applications/etc. and we'll almost
certainly be using either chromebooks that can be checked out, or the chromeOS
desktops systems.

All our infrastructure runs through google, the machines are really affordable
for a small non-profit, and given that many of our volunteers and the people
we serve are not very technologically literate they are far easier to manage
and help people do what they need to do.

As an individual I don't know that I'd ever buy a chromebook- I have the
advantage of being able to afford a regular laptop and I would rather throw
money at a laptop than deal with the inconveniences of areas where web
everything just doesn't work, but I can see them continuing to gain traction
in institutional settings like nonprofits, schools, and even workplaces for
people who don't need access to a lot of applications or local processing
power.

------
openfuture
Doesn't surprise me, chromebooks are so much better value than anything else!

I was going to get a dell xps 13 when that power saving bug was unveiled so I
ended up getting a toshiba chromebook 2 and a 256gb SSD for <600$

Now I'm running native linux via seabios and loving it. I hate the spacebar
screen on startup but I'm not sure I'd be willing to pay 500$ to get rid of
it.

------
arihant
I am using one since mid-2014 and it has made my iPad bite the dust. It's just
as quick access as iPad and does so much more and faster. Browsing is miles
faster than on iPad.

So while a lot of people think it's a PC that does less, I think it is more a
tablet that does more.

------
cliveb
Chromebook give me a bash$
[https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1n0wyA608k4eWGd9-NUh8...](https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1n0wyA608k4eWGd9-NUh8CeUebjGPdCHTZCnfkTcb6tU/edit#slide=id.gebd32916_033)

My 2008 Macbook died in March, that triggered me to mostly use my 2013 Pixel
for dev. Although I do have an 27 iMac at home.

My dev is mostly Web Dev + GCP and moving to Firebase (canonically all front
end dev). Hence even though I have Ubuntu via Crouton, I rarely need a local
Fuse file system. For node work and CLI work I spin up a GCP VM. The VM costs
about $13 per month, but I turn the VM off and pay pennies for storage.

~~~
pkaye
Is this the Google Cloud Storage? Is it accessed as a remote file system?

~~~
spb
For apps written against the "native" Chrome API, Google Drive is presented as
a filesystem the same way as the local filesystem - any service can expose
itself similarly via the [chrome.fileSystemProvider API][1].

[1]:
[https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/fileSystemProvider](https://developer.chrome.com/extensions/fileSystemProvider)

------
electic
This might be due to the fact that a new Macbook Pro is coming. Everyone I
know has held off upgrading until the new form factor comes out at WWDC.

~~~
vox_mollis
The problem there is that Google will likely release an updated Chromebook
Pixel soon, also.

With coreboot enabling installation of Linux on the Pixel for developers (And
stock ChromeOS for regular users, of course), there is no reason to prefer MBP
over the Pixel.

~~~
codingvelocity
Requiring apple hardware to develop for ios is a pretty big reason to prefer
mbp over pixel. Even if you aren't an ios developer, a development shop that
does mobile will most likely deploy macs to their developers.

~~~
SyneRyder
Similarly, if you develop cross-platform, having a MacBook Pro that can do
Windows, Mac, iOS, Android & Linux development all from one device is really
compelling.

------
grillvogel
I wonder how much cheaper macs would be if their primary purpose was tracking
users to deliver ads

~~~
geofft
I gather that you're implying the primary purpose of Chromebooks is tracking
users to deliver ads?

Are users tracked any more on a Chromebook than a) a MacBook Air running
Chrome b) a MacBook Air running Safari?

~~~
djrogers
> Are users tracked any more on a Chromebook than a) a MacBook Air running
> Chrome b) a MacBook Air running Safari

Can you use a Chromebook without being logged in to a Google account? Can you
block ads, trackers, and other creepy JavaScript on a Chromebook? Even the
ones from Google?

~~~
geofft
> Can you use a Chromebook without being logged in to a Google account?

That's a good point. You log in to the OS via a Google account. You can log
out of that account from Chrome-the-browser, though. (In fact it looks like
I'm currently only logged in to my employer's Google Apps account, and
nobody's told [https://accounts.google.com](https://accounts.google.com) about
my Chromebook account.) And I log into my Chromebook with a dedicated Google
account, but I realize that not everyone will.

However, you can install Privacy Badger or anything else that you could
install on other Chrome platforms, and it should effectively block Google's
cookies from reaching other domains. There's probably some JS involved in
running the browser itself that's shipped on the device, but if you want to
avoid all google.com-delivered JS, you should be able to do that. (I believe
this is no different from Chrome on the Mac.)

------
holri
There is no cloud, just other people computers.

------
chiefalchemist
Chromebook is just a non touch table. Compared to the cost of an Apple device,
where is the surprise?

------
bluedino
I'd be curious to see how long the lifetime is of a Chromebook compared to a
MacBook

~~~
conail
Forever. I'm happily using an original HP11 with no issues at all.

I bought it because I was spending most of my time in ssh/emacs and I wouldn't
be too worried about losing a Chromebook. Three years later the joke's on me.

As others have noted, crouton is super and updates are seamless. I use it
locally way more than I'd anticipated. IMO the standout feature is the
keyboard.

~~~
conail
I should also snarkily add that _every_ mac I've owned failed spectacularly
within 60 days of AppleCare expiring. Humbug.

Also, AppleCare costs more than a Chromebook.

------
chiefalchemist
Proof that people just want to have their needs met. Nothing more. Nothing
less.

------
slantaclaus
Its the economy, stupid! (not calling anybody stupid)

------
plg
and ford focus sales outnumber bmw 3-series

who cares

------
johansch
Every current Mac laptop user:

"Why the hell don't you release a retina macbook air? (A toy 'macbook' does
not count.)

~~~
_JamesA_
This current Mac laptop user bought a toy 'macbook' for portable development.
It's replacing an aging MacBook Pro 17.

I am running IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate and Visual Studio 2015 Enterprise (in a
Windows 10 Fusion VM) without any issues.

The lightweight portability and 12" retina screen are amazing.

~~~
jghn
Is this one of the new macbooks? I'm strongly considering doing exactly this
but figure at this point I might as well see what they have in store for MBP,
or even MBA if they don't can the product line.

~~~
_JamesA_
Yes, I have the 1st gen MacBook retina with 512GB 'flash storage' and the
1.3GHz CPU upgrade.

~~~
jghn
Thanks. Has there been anything where you actually miss the horsepower?

