

In Defense of Chrome OS - hornokplease
http://techcrunch.com/2010/12/14/chrome-os-future/

======
tygorius
So the "defense" as I read it boiled down to:

1) Just because it isn't ready yet doesn't mean it won't be someday,

2) It has a better chance of being improved because it's closer than other
Google projects to their company's core competency, and

3) The market may not be ready for it yet.

Even if I grant the first two, that last point is problematic. While there are
plenty of people who like keeping their data in the cloud, I get the
impression the Chrome OS use case is for people who only want their data in
the cloud. I wonder how many machines that will equal, given that we've just
had a couple of decades of laptop usage and having more than one computer is
popular.

Tangentially, at the risk of sounding like a 2nd cousin to rms, I find I'm
still a trifle irked that Android and Chrome are being referred to as
operating systems when in fact they're new user interfaces stuck on top of
Linux.

------
wccrawford
Why do people feel the need to 'defend' products that aren't their own? Either
those products will stand by themselves, or they aren't worth it.

~~~
Pewpewarrows
Why do people feel the need to 'attack' products? Either those products will
fail by themselves, or they're worth it.

------
yanw
I don't think a pre-beta product needs any defense further than the fact that
it is pre-beta. Besides most of the 'reviews' were positive about the OS and
critical about the hardware which is merely the conduit for the OS at this
point.

~~~
tygorius
Back in the dark ages, we used to break pre-production into three stages:
alpha (distribution inside the organization for comment, subject to possible
radical change after feedback), beta (distribution to key customers for
feedback), and gamma (more wide-spread release after feature-freeze).

I don't know how you can call something "pre-beta" if you're giving it a
release outside the organization. It's not as if Google didn't know people
would be commenting on it. What does that term mean?

~~~
corin_
It's just a way of saying that the beta is released earlier than it normally
might be, on account of caring more about getting user feedback early and less
about that feedback being taken as negative reviews.

