
Chrome OS has stalled out - randomerr
https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/01/02/chrome-os-has-stalled-out/
======
andrewmutz
I use Chrome OS daily to do my job and I think it is fantastic. IMO it is the
ultimate work machine for your average knowledge worker.

At my company, all the software that we use is web-based (SaaS), with the
exception of software engineers, who are using local tools to develop web
based applications.

For non-engineers, the OS provides an extremely simple client to use to do
their job. The OS is a _slightly_ better web browsing experience than the Mac,
and since all you need to do your job is a browser, it works great. The OS
presents your google drive cleanly as a local filesystem, so you can even
avoid any local storage completely. The OS is security-first, and is far more
resistant to malware than a Mac or Windows machine.

For engineers, you get all of the above and a well functioning linux
distribution on which you can build software. Since everything we deploy is on
linux, it's closer to our production environment than the mac.

The best part of the experience is how the cloud oriented nature of the OS
lets me treat my laptops like cattle rather than pets. If you lose your
device, just grab another one. All your stuff is up in the cloud. Strange bug?
just power wash the machine and start over.

I also think that journalists or hobbyists may have a hard time appreciating
the OS. Yes, it is terrible at things like video editing, games, audio
editing, etc. But for a work machine in an enterprise environment, it's
fantastic.

~~~
zouhair
I don't think relying on a third party and especially one that is as fickle as
Google to do the most basic workload is a sound idea.

I won't be surprised if Google kills Chrome OS in the near future, as they
killed a lot of stuff already[0].

I don't trust Google anymore.

[0]: [https://killedbygoogle.com/](https://killedbygoogle.com/)

~~~
kbenson
While Google hasn't been the best at supporting products (and support in
general), I always find statements like this with sites like that distasteful,
as they leave out a lot of context that mitigates how bad it is. Sure, Google
is EOLing Hangouts, but they provide a replacement. Sure, they've turned down
a lot of products (like reader), but many (possibly most of the very large
number presented on that site) were beta products.

I clearly remember telling people that asked me about whether they should
worry about it saying beta on some Google product I had recommended that
Google always leaves stuff in beta for years and not to worry. Well, now we
all know better. I'm not happy about it, but I don't feel like I can blame
them for that either. They were pretty up-front about services being beta in
most cases.

~~~
Ygg2
Here is the thing. Google has one primary source of revenue. Ad tech. If Ad
tech fails, all their other sources of revenue won't be able to pay for their
other services, so the fear they'll cut them is warranted.

Disclaimer I use Google services, but I'm definitely looking for alternatives.

~~~
andrewmutz
If your other preferred client is the Mac, you have the same challenge with
Apple. Their entire mac product line is only 10% of their revenue.

~~~
awinder
Do google developers get issued chromebooks these days? Either way, there’s a
large scale difference in the amount of money (because Apple makes more money
than google in addition to 10% being 4x the 2.5% of revenue google is devoting
to chromebooks). On top of that, Mac revenue is eaten into by iOS device
revenue, which is a pretty close product category. Much closer than ads, at
least.

~~~
mattzito
Yes, they do. The default machine you get is a pixelbook, that’s true of
basically everyone at Google. You can request a Mac, which is what I did, but
I later also got a pixelbook and found that I quite like it.

Literally the only thing keeping me from using it as my primary work machine
is that it only supports one chrome browser profile per login, so I can’t be
logged into my work account at an OS level and my work and personal accounts
at the chrome level. But I went and paid out of pocket for a pixelbook for
home because I thought it was a great all around home laptop.

(Disclaimer: I work at google, but not on chromeos or hardware, this is just
my personal experience )

~~~
ojn
Did they remove multi profile login?!

You used to be able to login with several accounts and switch between them
similar to virtual desktops.

~~~
enachb
You can still switch between accounts on ChromeOS. I do this on my Google
issued Pixelbook daily.

Once you're signed into the other account, you can switch quite easily with
<CTRL> \+ ,

~~~
mattzito
Sorry, to be clear, it switches all of your windows like a separate desktop. I
like having both windows available simultaneously. I realize this is a nit
picky complaint, and I am in the minority.

~~~
qx42
You can run the embedded Linux and then run Firefox there. Also, with multiple
workspaces now supported I'm funded less reason to grab the mac
(bettertouchtool being one thing). I even have vscode running full screen in
another orksoace and can easily swap over.

------
Kipters
I often see price being cited as a selling point for Chromebooks, but I have
never found them to be really cheap. Maybe it's a regional thing? Looking now
on Amazon (.it) I can find a Pixelbook equipped with a measle i5-7Y57, 8 GB of
ram and 256 GB SSD for _1999 €_. That's crazy.

For that kind of money I could get a 10th gen i7 (where applicable) 16 GB
ram/512 GB SSD Surface Laptop 3, Surface Pro 7 or Surface Pro X (including
type cover and pen for the Pros) with money to spare.

How is this considered cheap? It's insane

~~~
lllr_finger
That's probably more directed towards the sub-$300 market, which has at least
a handful of options. I've got my wife, kids, and parents all on these devices
because they're cheap and easy to use.

I'd prefer spending $300 on something like a refurbished Thinkpad for myself,
but realize that might not serve my family's desires.

~~~
Kipters
Yep, I can see some Acer, Lenovo or HP options in that range, but all of them
are equipped with Celeron N4xxx CPUs, 4 GB of ram and 64 GB eMMC, not exactly
stellar...

I would consider a 500-600€ device with a decent screen, 8 GB and a
(swappable?) disk to try ChromeOS out, I feel I'd be wasting money if I were
to get a sub-300 one

~~~
ajross
So... you want a high end laptop? Those are available, even with ChromeOS
installed. But they're not any cheaper. Hardware is hardware.

When people talk about price being an advantage for Chromebooks, they mean at
the low end, where the OS can operate well on hardware that Windows doesn't
tolerate, and where the windows license fees become a significant part of the
selling price.

Try a comparison of devices around $300US, that's the sweet spot for ChromeOS.

~~~
gowld
The most demanding application on my laptop, by a wide margin, is Chrome.

The only thing close is Windows Search Indexer, which is a buggy piece of junk
that spins CPU all day doing nothing

~~~
ajross
A typical windows laptop has a DRAM footprint (mostly because of the AV
scanners that everything has installed) rather higher than a ChromeOS box,
even with the browser running. And the storage requirements aren't even in the
same ballpark: something like 40GB for a routine OEM windows install vs. 6-7G
for the ChromeOS boot image (last time I checked, anyway). Add to that the
fact that most of the chrome apps are optimized to store to the cloud instead
of relying on local disk, and the chrome box can skimp on memory and storage
(e.g. a $8 64G eMMC chip instead of a $60 256G SATA or M.2 drive) in ways that
windows can't.

------
jonahbenton
Meh. Nah.

Chromebook growth has been phenomenal, full stop. There is still plenty of
headroom, because the price point continues to beat phones and laptop
competitors. Note also the growing success of premium Chromebooks. Classic
bottom-up innovation/disruption story.

In terms of making use of the hardware, Android is a necessary stopgap
strategy, but webassembly is coming to bring native app performance and
security to the web platform.

That's not to say Google is marching from strength to strength. Their product
management discipline is poor to non-existent, and from the outside there
seems to be a fundamental monetization tension between ads and subscriptions,
when the same human flips between being product and/or customer, particularly
for the kid/ed sector.

~~~
ReverseCold
Yup, chromebooks are huge in K12, and there really isn’t any promising
alternative. Even students at schools without chromebooks often buy them
independently because of their low price. These things are a massive success,
even if not in the way that google wants just yet.

------
ArtWomb
The counterpoint to this argument is that there are many users who want a
super-lightweight OS that is not bloated, but very high performance with long
batter life. I use my Samsung Chromebook 3 for gsuite, gcloud management
through the web console, linux (beta) shell based development, gcloud cloud
shell, putty type chrome terminal and fairly hardcore web app testing (webgl
2.0 compute, magenta, tensorflowjs). It works phenomenally well. And I've
definitely noticed a lot of Google employees using the Pixelbook as their work
laptop.

Looking ahead and making predictions for ChomreOS in the 2020s. I could even
see a Stadia style pipeline for more processor intensive apps. Run Creative
Cloud / Maya type tools on dedicated cloud gpus. And just send the video
frames to the client browser tab. I've been thinking a lot about how 5G
adoption really can be leveraged to offload computation from the device and
will introduce whole new classes of interactive media.

~~~
jamesfmilne
People are already doing this. Untold Studios in London are running (almost)
all their workstations in AWS and the desktops are just Intel NUCs running
Teradici.

It makes sense when all your assets are also stored in the cloud.

Not sure the economics are there for everyone yet, as cloud storage
requirements for digital content creation can get very expensive very quickly.

~~~
larrik
I mean, people have been doing that sort of thing forever. It comes in and out
of fashion every few years.

------
hocuspocus
I really wanted to buy my mom a Pixelbook (and then the Go), but it's
literally sold in three countries: US, Canada, UK.

Pretty much like the Pixel phones that still ignore a few major markets after
all these years. What should I feel about a company that doesn't even try to
sell its hardware seriously?

Meanwhile, any 2nd tier Chinese OEM will manage to have its products sold at
the electronics shop down the road.

------
darren0
I bought a pixelbook last year as I was excited to play with the early native
Linux integration. The technology that has been built is an amazing amount of
work (crosvm, Wayland support, etc) but at the end of the day it's really only
useful for simple use cases. This is a common theme for everything in
ChromeOS.

I've given up on ChromeOS for the time being as been capable of any serious
work I do. The more frustrating part is my kids have Chromebooks and as
they've gotten older they've become a real detriment. They can't accomplish
anything on them beyond school work. My kids are showing a lot of interest in
graphic design and programming and both tasks are too hard or almost
impossible on a Chromebook.

~~~
deltron3030
Try Codesandbox and Figma (both run in the browser) with your kids. Figma is
really underrated as a general graphic design tool, the pen tool for vector
shapes is top notch, and you can use blend modes for images. Google fonts are
already integrated, it can be used to learn e.g. logo design.

------
pgrote
Since 2013 the main computer I used was the Acer C720. i3, 4 gig of RAM
chromebook. Never had an issue with it. Runs as fast now as it did then.

It quit receiving updates in June of 2019.

Never understood the thought process behind this as supporting the machine is
probably negligible given the platform.

I looked at other chromebook solutions, but unless I wanted to spend close to
$1000 there was nothing close performance wise. There are ways of getting
chromeos on the machines left behind, but it didn't interest me.

Decided to move on to a refurbished Windows 10 pro dell laptop. I do miss the
safety I felt with the chromebook.

~~~
tytso
The Acer C720 used a 3.8 Linux kernel, as documented at [1]. Updating to a new
kernel would have required a full QA of the hardware to make sure that the
device drivers in a newer kernel still worked correctly with that hardware.

[1] [https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-
information-f...](https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-
for-chrome-os-devices)

Support costs aren't too bad so long as you don't have to update the kernel
and requal everything. But newer userspace starts to use kernel features to
provide better functionality and better security (consider the massive
vulnerabilities associated with Spectre and Meltdown, and obviously none of
the remediations would have been in the 3.8 kernels). So you have to consider
the costs of doing a requal of all of the hardware platforms using a 3.8
kernel to something newer, versus the costs of continuing to backport security
fixes to older kernels, and the costs of testing the userspace components
against older kernel, and providing workarounds for the lack of features in
newer kernels.

A six year support lifetime is a long time; and Windows 10 has also stopped
supporting older laptops on newer releases, so you will also see Microsoft not
providing updates to older hardware[2][3].

[2] [https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-
us/articles/3600086427...](https://helpcenter.steinberg.de/hc/en-
us/articles/360008642799-Windows-10-Support-of-older-hardware)

[3] [https://www.cio.com/article/2972791/why-you-should-be-
very-w...](https://www.cio.com/article/2972791/why-you-should-be-very-wary-of-
windows-10-if-you-own-an-older-pc.html)

~~~
pjmlp
The Asus laptop I got in 2009 with Windows 7, has gone through all Windows
updates, is now using the very latest Windows 10 version.

~~~
pgeorgi
And it's great if that works. If it doesn't, you have no recourse, even if the
device is only just over 2 years old (or whatever your country's mandated
warranty period is).

As happened for my HP laptop whose firmware put the GPU in some high
performance state, expecting the Windows driver to clock down as appropriate.

Sadly, Windows upgrades (7->8, 8->10, all the 6month updates to 10 except for
the October 2019 one) are "full installs" that run in what is essentially
Windows' "safe boot" mode with stock drivers, so there was no clock down.

The result was that I could only update the laptop outdoors in winter when it
was freezing, otherwise the laptop powered off mid-upgrade because it ran too
hot (which then leads to the upgrade being rolled back, repeat ad nauseum).

Compared to that, the 5-8 years of Chrome OS support cover a really long time
(the upgrade path and new OS version are actually tested on the very model I'm
running), but it's a trade-off: If you're lucky about the configuration and
what newer Windows versions expect, a Windows laptop can be usable for 15
years, but there's definitely luck involved (even though I guess Microsoft is
also doing some rather arcane testing on their own, but things slip through
and they certainly don't provide any guarantees for what's essentially third-
party hardware).

~~~
jasonjayr
That is equal parts mortifying and impressive that you diagnosed the root
cause and were able to work around it.

I thought windows update failing because an unsupported, never-installed
unrelated installer for Netware was in some custom-named obscure backup
directory buried 4 levels deep was impressive.

------
teddyc
I personally like the Chromebook, but it's relegated to fun, not work. It
worked well to help me establish a boundary b/t work and home life, as I'd
have to pull out my MacBook to do any actual work. I played around with
Crostini Linux, but I've had it die on me twice and been forced to do a clean
install of Crostini, which would be awful had I used it for anything
important.

The Chromebook is also a great way to get out of supporting friends and family
with technical issues. It's an affordable device and my tech support has been
limited to getting it setup with the printer. (Though cloud printing is being
killed later this year IIRC.)

~~~
choward
You must be doing something wrong if reinstalling your OS causes you to lose
anything important. For starters it helps making your /home directory a
separate partition.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
Does Crostini play nice with a separate /home ?

------
dreamcompiler
The utility of ChromeOS for me is that it enabled the creation of cheap Linux
laptops. For $300 plus a 128GB A2-rated SD card, I can boot GalliumOS from the
SD card and have a nicely functional Linux development machine with all my
important stuff backed up to Dropbox and/or Github. If the laptop gets stolen
I don't much care; I just buy another one and reinstall and I haven't lost any
data. (I don't use Google's builtin Linux because it's too limited--you cannot
boot it from an SD card.)

~~~
oscargrouch
This is why i think a OS like Chrome is designed exactly to be this sort of
trap. A cloud computing trap, where we are perfectly ok with alienating our
digital life/data to third-parties without understanding the depth of the
problem we are getting into.

The ones who control our digital properties, can control the world
(information is power, remember?). They might not, but they can, and also can
aid third parties with shady intentions (see all the Facebook fiasco). By the
way, we should have learned this lesson already.

Also, people often forget how groundbreaking was to have a compiler (GCC)
directly embedded with the OS because you could mess with the source and
compile it yourself. Its very liberating to have a platform where you can code
and modify it.

So i think a future where the likes of Chrome OS took over the world, is
pretty scary as we ended turning our powerful and liberating computers into a
sort of "interactive TV".

As i understand it, they will try to make it very easy for us to buy into this
platform utopia, the problem is, in my point of view, that in the long term
this will lead to some sort of digital feudalism. Lets not forget we are
"digitalizing" our lives day-by-day, til the day there are very few useful
things we do in the physical world.

So in the future if Google for instance want to ban your account, this could
have severe problems, as a side-effect of your digital ostracism. (access to
capital, bank, employment, etc..)

~~~
dreamcompiler
I see your point with regard to ChromeOS, but my post made it clear that I was
using Linux, not ChromeOS. My use of my Chromebook is not dependent on Google
at all, except for the fact that Google made the hardware exist. I'm dependent
on github and Dropbox but I trust both more than I trust Google, and I could
easily switch them both to servers I manage.

~~~
oscargrouch
Just to make it clear that im not blaming you, just that your post reminded me
of the exact trap things like ChromeOS are.

They are platforms that put Google strategic plans first and the user in the
background.

If they teach (and phones are teaching this) that is ok/normal to have
everything in the cloud and not stored locally, we are doomed in the long term
if we dont fight this trend.

You are a tech-savy person that can use Gallium instead, but you are a
minority and the normal person who bought a Chromium OS wont understand why
you got into the trouble in the first place.

If we forget and ditch the culture that came with GNU/Linux, personal
computers will be akins to TV's and big tech corps will have absolute control
over our lives.

Anyway, your post just reminded me about this trend. Not saying that you are
directly involved in it, just to make it clear, but is a possible scary
outcome if this thing get out of control.

------
pier25
Maybe Google had high hopes at turning Chrome OS into Android for desktop but,
as the article points out, it failed miserably.

At my last job in ed tech we developed and maintained a Chrome OS app for
about 3 years. Not an Android app, but a web app for Chrome OS.

I had great hopes for the platform for education use but it turned out
developing for Chrome OS was a terrible mess. Docs are incomplete and cryptic,
there are strange dev restrictions like not being able to use localStore,
erratic behaviors of the apps, nowhere to go for help, the chrome web store
dashboard was totally obsolete by today's standards, etc.

It felt very bizarre seeing Google doing all the marketing on their new flashy
Chrome OS devices, Android apps, and Linux support, while at the same time
looking at the docs and working on what seemed like an abandoned project.

I think ultimately Google will replace Chrome OS with Fuchsia. Maybe Fuchsia
took longer than expected so they had to improvise and bring Android and Linux
to keep the platform alive for a couple more years.

------
ramenmeal
Dumb question:

> constant crashes, an insanely slow single-core Intel Atom processor, and
> questionable build quality would make it clear to anyone that it was very
> much a product built for dogfooding, not as a replacement for your Windows
> or Mac notebook

This use of "dogfooding" confuses me, wouldn't the chromebook being used for
dogfooding mean it was meant as a replacement for your windows/mac notebook?
Or if not, how does it relate to whether the chrombook was meant to replace
windows/mac notebooks?

~~~
abrowne
I think they mean it wasn't ready as a product to be sold to the public.

~~~
netsharc
Seems like the author doesn't really know the meaning of that term (or well,
is using that term not in the way you and I understand it). That word is even
linked to the Wikipedia page, but it says:

> This can be a way for an organization to test its products in real-world
> usage. Hence dogfooding can act as quality control,

It smells like the author wanted to use a fancier term for "beta-testing".

~~~
13hours
He also doesn't seem to know quite what "delusional" means. He uses it to
describe people that don't agree with him.

------
dgellow
> In 2019, a public space, restaurant, or even a shopping center without free
> Wi-Fi is basically unconscionable.

The author isn't familiar with Berlin's cafes and restaurants ;)

~~~
bagacrap
I too have been to popular coffee shops without WiFi. You wouldn't have known
just by looking. Everyone was tethering.

Lumping restaurants in there seems a bit bizarre unless he's just talking
about SV.

------
Abishek_Muthian
Google sent me free Chromebook(Acer 11 N7) ~2 years back, with a request that
I speak to their GCP rep; I sent the rep my latest AWS bill with complete
break down and asked them to mail me back with equivalent GCP services with
price; I never heard back.

Well that's about GCP marketing team, as for Chromebook -

1\. The power brick broke down with single night plugged into power, that
seems to be a problem with that particular model of power brick and the one
Acer replaced with doesn't have any problem for ~ 2 years.

2\. This particular model is like a tough-book(kids?), I was very impressed
with the quality of build for the price ($299).

3\. Underpowered Atom CPU, but that meant being fan-less. Fan-less X86 means,
I use it as SBC (which it technically is) and it's hard to get a x86 SBC with
this spec for this price.

as for ChromeOS,

1\. I am content with the premise of low end netbook with browser as the
frontend (whether that should be Google Chrome is another discussion).

2\. I am happy with the updates, first it was vanilla chromeOS, then I
received Android App support, then I received notification that my Chromebook
is EOL(it was fixed later), then I received Linux support.

3\. Android apps compatibility became better but there are some fundamental
issues as heavy threaded apps stall when moved out of focus (this may be due
to hardware, someone with Chromebook Pixel should comment on this).

4\. Good security architecture and regular security updates.

Conclusion: As a commercial replacement for MIT Labs OLPC, Chromebook is a
clear winner; as for $1500 laptop I think the OP article makes sense.

------
FloatArtifact
It seems like to me I would be better off if chrome OS was actually part of
Android. The experience of switching to a desktop could be as simple as
plugging in your phone into a keyboard screen shell with a battery USB ports.

Why spend 800 bucks on your phone and laptop.

Third parties have tried to implement such systems with minimal success but I
wonder what it would look like with Google backing it.

------
williamstein
The new Pixelbook Go only comes with a low resolution display, except for the
most expensive model (see [1]). This is significant change for Google, since
their previous Chromebooks had 4K-ish displays. This move from high end to low
end reminds me of the Pixel 3a phone [2].

I loved the idea of Chromebooks, and hoped ChromeOS was a way that Linux would
finally be "mainstream" on laptops. I've bought at least 10 Chromebooks since
2013, including all of the Google flagship models, since I use them as my main
dev machine and at tradeshows. My next laptop is either going to be a Dell XPS
13 with Linux or (shudder) some random Windows 10 laptop.

[1] "1080p on a 13.3-inch display works out to 166 pixels per inch, a far cry
from the 235 ppi on the first Pixelbook and the impressive 293 ppi on the
Pixel Slate. Google does offer the Go with a 4K screen, but that option is
only available if you get the top-of-the-line model, which costs an eye-
popping $1,399." [https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/25/google-pixelbook-go-
revi...](https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/25/google-pixelbook-go-review/)

[2] I won't ever buy another Google phone -- I bought a Pixel 3a and it
completely broke by dropping it 3 feet with a screen protector and highly
protective case, due to the very cheap display tech they used. I searched
youtube for stress test videos about the 3a and could only find one where
somebody's pixel 3a shattered after being dropped 1 foot; in comparison phones
like iPhone X and Samsung Galaxy S10plus have dozens of videos with high end
equipment testing dropping under rigorous conditions.

~~~
yjftsjthsd-h
What's interesting, especially with the Pixels, is that Google used to lead
with the Nexus phones, which were notable in part because they were excellent
phones at a very good price. My guess would be that the difference is that at
some point Google decided that instead of making good developer phones (I
don't think they ever really viewed the Nexus line as targeting the general
public), they wanted to make their own premium consumer line.

~~~
AJ007
I never had a Nexus phone, but I had Nexus tablets. They were great. I was
shocked when I went to buy a new one and all I managed to find was a piece of
shit Samsung tablet. That was a pretty defining moment for me when I realized
Google had substantial structural and a management issues beyond the standard
public controversies. Chrome OS users should not expect a bright future, no
matter how great things are at the moment.

------
mikece
This would correspond with the rumors that Google is quietly pulling
engineering resources from Android and ChromeOS to work on Fuchsia which is
supposed to replace both _and_ be the Google IoT operating system of the
future. It's rather open that Pixelbooks support the current builds of
Fuchsia; what's less published but not hidden if you ask the Nest engineers
that the Google Home runs on Fuchsia with its apps written in Flutter.
Fuchsia's browser is Chrome and has an Android compatibility layer which
allows running Android apps on Fuchsia (how long they keep that in is another
question).

------
Medicalidiot
I've used Chromebooks for 8 years now. Anecdotally what I've noticed is that
the sheer amount of bugs has increased dramatically after they started
implementing the ability to use Android apps. Right around that time it seemed
like Google went from trying to make the best browser based operating system
to something else. With new updates things seem to spontaneously break and the
amount of effort that went into tracking down bugs diminished.

I'm using a MBP now, instead, partly due to the quality issues and partly
because Google's privacy stance has made me more uncomfortable as time goes
on.

------
pengo
I was a Google evangelist until the penny finally dropped and I saw that their
business model was a disease. Chrome OS is cool, as are many of Alphabet's
products past and future. But I no longer use any Google products or have a
Google account, and actively take steps to prevent them having even passing
access to any of my data.

I think there are good use cases for a cloud-based OS, and it's something I
could be interested in using, even helping develop. But, like Android and
Search, Chrome OS is just another harvester of personal information to feed
Google's advertising profit machine.

------
dfabulich
Access to files is the critical issue here. Look at these examples from the
article:

> _Chrome OS doesn 't have a robust photo editor? Don't worry, you can
> download an [Android] app! Chrome doesn't have native integration with cloud
> file services like Box, Dropbox, or OneDrive? Just download the app! Chrome
> doesn't have Microsoft Office? App!_

The problem is that Chrome OS is attempting to be a _desktop_ platform, using
web apps and mobile apps.

Desktop OSes (Windows, macOS) are all about files. Apps are files. Your
documents, photos, and videos are files. Any app can access any of your files.

On mobile, you don't normally interact with files. Apps aren't files; you
launch apps directly from the app launcher, and they store data internally;
when you delete an app, its data is deleted, too.

Web apps are like mobile apps: they don't have access to your files. You can't
make a web app photo editor that opens a file, makes some changes, and then
saves those changes to the file. Instead, you have to "upload" the file to the
web app, and then you have to "download" the modified file.

Microsoft Office has a web version (Office 365), but it's like Google Docs,
lacking access to your local files. Dropbox has a web app, but it just lets
you download files one at a time; it's impossible to implement Dropbox-like
file synchronization in a web app.

Google is aware of this problem, but you might not like their proposed
"solution," to develop a cross-browser standard file access API.
[https://web.dev/native-file-system/](https://web.dev/native-file-system/)
Google's currently running an "origin trial," where a small number of web
sites have temporary access to the feature to try it out.

I think Google's not going to ship it until they convince Apple or Mozilla to
approve; it's not clear when (or if) that will happen. Here's the most recent
discussion from May. [https://github.com/mozilla/standards-
positions/issues/154](https://github.com/mozilla/standards-
positions/issues/154)

So file access isn't technically "stalled out," but it's still going to take a
long, long time.

------
rckoepke
ChromeOS is also used for all docker instances on Google Cloud Platform
(GCE)...so I doubt development is dead in the water.

~~~
herohamp
This seems pretty crazy, can I get a source on this?

~~~
jcastro
[https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized-
os/](https://cloud.google.com/container-optimized-os/)

------
smt88
What Google product doesn't feel stalled? (Serious question)

------
omnifischer
I really like a stalled out OS. Really give me 20 year stability. Do not
change interface and add eye candy every year just to sell new stuff. Just
security updates.

Really hope there is RHEL (10+ year release) type ChromeOS.

------
pjmlp
Technically Chrome OS has some interesting bits, like its use of
virtualization, containers, based on Rust and Go.

As general purpose OS, I never got the point of it.

Any OS other OS is able to offer browser juggling support alongside the
benefits of having a proper OS, better hardware that a Web browser is capable
of (does not matter how good is the GPU, Web GL 2.0 can only do so much).

And the security story is kind of meaningless when everything that matters is
stored in someone else's computer, with the traffic going through Google's
servers.

~~~
zamadatix
It's not targeting the general purpose OS market it's purpose built for
specific kinds of customer use cases. Once you get past that it makes a lot of
sense. Well not as in "it makes a lot of sense for you personally to go out
and by" but it makes a lot of sense why it exists and sells so much.

~~~
pjmlp
That is the thing, it doesn't sell at all outside US School system, as the
article points out.

~~~
zamadatix
Decently popular at SMB as well.

The point is it doesn't need to outsell Windows it just needs to have markets
it targets and updates for those markets. That it doesn't have updates for
markets it doesn't target is irrelevant unless they've maxed out all the
markets they target (they haven't yet).

------
scarmig
I don't know how I feel about ChromeOS's market position. I do know that
Crostini is the best innovation in the laptop space from the last half decade.

------
turtlebits
I agree that ChromeOS needs some love. Recent updates have started to make my
Pixelbook freeze and self reboot (while using Chrome only), Android support
seems half baked still.

That said, I regularly use it over my MacBook and still is the best form
factor laptop I've ever used.

------
accosine
I got the original Cr-48 Chromebook back in the day. That thing was phenomenal
good at just-surf-the-web™️. If ChromeOS was really stalled out, I could use
it as something else than a paperweight.

------
thibran
Long battery life, cheap, can write some code in Linux -> perfect travel
device

------
thecrumb
My daughter's school just switched from iPads to Chromebooks.

------
AcerbicZero
Ah yes, Google. Now there is a company I can trust to build a product and not
abandon it on the side of the road when they fail to put the effort in to make
it successful.

------
throwGuardian
I see googlers in tech talks and at cafes only use MacBook Pros. If their own
PC isn't good enough for them, why should anyone else fall for their
marketing?

The day I buy a Chromebook is the day I read that Google only issues
Chromebooks to their employees

