Look, I really like the idea of the Chromebook, but I feel like Google's kinda moving in the wrong direction here.
What power user lives completely in the cloud?
* Coders obviously can't use this machine.
* Designers need photoshop or other non-web apps.
* Writers are not gonna migrate from Word to something like this, because either they were already using Google Docs and are fine with their crappy old netbook, or they like Word and are gonna stay with it, because writing is still just plain better in MS land.
* Video editors obviously need real apps
* Social media experts will just continue to use their iPad3 or Nexus 7/10
Apparently the codename for the Pixel (in the chromium os issue tracker, svn, etc) was Link[1], and recently they've added a metallic (i.e. chrome) android statue (without a corresponding android update) [2]. I might be just over-analyzing things, but there might be some software update in Google I/O signalling a merge between Android and Chrome OS (where the latter is already starting to get features like Google Now on that mobile-convergence pathway like Apple's OS X Lion).
Android has arguably more high-performance, graphics-heavy and touch-enabled apps, and has the toolchains to compile more sophisticated applications (IDEs, etc).
Also, Google has a weird ironic naming paradigm. First is Chrome which is named as such because they want to minimize the browser's chrome (tab bar, menus, buttons, etc.), and now is the Pixel which has a HiDPI display so people kind of forget the pixel. It would probably be a bad idea to call their self-driving car Crash though.
Judging by this interview three years ago, it seems to have crossed the minds of the Chrome OS team, but it would be strong to call it a "plan".
JS: And this also gets at another issue. I know that Sergey made some comments that were widely reported about a future merging of Android and Chrome OS, and to me this seems more like a statement of the obvious. In the sense that, once the hardware is full-featured enough to support all the things that you have on Chrome OS, then why do you need something as stripped-down as Android.
MP: Yeah, it's unclear. We get a lot of questions like this, and the truth is, I don't know the answer. We're so focused on shipping release one right now, we spend less time than the outside world speculating about what we're going to do next... how will we integrate this with Android... how will we do any number of things like that. -- http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/01/chrome-os-interview-...
The interview as a whole shows where Google's head was at regarding Chrome OS just a week before the iPad was announced, which is itself fascinating.
You really think he's going to say something like: "Yeah, I know that's what Sergey said, but we don't want to merge with Android. We think that the web platform is important and that would be a step backwards"?
I think the evidence says it all. Three years later and Chrome & Android are no closer to a merger.
There is an SSH app for Chrome. If you're "in the cloud" you have a computer to SSH to to code on. I do this with my Chromebook and it works fine; windowed Chrome apps don't steal keys anymore, so C-w is kill-region, not "close the tab".
There is also nothing stopping you from porting your favorite development tools to NaCl. This is something I'm planning to look into in the near future.
they were already using Google Docs and are fine with their crappy old netbook
Also, Google Docs looks really nice on a Macbook's retina display; significantly nicer than on a regular display. If the Pixel renders it the same way, it is a nicer experience.
That seems like a reasonable use for a $250 computer, but using a $1300 computer with a 2560x1700 display as a dumb terminal is a bit of a waste.
Your average end-user is going to be pretty disappointed when they find out that all they can do with their expensive laptop is browse the internet.
It seems like the best use of this of this might be to run Linux, but if you accept a slightly lower resolution, you can get a pretty decent Thinkpad or Envy that has a lot more flexibility.
Paying an extra thousand dollars for a much improved experience of a device that you'll look at 5-10 hours a day for several years, doesn't seem to me to be out of line, even if it does act as a dumb terminal.
> So why wouldn't you spend the few hundred more and get a MacBook Pro that isn't a dumb terminal ?
Chrome (both the browser and ChromeOS) have always been about making it so that "browser" and "dumb terminal" aren't at all the same thing. Certainly, I think its reasonable to say that its still at the point where, for many power users, it isn't suitable as a replacement for a traditional desktop OS.
But then, this is clearly aimed at early adopters that are more heavily into web-based tools than is generally the case, and who value a low-configuration means of getting to those tools.
He/she may have come off as abusive. But I think that's actually a good question.
Yes, the resolution is great. But why would someone spend 1300 bucks on something that has great resolution just so they can ssh into something else? $500 maybe.
Whoever down-voted you was a dick, there's still more decent folk than dicks though, just ignore it. And, have some karma back, good point for discussion above.
Paying an extra thousand dollars for a much improved experience of a device that you'll look at 5-10 hours a day for several years, doesn't seem to me to be out of line, even if it does act as a dumb terminal.
The real answer is: depends on what $1000 means to you.
> Writing the code is only half the story. You also need to test that code and that means running the code on a target machine similar to your customer.
Right. And unless you are writing desktop software, that most likely means running it on a commodity physical or virtual servers, which aren't going to be your dev workstation.
For user-facing web software (as opposed to pure web services), ideal UI testing means having a wide variety of hardware/OS/browser combinations available for testing, but none of that needs to be your development workstation, either.
So neither of thos are strokes against using a Chromebook for development.
Most simple editing stuff, like what's in Picasa or Paint.Net/Pinta can be done in a ChromeOS app. My bigger concern is the CPU is overkill, and the GPU may be underkill... the latest/next gen Tegra chipset or similar with that screen would probably be a better combo at a lower price... Without a local OS, I'm afraid I wouldn't even consider this thing for over $800, at the price they are at, they're in Macbook territory, which although getting more locked down, is still much more versatile. Not to mention without VM host support.
> There is also nothing stopping you from porting your favorite development tools to NaCl.
You expect people to dedicate YEARS of their life porting development tools to a platform that in all likelihood is going to be dead soon ? Not happening.
> If the Pixel renders it the same way, it is a nicer experience.
Sure. And if we are completely ignoring price/value then reading it on a supercomputer connected to a Sony 4K television would equally be better.
I tried using a chromebook and an ipad as my sole dev setup for a week or so over the holidays. I actually found it was more freeing than a traditional setup in certain ways!
Once I got a linode server set up I stopped worrying about not having my dev env. With persistent 3G I was actually able to SSH in and get work in settings I never would have considered previously.
The obvious thing that was missing from the chromebook experience was a core set of native app. 1password, skype, spotify, and a few others haven't quite made it to a web app yet. However, most of these apps have a native client ready to go for iOS. So between the chromebook and iPad mini I felt like I had everything I needed to be productive.
Ultimately, I simply wanted a nicer machine to work on day to day. Chrome OS is a real pleasure to use (I like it more than modern OS X in some ways!), but the hardware on my Samsung laptop just felt, well...cheap. This new machine fits that sweet spot really nicely. I could see myself considering to purchase this machine as a dev laptop if I hadn't just bought a new macbook pro.
It certainly would have been a more flexible experience! I have a friend who frequents a coffeeshop I hang out at who I have been teaching Python and misc. hacking to. I ended up giving him the chromebook, and he's set it up with ubuntu (both by dual booting and through booting of a thumb drive!). So I definitely appreciate and accept the flexibility of ubuntu on the chromebook.
If you want to say it's "better," I'd ask "to what end?" I personally really like the security model of ChromeOS and having working 3G drivers was a huge benefit when I was experimenting with this setup. I love having a secure client I can trust to connect to sanctioned dev environments on. It's much harder for me to vet that my ubuntu rig hasn't been root-kitted vs. trusting the block-level cryptographic hashing on ChromeOS.
I think this is probably where most people would call me a tin-foil hat weirdo, and I wouldn't disagree. This might be just a fun exercise to think about right now. However, I think it's an increasingly important factor in considering personal computing setups and it definitely played into my choice of platform on the ChromeBook. Plus, it's also just plain cool to see how much mileage you can get out of just chrome + ssh!
Am I missing something here, or did they build a machine that even their own developers cannot use? When you go to the Google campus, will everyone still be toting around a Macbook?
Many of their developers use Chromebooks, I believe. Code is not allowed to be stored locally on mobile devices so they use Chromebooks and SSH (or any other laptop and SSH).
Additionally, I think that going forward on-site interviews at Google will use Chromebooks to type code up, rather than white-boarding (which makes me sad, but I suspect will make all the people who hate white-boarding a lot happier).
Google engineers are not actually allowed to write code locally on those laptops. The macbooks are only used when hanging out around campus to view email and ssh into workstations (linux desktops) where actual work is done. That same thing can be done from chromebooks.
I just think they are moving in the wrong direction between ChromeOS is for $200-$300 machines, not $1300 machines, no matter what extra specs they give it. Why buy such a powerful machine if you can't use Photoshop, IDE's or 3D games anyway?
But as a $250 web machine with 10h of battery life? Sure.
Depends what they are coding; developers working with PaaS platforms using one of the many cloud IDEs can certainly use it.
> Writers are not gonna migrate from Word to something like this, because either they were already using Google Docs and are fine with their crappy old netbook, or they like Word and are gonna stay with it, because writing is still just plain better in MS land.
If they are using Google Docs on an existing laptop/netbook, well, eventually its going to need replaced, and if that's their main use, ChromeOS presents a lot less distraction than traditional desktop OS's for that use role.
We've recently shifted to developing directly on a development instance on EC2 and haven't looked back. The IDE we use supports editing over SSH, so we simply treat the machine as if it were on our laptop. The best part is access anywhere. Last week I set up a local-only development box and everything was going swimmingly -- until I needed to work from home. I realized just how amazing being able to work from anywhere truly was.
There needs to be a balance. If I can't use my IDE on a chromebook, that obviously won't work. But if I can have access to my tools locally that manage remote service and data -- I'm golden.
I'm curious, what IDE are you talking about? I have the Samsung ARM Chromebook, and I've been forcing myself to learn vim so I can do development on a remote system over SSH, or on a local chroot environment. For my day job, I'm a Windows developer, so I'm used to the Visual Studio tooling.
I wonder if Brackets has any aspirations for a Chrome OS port. It's already a packaged JS app, but I don't know how portable their device API layer is.
I don't understand why I'm getting downvoted. Brackets is an HTML5 based IDE that's currently targeting the web development set, but could easily branch out (like any text editor) into being a good editor for any language, and is built to work in a browser. Make the remote repository for you code a bunch of files by SFTP, using SSH for commands, and you have a remote IDE for any development process, including eventually a debugger.
How many breathless stories have been linked here about dudes in Oregon pedaling their mountain bike out into the forest and setting up their iPad 3 and Zagg keyboard, and using their LTE connection to do remote dev? Same thing for the Chromebook.
I didn't downvote you, but are you seriously suggesting that all you need for arbitrary development is a nice-looking, syntax-highlighting text editor? Leaving aside the fact that Brackets itself is relatively immature.
It may work if you use SSH, as others have mentioned, but that still restricts your use case and that's not what you implied at first.
I was reacting to "coders obviously can't use this machine" because coders, with SSH and a nice IDE that fits into the environment, obviously can use this machine. As others have observed, you're not buying this for the processor, you're buying it for the large, high-res touchscreen, aluminum body, built-in LTE, and light weight. If you want raw CPU and hard drive space, you'll get a Mac. I don't think screen-and-body is an invalid reason, either, to pay a premium. When you use a tool all day, the surface quality, the experiential quality, makes a difference. I've never really understood being cheap with something that you're going to look at and touch 6-10 hours a day for 3-4 years, on average.
That said, yes, brackets is immature, but fairly brightly points to a future where a browser OS like ChromeOS is more than sufficient for a really wide variety of use-cases.
Do you realise how completely ridiculous and illogical you sound ?
> I've never really understood being cheap with something that you're going to look at and touch 6-10 hours a day for 3-4 years, on average.
So if that is the case why on earth would you buy a laptop that doesn't do anything ? Why wouldn't you spend the few hundred more and get a MacBook Pro that runs Eclipse, Sublime, Visual Studio, Photoshop, Office etc.
You can do all that in the browser or via remote desktop to a server or desktop. Eclipse Orion works in the browser (as do several other IDEs such as cloud9). Office works in the browser (but I prefer Google Docs).
For simple image editing, I just use pixlr.com. If I really needed advanced features from photoshop (or gimp), I can A) remote connect to a desktop or B) boot to ubuntu from a flash drive.
If you need Visual Studio and don't have access to a desktop computer you can remote connect to, then yes, don't buy a chromebook.
Or of course if you are developing native iphone/ipad apps (i.e., not phonegap, etc.) and don't have access to a mac computer, then yes, of course, get a macbook instead of a chromebook.
Probably because you're basing your argument on a bunch of things that don't exist, to justify a product that will take $1,300 out of your bank account today, not 3-5 years from now when it might be useful.
Probably not that well at first, but if you throw the possibility of a laptop that competes with a Retina MBP into the mix, I'd imagine there would be some desire in the community to work on it at least.
(edit: competes in terms of screen resolution... 4GB RAM and an i5 is not as good as 8-16GB RAM and an i7 of course)
Not just what, but where are the power users? Both models of the Chromebook Pixel are still available with immediate shipping from the Play Store. Contrast to the Nexus 4 sales launch.
You have multiple good points. But I don't think that writing really requires Windows, that is a pretty extravagant claim. You can write with a typewriter or a text editor, it's not DTP. And I don't see how someone whose job is to operate sites like Twitter has any serious reason why they would need Windows per se.
I wasn't claiming it requires windows whatsoever. Word is available for mac as well.
And if you're the kind of writer that doesn't need it, you probably already are using docs, on your $300 netbook, and you really don't care. This isn't going to improve your life in any way, because frankly, a computer from 1995 would be all you need for writing. I'd say earlier, but you at least need a half-decent print preview.
I still feel they haven't resolved the Android vs. Chrome OS debate. I can't imagine this doesn't create some tension within the organization. Maybe they're hoping to sell Android to Oracle (yikes).
> I still feel they haven't resolved the Android vs. Chrome OS debate.
The long-term strategy, which they announced years ago, is to converge the two platforms. (Its been obvious for some time that, in more detail, Android was the near-term comparatively low-risk [for Google] option, and ChromeOS was the long-term, higher-risk option.)
"We're pushing computing forward. It'll definitely make the
ecosystem rethink touch," Pichai said. "I think people will
take the first step toward building tablets with this." [1]
I would think HN is the kind of place where that's exactly what people would want to do. I'm not convinced by this Chromebook either, but stock configurations / things I can change are definitely not the reason.
What power user lives completely in the cloud?
* Coders obviously can't use this machine.
* Designers need photoshop or other non-web apps.
* Writers are not gonna migrate from Word to something like this, because either they were already using Google Docs and are fine with their crappy old netbook, or they like Word and are gonna stay with it, because writing is still just plain better in MS land.
* Video editors obviously need real apps
* Social media experts will just continue to use their iPad3 or Nexus 7/10
* Gamers can't go without DirectX seriously
What power users are they talking about?