This article misses the point of the Google OS. It is a web-centric OS for devices that are used primarily for surfing.<p>Having said that, I think it is pretty clear that Google is betting on most of our applications living in the cloud in the future, and that is the trend they are banking on here.
1. How many netbook users run Photoshop on their netbook? I'd bet that it's an insignificant number.<p>2. Aviary (<a href="http://aviary.com/home" rel="nofollow">http://aviary.com/home</a>) will likely run fine on it. :p
Essentially asks "why isn't it everything for everyone?"<p>Apple's OS/hardware isn't that either, they seem to be doing very good. Why do you want creative features in a consumerist OS? It seems to be a sort of a "TV 2.0", not a UNIX workstation, even if it runs on Linux (kernel).<p>Let's wait to find out what they actually have in mind, and <i>then</i> jump to conclusions.
I think that the Google OS will be great even if I only boot to it occasionally. If it really only takes a few seconds to boot, it will be useful to use when on the road or when I just want to check email.<p>It's a little like using Chrome instead of Firefox. I use Chrome when I actually want to use the web like a normal person, but when I want to do real work and development, I use Firefox because it is so much more powerful (WebDeveloper, Firebug, TamperData, etc).
I think what we're going to see is a way to hook into Chrome so that it appears like you're launching an application (rather than visiting a web site), but it runs within the Chrome engine using HTML/JS. With Native Client, even complex operations could be done within Chrome without performance worries.