Chrome OS has stalled out

155 点作者 randomerr超过 5 年前

30 条评论

andrewmutz超过 5 年前

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.

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Kipters超过 5 年前

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

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jonahbenton超过 5 年前

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.

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ArtWomb超过 5 年前

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.

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hocuspocus超过 5 年前

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超过 5 年前

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.

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pgrote超过 5 年前

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.

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teddyc超过 5 年前

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.)

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dreamcompiler超过 5 年前

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.)

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pier25超过 5 年前

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超过 5 年前

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 notebookThis 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?

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dgellow超过 5 年前

> 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 ;)

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Abishek_Muthian超过 5 年前

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超过 5 年前

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超过 5 年前

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." <a href="https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/25/google-pixelbook-go-review/" rel="nofollow">https://www.engadget.com/2019/10/25/google-pixelbook-go-revi...</a>[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.

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mikece超过 5 年前

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超过 5 年前

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超过 5 年前

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超过 5 年前

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. <a href="https://web.dev/native-file-system/" rel="nofollow">https://web.dev/native-file-system/</a> 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. <a href="https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/154" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/154</a>So file access isn't technically "stalled out," but it's still going to take a long, long time.

rckoepke超过 5 年前

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

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smt88超过 5 年前

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

omnifischer超过 5 年前

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超过 5 年前

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.

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scarmig超过 5 年前

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超过 5 年前

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超过 5 年前

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超过 5 年前

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

thecrumb超过 5 年前

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

AcerbicZero超过 5 年前

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超过 5 年前

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