The Computer Is Your Friend: Chrome Wasn't Built In A Day

[athelind]

Douglas Rushkoff insists that Google Chrome OS will CHANGE EVERYTHING.

Some of Rushkoff's arguments are less than convincing to a Linux user, I'm afraid. I'm not "locked into Microsoft Office". I use Open Office, and when an MS user simply HAS to see my work, I export -- which I'd have to do with GoogleApps anyway.

I'm simply not comfortable

Comments

[cpxbrex]

Ah, my point made with so many fewer words!

[athelind]

I thought it sounded kinda familiar, but Nohamotyo bit me.

[araquan]

This, pretty much, yes.

[cpxbrex]

I think the best way to understand this is that Google and Microsoft are in a big brawl. Like you, I use OO and I am writing the Great American Novel. My third one, hehe. I wish compatibility was an issue but, y'know, it's not. For most users, it's also not. But what's at the center of all of this is two giant corporations squaring off against each other

[athelind]

Now, see, there's a flip side there -- there IS a market and a use for the thin client/thin hardware machine. That's why netbooks are so successful right now, and ChromeOS may just kick some serious ass on the Netbook platform.

What Ruskoff doesn't get -- and a lot of the industry doesn't get, though the MARKET does -- is that the Netbook is a fundamentally different animal than the desktop. For the last couple of decades, everyone's been talking about "convergence" -- but "convergence" isn't the FUTURE anymore. It's HAPPENED.

What's happening NOW is divergence. Netbooks are splitting off from desktops, and becoming Something Else. An operating system optimized for the Cheap Fast Lightweight Net-Machine is a great idea, and may finally slap the rest of the industry around to realize that Netbooks AREN'T just "desktop lite".

[cpxbrex]

I dunno, myself. I'm pretty gadget shy, though, if it isn't a kitchen gadget. People keep telling me how convenient their iPhone is and I keep saying, "I find having no cell phone at all is even MORE convenient. I never have to worry about being out and then someone calling me and doing that awkward thing where you tell the people around you you've 'got to take this' and then having everyone looking at you shaking their heads for ten minutes." I kind of feel the same way about netbooks. If I wasn't somewhere that I could sit down in a comfy chair with a good keyboard I couldn't imagine wanting to work real hard on a project. So . . . I DO find myself wondering at the whole logic behind netbooks . . .

Which means that maybe I should shut up, huh? :) But I mostly see this as a brawl between two giant corporations that's about something that doesn't really effect me or, really, anyone I know in a serious way.

[tombfyre]

I've often wondered if some aspects of computing were going to lean back towards the days of the terminal mainframe. But instead of a local mainframe in the building, our systems would all be getting a live broadcast from the internet. No doubt many the software company would drool with the idea of renting us operating systems and software, letting us download them on the go to an otherwise functionally dead terminal

[wy]

I'm okay with 'in the cloud'.

Because, nothing most people do is really that 'important'. And if it is, it shouldn't be on your connected machine anyways. :P Just saying.

[athelind]

Well, exactly.