Daniel Pietzsch

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What I think [John Gruber] is getting at is the sentiment embodied by already announced products like the Litl and Google’s Chrome OS. This is the middle ground between the desktop and mobile software platforms, which makes perfect sense for a hardware device that fills a similar position.
The “reconception” part comes in when you consider how many people really need the power—and the complexity that comes with it—of a desktop platform, and in what situations. As a computer geek watching the Chrome OS introduction video, it’s hard not to think about how much easier some people’s lives would be (hi Mom and Dad) if they could trade technical complexities they don’t care about for vastly increased simplicity and ease of use.

John Siracusa in Antacid tablet

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In fact, as far as I can tell the “desktop OS” is basically a failure. Outside of computer professionals and “graphic designers,” most people just want to start their web browser. They can barely use the rest of their operating system past that — and they don’t want or need to, either.
So building computers that are designed to do one thing, run a web browser, incredibly, and do it insanely well, is a great idea.

Whisky Van Gogh Go: why ChromeOS is a great idea

Agreed:

I believe there are millions of users out there that have a personal computer and only use it for doing stuff on the internet. And even if they do something else, using a classic desktop application - like writing the occasional letter in MS Word f.e. - there is already a web application for this. These users don’t need an expensive, full-featured computer with lots of storage and processing power to accomplish their tasks.

(this post was reblogged from whiskyvangoghgo)

trendd:

Very cool. Google has made a comic book to explain their open sourced Chromium OS.

Google Chrome

I think the book is more about the browser than the OS, but it’s a great read anyway.
I especially like the chapter about Search and User Experience (of course).

(this post was reblogged from trendd)

→ Chrome OS: Internet failing at PC > PC failing at Internet

Saving files, copying them, syncing them—this is all pointless clerical work that I want my computer to do for me. ChromeOS officially nukes the “file” as a core user-facing OS abstraction. This is a huge victory for users everywhere[…]

(via Daring Fireball)

→ Chrome OS And The Microsoft Squeeze

Interesting article by The Washington Post on Chrome OS and what this might mean for Microsoft and Windows.

Google isn’t trying to compete with a standard OS, they’re trying to help users realize that for the majority of computing they do, they don’t need one in the first place. Maybe you have a desktop computer at home for those few tasks that need dedicated native applications, and maybe that runs Windows or maybe that runs OS X. But maybe the machine that you use most of the time is your cheap, fast ChromeBook.

(this post was reblogged from haroldcheardjr)

The New Wave Of Operating Systems

I find the recent discussion about Google’s Chrome OS and other operating systems/netbook solutions like Litl or HyperSpace very interesting.
The idea to use a computer as a thin client ‘just’ to access the web is really great. All your data is stored on the internet and all you use are web applications to accomplish your tasks.

I think there is a huge potential for these type of OSes although it’s not (yet) suitable for everyone.

Who will use it?

I believe there are millions of users out there that have a personal computer and only use it for doing stuff on the internet. And even if they do something else, using a classic desktop application - like writing the occasional letter in MS Word f.e. - there is already a web application for this.
These users don’t need an expensive, full-featured computer with lots of storage and processing power to accomplish their tasks.

The huge advantage that web applications have, is that users don’t have to install anything. It’s easy, works everywhere and you don’t have to worry about the hardware. You also don’t have to deal with anything malicious like viruses or malware, either. It just works! And that is what these users want and need.
With Offline Web Applications coming with the HTML5 specification, this doesn’t even make the computer useless when you don’t have an internet connection available all the time. Of course, you won’t be able to chat with your friends while offline, but you still can write that e-mail you would like to send later or improve and finish the document you’re currently working on.

As shown in the demo of Chrome OS, you even can work with images from your digital camera and store them on the internet using an appropriate service. I believe a lot of users don’t process their images anyway and also share them anyway. So why store it on your local machine?
Even if they did process some of their images, they may also be satisfied with a less powerful online image editor like f.e. Picnik.

When selling these netbooks and their OSes, there might be a challenge of convincing these users to store everything on the web. But I don’t think that this is too hard to do: they already store a lot of data on the web, so why not store everything else there, too?
I think that’s even more secure for them, because I believe a lot of people don’t do regular backups. With every document stored in the cloud, they don’t have to worry about this, because the service provider is probably very serious about backups and availability unless he wants to ruin his business easily.

Netbooks and OSes like Chrome are cheap, easy to use and maintenance-free. That is perfect for people who use a computer to access the internet.

Who will not use it?

These OSes and netbooks are not made for people that need lots of storage capacity, processing power and/or desktop apps that make use of this.
To only name a few of these tasks, you are not able to manage and listen to your music library, process and sort photos professionally, or f.e. make a music or video production on a netbook. Software development is also not easily possible on a netbook. At least not yet.

The future

I am really curious what the future will bring up. When an internet connection will be available everywhere, be lightning-fast, reliable and affordable and there are also affordable services for storing all of your gigabytes of data in the cloud, we all might only be using netbooks exclusively one day.
You will pay for your software on a monthly subscription basis and your data is available everywhere you go, no matter what device you use to access the internet.
But all this is really far away, I guess.

Right now, I think thin clients in form of netbooks, running a slim, secure OS like Chrome, Litl or HyperSpace are a great alternative for users that spend 100% of their time on the internet when they use a computer, and for users as a secondary machine when they don’t need the power and versatility of a full-featured laptop or desktop computer.