Google Bearing Gifts
This last Thursday I was surprised and delighted to receive a Cr-48 ChromeOS notebook, and I’ve chosen to share my thoughts in this post.
I remember the day that Google Chrome came out, a little over two years ago. Numerous blogs speculated that Google was planning on entering the browser market and it was anyone’s guess what that would look like. Google suddenly confirmed the rumors, and, the next day, they released the beta. That was blazing fast for a world where the speediest browser development cycle was Mozilla. (Even now, Mozilla is still taking it’s sweet time with FireFox 4…)
This ChromeOS notebook was another wonderful episode of Google’s surprising speedyness. I had signed up for the test program on Wednesday morning (the 8th) and received the machine the following day without even being informed that I had been approved! I guess Google knows how to get me excited about a new product.
In this post I want to quickly review my thoughts of the machine and OS, but then go into what I think Google is up to with this.
The Hardware
The Cr-48 hardware is fairly robust for a test (also, free) system. There are a good deal of complaints about the trackpad, which is finicky and occasionally inconsistent. It’s conspicuously modeled after the trackpad found in newer MacBooks, notably with its two-fingered-scroll feature. While Apple hardware is a good inspiration to build from, the imitation included with the Cr-48 is not polished. Alt-clicking and scrolling are delicate and choppy, and accidentally brushing the pad with a third finger seems to send it into total confusion.
Aside from trackpad woes, the rest of the hardware is solid. It has a rubbery surface which is easy to grab and it’s fairly light. Battery life very nice too, although I haven’t pushed it.
The Software
The hardware is nice, but, of course, the really interesting thing about the Cr-48 is ChromeOS. The experience of ChromeOS is essentially the same as using the Google Chrome browser. I log into ChromeOS using my Google account. When I did so on first-boot my Chrome extensions, settings and bookmarks were automatically imported, making my very first experience with the new OS pretty much exactly the same as in the browser.
In a world where machine shareability is more important than ever, this Google login scheme is a genius stroke. It also means that none of my sensitive information is stored on the machine itself, so if it is stolen, my data is safe.
As long as you remember that ChromeOS is just a browser, I think the software is pretty cool. If you want a little more from your system, it’s not really powerful enough to run Hulu smoothly, and has extremely limited access to the underlying system.
As a programmer, however, using ChromeOS poses a certain challenge. John Resig made a great post on his blog about using ChromeOS’ weak terminal to SSH into a more-flexible system in order to program effectively. This is tricky because development is a lot of what I use a computer for. More on this issue later.
What I think Google is Up To
My lovely fiancée is forever suspicious of Google’s motives, so when I told her about the new machine she said
“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.”
While I don’t always share her suspicions, I think this classical quote is highly appropriate — Google is up to something.
On the surface this is a test program and clearly I can help Google out with bug reports, testing and reviewing. However, I think the trouble developers (like myself and Resig) have using our Ch-48s as development machines is telling.
ChromeOS is supposed to be all about web apps, but web apps for development (such as Mozilla’s Bespin project) are still primitive. This restriction forces us to get creative and further evolve the idea of truly cloud-based development.
I think the popularity of netbooks didn’t end up pushing better cloud-based development. A developer with a traditional netbook still had a normal HDD and complete system-level control; the need for cloud still wasn’t there yet, even if the desire was.
This is why I think ChromeOS’s severe system-access restrictions, and the fact that the test models are being specifically shipped to developers is because Google trying to incite developers to solve this the problem of cloud-based development for Google… for free. They’re engineering a need for the cloud.
Developers are problem solvers. Even my developer friend who dislikes the Cr-48 is trying to solve the problem. Google is being very clever. Not that I mind.