Day one of March Break Marathon, we'll start it soft with some easy insights on the soon to come Google Chrome OS.
It may have been a slightly ground breaking OS for netbooks. It was hyped to be up and against Windows and OSX. However, after the official developer preview of the GOS (Google Chrome OS) was launched, demonstrated, and leaked, I thought that it was slightly lamer than it's hype.
Yes, this operating system is indeed in its very early developmental stages with very little features. It was not made for a public release or even preview (meant for developers who love tackling problems) but it was a little short than what I had expected.
An OS, any OS as we know it as, has what I call core functionalities. Even the oldest GUI OSes have these sort of basic functionalities as an OS. It should:
-Browse folders and files in its own finder, windows explorer, or gnome
-Allow for offline access to multiple sources of data (OS structure, Applications, files)
-Should run to some extent independently on its one, regardless of how much online content it may have
-Should allow for customization (theme, settings)
-Should allow for third party apps, and developed apps from any platform
The above are what I think should be in a fundamental OS. Maybe GOS is a change, I'm not sure but this change is certainly taking the amount of functionality out of netbooks. GOS, being this Google's special OS for netbooks and high powered handhelds is really taking functionality out of it.
For example, if I bought a netbook running Windows XP, I'm running Windows XP. XP is a full OS that, as much as Microsoft wants you to forget, you would use on a daily basis just some 3 years from now. Even until today, most gamers, graphic designers, banks, large corporations, schools etc. still rely on this hefty OS to perform their daily routines. Having this in a computer will open you to a world where any Windows related task is possible.
However, if I took that same netbook and put GOS in it, I'd be running something that was stripped apart. GOS with little features mentioned above in what is a fundamental OS is a real turn off.
GOS is:
-an OS that is primarily based online (all apps are in the air)
-an OS specializing in internet based applications
-an OS where all apps need to be specially redesigned and optimized to be in servers
-an OS where it requires an always connected OS in order to operate
-an OS that is just a big web browser
With GOS's limiting features, I feel that I'd be taking features away from it rather than improving it. Although it's UI really frames everything into the whole screen, it limits what you can do on it. Say for example you are from Java and you want to run an IDE on the GOS platform. That's not happening natively. Because GOS was meant for you to be able to run you whole OS in a sort of web browser, all the apps will need to be on the web. So it means that if you want to run your IDE, you must first convert all the C, Java, whatever code and UI you've got for that IDE and convert it into PHP, AJAX, Javascript, HTML and so on in order to get it to run on GOS. This is a real turn off. Why can't the a developer that uses that IDE simply just get Windows on his netbook and run it off that? The hassel of porting apps to another platform will really limit the number of apps for the pro user of netbooks.
Putting XP on a netbook, even though it could get a little slow, will open your netbook up to a lot more features than GOS will provide.
As for the rest of the users, you will have to be connected onto the internet before you can do anything on GOS. GOS links your Docs, G Cal, Gmail, Twitter, FB, and everything you normally (as a casual computer user) would do in web form. Web form of office (Docs) Web form of mail (Gmail) etc.
The user doing those tasks who has internet connection (via 3G, Wifi, etc.) will benefit from the nicer UI when dealing with Twitter, Documents, Facebook, Social interaction etc. on their small screen netbook device.
As for the higher level users, they are going to have a hard time getting their tasks done because incompatibility and difficulty in optimizing apps for GOS will be a hassle.
I understand that GOS is not complete and is not optimized well yet with developers. But I think that the path that Google chose to market their OS is not in the right path to WOW the professional crowd.
Feel free to comment and argue about my opinions. I love to hear other's thoughts about my articles.