I guess, although everyone and their mother already knows how to access the internet on a Windows PC or Mac so I'm not sure how big of a point that is really. Also how exactly is Chrome OS a better way to access the web? Is it superior to the Chrome browser running on another OS?
I meant that more in reference to tablets, although there are obviously some advantages to having an entire operating system dedicated to the browser. They can do some things with the window manager, for instance, that wouldn't be replicable on other OS's.
I'd say Diablo III is a pretty killer Windows app, so... two weeks ago? I'm not sure that HTML5 has taken away the focus from mobile but I'm not a developer so I gues I'll have to defer to the experts on this.
Ah, but games are different. If you're a PC gamer then you shouldn't even be looking at Chrome OS yet.
Hopefully MS pulls their heads out of their butts and adds WebGL to IE so we have a unified way of getting great gaming content in browsers. Until then, though, Chrome already has Native Client and that's getting some pretty serious support (
Bastion and
From Dust as recent examples.)
As for running faster do you actually have any benchmarks demonstrating this? Considering Chrome OS doesn't have dedicated software really I'm not sure how you actually test it.
Consider The Verge's review. I quote:
"The new Series 5 is powered by a 1.3GHz dual-core Intel Celeron 867 processor and 4GB of RAM, and though those aren't exactly bleeding-edge specs they're more than up to the task of powering Chrome OS. I frequently had Rdio playing in the background, three or four windows open totaling 20 or so tabs, and a handful of site-specific apps running, and the Chromebook never once slowed down. I never even had a tab crash, and I'm all too used to seeing the "this page crashed" frowny face on desktop browsers. The device is also really quiet — there's a fan inside, but I only heard it if I put my ear right up to the computer.
I did eventually get the Chromebook to slow down and stutter a bit, but it required playing Angry Birds and Cargo Bridge simultaneously while streaming three YouTube videos and some Rdio music and having two dozen tabs open in the background. That's not exactly a "real-world" scenario, and for anything like regular use, you shouldn't run into any issue at all. Flash never crashed inside the browser, even on heavy sites like We Choose the Moon — Flash crashes constantly in Chrome on my Mac, and it's almost strange how much better it is in Chrome OS."
Try doing any of that on another OS running a 1.3 GHz Celeron processor without performance issues. You can't. Since the entire OS is optimized for Chrome, Chrome flies. Other OS's have to worry about dozens of other background processes and native apps. Not so with Chrome OS.
Modern versions of Windows, OSX, and Linux were all made this century and are focused on security.
Their cores are still trapped in the 80s and 90s, however. Well, maybe not Linux distros, those tend to not be squeamish about breaking from the past.
And no, I especially wouldn't say Windows or OS X are "focused on security." Security on Windows means downloading an extra-OS app that always runs in the background, eating resources, trying to protect you from yourself. On OS X the situation is similar, except no one's bothered to make antivirus apps even though
the door's wide open. Still, OS X has the benefit of being derived from Unix so the situation isn't a total mess like with Windows.
Do you have any real proof that Chrome OS can't or won't potentially have malware in the future, especially if it actually does become a popular OS?
Malware is something that will always exist on every platform because it hinges on user stupidity. Viruses and other kind of threats, however, I'm confident in saying will never appear on Chrome OS, even if it does become massively popular,
due to the way it's architectured.
Parts of that last paragraph are pretty much straight up false, at least for a computer literate user. "Windows bloat" is essentially a relic of the XP and earlier days. You only really see it now with people who install a ton of startup crap or get a bunch of malware that slows down the computer. I've run Windows 7 for years without performance degradation.
And it requires constant maintenance. For the primary users Chrome OS is targeted at for the moment, that's an issue. Most people don't maintain their computers, most people never uninstall anything. For those people, Chrome OS would really make a difference.
Call me when Chrome OS isn't just a browser.
Why would I do that? It's exactly what it should be. I hope it never becomes anything more.
…that launches web apps. Literally bookmarks.
This is also another piece of FUD I've seen come up. A fair amount of Chrome Web Store apps are packaged apps, meaning they include all the assets in the CRX file that downloads. So it supports Web OS-like apps too.
Plus, Chrome apps run with elevated privileges from the get-go. Instead of always asking for your location, Chrome apps list that and are granted permission on the installation dialog. It's not killer functionality but it does highlight the difference between installing a web app and just navigating to it from the URL bar.
