In Defense of Chrome OS | Hacker News Reader

In Defense of Chrome OS

techcrunch.com

4 pointshornokplease7 comments

So the "defense" as I read it boiled down to:

1) Just because it isn't ready yet doesn't mean it won't be someday,

2) It has a better chance of being improved because it's closer than other Google projects to their company's core competency, and

3) The market may not be ready for it yet.

Even if I grant the first two, that last point is problematic. While there are plenty of people who like keeping their data in the cloud, I get the impression the Chrome OS use case is for people who only want their data in the cloud. I wonder how many machines that will equal, given that we've just had a couple of decades of laptop usage and having more than one computer is popular.

Tangentially, at the risk of sounding like a 2nd cousin to rms, I find I'm still a trifle irked that Android and Chrome are being referred to as operating systems when in fact they're new user interfaces stuck on top of Linux.

Why do people feel the need to 'defend' products that aren't their own? Either those products will stand by themselves, or they aren't worth it.

Has MG Siegler ever written anything worth anyone's time to read?

Why do people feel the need to 'attack' products? Either those products will fail by themselves, or they're worth it.

I don't think a pre-beta product needs any defense further than the fact that it is pre-beta. Besides most of the 'reviews' were positive about the OS and critical about the hardware which is merely the conduit for the OS at this point.

Back in the dark ages, we used to break pre-production into three stages: alpha (distribution inside the organization for comment, subject to possible radical change after feedback), beta (distribution to key customers for feedback), and gamma (more wide-spread release after feature-freeze).

I don't know how you can call something "pre-beta" if you're giving it a release outside the organization. It's not as if Google didn't know people would be commenting on it. What does that term mean?

It's just a way of saying that the beta is released earlier than it normally might be, on account of caring more about getting user feedback early and less about that feedback being taken as negative reviews.

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