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Comment by ConstantineXVI | Hacker News Reader

That is one beautiful laptop (note that it's not 16:9 either). I feel like we're missing something, there's no way Google would be blind enough to build such a powerful machine (vs existing Chromebooks) that's so limited by the OS. There's either something we aren't being told or Google's jumped entirely off the deep end.

(Alternative: there's no way they could do a "Retina" Chromebook for reasonably cheap, but the Nexus 10 would seem to disprove that)

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It's not really limiting though. Between NaCl and WebGL you can do everything from 3D gaming, to Remote Desktop clients (an RDP client already is in the Web Store). It's true that a lot of the software still needs to be created, but what is going to spur that to happen if not hardware that is tuned for it?

You can't build for NaCl from CrOS, and as it stands you don't have the toolchain (editors, debuggers, shells, etc) one's used to on other platforms. I understand a $400 phone not being able to run it's own toolchain, a $1300 computer less so.

It's much easier to develop on a Chromebook than you probably think. There are many editor choices, there is Web Inspector for debugging, there is an SSH client (in NaCl), there is developer mode, there is Crouton which gives you a Ubuntu chroot without losing the rest of ChromeOS[1]. I don't do NaCl, so I can't speak to how much pain that is, but for web development I find Cloud9, Web Inspector, Secure Shell to be more than adequate.

[1]https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton

I've got a Chromebook sitting to the right of my keyboard, and routinely use it as an SSH terminal (that and the keyboard is exactly why I have it). Remote is sufficient, but not always desirable (not just offline, latency can get in the way as well); and crouton and such are kludges vs. having a proper *nix environment within CrOS (not to mention losing verified boot, which I see as a plus overall but glad it can be turned off)

Yeah, I agree that Crouton and the like are "cheating" a little bit, and I don't use them personally. I think you're being a little unfair here, though. You want verified boot and a full *NIX offline toolchain. Aren't those incompatible things? Probably the closest thing you can get to local development without cheating is if something like VirtualBox were ported to NaCl, which I don't believe exists, yet.

Not a full environment; just enough of one for average web development (meaning vim/emacs, git, ruby/nodejs/etc, NaCl compiler, and associated debuggers), a small enough set to be vetted by Google and run at low privilege while still letting an average developer get started out of the box w/o needing to figure out hosting or such right away.

Hell, just adding some project management to the inspector to act as a psuedo-IDE for Chrome apps would be a start. I've got personal attachment to *nix from using so much of it, some 12-year old that stumbled into the devtools has no such attachment.

But you're asking them to open up all of the kernel APIs to Vimscript, Emacs Lisp, Node, and Ruby... that's no different than just being another Linux Distro, which they didn't do for security reasons. If you want all of that, I don't understand why you are against chroot.

Besides, the fact that Chromebooks are running linux under the hood is an implementation detail. They could very well be running FreeDOS as far as the user should be concerned; the platform is Chrome.

I think I am just used to hardware lagging the demands of software. This just seems, odd. Especially considering how much more this computer can do with something other than chrome os. (Correct me if I'm forgetting something, but is there anything chrome os can do that another OS can not already do?)

is there anything chrome os can do that another OS can not already do?

Stay maintenance and virus free?

This feels as vacuous as when the linux crowd used to proclaim it. Hell, just within the webapp realm that Google is good at, they haven't exactly been stellar with long term support of some products. I mean, I never worried about maintenance or viruses in Google Buzz, either. Luckily, I also didn't worry about it sticking around. :)

Discliaimer: I work for Google, but don't know about real strategy decisions about this.

I think it's all about establishing more demand for web apps.

Already I can do everything I need to in Chrome except for a nice development environment, though Cloud9 is getting closer, and music apps like Logic. Those are quite doable though, especially with the Chrome App APIs, someone just needs to get the ball rolling.

The current crop of Chromebooks were really inexpensive and nice for the money, but they weren't going to appeal to the cutting edge tech users who will loudly demand and use better web apps. Chrome needs something that inspires, and I think the Pixel will do that. I've used it for a while now and the hardware is incredibly nice. It'll also create space between the $200-300 Chromebooks and the Pixel for some decent mid-range devices.

I can't imagine there are that many people who want to spend $1,300 to use web apps. People use GMail, Google Docs, etc, because they're cheap, not because they're good. That's why the $250 Chromebooks sell any units--because they're cheap. This thing takes the "cheap" aspect out of the equation, which seems like a mind-blowingly stupid decision.

I use gmail and google docs because they're good. Why else would I use them? Cheap? There's plenty of free email programs out there. None compare to gmail. I'll agree that when I need to get really down and dirty with a spreadsheet, I whip out Excel, not google spreadsheets, but for most of my "lists that need some numbers to add/multiply together", google spreadsheets work great and are always available from wherever I am.

Which is not to say I think you're wrong. No one's going to spend this much money on something so limiting. If we were 10 years in the future and we all had gigabit network speeds, and there were enough awesome web apps to replace the hard working desktop apps (photoshop, IDEs, CAD, etc)... then yes.... but I would still hope the specs would be better for the price. 4GB of RAM in a $1300 machine? What is this, 2005?

The sort of webapps Google is talking about are very intensive. JavaScript and NaCl replacements for desktop apps.

IMHO, all it needs for a decent developer environment is semi-sanctioned shell access and a package manager. I've been using the age-old SSH+tmux combo fine, all that's really hurting me is latency. I'm kind of surprised Google hasn't taken up the task of building their own web-app IDE (but not that surprised, if what I keep hearing about Google not allowing code checked out on laptops is correct it's hard to improve much on SSH).

I want this machine to work, I just don't see how it can without being self-hosting.

Well said, that's my thought as well. If you look at the complaints in this thread (lack of VMs, lack of Photoshop equivalents, etc.) won't get created until there is compelling hardware capable of running them. We're already seeing an explosion of web apps to fill the need of regular Chromebook users (stuff like RDP clients are a hot item in the Web Store these days), but it will take something more capable before we get, for example, good WebGL games.

I don't think a high price (>$1000) will establish 'more' demand.

anyone who buys these will establish demand for apps. Even if it isn't many, it is one front.

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