Google, after a rather coy interlude, have demonstrated the new Chrome operating system for the first time. It’s fast, loads quickly, and isn’t apps-cluttered. Its initial version will be for netbooks and their solid state drives.
That rather innocuous-looking concept is another oblique hit at Microsoft and Apple. Disk drives are the traditional, rather than the obligatory, form of hard drives. Solid state has been around for a while, and it’s the equivalent of transistorization for computers, with the same likely impact that transistors had on radio.
The LA Times:
Not surprisingly, the on-screen interface of the operating system looked much like a browser. On top were tabs showing programs for e-mail, documents, a chess game, a book e-reader and more.
Pichai (Google spokesperson) showed how panels that popped up from the bottom of the screen (around Google, they've been nicknamed "moles") can be used to play music, instant message or show a quick video while browsing the Web or doing work.
To put it another way, a different configuration, one with clear ancestry to the apps environment. That makes sense, given the fact that Chrome’s apps live online.
There’s a much subtler, and much more important effect, however. What they’ve done is begin the conversion of the computer into a home appliance. When you turn on a TV or a toaster, a lot of the services/apps are sourced remotely.
That has direct applications (excuse pun) for motherboard designs, and interestingly the space freed up by redundant hardware can be used to pack a lot more into the boxes. Your computer could become far more powerful, with more ability to operate some forms of data like videos, music, etc.
Damn near anything can be hooked up to a hard drive, and if you get rid of the disk system, have a look at the box space. It’s basically a circuit board. This is also very relevant to all the things laptops can’t do, crammed with hard-to-access stuff. Real “tablets”, with access to a huge range of services, are the likely result.
The potentials are huge. Google, very practically, has made its code public, to allow the computer industry to get a good look at it. What’s runnable and what isn’t is the issue. It’s highly unlikely that the industry will miss the chance to access a good market. A company like Dell, for example, could probably set up something virtually overnight.
Google’s promo video for Chrome OS is very basic, geared to the absolute bottom line of the market, an explanatory version, with the cloud concept as the guts of it.
This is a good way of getting the basic concept across, equating the OS with phones and emails in terms of data access. The guy speaking doesn’t use the word “dude”, but that’s the general tone.
The message is “download Chrome and you’ve got it all covered”. The only thing missing is that they didn’t directly mention it’s also a defence against computer crashes. They just say “stop worrying about your computer”.
That online access is a big selling point. It may be the end of the consumer “computer myth”, too. The mystical device may become the equivalent of a phone.
Well, that was 40 years well spent. Good luck to Google for opening up the floodgates. It’ll be interesting to see how Microsoft, who’ve been touting cloud computing for years, and Apple, who’ve device-primed the world, deal with this.
