A blurry snapshot of ChromeOS has surfaced showing a new, Mac-like dock and some battery and wireless notifiers in the bottom corner. This OS looks so stripped down compared to other OSes we’ve used that we’re loathe to call it anything more than a shell. However, we all love us some Google so let’s just stare at it for a while while we eat our Subway sub.
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What happens when you mix one of the best ‘budget’ beers with the best messenger bag company in the biz? The best messenger bag of all time! That’s right, friends, Chrome is giving away one (or maybe more than one, I don’t know) LE Citizen PBR bag. How do you win? I’m glad you asked because it’s the easiest contest I’ve ever come across.
Sign up for Chrome’s e-mail correspondences before July 31 and you’re automagically entered to win! A winner will be announced the following day. Easy, right?
Citizen PBR Bag [Chrome]
Walid Abu-Hadba, Microsoft’s Vice President of Developer and Platform Evangelism, has gone on record to say that “[m]ost of what Google does is defensive.” He has an interesting point: all of the non-search stuff that Google invests in keep its would-be competitors on their toes, and prevent those would-be competitors from encroaching upon the cash cow of Google’s operation: search.
Although John Gruber is an avowed masticator, I do enjoy his take on issues dealing with and pertaining to technology. To wit: his take on Chrome OS which, in a few paragraphs, boils down the entire argument to “We don’t know enough yet to decide but things look interesting, although it seems like it might be a certain form of vaporware.”
John pooh poohs Google Chrome OS, just like he pooh poohed the Palm Pre. John’s a smart guy, and has some good insights into the technology world. But on the issue of Google Chrome OS, I think he’s wrong. Google isn’t in the operating system market, it’s in the software services market. The easier Google can make it to get to their hosted applications, the more customers they’ll have. To paraphrase Larry Ellison’s famous quote, “the web is the operating system”.
We’ve been sitting things out today as our brothers at TC pant over ChromeOS, the latest OS based on Linux to impress, however lightly, upon the synapses of our country’s journalistic elite. ChromeOS can’t beat anything. In fact suggesting that ChromeOS will beat Windows or even OS X is like expecting Coby to come up behind Sony and Samsung next year in Blu-Ray player popularity. As a wise man once said “Ain’t the same ** ballpark. It ain’t the same league, it ain’t even the same ** sport.”
ChromeOS is a specialized version of Linux designed for netbooks. It is more like Android than anything else and, as Fake Steve notes, no one will use it. Oh, manufacturers will pay lip service to it and maybe someone will install it on a few million machines but it will be a drop in the bucket compared to the powerful web OSes called Windows 7 and OS X.
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It’s hard to type a blog post when one hand is being used to pat myself on the back.
Last year I wrote a post about the just launched Chrome browser titled Meet Chrome, Google’s Windows Killer. From that article:
Chrome is nothing less than a full on desktop operating system that will compete head on with Windows…Expect to see millions of web devices, even desktop web devices, in the coming years that completely strip out the Windows layer and use the browser as the only operating system the user needs.
One representative response to my quote above, from The Register: “In no way can this statement be construed to make sense, and I’m not just being a pedantic asshole here. Fortunately, El Reg readers are with it enough to know that you need a proper OS before you can have a browser.”
We jumped on the chance to take a look at two of Chrome’s newest bags: the Corsair and Vega. As Peter Ha told me, Chrome is one of the last true makers of messenger bags. He is rarely right about anything, but this time he was dead-on. These bags are rad. Read More
Unlike Timbuk2 or Manhattan Portage, San Francisco-based Chrome has managed to stick to their core roots without sacrificing their souls to make diaper bags and yoga mat holders just to make an extra buck. It’s inevitable, though, that after 14 years Chrome would expand their line of bags to include those of us that aren’t as hardcore as the couriers biking around cities like Manhattan.
I’m not the biggest “download the source and compile” person out there, but if you are, you may have been following Google’s ongoing browser experiment as it rockets through release numbers. It’s not exactly available for macs just yet, but you can compile it and make it go as a sort of pre-Alpha program. It should have all the features and optimizations of every other build, so don’t worry about being behind your Windows brothers.
Will Google Chrome signal the end of Firefox’s “geek” domination? That is, will Chrome one day replace Firefox as the computer savvy user’s browser of choice? Maybe, friends. Maybe. Reasons? Chrome is faster, it’s newer (who doesn’t love a shiny, new toy?) and it’s architecturally better—a YouTube tab crash doesn’t bring down the entire browser.
So everybody’s talking about Chrome and how fast it is, and Google is talking about keeping it open and all that. Well, just how open is the sucker? How about super open. This savvy gentleman took Chrome apart and found evidence of 25 open source project libraries being used in its code. They really did take a bite out of everybody. And I bet they’re taking bits from OpenMoko and the LiMo group for Android-Chrome.
Check it out and see if you’ve got some code in there. There’s a pretty good chance, like 25 in 8,000,000,000.
Dramatization
Floating around Twitter and Tumblr the past day or so has been the rather restrictive EULA that Google has in place for its Chrome Web browser. People were freaking out, as they do so often in today’s hypersensitive climate, because it looked like Google was making a legal claim to each and every bit you transmit while using the browser. Post to a message board or blog? Google owns the post. Upload your garage band’s songs to a Web server? Congrats, Google now has the exclusive rights to your songs. And so on.
That’s not the case, Google has assured everyone.
That scary language was a mistake, Google says, and the EULA will be changed retroactively.
I like how Ars Technica points out that anyone with some amount of computer savvy could legally walk around the EULA by the downloading its source code and compiling it on their own.
Also, I’m hoping to have a little “This Mac users’ take on Chrome” either later today or tomorrow. Oh, it’ll be a barn burner, you can take that to the bank.
Here’s a cartoon from GeekCulture.com’s Joy of Tech series. Enjoy.
The Joy of Tech [GeekCulture.com]
Just fired up Google Chrome, Google’s new web browser. I haven’t had a chance to really dig into it yet, but I’ve noticed that it feels really, really fast. Almost like I’m loading up cached pages offline. Google Reader, especially, feels super quick.
I’ve noticed a couple of little CSS oddities here and there (YouTube videos are centered in our posts when using Firefox but left-aligned in Chrome, for instance) but other than that, it’s been humming along pretty nicely.
But enough about me. How are those of you who have already downloaded and installed Chrome liking it so far? Good? Bad? Think you’ll keep using it?
Update from Devin: It lacks a home button, which isn’t such a big deal until you think about how useful they’re trying to make their “speed dial” thing. I have a personalized, extremely useful home page that I go back to in already-open tabs all the time. I also am addicted to gestures and there are none in Chrome, so while it’s clearly super fast, it’s not very productive for me in this form. What do you guys think?
Update 2: Found the home button, I was just being stupid. I would like gestures, though. And the bookmark bar buttons should close if you click them twice or otherwise act like menus. Scrolling doesn’t seem to obey my universal settings of three text lines per “notch” or equivalent. Fast as hell though.
While not totally a surprise, Google announced (somewhat accidentally) not too long ago that it will launch an open source Web browser later today, named Chrome. (Screenshots have also leaked.) Quite literally, every site on the Web is talking about it, because when Google jumps, we all need to say “how high?”
Google’s rationale for launching a new Web browser is that today’s Web sites—YouTube, Facebook, Picnik, Twitter, Photosynth, SmugMug, and so on—are more than just a Drudge Report-style collection of text links; browsers need to evolve to make using these rich Web sites and Web applications as easy as possible. Hence, Chrome.
It’s scheduled to come out later today, while TechCrunch is covering it from A to Z.
I’ll reserve judgment till it comes out. Maybe they’ll do a east-to-west time zone release—I’d get it before the rest of the guys (Peter, Biggs, Doug, Devin, Matt, etc) in the states!
Check it aspiring rappers/blacksmiths. Though not officially from Nintendo, a full chrome DS casing set is now available from SHOCK! via ConsoleShop.com. It’s supposed to be easy-to-install, very durable, and looks hella cool to boot. You’ll have to replace the case and buttons, but it shouldn’t be harder than trying to replace an iPhone battery. Get it now for $39.95 or pay the price of not being the coolest kid on the block.
SHOCK! CASE FOR DS LITE *MAGNUM CHROME* [ConsoleShop]
To the diehard fans the Nintendo Wii is the gold standard for console gaming, and soon they’ll have a chance to show their system at least in chrome if not actual gold. A new outer shell, the I-Case, will be available at the end of the month from XCM for $37.99, giving the console that extra high-tech look. And if the shiny cyber-look isn’t your thing, alternate colors include Crystal Blue and Black – you know because a black console seems to be all the rage. The company claims everyone from “young games to your Gran” can install the I-Case. We’ll find out sometime in a few weeks whether that’s the truth or if I’ll have to go buy a new Wii.
