During his keynote speech at the Worldwide Partner Conference, Steve Ballmer has dismissed Google’s announcement of Chrome OS. “There’s good data that says 50 percent of the time that someone’s on their PC, they’re not doing something with the Web browser,” Ballmer said, suggesting that an ideal operating system would provide both rich online and offline integration. It is not sure yet what Chrome OS will exactly offer.
Hey Microsoft a modern browser already has support for working offline. Silly Ballmer.
Hey, Lennie.. not everything done offline requires a web browser.
I understand that, but I read it like, you _need_ to be online, but that’s not true either. Although the webpage/-application needs to be designed for it, if properly designed their is a whole lot you can do offline these days. Most people probably don’t know this yet and Ballmer/Microsoft/IE doesn’t understand this yet.
Just ignore Ballmer, his competence is buried in a bunch of sharades he has done over the years.
I agree with Ballmer this time. I don’t often use a web browser when I work on my computer. There are plenty of activities that require a desktop application, and among which the best ones are Windows/Mac only. Apps that come to mind are related to photo editing, video editing, publishing software, applications that are not restricted to professionals anymore, especially with the YouTube and blogging generation. What would you do if you had only a web browser in your OS? You would need a dual-boot with Windows or a regular Linux distro (not just Google OS).
This statement of his regarding Chrome OS is quite surprising considering his usual responses. “HAHAHAHAHAHA! It doesn’t even have a KEYBOARD!” when asked about the iPhone comes to mind.
EDIT: Even more surprising is that I agree with him in principle. I’d be willing to assume that the only office software you’d be able to use with Chrome OS would be online offerings like Google Docs or that other one… “Zoho” or something? I tried using Google Docs for everything a while back, and I found it to be very underfeatured. Using it offline with Google Gears also revealed a major flaw in that I couldn’t create a new document without being online. People who don’t fully understand what they’re for say that netbooks are toys, but Chrome OS looks like it’s going to really turn netbooks into toys.
Edited 2009-07-14 22:49 UTC
FTA:
So, let me get this straight… this is the CEO of Microsoft is claiming that you only need one “client OS”?
Perhaps he should be worrying about his own company’s OS selection first then… Last time I checked, there were almost a dozen different versions of “Windows” floating around, and just cuz they have the word “Windows” in the title doesn’t make them the same OS.
In fact, if you want to split hairs, Android and Chrome OS are both going to be Linux… right?
edit: stupid quote block
Edited 2009-07-14 23:06 UTC
Well, I didn’t RTFA, but even so I should have known Ballmer would say something stupid like that. I just agreed on the principle that an OS which requires you to always be online (though I’m sure Microsoft will eventually get there too) is a bad idea.
FWIW, I didn’t actually mean to reply to your comment, but rather post a new one entirely – that was my stupid mistake :/
No, he’s claiming Google only needs one client OS, not everybody, that’s why he specifically brought up Android.
Google OS really need “always online” feature. It is close, though. Some netbooks (Sony Vaio P, for example) have it already.
I thought his rationale made sense and it’s exactly the focus for OS X. There is always a first.
… I find myself in the unusual position of agreeing with Ballmer on this. If my netbook is only useful in places I can get an internet connection, it’s useless to me – useless on the bus, useless over in the park, useless on the plane. It *must* be functional on it’s own, without relying on external services.
I doubt it will “require” internet connection at all times. Highly doubt it. In fact I think you comment is very apt because I think this is exactly the reason why Chrome OS is being built the way it is.
With almost all recent browsers, and in particular Chrome, the ability to store data in a local data store is possible (ala Google Gears for Chrome). Sure, there are going to be certain types of apps that require net access to even function, but that will be a function of the apps design, not a limitation of the underlying platform.
If you set your http headers correctly, and your combination of HTML/JS is static (does not directly rely on any data outside of the browsers data store), it is fairly simple to deploy a web application that can be cached by the client pretty much indefinitely (or until the client can get a net connection and check for any updates).
Combine a local data store with synchronization with a server backing store and you can get pretty much the equivalent of what most mobile applications do now – the main difference being instead of syncing with your home computer you sync with the cloud (I hate that term… but it fits here).
I imagine this is the type of app Chrome OS will be designed for. It’s all doable now – its just that the demand for this type of application on desktops is limited – desktops are almost always connected to the internet – working “offline” isn’t that big of a feature so few people bother writing things this way. Its also not that big of a feature on mobile devices for the same reason – most of the modern ones go for an “always online” design that doesn’t need it. But netbooks/laptops in particular are NOT always online – most rely on Wifi which isn’t always available.
I’m sure Chrome OS will offer some layer of application/window management that tries to abstract this away to some degree to make things “feel” more like desktop apps – but under the hood it will probably be pretty standard web application design. This is all speculative of course, but it makes sense to me. Imagine gmail with local mail storage implemented transparently… They already do this in fact
, its just that few people care at this point – but on a netbook it will probably be a big deal.
I don’t think the point is that you can write better apps this way. The point is you can write web based apps that can be deployed as desktop apps without a whole lot of implementation differences. If you implement the local data store correctly you can pretty much abstract it away – its an optional feature that is of real value only when your offline.
Sorry for the long rant… I might have went a bit overboard
+1. I spend most of the time coding offline, so such OS has limited target segment. How about playing a nice game, offline ?
I love it when Ballmer opens his mouth because he epitomises what is wrong with Microsoft within a single sound bite. There is very little information that is divulged about this new Google OS – for all we know it could be a desktop orientated distribution based on a hypothetical Android 2.0. Little information is released but of course that isn’t going to stop the likes of Ballmer make broad sweeping statements.
Microsoft pretty much know that anything Google touches almost turns to gold either instantly or within a small time period; the only technologies from Microsoft that have taken off are those which were either created by other companies acquired through acquisitions or based on those foundations; case in point would be hotmail and Messenger and their symbiotic relationship.
My loathing of Microsoft has less to do with the fact that it is Microsoft and more to do with their detachment with reality and unwillingness to be self critical or accept criticism from outside their own company and take that criticism onboard.
Edited 2009-07-15 04:56 UTC
To be honest, we have enough information about Google OS to draw conclusions:
– It’s going to be a Linux distro
– It’s going to have only Chrome as an application
Basically it’s going to have even less features than existing Linux distros that have arguably failed (with hardly 1% usage share). What does Google expect? Sticking a “Google” logo to the boot screen won’t be enough to make it successful.
People want to edit their videos before sending them to YouTube, they want to watch DVB-T television on their computer while retouching their vacation photos before sending them to their Facebook profile, they want snappy full-featured and desktop-based office suites (not Google Docs). The web has its pros but it won’t replace well-established desktop applications. I’m taking a look at all applications on my computer, and many of them can’t be replaced by a web browser…
Nice to see that you ignore the fact that one can have locally hosted applications using web based technologies; there is nothing stopping Google from offering that and connecting it to their services when the user wants to synchronise between their application and services.
Who does that? I’d love to meet these ‘millions of people’ – I’d love you to point out where Google has said this is a device for everyone for every occasions.
Again, how many end users do that? I can’t think of a single person in my whole family and friends who do such things. I’ve deleted the rest because you’re making unrealistic assumptions about end users and what they use their computers for. In the 10 years I have been supporting end users I’ve yet to see an end user use their computer for even half the stuff you’re talking about.
Heck, New Zealanders tend to have a very quick adoption rate when it comes to mobile phones, computers, internet, online banking, pay television – and I’ve yet to see what you claim that the average person does.
Ok, my wife, who is truely a noob, the kind of person who would reply “the Internet” when asked what a web browser is, well, she will not use a browser-based OS for simple reasons:
– She prefers Windows Live Messenger to Meebo (and to any other IM clients, BTW)
– She prefers the good old MS Word to Google Apps (she used it only once, a long time ago, she doesn’t like OO.o either, BTW)
– She resizes her photos from her digital camera to fit Facebook/Orkut’s size limits, using Photoshop
– She uses Windows Media Player to listen to her MP3s
– She uses an application to learn how to type quickly
– She has Skype minimized connected all the time
This is for a person I particularly consider *non* tech-savvy. In my case, I would add the following apps that I can’t use with just a web browser:
– Dreamweaver
– Photoshop
– TextPad
– 7-Zip, WinISO, WinRAR
– Apache, PHP, MySQL
– Backup Magic
– CDBurnerXP
– CutePDF
– DVBViewer
– WS_FTP Pro
So, the usage is really restricted (checking your mail on a trip, basically). Why changing if you lose features? No.
If Google wants to expand from the netbook to the desktop, it will have to make all these popular desktop apps available easily, not poor web apps and a browser.
She uses PHOTOSHOP to resize her photos??!!
So…does she have Photoshop permanently swapped to disk, “ready” to load in 40 sec. every time she needs to crop a photo?
I am not about to comment on the quality of PS as an image manipulation tool – it’s still without competition for those who know how to navigate it (and don’t know how to code), but – owning the entire Adobe portfolio of software on my wonderful 2009 quad-core workstations with their 10K rpm drives and whatnot – I STILL would never EVER consider challenging my patience with starting up PS for a mere crop.
ImageMagick + a custom script for previewing selections and magnetizing to borders will do this is 3 seconds, by which time PS is still busy drawing its splash screen…
I do agree.
I’ll talk about what happens here in brazil, mostly on lanhouses:
People read web email (hotmail, gmail, …), check news at Orkut (FaceBook, MySpace, …) and connect to Msn (Google Talk, Aol,…).
The only thing they use that is offline is Microsoft Office, mostly because it is the only thing they know. If there was a openoffice hack to imitate the menu and options position and names, like gimpshop does, most people would simply do not care.
So Google has only to provide a offline office app – probally google docs with gears – and convice people to use it to replace windows. And this is while Microsoft itself does not release Online Office 2010!
The other ones can be used online, even throught Microsoft sites, like Outlook (OWA), Live Messenger, etc.
In the end it is kind of funny, but Microsoft can be helping Chome OS by releasing it’s products free on the web
True, and alot of this could easily be provided through either remote or locally hosted applications using web based technology; I could see a Pidgin like multiprotocol client using web based technologies so that the end user wouldn’t notice a difference.
I remember the prior person was talking about ‘touching up photos’, I wouldn’t be surprised if it included flash considering that Adobe themselves run a facility that allows photo tweaking online which is flash based.
Given that the main focus of Google OS is as a netbook; I don’t see people doing high end rendering; heck, at the best of time it is difficult to find people who actually tweak their photo beyond cropping parts of the picture and plonking it in a new file.
The funny part about OpenOffice.org are the number of people who refer it over Office 2007 because they are used to the old way of doing things – that not to say there is anything wrong with Office 2007, on the contrary I love using Office 2007 (and Office 2008 for Mac) but for some, they would sooner keep things the way they are than move forward.
I look through GMail and other facilities that offer rich user experiences and I now I don’t even run mail.app because the online facilities are that good; mobile internet is cheap and reliable enough to use on my laptop so if I do need to access my mail it is fairly easy.
Then there is also what one can do with what Adobe and Sun are promoting too; so there are lots of ways to deliver desktop applications without it necessarily being native, having to be connected to the internet or some other litany of excuses.
Well, there’s a minor problem: we’re talking about netbooks as a target here, which in my book is far from a PC (well, it’s a personal computer, but you know what I mean). I don’t have statistics, but I’d say netbook users spend quite some time online when they are using their netbooks. On the other hand, we probably have already become quite accustomed to Ballmer dismissing Google stuff.
The netbook is the first step. Google most probably will also target the desktop.
Android is aimed for phones and Chrome OS is aimed for netbooks. I don’t see the problem.
Much like how MS have Microsoft have Windows Mobile for phones and Windows XP for netbooks.
In fact, one could go further in pointing out Balmers hypocracy by also listing Windows CE (aimed at everything from integrated devices to desktops) and soon-to-be-released Windows 7 (aimed at netbooks too).
He disses everything that doesn’t come from Microsoft. Then if what ever it is takes off Microsoft makes something like it and talks about how great an idea it is.
Balmer to me is the “George ‘dubya’ Bush” of Microsoft. Every time he says something like this, or does a monkey dance on stage, I imagine some PR guy cringing off stage, sobbing into the unused script.
If what Balmer says is true and 50% of the time, people aren’t using their browser, that means they are the other 50% of the time!.
I will bet good money that there are three apps that would account for about 90% of that non-browser 50%: Outlook, Word and MSN Messenger.
All three of those applications could easily be replaced by offline/online web-based apps, and imagine what you could get in return; a fresh new OS with no backwards compatibility issues, and minimal bloat.
Even if Balmer’s right (unlikely) there’s still a massive market for this type of OS in the ATM/kiosk world.
My company is developing an online desktop. We do it because it’s the only thing that makes sense. Want to use a “heavy” app? How about drawing on 1000s of cores online?
So…working offline? No problem – our desktop will sync with storage as soon as it gets back online.
Look to AMDs “rent GPU-power” initiative and understand that this is the way of the future. The Cloud is what everybody wants, it’s just personal information security and can-it-run-offline that’s the key problems to solve.
Microsoft still has to finance Win7, so they’re pretending they haven’t understood this quite yet, but their cloud product will support MySQL, so clearly they ARE getting it…
End users want to go to a store, buy a product, press “On” and be ON. That’s it. They are busy doing something WITH computers, if only entertaining themselves, not worrying about HOW it’s done (if the apps are designed to not make them worry, as they should be), or rather, that’s how it SHOULD be. Unfortunately, usability is at odds with inertia, so development is slow and users still too often frustrated with their computing experience.
This is – still – coming from someone who works in Vim 75% of the time. It’s also coming from someone who thinks the iPhone and iPod are superior products (though the sound quality isn’t) because of their superior GUIs in general and UI metaphors in particular, but who refuses to bite into the Apple (I don’t like praying to any god, however superior).