Hacker News Reader

Comment by caffinatedmonk | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious why they didn't mention something so game changing as this in the keynote.

Chromebooks in general don't seem to get that much attention. I'm not sure why, maybe they're not as ground-breaking as... another messaging app... that isn't even out yet...

Everyone wants to be the only walled garden... https://xkcd.com/927/

Managing expectations, I think. Google tends to release early and with sometimes experimental products where the quality/UX is not super great. I expect this will have some rather rough edges.

That doesn't stop them from announcing all sorts of things that have rough edges. Some of them keep their rough edges for years.

What game is this changing, really?

Having offline apps is game changing because not everyone has access to the Internet all day long, and doing tasks like image and video editing on your laptop will be much easier and faster than using web services.

So, like having a Mac or Windows laptop, but restricted to either webapps or walled garden.

This is not game changer. It is exciting and might help grow the Android ecosystem. I just hope Google learned from the Honeycomb fiasco.

You can side-load Android Apps on Android.

I'd be pretty surprised if you won't be able to side-load Android apps on ChromeOS.

You can already side-load Android apps on ChromeOS, as well as with Chrome on other platforms. All you need is the ArcWelder chrome extension, which I'm pretty sure is provided by google themselves, to package up an apk into a chrome app: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/arc-welder/emfinbm...

But chromebooks already have lots of offline apps? They have been available for the majority of the Chromebooks' lifespan at this point.

Sorry, not trying to be argumentative but this doesn't change the game.

It's cool, but not game changing.

If it's get too affordable with a low-end hardware, most users will still opt for LAN cafe which is popular in China and some countries and is cheapest option for gaming and surfing Internet.

The cheapest notebook is about US$200.

Touchscreen support. For example, I use Zinio to read magazines. The webapp can't zoom, doesn't handle portrait mode well, and is pretty bad with touch. Actually it's pretty broken in general. But the Android app runs great on my Chromebook and has a good fullscreen touch UI.

Similar with something like Google Play Books. The Android app has a good fullscreen touch UI and has a notes feature that the webapp doesn't.

Literally? Hearthstone. You can now play Hearthstone on a Chromebook.

Perhaps not game changing, but it is interesting to look at the overall 'universal' app trend between Apple, Microsoft and Google.

Microsoft's UWP platform - for Microsoft it's about bringing users from their strong desktop market to Windows Phone.

Google - Android apps on Chrome OS. Google seem to be doing the opposite of Microsoft and making a play for the desktop market.

Apple and the iOS-ification of OS X - Similar to Google, Apple seem to be preparing to pull in their phone market stronghold onto the desktop.

Seems like Microsoft and Google are directly competing here, and Apple is competing with themselves.

>Apple and the iOS-ification of OS X - Similar to Google, Apple seem to be preparing to pull in their phone market stronghold onto the desktop.

Is this what the relatively recent bitcode stuff with iOS apps is for?

It's a pretty huge deal, at least in my eyes. Chromebooks have this enormous following because of the price. Now, every app in the Play Store is installable to this huge group of laptop users. That means when a company wants their app to be on Android, they consent to it being on laptops as well. This means Microsoft Office and Apple Music are on ChromeOS laptops. It's a very effective strategy to vastly increase the viability of Chromebooks for regular users using other companies' apps. I never expected to see Apple developing apps for a Google-controlled laptop OS, but here we are.

Anyone know what would happen if one were to install BOTH the Android AND Chrome OS version of an app (e.g. Gmail)?

probably nothing, you'll have two different Gmail apps

I see -- kinda like having OpenOffice and Microsoft Office on the same PC I guess -- either one can open a .doc document.

Best bet, they're kept separately. Different runtimes (one JRE, one browser environment).

Well, ART not JRE.

urm, there is a gmail app on chromeos?

it just links to gmail.com if i use the gmail shortcut on my tray and i couldnt find another app on the store.

I was under the impression they had built an offline version of Gmail for Chrome OS. I suppose not.

They run out of time apparently.

Because they are killing Chromebooks. http://www.theverge.com/2015/10/29/9639950/google-combining-...

I thought this was a big rumor for a few days that ended up getting extinguished by a Google exec.

Yeah. But then they build devices like the Pixel C, which were clearly supposed to be Chrombooks[1] and they have both groups reporting to the same managers.

So.. read the actions.

[1] http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/12/the-pixel-cs-bumpy-ro...

The Pixel C is a tablet with an optional keyboard available, so if it was (as it clearly seems) planned to be a ChromeOS device, it was a third form factor from the existing Chromebooks and Chromeboxes.

But making a decision not to expand ChromeOS devices to include "Chromeslates" is not the same thing as killing Chromebooks.

Did you even read the article?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com