I personally find the Angry Birds-Facebook-Netflix picture of the future of computing extremely depressing. Where's Google's suite of content creation apps that "non-techy" people can explore to express their creativity?
In the visual arts, a lot of the people who do amusing Photoshop work are not professionals. Also consider MySpace in the 2000s. You might argue that MySpace isn't a good illustration of the value of giving people creative freedom, but you can't deny that a lot of people were eager to take advantage of it.
Then there are the people who get into sound editing or musical arrangement. These days a kid might start with making a ringtone and then escalate. Personally, I'm the least "creative" and least musical person you'll ever meet, but even I spent a whole day trying to arrange a decent-sounding version of "Walk Like an Egyptian" using a digital music program on my Apple IIgs. Why "Walk Like an Egyptian?" I have no idea. When I was thirteen I recorded myself belching, reversed it, dropped the tone an octave or two, added an echo and made it the shutdown sound for Windows 3.1. I told my parents it was the sound of a WWII submarine preparing to submerge. (Eventually, I figured out that code was my preferred way of expressing myself. I had fun writing computer programs that made pretty mathematical patterns on the screen, among other things.)
Putting content creation tools in the hands of everyone is key because you never know who's going to use them. Some kid decides to make something cute or awesome or badass or smartass and the next thing you know s/he's hooked on sound editing or what-not. Unfortunately, the model of commercial software development is to give someone a free taste, then frustrate them with limitations, and then take their credit card and charge them for the pro version. Kids are easily frustrated, may not have access to a credit card, and even if they have a card, may not be able to spend $100 or more for professional-quality software.
However, I think the answer to that concern is that non-professional content creation needs will be served by free web apps.
Content creation has never been as cheap as today. To suggest that tablets or netbooks will somehow limit that ability seems crazy to me. Just because the software isn’t yet written? Because that’s what’s happening, the software is written and perfected (Have you seen GarageBand? Google Docs? The list goes on.) and meanwhile we are all in transition anyway. All those PCs won’t disappear overnight.
This is one of those crazy way-too-premature worries.
I love my netbook, it goes almost everywhere with me. I can touch type on it fast enough to take notes in meetings or from church sermons, I can write music on it, I can even run Visual Studio 2010 and SQL Server 2008 well enough to be productive with them.
I can't for one minute imagine how I'd be able to do anything like that without a hardware keyboard and I'm yet to see the add-on keyboard that's as stable for typing on my knees, in the back of a car, held in one hand while standing (or whatever) as any netbook. I've got no problem with tablets as devices but they still seem to be firmly consumption devices to me.
Typing is a subset of creating. Tablets are not so great for typing, sure, but PCs and tablets are both cheap. There is no reason to believe that they won't co-exist, both making it easier for everyone to create.
When I'm creating text content, a keyboard is a fast and efficient means of data entry.
When I'm creating images or doing graphic design work, I want precision of control. A touchscreen isn't fine enough.
When I'm creating music, there are a range of input options but I'd still take some persuading that a touchscreen is quite there.
But it still doesn’t matter. Looking at the whole picture, tablets make creating easier. That’s it. To suggest otherwise seems crazy to me.
...and ChromeOS would change that? Availability of tools is not something that needs to immediately follow daily use.
Not all my family cooks. We still have a kitchen.
Look at ipad running GarageBand, thats the stuff we want. People don't create only when when creating stuff sucks. Just like I only cook when all I have to do is "add hot water".
There is a quote that comes to mind: "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." - Albert Einstein.
A limitation is not the same thing as a complete absence of potential.
After correcting your analogy, I can think of situations where landlords do not provide full kitchens---for example apartments, or temporary vacation condos or business suites.
You can technically cook, but you can't cook very much.
I do think that these devices are more of an internet window. At the same time, they are in standard PC form factor. I feel chromeOS chose a bad form factor. Think about it, you are happy carrying your laptop or having a desktop with your current internet window (iPads), but imagine carrying and having chromebook with a macbook. That doesn't look like a solution, thats an ugly desk. Point being - I won't be the only one who will every now and then, mistakenly or otherwise, compare chrombooks to the PCs. If they look like one, they might as well bang like one.
HTML, CSS, and JS already won, in the sense that English had "won" a hundred years ago. What I'm waiting for browser performance and developers (myself included) to write apps that "bang", not webbooks that run legacy software.
Certainly you haven't lived if you haven't read them all, and even if you manage that, some college punk might release yet another novel just as you find yourself in the final moments of your stressful life; Jeez, the horror.
Here's a great photo/picture editor:
Those are just off the top of my head.
There is also the possibility that you are faulting Google for not making creation applications, because you don't acknowledge other participants in the venue which work very well on Chromebooks.
Just off the top of my head: http://www.aviary.com/
There are a plethora of web apps for content creation available. There are also a variety of image editing & drawing apps in the Chrome Store (and a basic drawing app in GApps).
Edit: If you want iMovie, you want a Mac. My family doesn't use iMovie (though I do personally, but the ChromeBook isnt't for me), they use YouTube video tools & Facebook video crap.
iMovie (which was the example you gave before you edited your comment) is way, way too complex for my family members, from experience (and even me, at times).
I'm helping an old lady in my neighborhood edit movies of her kindegarten class in iMovie, and I'd bet that most people would have said "oh, she doesn't need to edit videos", but one of her colleagues starting making montage videos of the class for the end of the year and she wanted to do it too. Since she has a MacBook, this is possible. If she had a Chromebook, she'd have to borrow someone's computer, and I don't know if she would have the courage to ask for that, especially since, like most old ladies, she is scared that she will break computer every time she does anything.
And there's also a photo editor on the apps store - Picnik https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/inmnggcpelemfookhl...
There are some and there will be more soon enough
If mom & pop can do their Facebook and email on the Chromebook the kid can hack away on one of these for the price of a movie and a slushy...
On the internet