How Google Stole Apple's Thunder And Became Our Favorite Tech Company Again | Hacker News Reader

How Google Stole Apple's Thunder And Became Our Favorite Tech Company Again

sfgate.com

2 pointsUnited8572 comments

Bored during a recent commute home I decided to pay attention to the gadgets people were using. Then, in conversation with my sister it dawned on me: "Apple products are for old people!". My sister agreed, elaborating that "old people just need a simple device they can use for making phone calls plus the middle-class/post-middle-age have the money to buy into the Apple 'it just works' dream. 'It just works' is another way of saying 'simple' and that is what they want."

Although there are a gazillion web designers/web coders out there sat in front of their allegedly hip MacBookPros that will disagree with me, take a look at the Apple demographic on your next commute. Whilst you are at it look at the 'Samsung' demographic (including those with other Android devices). Apple products are the conservative choice, the safe bet for those of a certain 'elderly' demographic.

On the desktop Apple products do spare people of the tedium that goes with a classic Windows PC - ages to start up, lots of virus dangers and lots of 'reboot to install this pointless upgrade' scenarios. However, Google, with their Chromebooks have shown that there is another way and the choice is no longer Apple or really-boring PC.

The bit I like about Chromebooks is how everyone says the Google Pixel is 'a very expensive browser'. The bit they don't see is how Google have moved on from the classic 'WIMP' desktop metaphor that is now many decades old.

ChromeOS is not a 'skuomorphic metaphor' in the way Apple OSX is, it is a pure web experience, the future now. Sure you cannot run ye-olde-desktop-programs with it, however, there are much better collaborative tools for creating content that are almost here. ChromeOS forces you to work with these new and improved tools because you cannot work with Wordperfect/MS Word any more. It is great and it is no tragedy at all that those gatekeepers of yesteryear - Microsoft and Apple - haven't really got much to offer for this brave new world.

Excellent comment, and I'm a fan of most of what Google does, as well.

But I cannot support Chromebooks with my consumer dollars. (Nor do I like their self-driving car project.) My fiance and I are both in IT security.

The way we see it is- if your PC data is stored "in the cloud" instead of on discs YOU own and control, you're vulnerable in many ways.

Network connectivity goes down for a period of time? Can't do your word processing! Ectetera, etcetera.

I use all kinds of Google web services (including Gmail and Google Docs). I sometimes develop websites for clients that are hosted on third party web servers. I integrate Dropbox with every device I own, and I love it.

But my local discs sync with Dropbox as much and as often as they can. And I would never put something I don't want people to see (pirated media, "sexy" photos of myself, etc.) into my Dropbox folder.

I use "cloud services" but I always back up my content to discs I OWN and CONTROL, and my private stuff never sees the Internet. If something is on a web server you don't own, always assume other people (even if only employees of the company that owns the web server) can see it.

And if network connectivity fails, even if only briefly, it shouldn't be able to stop you from accessing your everyday PC data and engaging in activities that shouldn't have to have Internet access to work.

Noooo... I'd never buy a Chromebook. And I normally love Google and I'm definitely a Linux geek.

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