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Comment by VikingCoder | Hacker News Reader

You're confusing me, honestly. If you have a Windows box, and want to view photos, would you settle for Paint? No, you'd be nuts to.

So when you want to browse pictures from your phone on your Chromebox, upload them to flickr, and the experience is awesome.

When you want to watch some videos on your Chromebox, you watch Netflix Instant Watch, or YouTube, or Google Play Movies, and the experience is awesome.

It's like you're comparing Vanilla Windows to Vanilla Chrome. Why are you tying one arm behind your back, like that? Install some programs on that Windows box, and use the best of the web on your Chromebox.

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But you wouldn't use Paint. The Windows Photo View and Explorer actually do a more than adequate job. Windows Media Player too does a reasonable job of playing video. Netflix, YouTube and Google Play Movies don't solve the problem of plying my videos. The Mac, modern desktop Linux distos and Windows support the functionality that the OP and you crave out of the box - as do most tables, including the iPad. I just don't see where Chrome OS fits in.

Yes, YouTube does solve the problem of playing your videos. And sharing them with your friends. And archiving them, in case of disaster. If you're willing to use YouTube, of course. If not, you can use Smugmug or Flickr or Vimeo or...

ChromeOS is inherently an operating system that uses the internet to solve users' problems.

Expecting ChromeOS to have BUILT-IN ways to do what you want to, is kind of silly, in my mind. I validate that you may reject the design idea, but you're forcing it into solving problems in a way it was inherently and intentionally NOT designed to solve them.

Viewing photographs and videos is something that ChromeOS does. It is not asking too much of it to do it well.

They gave it the ability to play videos and pictures offline because even they know it is absurd to expect the user to upload all their videos and pictures.. at least prior to viewing them. They just did a half-assed job of it.

I tried looking for programs on ChromeOS to install to fix these things, the offerings are either universally abysmal or for once Google has completely failed at search because I failed to find anything that wasn't abysmal.

In the analogy, Chrome is Linux.

If you want a full-fledged system, you use GNU/Linux, or probably a distro like Ubuntu.

If you want a full-fledged system from Chrome, you use the Internet.

You can text edit with sed, but that's not how anyone uses Linux, in real life, right?

One might argue that a Linux distro without vi, ex/ed, or at least nano/pico, but rather just sed is ludicrous because no user operates like that.

If they included sed and intended it to be your text editor, as ChromeOS has included half-assed local picture and video playing (is this not what those things are for? Am I supposed to be using these things for stream manipulation, not picture/video viewing? Because if that is the case, their UI has failed to convey that.), then I would without hesitation assert that their distro was poorly considered.

"Their distro" is the Internet.

A Chromebook without the Internet is ludicrous, because no user operates like that.

They might have been better off to not have the local picture and video player. They're the embarrassing "Notepad," if I want to make the analogy to Windows, again.

"A Chromebook without the Internet is ludicrous, because no user operates like that."

I don't believe that anybody doesn't. Even android phones have better offline capabilities (Way better, and generally with less offline storage to boot) and people expect their phones to always be online.

"I don't believe that anybody doesn't."

Here are the devices I own that are always online, when they're on:

TiVo, Logitech Revue, Wii, Chromebook, Android 1, Android 2, iPhone, Desktop 1, Desktop 2, Laptop 1, Laptop 2, Laptop 3, Laptop 4, and Kindle Fire. (I might be missing a couple.)

I expect my Chromebook to ALWAYS be online. Not least of which, because my Chromebook has 3G, just like my first Android phone did.

I must inform you that there is a user who uses sed over all other text editors: me. I do use vi but I could easily survive without it; I have countless custom utilities that rely on sed. Surviving without sed would be difficult. Imagine a system that has pipes but where you cannot "write to disk"; where you do not have a TMPDIR for ed to use. With sed, this poses no problem.

Just out of curiosity - your resume was written in sed?

Actually, I used fmt. Then groff and ghostscript.

The job of fmt could be done with sed, of course. As many of HN'ers know, sed can perform the functions of many other UNIX utils. If used as an "all-purpose" program, perhaps it raises the possibility of the typical mantras about "the right tool for the job". But consider this: editing/transforming text (e.g. output from other programs) as a "job" is somewhat all-encompassing under UNIX. Everything can be a "file" and every file can be represented as "text" (e.g. ASCII, hex). What varies is the context in which you do this job of editing/transforming. It might be preprocessing source code (text) for gcc or maybe it's preprocessing a resume (text) for groff.

"When all you know is a sed, everything is a text." - Unknown

"Expecting ChromeOS to have BUILT-IN ways to do what you want to, is kind of silly, in my mind." Why?

My VCR doesn't have any BUILT-IN movies.

I really, honestly don't mean to be crass, but the analogy is apt to me.

Besides mudding the issue by confusing data with function, the Chromebook does have these features, and there is nothing about it that even indicates these features are deliberately second class citizens.

In this analogy your VCR has the ability to write an input source to a cassette, all you've got to do is hit the record button on the front of it but is incapable of writing to the first or last 10 minutes of the tape. VCR company considers cassette consumption to be the primary VCR use-case and is the use-case they are concerned with. Is it reasonable to complain about the substandard record functionality that they shipped? Is it reasonable to question the market viability of a VCR so needlessly crippled?

Is there anything in Notepad to indicate it's a deliberately second-class citizen?

My Roku doesn't have any built-in movies, my DVD player doesn't have any built-in movies...

It's not "needlessly crippled," it's brand new. Windows 3.0 would be seen as needlessly crippled if it were released today.

Look, if you don't like it, that's fine. But you can't convince me that it's not a viable product for many people, in many use cases. It might not be right for you, and I'm not saying you're wrong about that.

Notepad doesn't need to indicate that it is second-class because standard end users don't give shits about text editing. Standard end users use word processors. Text editing is itself a second class activity; playing your videos and browsing your pictures is not.

> My Roku doesn't have any built-in movies, my DVD player doesn't have any built-in movies...

Yeah, I'm starting to think you are deliberately being weird. My complaint is not that my movies were not pre-installed on the thing.

DVD players can play movies, if you plug one in.

Chrome can play movies, if you connect to a site that has them.

Standard end users don't give shits about built-in apps in Chrome. Standard end users use web applications like Google Docs, Flickr, Facebook, Smugmug, and on and on...

ChromeOS can play movies... sometimes.

Here is a fun use-case for you: A mother sits down in front of her laptop with a swanky 10GB/mo dataplan from Verizon. To her right is a SD card, on which are several videos of her children at their latest soccer game. She plugs the SD card into her computer, the SD card reader slot being one of only 5 ports that it has.

Can she watch her videos, without blowing through her dataplan?

With ChromeOS all bets are off. ChromeOS professes to support such a use case, as does her Android phone. Unlike ChromeOS, she can be confident that her Android phone will not let her down.

This isn't a reason why I don't use ChromeOS. My reasons for not using ChromeOS are weirder, and I do not fault ChromeOS for not meeting my needs. Rather, these are reasons why I could never recommend ChromeOS to friends and family, people I otherwise recommend software that I do not like to.

Yes, you have valid complaints, for why you wouldn't recommend today. I think those complaints are going to go away, over time.

The world of 10GB/mo dataplans is as dead as the world of 14.4 Kbps modems, it just doesn't know it yet. Google Fiber is going to push the other ISPs kicking and screaming into the modern world.

When I record videos on my Android Phone, they're automatically uploaded to the cloud for me. I can view them instantly. There are Android Cameras / Videocameras coming to the market that do the same trick.

Also, I'll point out to you that people in Moore, OK are looking through rubble for family photo albums. If they'd been in the cloud, instead...

Also, Notepad professes to be a word processor. It sucks at it, and ChromeOS's native video-watching app sucks at it.

YouTube or any other Internet Only service does not solve the problem of playing my videos very well.

Why would I want to upload gigabytes of video instead of downloading a small program to play them locally? If I care about archiving things - why would I want to archive just my video files?

I don't think anyone expects ChromeOS to have many built-in ways of doing things - but I also don't expect ChromeOS to be very widely used because it's not solving users' problems very well at all. Unless of course...they add native apps ;) Then it could be something.

Yeah, at the very least I would expect ChromeOS to be good at playing videos out of that massive 1TB Google Drive offering that the pixel gets you. I mean, what else are you going to burn up 1TB on, if not video?

> Why would I want to upload gigabytes of video

To archive them. To share them.

> If I care about archiving things - why would I want to archive just my video files?

You wouldn't. You'd want to archive anything. I genuinely don't understand the point you were trying to make here.

> it's not solving users' problems very well at all

I disagree. It solves my problems better than most other devices. "Playing my videos," it does extremely well. Step one, I shoot them on my Android, so they're instantly uploaded. If I have a video that's not on Android, I upload it to YouTube to archive and share it.

Many people in Moore, OK are shifting through rubble, looking for family photos. I think backing photos and videos up online makes a ton of sense...

I don't want or need to publish many of my videos or photos online. They are private; I'm a fairly private person.

Also - where am I supposed to put the terabytes of legally obtained digital media that I own? Can you upload every movie you own to YouTube? Furthermore, my NAS serves things quicker than any online service.

I also like a local player in case there's no Internet connection or if it's slow. I go camping in the mountains and my mobile provider has spotty coverage in remote regions.

So no, it doesn't solve the problem real well. I'll keep using my NAS and online backup service and general/full operating systems such as Windows, OS X, Debian and CentOS.

> They are private; I'm a fairly private person.

You don't need to publish them. I have YouTube videos uploaded which can only be seen by me - with my two-factor authentication. I bet they're more secure than most backups that most HN'ers use.

> So no, it doesn't solve the problem real well.

I'd wager most users don't have terabytes of data, or need to watch movies when they go camping in the mountains.

Bummer it doesn't work for you, but I still think there a lot of people it would work for.

> I have YouTube videos uploaded which can only be seen by me - with my two-factor authentication.

How can you be so sure? I think a Google employee or a three letter agency could probably look at them if they wanted to. What if Anonymous gets hold of them and wrongly identifies you as a bomber?

Also, I'd wager that most users don't need to have all of their videos, photos or other media available to them wherever they go or on whatever device they're using.

You wouldn't use Paint to view pictures on vanilla Windows. You'd use apps far better suited (and already set as default).

I think you still have a point in your comment though.

In Windows 3.1 days, I absolutely would have used Paint, if I were lucky enough to have it open my file type.

If you unplug both devices from the internet, there's absolutely no question at all which is superior - Windows, hands down, no argument from me.

But if you let a Chromebook get on the internet, and you're comfortable using the best tools on the internet to solve your problems... there's a lot going for a Chromebook.

Someone who says, "Well, sure, but what if you don't have internet???" Yes, that's totally true and valid. But I think it's almost equally valid to ask how well a Windows box does without power. In a lot of ways, a college ruled notebook and a No. 2 pencil has them both beat.

There are places where people want to use their computers where there's no internet, or very slow internet, or a fee for using the internet. For example, on airplanes.

Yeah, and there are places where people want to use their computers where there's no power. For example, on airplanes.

More airplanes are getting internet, and power.

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