Daily Archives: November 19, 2009

google

Google Chrome OS – astonishing

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I’m watching Google’s press briefing on the forthcoming Chrome OS. It is amazing. What Google is developing is a computer that answers several of the problems that have troubled users since the advent of the personal computer.

Exaggeration? Here’s a quick summary of what Chrome OS is. It’s a device that you will purchase which runs in effect just the Chrome browser. All storage is solid-state, it boots in a very short time – a few seconds.

The Chrome browser is somewhat modified. It has “application tabs” – on the top left below – which represent web applications that you use.

It also supports panels, windows which float above the browser. Use case: Google Talk, there while you browse other web pages.

All the data is online, apart from a user area that is a cache of online data. All binaries in Chrome OS are signed and inspected on start-up. They are known binaries, because the user will never install an application – only a browser extension, maybe, which will come via Google. Google is not planning to support anything other than web applications.

This has two implications. One is that stronger security is possible. If any binary is added or modified, that can easily be detected; it is a white-list approach. In the event of a problem, the machine can be re-imaged, making it clean.

Second, if your Chrome OS computer breaks or is stolen, or re-imaged as above, it’s no hassle. You can simply buy a new device, log back on, and all your data is there.

There will be offline support, with automatic synchronization to your online store.

At top left is a start button app button which opens an application-centric Favourites menu.

If you double-click a document, it opens on the Web. If it is an Excel document, for example, it might open in the Excel Web App, which Google rather gleefully demonstrated.

Will this be good? Yes. Cheap, fast, effective. Stream music. Run any web application.

What about the dark side of Chrome OS? That is easy to spot. The security model depends on Google knowing about all the binaries and browser extensions. If you have a binary which Google does not want to approve – “there is no certification process for an alternative web browser”, we were told – you have no way round Google’s control.

Alongside that, you will naturally see Google’s applications and identity management woven into the product. It gives Google huge power over its users. It could make Microsoft’s monopoly look trivial.

In mitigation, everything in Chrome OS is open source, and it draws on open source projects such as Web Kit.

I am sure there will be much debate on the implications of today’s announcement, but count me highly impressed – though Google acknowledges that this is not going to be a computer for every purpose.

It could nevertheless meet a large subset of computing needs; which will gradually grow as it matures.

More info here.

Technorati Tags:
adobe, flash, microsoft, silverlight, software development

PDC day two: Silverlight 4 and a free laptop

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There were two big themes at PDC in Los Angeles today. One was the Silverlight 4 beta, the subject of the most impressive section at the keynote. The other was the announcement of free laptops for every attendee – aside from press and government. It is remarkable how a generous gift can change the atmosphere. The lack of breakfast or Universal Studios party was soon forgotten as the audience cheered its own good fortune.

There is actually some justification for handing out this hardware. It’s a decent machine, a modified Acer Aspire 1420P with Windows 7 x64, 2GB RAM, multi-touch display, and accelerometer. Most of us do not have multi-touch machines, and giving them to the core Windows developers who attend PDC may help stimulate the creation of applications that properly support this feature.

Otherwise, it was a Silverlight day. Although SharePoint 2010 was also in the keynote, the cheers it received felt more like relief, that it finally has sensible development and debugging tools in Visual Studio, than real enthusiasm. Somehow the keynote did not capture the potential of the product.

Silverlight though was well received. It is a huge release that opens up many new possibilities, though I am discovering some details that look awkward. There is also one troubling aspect, which is that Microsoft is introducing imbalance in its cross-platform story. The Windows version of Silverlight 4.0 supports COM automation, enabling integration with local APIs such as location on Windows 7, and Microsoft Office. There is no equivalent in the Mac release. It would not be so bad if Microsoft offered some route to similar functionality on the Mac, but there is none that I am aware of.

Microsoft folk that I spoke to about this dismissed it as a minor point, but it is not. Cross-platform is a discipline; this is a failure to observe that discipline and hands an advantage to Adobe Flash for developers that require broad reach.