Chrome OS is looking very promising. This could be the beginning of the end for MS and Apple’s OS foothold.
Timing:
netbooks a plenty. windows 7 and Snow Leopard showing it’s bulkiness. What a better way prolong using your existing hardware than to run a leaner OS. Apple has shut the door on atom users hackintoshing, and windows 7 doesn’t offer significant performance over windows xp (in atom with intel 940 chipsets). Chrome OS (maybe even android) is what people are eagerly waiting for. Those that don’t know or don’t care will be easy converts once the OS is available.
Easy to Try:
Like Linux with LiveCD and windows PE (Preinstallation Enviornment), it’ll be easy to transition people first by having an OS that can boot from CD/thumbdrive.
Web Applications:
MS seems to know this for quite sometime that retail software may be at an end and that charge by service model could be what is in store next. Windows Office Live is their incarnation of just that. Not for everyone, but if businesses started using Chrome OS, they wouldn’t essentially be out of Word or Excel because they could run the web instance. Google Docs is an alternative, but I remain admit that the business world still revolves around transferring Word and Excel documents, like it or not.
Apple has MobileMe. If they retooled iWork to work as a web application, perhaps they can compete.
What Others Did Wrong:
MS released Windows CE/Windows Mobile. That also acted as a thin client with modest ability to do terminal services. Most importantly Terminal Services Remote App. This could have easily been promoted more and it’s features enhanced to compete in the Chrome OS space. However, Windows CE really needs a visual overhaul (windows mobile also. A rant I will defer later). And ideally more (.net) applications. About the only people using WinCE now is assembly line pc’s with robotics or restaurants running POS.
Apple, with their Snow Leopard/OSX proves that not only MS can really mess up when it comes to software. I love Apple hardware, but when it comes to them and software, it really disappoints me. Although underlying os is a flavor of linux, depending on library files on compiling from source other than the most common applications seems to be a pain. Apple will go through updates and remove/alter my library file dependencies because they don’t match. with an Apple created program, it is a simple matter of dragging in to install, dragging out to (and into trash) to uninstall. Well that only works if it’s basic applications. try to do that with a database app and see how well that works.
http://www.engadget.com/2009/11/19/live-from-googles-chrome-os-project-announcement/