Much ado has been made today in the blogosphere about the newly announced (but 1.5 years from being shipped) Chrome OS from that search engine company, Google. Here is an excerpt from the announcement:
We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we’re announcing a new project that’s a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It’s our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be.
This reminds me of a long-standing debate that I’ve had with a few of my colleagues at work, about the relative value of browser-based web apps, versus desktop-based, internet-enabled apps. Chrome does not end this debate, but I see it as a step in the latter direction.
There is a big, big question that I have about all this, though. And it’s something that I’ve not seen in the dozens of official and unofficial blogposts that I’ve read so far today. And that issue is one of hardware compatibility. A real operating system has to interface with external devices, and accommodate all types of information captured and collected by the user. Yes, it’s true that more and more people are living their entire digital lives on the internet, and that much of what they do involves browsing, viewing, and sharing of information within a web context.
However, in order to get that information onto the web in the first place, there needs to be some sort of user-facing hardware that captures that information. A physical keyboard (or touchscreen keyboard) are pieces of hardware for capturing text information. And a camera is a piece of hardware for capturing image information. So my question is: If the ChromeOS is to serve as the operating system for my computer, will I be able to plug my camera into that computer, and upload the files from the camera to the web, in such a form that others can view those images? Continue reading…
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