Chrome OS is from Mars, Windows is from Venus
Of course, the Chromebook won't be more powerful than a Windows PC. It's just different -- and that's good
Follow @BSnyderSFNo one loves a deathmatch more than the tech press. It's great fun to handicap the opponents, talk knowingly about strategy, and trot out the quotes from Sun Tzu and the "Art of War." We're seeing that again as Google gives us a glimpse of the Chrome OS and drops hints about the shape of a future Chromebook.
Only this time there won't be a deathmatch. Indeed, the two contestants won't even get in the ring. When the first Chromebooks debut some time next year, they'll complement, not replace, the PC (or the Mac, for that matter). As they used to say on Seinfeld, "There's nothing wrong with that."
[ Take InfoWorld's visual tour of the Google's new Chrome OS. | Read InfoWorld's ultimate mobile deathmatch: iPhone vs. BlackBerry vs. Droid vs. Pre. ]
The most dead-on description of the situation was John Gruber's post over at Daring Fireball: "Maybe Instead of Two Cars, You Just Need a Car and a Bicycle." Exactly right.
The right tool for the job
I finally got around to reading (yes, all of it) "War and Peace" this fall. While sitting at an outdoor café, I reached a section on the battle of Austerlitz and realized I didn't know much about the 1805 dustup. Well, I reached for my iPhone, searched on Austerlitz, and quickly found as much information as I needed to enrich my understanding of the chapter.
On one level, it was an enjoyable and very cool amalgam of old -- very old -- media with the new. But more pertinent, I didn't use a PC and I didn't use Windows -- because I didn't need to. In that context, a simple tool that allowed me to browse the Web was the right tool.
When I got back to the office, I booted my PC and did what I needed to do: Write and research, and use tools like spreadsheets and presentations. Not to belabor what I think is a very simple concept, but it was the right tool for that job. So when writers like my colleague Randall C. Kennedy beat the stuffings out of the Chrome OS and consign it to "the dustbin of history" because it isn't Windows, I get a little impatient.
He writes: "It [Chrome OS] assumes that the world is ready to give up the traditional personal computing paradigm and live full time in the cloud." No, it does no such thing, anymore than the iPhone makes that assumption. It assumes that many, but not all, of the functions users crave are cloud-based. And they are.
