Hexnut is the blog of Philadelphia-based designer Jake Lazaroff.

Why Google Shouldn’t Cool It With Chrome OS#

Brian Chen over at Wired has written an article entitled Why Google Should Cool It With Chrome OS, saying that he doubt[s] consumers will show much interest in a Chrome OS netbook the way Google is currently packaging it. In other words, he’s skeptical that consumers will want to give up all their local software in favor of web apps.

Web apps can’t let us process Microsoft Word documents, sync our iTunes libraries, or edit photos with Photoshop, for example. Thanks to their crampy keyboards and small screens, netbooks aren’t ideal for productivity apps such as Photoshop or Microsoft Word — but you’d be surprised at the different uses for netbooks that made them last year’s hit product category.

I say, if consumers are slow to pick up Chrome OS, it’s because Windows is familiar and Chrome OS is new and foreign, not because it can do less.

Any computer purchase is an exercise in compromises. Generally, a consumer will compromise on price for specifications, paying more than they had planned to for a faster computer. However, when buying a netbook, consumers are making a different compromise. Instead of compromising price for specs, they’re compromising specs for form factor.

This compromise happens because a netbook user buys a netbook realizing they’re not going to have the full functionality of a laptop or a desktop.  They’re buying it SPECIFICALLY to do less.  A netbook is a computer that’s designed for easy Internet access like checking mail, chatting, and browsing around—NOT resource-greedy tasks like Photoshop.  That’s the whole appeal.

Why are users comfortable making this compromise?  Jon Gruber over at Daring Fireball nails it:

One thing that strikes me about Chrome OS and Litl is that neither bother trying to do everything Windows or Mac OS X can do. Not even close. I don’t think either even bothers trying to serve as one’s primary computer.

Nobody’s going to be buying a laptop with Chrome OS to use as their main computer.  Obviously, many people will still want Photoshop or Microsoft Word or iTunes on their computer.  But not everyone needs to have access to that ALL THE TIME, and that’s what Google is betting on.  Need to quickly edit a document on the road?  Fire up Google Docs and slam it out.  Want to get rid of red-eye in your photos while you’re on vacation?  Aviary will do just fine.

The Wired article quotes Michael Gartenberg, a tech analyst at a company called Interpret.  He says:

This idea that I’m somehow going to do away with rich app architectures and do everything through the browser is an old argument, and it’s never taken root.

That’s because it’s never been feasible before now, not because users have an inherent preference for local software over web apps.  The average user doesn’t care whether an application is in their browser or on their hard disk—as long as it does what they want it to do.  Now that most people have relatively high-speed Internet connections, and technologies such as Canvas and AJAX and frameworks such as Ruby On Rails and Cappuccino exist, it is actually feasible to have a web application that works and feels just like a desktop application.

There are many, many web applications that prove that last point.  Aviary, a whole suite of web-based creative applications (vector and raster image editing, audio editing, and more).  Google Docs, an office suite.  meebo, a chat client that supports multiple protocols.  Mozilla recently released Bespin, an editor for HTML, CSS and Javascript written using the new Canvas element.

There’s one thing Mr. Chen gets right, though.  He describes Chrome OS as an OS that enables us to do less. YES! That’s EXACTLY the point.

Don’t shoot for every feature that your competitors offer. Make your product simple, and make it better than anything else out there. It works for Apple, it works for Nintendo, it works for Twitter, and it will work for Google.

• #google
• #chrome os
• #wired
• #netbook
• #web