There's been a lot of interest in Google's new ChromeOS, designed to replace Windows, particularly on portable devices. But some are dismissing it as being irrelevant.Charlie Wood, who has written a Mac app that I use called Spanning Sync, gives his point of view of it.His conclusion clinches it for me:
So the web is a big deal and simple machines that let you use the web without unnecessary complexity will be a big deal. But does that make ChromeOS a big deal? Yep. Because ChromeOS is the thing that makes these simple web machines possible. It's the thing that removes the layers and layers of sedimentary complexity that have built up in personal computing over the last 30 years. It eliminates a vast world of hurt made up of BIOS settings, device drivers, DLL's, startup items, registry settings, and other things too painful to remember clearly. It's the thin layer between the amazingly powerful yet inexpensive hardware available today and the amazingly powerful yet simple applications on the web.ChromeOS is only a big deal to the degree that the web is a big deal and that today's PC's aren't ideal web machines. Which is to say, it's a very big deal.