To me – they’re mission critical tools that better work – because I don’t want to drive to the datacenter at 3:00 am to fix some nonsense that shouldn’t be there in the first place.

I also bore easily when confronted with endlessly bloated sub-menus that Micrsoft foisted on us for the past 25 years. 75% of their “features” reek of one thing – to keep us from going to their competitors for the slightest thing.

Which brings me to the 3-times daily Internet Explorer crashing – and slow performance.

Its history.

I installed Chrome & learned all I needed in 30 minutes flat. No wearying Redmond pull-down bloatware. No nonsense.

And I don’t have to light up a joint just to get into Microsoft’s head – about what they’re doing at every turn.

Sure – the Chrome beta has teething problems. But it’s still a killing machine compared to that panty-waist Internet Explorer.

And my Windows operating system is finally where it belongs, way in the background – out of sight, and out of mind.

Good Riddance Microsoft.

Rob

You can read more about the privacy concerns at http://singe.za.net/blog/archives/947-German-Gov-says-Google-is-the-Devil;-SRWare-performs-exorcism.html

You can read more about the security concerns at http://singe.za.net/blog/archives/941-My-Thoughts-on-Googles-Chrome.html

I think that gOS and hardware such as the Walmart $100 pc and the EEE are showing that for the majority of people they only need a web browser, an email client and an office suite. There are exceptions but most things most people want are browser based or have a browser alternative.

I hear that a team at Adobe are developing flash so it could run C code natively on the users pc as if it was running external to the browser. Once that is complete things will get really interesting. Linux Kernel running in a browser anyone??

Nope it won’t replace the OS. Their is still a need for the platform on which the browser runs. But that platform can be anything so who cares about the OS. And to the end-user an OS has always been the things you do on it not the kernel.

Java dreamed of doing this. Web browser are already doing it. Its not wishful thinking when you see people current behaviour changes. You have standards around the presentation and the language. The various AJAX toolkits abstracting the JavaScript differences that do exist you have a pretty good platform. The web browser presents the first credible platform on which to run truly cross-platform.

Whether its the best platform for development I’m not sure but I sense that it doesn’t really make a difference as its what people are already doing that does. Witness the massive market on cellphones that have a pretty rustic use of Java that really reminds us of the “Write once, debug everywhere” mantra. What does a solid standard platform mean for a developer of cellphone apps? I’d guess quite a lot. The only thing missing would be performance… Aha.

You probably also want to watch what Mozilla is doing. Their tracemonkey adaptations resulted in blistering speeds in their JavaScript engine, they rival what we’re seeing in V8. They’ve added native video for Firefox 3.1. You might not think this is important but you need to think that Firefox has 20% of a market that was dominated by some other browser that seems to not care much about leading innovation. Since the release of Firefox the domination has been eroded from around 95% or more to 70%. This has given space for really innovative development to happen in the browser space.

There is only one group that really doesn’t need the browser to succeed as a platform, there are the companies that derive revenue from a desktop shrink wrapped model.

I think the bets are out on this one, I think I can agree on that. But I think there is a massive potential that you are underestimating by thinking of the history of Java and not adjusting it for the realities of technology today.

Even Java, without all the barriers of a browser, cannot replace an OS. What makes Chrome suddenly capable then? It’s too much wishful thinking.