This post is inspired by +John Hardy's rant today concerning something called asm.js as well as what I will only describe as long term recall of +Tim Bray's native vs. web article of a couple of years ago.
My key point is this: Google's Chromebook experiment has it right on how people spend their time on light weight laptops but wrong on what to do about it. In short, as assumed by the Chromebook team, people on light weight laptops do spend the vast majority of their time interacting with and publishing "web" content.
However, is the solution to just push everything into the browser? I'll note that much like with my mobile devices, I opt for native web clients on my macbook air when they're available. They're faster, and I have more control over each service.
I think the Chromebook would be more interesting if it more clearly recognized this fact. Perhaps Go could become the default native client language.
Bud - as soon as you start supporting native apps, you run into the need to build a full-fledged operating system for all-purpose use, including such unpleasantries as backups, application updating, and the like.
ReplyDeleteThe "everything is in the cloud" package at least simplifies management of the whole system, making the Chromebook more like a smart terminal than anything else.
Ed, they have a native client api, so it's something they do already.
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