Who and what are today’s Chromebooks for?
a two part note on Chromebooks for developers
One small step in the web, now living in a browser…
Fun fact: Chromebooks are only awesome because of Chrome OS but every time we choose a Chromebook, we never think or talk about Chrome OS.
The web and space have a bit in common? both places anything can happen, everything possibly exists and sort of open source and Chromebooks are the rockets of the web, built for all and by all on the web and now mostly used for teaching about space in schools.
Here’s what happened so far, the first Google made Chromebook in 2013; Pixel was to inspire developers to work on a machine built “on the web”. Remember the device being compared to the Mac-book? Mostly because of its high price and sure the marketing said you could play videos and play games on it but it really was for and hilariously hopelessly only for developers to build websites as apps for the web… I mean the Chrome Web Store.
So what has changed?
- Did developers not like that idea because of its impractical implementation at the time
- Or that thousand dollar price tag was just a no no
- Or did web development just have so much explosion going on to fit into a web OS
- Or Chromebooks and Chrome OS really just took a shift, leaving once excited web developers hanging
I’m out to see what people and brands really think, want and build Chromebooks for. Using a survey and some data from reviews, here’s what I found.
What the brands built:
In the Chromebook scene, there is a lot so far despite its how unpopular it may seem with consumers! The idea is to look at the favorite and most reviewed Chromebooks. PCMag recently published a list of the best Chromebooks for 2019 we can use.
Survey Results:
To round it all up perfectly would be to get your views, so I took a survey, asking for your views on Chromebooks and we tried to see how much people were okay with working on or owning a Chromebook. I really was surprised about what most of you guys said. Not even for when it’s free? How can you hate on free stuff?
Note that 90% of the participants did not have internet access as a reason for not wanting a Chromebook and here’s our deductible:
“I think Chromebooks are really cool, I like that I can use it in my browser and all that cloud stuff but I don’t know how I should live in a browser so I don’t want to buy one”
You can find the complete survey results here
The death wish.
Chromebooks are in competition with Windows, Linux and Mac OS, a battle it probably and honestly should not try to fight.
Or should it? With new additions from support for Android Apps and PWA making web apps even better. That’s what I set out to see in the next post. I got a Chromebook and went all in, as a web developer.
…and I actually had a fine time, I mean I don’t really miss my old laptop yet.
A big thank you to everyone who participated in the surveys and to PCMag team. I’m putting together the second part of this with a list of tips, web apps and “shortcuts” I took on my Chromebook experience.
