Developing for ChromeOS is Terrible
Optimized Chromebook Apps Were Killed in the Cradle
I’ve shared small doses of my thoughts on ChromeOS’ trajectory over the last few months, and it hasn’t been positive. One of the main reasons for that is, if you’ve actually used a Chromebook as your main computing device, you’ll likely run into major issues. In my case, whenever I’ve run into a problem, I try to create solutions.
But there’s a problem only the ChromeOS team could fix that makes this impossible to do anymore: developing on and/or for Chromebooks is a nightmare.
You’ve probably heard the horror stories of banned developer accounts, whiplash inducing changes in corporate attention, and a laissez-faire attitude about their products making Google the worst tech corporation to do business with, but I assumed most of the complaints were really about Android. My only true experience working on a Google platform is ChromeOS. Unfortunately, all the same absurdity we’ve come to expect from this company are present here, and it makes worthwhile development impossible.
Chromebooks aren’t the most popular devices, and their market share doesn’t warrant the work necessary to optimize for them, but I’ve been building Chromebook applications for two years as a labor of love since I enjoyed using ChromeOS.
