The Chrome OS Release Is Not About Now, It's About Next.

Yesterday, as most tech outlets noted, Google previewed their much-awaited Chrome Operating System - and in parallel released the code for the operating system to the open source community. By the end of the day, sites like Gdgt had compiled virtual machine capable installs of the early alpha system, and geeks, including me, were tinkering with the system. Unsurprisingly, there were near-immediate reviews, and some calling the news a disappointment. But for me, the news was not so much about Chrome OS being ready to go, but instead Google delivering on a promise, and showing its cards, before they had to, to let us know what's progressing in Mountain View.

Google's success and growth over the last decade has not been without its detractors. The company, which could once simply be described as a search engine, now has its reach in a dramatic number of Web applications and services. I tend to be rosy on the company's expansion, and even asked last month if it was at this point possible for somebody to use Google software exclusively and not lose functionality.

Google's preview of the Chrome OS was more than a product release. It was a milestone in a vision of a Web-centric world, one in which we are increasingly living. For the vast majority of my own activity, I am online, not using software. I intentionally use some applications, like Microsoft's Office suite or Adobe Photoshop, quickly, and then close them just as quickly, as to not slow down my computer's performance. Google's Chrome OS is the latest development in a vision that says our activity will be online, our data will be stored in the cloud, and applications that have traditionally been desktop software will make their way online.

Under no uncertain terms, I agree with their vision. This is happening and it is happening fast.

When I booted up VMware Fusion last night, and turned on the Google Chrome OS for the first time, it didn't come with an instruction manual, asking me only for my login and password - which corresponded with my GMail account. Logging in took me to the now-familiar Chrome browser, the starting point for the next generation of computing. While today, the experience is not dramatic, thanks to us already being familiar with their browser on Macs and PCs, it was a checkpoint that this was real and happening. There was no way to move the browser off screen and get to the equivalent of a desktop, for it didn't exist. There was no C: drive or System folder. Just the browser and an infinite Web that is capable of taking me anywhere.

So with due respect to my good friend Jason Kaneshiro, who writes: Google Chrome OS: I Don’t Get It and ReadWriteWeb's Sarah Perez, who asks Was Chrome OS a Disappointment?, the main concerns I have seen voiced around limitations on what the OS can or cannot do are much like the concerns people had when the first-generation iMac shipped without a floppy disk drive and ditched Apple's proprietary cables for the new Universal Serial Bus (USB) standard.

Google promised us a new operating system built on the Chrome Web browser. They delivered. They gave us more information yesterday showing that they were working on it. They immediately gave back to the open source community and gave us a way to start tinkering. This is not a situation of ditching the Mac or a Windows 7 machine today, but instead, about pushing us forward to a new reality. If we choose to stay in one place clinging to our old ideas, we will only get further behind.

Could A Real Apple Fan Completely "Go Google"?

As a Mac fan in the 1990s, it was a lot easier to understand who the good guys were and who the bad guys were. Apple was very good. Intel was bad. Adobe was usually good. Microsoft was bad. Very bad. Evil. But over time as we have morphed into the latter part of this decade, Intel switched teams and became good. Meanwhile, Adobe looked less like a close friend and more like a despised ex, as Microsoft went from hated bully and thief to playing the role of crazy uncle who nobody really likes but puts up with because he's not going to disappear. The hardest to label? Google, a younger cousin who everybody really likes, but just might be too smooth to be trusted, even as it gets too popular. Now the stage is set for an awkward family reunion - as Google and Apple are so overlapped, tech fans have the option to choose between the two for practically their entire digital life, and the loyalty once sent Cupertino's way, exclusively, is getting some serious competition.

Over the last few years, if one can look beyond the striking hardware and arguable operating system differentiation between Mac OS X and Windows PCs, Apple has unquestionably led the way in terms of seamless integration between applications and devices. The company's iLife package ensures that media is treated in a similar way across multiple applications, and its user interface guidelines protect the users from odd menu behaviors that change between each program. Meanwhile, the company's iTunes/iPod/iPhone juggernaut has made managing media easier than ever before, especially when one considers the addition of the fast-growing App Store and the good, even if not given much respect, Apple TV, which brings the core of the store to the core of the home.

But while we Mac fans may have been resting comfortably as the Mac vs. PC commercials made us giggle with egotistical self-pride, and the company's balance sheet has grown ever stronger with quarter after very profitable quarter, Google has been changing its spots - morphing from search engine and advertising powerhouse to a Web services monolith that can go head to head with almost every single Apple product out there. As the company integrates its many different products, they too may offer the integration we have always come to expect from Apple, but in an open, Web-focused way. And with every single new announcement, Apple fans have to start thinking if their future is one that is Google as much as it ever was Mac - and if "Going Google" would be that bad anyway.

If Mac OS X is the platform on which all Apple software starts, so too will be Google's Chrome OS. We know it's coming, and some sharp engineers are slaving away in Mountain View to capture the flexibility of the Web and make the cloud the equivalent of your hard disk.

Apple's Safari browser, the built-in Web browser for Mac and for iPhones, is equally matched by the Chrome browser on all major operating systems and on Android as well.

The iPhone and its 80,000 to 100,000 applications in the iTunes Store are being challenged by Android's new fleet of phones, led by the Droid from Motorola, and its rumored 10,000+ apps.

Apple's Mail? Easily matched by GMail. iCal? See Google Calendar. iChat? Google Chat. iMovie and iDVD? Well, it's not the same thing, but you would be hard-pressed to say YouTube doesn't win that battle. iWeb? Really? See Blogger.

On the professional side, Apple's iWork sports Keynote, Pages and Numbers. One has to wonder why they even released these apps, as they're not exactly keeping Microsoft at bay, and I don't know anybody who uses the last two. I use Pages once a year to do our Holiday letters home, and that's it! You better believe that Google's online office suite of Google Docs, Spreadsheets and Presentations is the real deal. Beyond that, do you expect Apple's iDisk to trump GDrive? Will Mac OS X Server beat out the Google File System (GFS) or can you expect XServes to replace Google's commodity rack servers in their datacenters around the globe? Not likely.

This isn't a rant stating that Apple is doomed. Far from it. After all, Google doesn't "yet" make excellent laptops. But I've tried the Motorola Droid with Android 2.0 and it's good enough that if iPhone were not an option, it would be an easy second choice. I find that I am using my Apple OS and my Apple Web browser to go Google, not just for the search engine, but all the downstream Google services. (10 of which I highlighted last month)

Google spokesperson and king of anti-spam Matt Cutts said his October goal was to avoid Microsoft software, a task made easier than ever now with Google providing an alternative just about everywhere. But I wonder if it's possible to do something very different - use ONLY Google software for a month. That would mean using the company's Web browser exclusively, and their office suite exclusively, and their mobile phone OS exclusively. That would mean using GMail and Google Talk and Google Wave and Google Calendar and Google Reader instead of Outlook or Mac Mail. I bet we're very close to this happening.

On Wednesday, Google also announced some of their first forays into Music search. This is an area where Apple still has the clear advantage - with iTunes. But Google offers Pandora on the Android platform, so iTunes isn't needed. Maybe I could push them to buy Spotify, and set up a killer alternative to iTunes with the Google logo? That would be something indeed.

I am a Mac guy. Maybe I'm less of a Mac guy than I once was, but I still trust Cupertino. That said, Google is growing on me in a big way, and they are the real alternative - something Microsoft never really was. Maybe soon I'll also be going Google in a way I never expected.

Who's to Blame for Snow Leopard Disabling My Adobe CS4 Licensing?

Yesterday, like many other Mac geek faithful this weekend, I got my hands on a copy of Snow Leopard, the name of Apple's latest operating system upgrade, Mac OS X 10.6. Though I knew it reportedly had few major feature enhancements, all signs online pointed to it being a harmless upgrade. Even comments around Adobe CS3's having issues pointed to clean sailing with CS4. But my experience, so far, has been anything but clean, and it's not exactly sure what caused the issue, or what will be needed to solve it.

As you may recall, in May, we had to do a little song and dance with Adobe's tech support team to download the full version of the company's CS4 product. But since then, I've been using the product suite practically every day. In fact, practically every blog post you see here features screenshots or graphics that have gone through CS4. But this one won't, unfortunately, and it's like I am operating with one hand behind my back.


My Photoshop CS4 Forgot I Had Permissions to Use It
The issue is an odd one. When trying to start up any of the CS4 products, be it PhotoShop, Illustrator, In Design, or the others, I am simply told that "Licensing for this product has stopped working". The error encourages a restart, and yet, following restarts (plural), the issue remains - suggesting I tell tech support, which I will, but am not extremely excited about, especially after May's fun.


Illustrator Mocked My Trying to Launch It As Well
I have to assume that the issue has arisen as a result of Snow Leopard clawing its way on to my Mac. After all, Photoshop worked before the install, and doesn't work after, and nothing else changed. So far, online repositories aren't much help, and it's not clear which of the three players is at fault - Apple, Adobe, or me. (It could always be the user's fault). I have seen others say their CS4 apps are working great with Snow Leopard, but mine sure aren't. Maybe it's because they had the retail boxes, and going for the download version is coming back to bite me. I sure hope not.

I sent a note 1-1 to an Adobe rep who wrote me back in May, and look forward to seeing if she responds Monday. I'd be curious to see if this is a "Louis-only" issue, or if this is more widespread, and see why this is happening. Until then, get used to text only, or big juicy screenshot images with no resizing and cropping.

Will The Mac OS X Dial Go All the Way to Eleven?

Apple's Mac OS X operating system is almost a decade old. After having gained access to the Mac OS X Public Beta for a cool $29.95 way back in 2001, and followed Apple through all the point builds in the ensuing eight years, from Cheetah (10.0) to Puma (10.1), Jaguar (10.2), Panther (10.3), Tiger (10.4) and now Leopard (10.5), with Snow Leopard (10.6) on the horizon, I've seen Apple meticulously add features, improve functionality, introduce new applications, and redraw the user interface more than a few times. But I am honestly wondering what Cupertino has in their mind for what's next. Why is nobody talking about how the company could follow up with an encore, Mac OS XI (or Eleven), that could change the game again?

An Already-Long Life for Mac OS X

That Mac OS X has survived as long as it has is remarkable already. Mac OS 9, its predecessor, debuted in October of 1999, and its last bug fix release (9.2.2), was issued in December of 2001. Similarly, Mac OS 8 debuted in July of 1997 and got its last update, to OS 8.6, in May of 1999, another two-year stint. Only Mac OS 7's six year run comes close.

Now, while it's true that the long tenure of Mac OS X could be as much related to a new approach to version numbering on Apple's part as anything else (for example 10.5 could have been renamed 11...), part of me thinks the OS is getting a little long in the tooth. Nothing in Snow Leopard excites me, though I no doubt will upgrade to that as well, just to stay current (and some apps may require it). And some of the same major market forces that made the iMac a success are the same ones that are changing the game for what we will expect in an operating system just a few years from now, no doubt.

Somewhere deep in Cupertino's R&D labs, I hope there are some extremely talented engineers thinking long and hard about what's next, and what kind of aggressive changes Apple can take to leverage technologies that simply were not around in 2001, the last time they had to tear down the old and build up the new.

The Desktop Is Giving Way to the Browser and Cloud

Google's Chrome OS and the rumors around Crunchpad's browser-only interface (with no hard disk space) are two volleys into the abyss of what's next. Apple was smart to grasp onto making the iMac one of the easiest ways to get onto the Internet. Apple was a fast follower, debuting the iTunes store as a massive Internet-powered e-commerce site for digital media. But Apple and Mac OS X is still very much driven by the same framework that has existed for decades - utilizing the desktop metaphor, with a Finder, and applications, which run independent of the browser or "the cloud". And the very media we are buying from the iTunes store, be it music, video or applications (for the iPhone) is stored locally on hard drives.

Mac OS X Eleven (or Mac OS XI, whatever they call it) is going to need to compete in a new world that will likely have a grown-up version of Google's Chrome OS, a successor to the already-respected Windows 7, and all matter of other operating systems from netbooks and mobile alike. And while the world does not yet have the ubiquitous high speed broadband needed for always-on mobile cloud computing, more people will, and more companies are working to make that a reality.

What Will the Future of the OS Be?

In the early 1990s, we saw plenty of hype from companies like AT&T who rallied around the idea of a virtual assistant, who would monitor your data and your appointments - someone with whom you could ask, using natural language, a question, and expect a familiar reply. A fun fantasy, people haven't yet realized this dream, and it's not clear that's the way we want to interact with our computers. In addition, Apple's approach to search has not always been the best. Sherlock is long-forgotten, and the company has turned to Google for search on the desktop and iPhone browsers.

The next operating system, from Apple or anybody else, will not be about even fancier, cooler, graphics, or wearing virtual reality glasses, or seeing your file folder structure in 3D. But it will have to see the same kind of metamorphosis and dramatic step changes that the Internet has seen over the last decade. While the Web has grown up, from flat gray backgrounds and purple text links, to full streaming live video and interactive multi-lingual conversations, the desktop is waddling alongside - Steve Jobs' baby who nobody has the heart to tell him has gotten ugly.

I've ridden this ride on Mac OS X to 10.5.7 where we stand today. 10.6 is coming. But I want to start hearing about the future. I want to hear about leadership and authority. And I am very curious if Apple can lead the way in a world where Google is king.

Google Says Yes to Launching An OS (Based on Chrome)

That sound you just heard was the very big "other shoe" of Google being dropped. Late Tuesday night, the company announced on its official blog that it is going to soon be releasing what it calls the Google Chrome OS, a lightweight operating system, initially targeted at netbooks, but aggressively said to be their "attempt to re-think what operating systems should be."

This highly anticipated move is an extension to the company's Web browser initiative, launched just a short nine months ago, and puts Google in direct competition, once again, with tech titans Microsoft and Apple.

Though the blog post does not feature all the eye candy one typically looks for in a new operating system announcement, the author does spell out a few things. First, it will run on both x86 and ARM chips, and is considered a different project than that of Android - which many others had speculated would be Google's first foray into the world of operating systems. The post differentiates between the two by saying, "Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web."

The focus on those people who spend most of their time on the Web sounds like it would be in very close proximity with the CrunchPad I covered over the weekend, but funded by a company with thousands of employees, not a few dozen.

The new push from Google also will no doubt further complicate the relationship the company's CEO, Eric Schmidt, has as a board member at Apple. Already forced to recuse himself during discussions of the iPhone, thanks to the Android platform, Schmidt may find himself recused from discussions of Apple's OS, and any future tablet or tablet OS. With this kind of momentum, just maybe he won't play an official role on the board at all?

I wouldn't anticipate seeing builds of the new operating system any time soon. Google says they have a lot of work to do, and will be relying heavily on the open source community to push the project forward. They hint to stay tuned for more updates this fall. No doubt, many will be on the edge of their seat.