But there’s something that’s interesting to note here. Just couple of hours back, a cluster of Flash related bugs have been simultaneously updated with the same standard update message and then moved to Milestone R10

“Flapper won’t make it to R9.x so punting to R10″

Now, a total of 10 Flash related bugs have been simultaneously updated with this message and further moved to Milestone R10. What does that mean ?

May be, Flash bugs are temporarily deferred for now and all Flash support issues will not be fully resolved at the time when Google announces Beta version of Chrome OS to the world.

Looking at the Chrome OS bug history, Flash bugs in Chrome OS have been persistent since the very beginning of the project and have consumed a lot of time in getting resolved, and still, the bugs aren’t fully resolved as yet. Few hours back, a new Flash bug has been filed in Chrome OS bug list and this may not be the last Flash related bug on Chrome OS bug list.

Well, December isn’t too far and we will soon get clarification on all the speculations floating right now.

]]> http://www.googlechromeosupdate.com/chrome-os-flash-support/feed/ 2 http://www.googlechromeosupdate.com/chrome-os-delay/ http://www.googlechromeosupdate.com/chrome-os-delay/#comments Mon, 22 Nov 2010 10:40:32 +0000 admin http://www.googlechromeosupdate.com/?p=251 Guys, just stop holding your breath for Chrome OS anymore…The wait is going to be longer than you may expect.

After months of speculation and media sniffing, the consensus over Google OS launch is that the much awaited web based OS, popularly known as ChromeOS, is not going to launch during Christmas or anywhere near that.

So those people who were holding their breath and avoiding to buy any other netbook or tablet in expectation of announcement of a Chrome OS netbook should better go pick an Android tablet instead or the iPad.

Some experts are surmising that Google may be recalibrating its Chrome OS strategy, seeing the super success of Android platform in past one year, especially on touchscreen devices. Earlier, we did hear some news on manufacturing of Chrome OS tablets by HTC and Google but now, those tablets are looking far from reality, thanks to Eric Schmidt’s clarifying statements at Web 2.0 summit about Android’s suitability of touch devices compared to ChromeOS.

To be precise, Eric Schmidt told that Google Chrome OS is still “few months away” from actual launch so it’s apparent that Chrome OS will not arrive during holiday season.

But all of this does not mean that Google may be thinking of killing their Chrome OS project before its launch itself. Android platform is great and touted as the future dominant platform but that does not take away from the core principle behind Chrome OS and that is all ‘web apps’ become ‘native apps’. That’s how the future of computing is supposed to be.

So, all you Chrome OS enthusiasts, as you’ve patiently waited for so long, wait for some more time… !

Most of the debugging/resolution currently under progress is related to Build area(indicating near final build version) and DesignUI , both being associated with front-end issues, which are usually dealt at the final stages of software life cycle.

Serious Flash issues appear to have been resolved by now. The only left out bugs that are critical in nature and running under high priority relate to Power performance and Boot time lag.

Interestingly, drastically small Boot time was the main selling point of Chrome OS when Chrome OS got announced. It’s absurd that boot time is going upto 40 seconds, as reported in this bug.

Anyways, November 11, the rumored date for some big announcement from Google Chrome OS team is just two weeks away so event invites might hit the journos and tech bloggers, right at the start of next month.

Hold your breath…Some big news is cooking behind the scenes…

As no official comments have been made over the release date of ChromeOS powered netbooks, the only way to find any clue about Chrome OS is to dig out bug status reports and estimate the progress of Chrome OS by itself.

And after tracking bug reports of Chrome OS, we have a feeling that Chrome OS may probably get further delayed. Nov 11, the previously estimated date might just be the unveiling of the Operating System, not the actual release of Chrome OS powered Netbooks.

From there, Netbook manufacturers will also take couple of months to start selling Chrome OS powered Netbooks. So, taking a safe assumption, Chrome OS Netbooks should hit the market by March-April 2011.

But what has really kept the Chrome OS project from completing by now ? Keeping regular bugs aside, one big problem that’s bugging Chrome OS progress is Flash !

Call it the burden of staying compliant with Flash content, which is ubiquitous over Internet or dealing with power and performance issues that come with it, there is some good logic why Apple hates it so much and has picked HTML5 as an alternative instead.

These are the bugs in Chrome OS project revolving around Flash. In one of the threads, the bug is hovering around non-loading of Flash content on some hugely popular websites. Most of the Flash related bugs are still open, except this one that has been fixed just yesterday.

In some threads, Flash plugin has also been reportedly consuming unnecessary power and affecting the battery performance on Chrome OS loaded Netbooks. When Chrome OS got introduced, long battery performance was one of the main concerns of the Chrome OS team and we can only hope that Chrome OS team will(or probably has) find some solution to performance hindrance that comes along with Flash support.

As full Flash support is extremely critical at the launch of Chrome OS, the Google OS has to comply with Flash and fix all these bugs at the earliest. It remains to be seen, however, if Chrome OS team will be able to keep its due promise and announce the Chrome OS within next couple of weeks.

But along with all the accomplishments that HP has made in the past decade, one important area where HP is seriously lagging behind is its monopolized Print business. And it’s not HP’s competitors(Canon, Lexmark…) which are hurting the revenue stream of HP’s established print business but there’s a different sort of threat for them. It’s the Next Generation digital devices that are making Paper printing worthless.

With the advent of smartphones, e-readers and tablet devices, people are getting more adapted to reading content over the screen. Less people are looking interested in printing every single document they want to read as the comfort zone is slowly drifting to Wireless digital devices from Paper reading.

Dying business of Newspaper & Magazine industry is one big indicator. That’s probably the reason why media entities like WSJ and NYTimes have launched their iPhone and iPad apps, to keep serving their content to current generation of consumers.

Apart from the changing preferences of our generation when it comes to consuming content, there’s another reason why Printing is no more a desired thing for many of us. The reason is the incapability of most of the upcoming devices to start printing right away.

Majority of printers that HP builds today require printer specific drivers, wired connectivity, etc as the mandatory condition, which simply turns off anyone interested in taking a quick print from his smartphone or tablet, as all of them are wireless devices and don’t have printer drivers installed on their sleek machines.

All of this is hampering HP’s print business revenues to a great extent. Solution ?

HP has found a reliable companion, which will make things better than what they are now. Google and Google Cloud Print to be more specific.

As Chrome OS team announced earlier about Google Cloud Print, a cloud based service to execute printing jobs from any device (Desktop, phone or browser), without any need of printer drivers, it recently updated about the progress on Google Cloud Print service and also highlighted HP’s launch of full suite of cloud-aware printers ranging from $99 consumer printers to business-oriented printers.

As Google describes, Google Cloud Print can print from any printer, be it a legacy printer or upcoming Cloud aware printers but Google strongly recommends Cloud aware printers as they will give the best experience to the users. And supporting Google’s vision, HP has finally come up with affordable ‘Cloud aware’ printers.

Google employees have started internal testing of ‘Google Cloud Print’ service employing HP’s cloud aware printers and it seems that the goods(Chrome OS) are most likely to be delivered on time(this fall), as committed.

As more and more people are spending substantial time on Internet and more likely from their wireless devices(smartphones, tablets), if all of us become able to start printing right from our smartphones and tablet devices, HP will have far less problems to deal with, to keep its print business revenues flowing.

As Apple Tablet is very much a certainty now(which was a rumor in 2009) and Apple has officially announced an event this month for launching their tablet product as well, the niche tablet industry is ready to get shaken up big time in 2010.

As reported by Australian publication, Smarthouse recently, Google and HTC have been working on Chrome OS Tablet for the last 18 months and have so far produced several prototypes of their yet-to-exist touch tablet. As Chrome OS offers a great way to get onto the web as swift as it gets, Chrome OS over a tablet sounds like a perfect concept actually.

Now when all of us know that Google is just about to unveil its own Smartphone, Nexus One , built by cellphone manufacturer, HTC, this rumor that claims that Google is on its way to launch a self-branded Chrome OS Tablet built by HTC makes absolute sense.

But there’s a question popping up in couple of curious minds…

Is Chrome OS Tablet a worry for Chrome OS Netbook ?

Frankly, it doesn’t really matter as long as it’s Google’s Chrome OS powering the machines, be it a tablet or a netbook.

But yes, Google’s supposed plan to launch its own tablet against Apple’s tablet might be a well planned move from Google to simply prevent Apple from reiterating the ‘iPhone act‘ again.

Apple’s iPhone is an extravagant smartphone and so is Google Nexus One(actually much better) so what’s the difference..?

iPhone dominates the smartphone industry and Nexus One is yet to even start selling to its prospective buyers. Why ? Because iPhone launched in mid 2007 and Nexus One is to launch in 2010. It’s the early advantage that made Apple iPhone a clear dominator in smartphone industry. Google would never want to let Apple eat up the Tablet industry single handedly, just like what it did to smartphone industry with iPhone.

With Google competing head-on with Apple in Tablet market now, the consumers will find it more comfortable to be able to have a choice between the two offerings.

We will track further developments on this…Stay hooked!

[via Gizmodo]

As demonstrated by Chrome OS team at Google HQ last month, the user login to Chrome OS was taking place at initial boot up stage. But considering the latest rumors, Chrome OS team is testing to shift User login to Chrome browser rather than putting it at boot-up stage.

Why ?

Well, there can be plethora of reasons for it…Here are a couple to think over !

• Putting login interface through Chrome browser would give an ubiquitous flexibility to Chrome OS users to login to their WebOS interface though any machine that has got Google Chrome browser and not just through Chrome OS Netbook.
• Browser based Chrome OS interface would make it much more easier for users to switch between user accounts, almost as quickly as logging in and out of your two different Gmail accounts.
• Syncing of user accounts could be easier
• It would reduce boot-up time even more

So, what do we expect now ? Browser based login or Boot-up based ? We got to be patient to get any of the possibilities confirmed as Chrome OS team is still to decide on this point. We reckon, Chrome OS will be a browser based login system.

Anyways, we will find that out soon…Hang in there !

Source

When Google promised that Chrome OS Netbooks will be out in the market by fall 2010, it was presumed that multiple Netbook manufacturers will come up with Chrome OS Netbooks but now, it seems that Google doesn’t want to take any chance in launching its own OS and simply wants to ensure that Chrome OS Netbook becomes a Standard within Netbook industry.

It might be a case that Google branded Netbook may serve as the exclusive distributor of Chrome OS, much like Apple’s business model but this is just a presumption as yet. It has been Google’s nature(as what you can see with Android) to build the software side and let multiple hardware brands do the rest of the job and hence it would be a tough call for Google to go exclusive with Chrome OS.

There is another possibility that Google may become one of the many Netbook brands to offer Chrome OS. But frankly, no hardware OEM would like competing with Google on hardware front especially when the OS is built by Google itself. At worst, this might even happen but only if OEMs get terribly scared of getting out of business if they boycott Chrome OS in their Netbook offering.

Now that Google is making its entry at mobile hardware front with Nexus One (the Google Phone) along with Android, it is looking more probable for Google to come up with a Google branded Chrome OS Netbook as well.

As per the rumor mill, this Google branded Chrome OS Netbook might be sold with a 2 year data plan contract with a carrier.

So guys, whatever the case be, you better hold your plans to buying a Netbook until next Christmas. We bet, you won’t regret !

Source

With loads of excitement and hype building around Google’s dream project, the Chrome OS, such an announcement was inevitable to come up. And stay assured to hear more and more netbook OEMs announcing their tie-ups with Google for launching Chrome OS powered Netbooks.

Catch the trend of Android’s growth. It was HTC which took the plunge first and became the first Android phone manufacturer by producing T-Mobile G1. Since then, every smartphone manufacturer followed the trend and launched their flagship android phones one after the other, be it Samsung, Motorola, LG & Dell among others. And such a behaviour is obvious as no cellphone OEM wanted to loose the opportunity they could get from Android OS platform.

Similar trend is expected to happen for Chrome OS as well. No Netbook OEM would ever want to loose out of becoming a Chrome OS Netbook OEM as market is going crazy to grab it. The huge excitement may just be among the geeky crowd at the moment but we all know that non-geeky crowd(majority) simply follows geeky crowd, when it comes to tech stuff and latest tech things to grab.

Acer plans to work in tandem with Google to get the first ever Chrome OS Netbook out by late 2010. We will keep track on the developement of this netbook. Stay hooked !

This rumor has emerged from TechCrunch, a popular silicon valley tech blog. As there is no official statement from Google itself, we can’t really call it a news but the rumor seems to be true.

It’s hardly been half a month since Windows 7 launch and Google OS is making the news again. It might be a long term strategy from Google to start rooting its OS as early as possible, especially when Windows 7 is getting a great response from the customers.

Starting early might serve positively to Google but we’re hoping it’s not way too early. Our anticipation is that Google OS is nearing its launch but a very limited launch and that too in a month or two(not in 5-7 days). We might be wrong but this anticipation seems more sensible and Google does believe in doing things sensibly.