Chrome yumminess

It says a lot about how much I like the Google Chrome browser that I can say ‘yumminess’ without too much embarrassment, also that I should spend a more-than-is-healthy-for-me amount of time salivating over the new Google Chrome Notebook. As a software developer I default to the position that a Chromebook is of no use to me, though I confess that, particularly with a VDI solution implemented for work, this will become less of a barrier. Besides which, I’m stubborn enough to believe that portable means secondary, and as an additional device it has an attraction.

Two applications that I already use with Google’s browser are Gmail and TweetDeck for Chrome; both use HTML5 notifications and both are preferable to their client application alternative. In moving to the browser they gained simple advantages that I’d never previously considered; integrated search for example. And I could learn to use Google Apps, though I admit in the past to having returned to Microsoft options rather than making the effort.

So where are we on this evolutionary path and is Google’s fundamentalist ‘everything in the cloud’ approach the right way? Or is Apple’s comparatively conservative ‘data in the iCloud’ more likely to succeed? And what gives with Microsoft’s Windows8 emphasis on HTML5 and Javascript? I digress; it’s the shiny objects that have my immediate interest, even though it’s hypothetical. I am on the outside looking in; iPads, Chromebooks, Snoozeberries, Everlasting Updates… such goodies are beyond my reach, and it's probably healthier that way.