Granted, but why would I ever turn SSH on? I keep it off.

I have an app called Toggle SSH. Free on Cydia, just turn ssh off.

How could this not be a winner? Here is now: I have about 100GB+ of data on my hard drive. No probs, it's a 500GB laptop drive. The amount of data I collect seems to increase exponentially every year. Storage does too. But you know what doesn't - internet speed.

I can't have my 100GB of data in the cloud because the internet connections are too slow, and connection speed is increasing linearly, and not very quickly. I can't do it on today's connections, and I won't be able to do it on tomorrow's and most certainly not over LTE.

It's surprising you take such a shallow view at this. I mean, maybe you are right - Google is trying to make a could OS, where everything is on the cloud, and it will fail spectacularly.

I just don't think they are that stupid. Here's my vision for Chrome:

- All apps that can live in the Cloud. We already have Gmail. The browser. Calendar. There's going to be Google gears for when you're offline, syncing seamlessly whenever you are connected.
- All apps that can't live in the cloud are local - photo editing for example. I have 10GB of photos. I don't think I'd ever want to upload them all, or handle them, over a slow internet connection. And connections are going to remain comparatively very slow for the foreseeable future.
- The local apps are still AJAX apps (maybe extensions?) that can also run on Windows and OS X.

I think Google's goal with this whole endeavor is not to replace Windows, but to make the operating system irrelevant. Windows, OS X, Chrome, Ubuntu - doesn't matter, your cloud-y and AJAX-y apps run everywhere, and look the same everywhere. The browser is your OS, and Google Chrome the reference implementation.

That silver jump suit and hair is soooo retro 80ies.

@Jon Personal preference - I don't like everything Google branded because I don't want to lock myself into one company. But like I said, it's not an issue since this is open source.

BTW I don't think Google's goal is to replace Mac OS X or Windows 7 - no, the plan is much better than that. Google's goal is to make the OS irrelevant. We are already halfway there, the OS matters much less than it used to - Chrome OS is kinda the final push.

Chrome OS is interesting, and the best part is that it's open source. Because that means that anyone can create a build with just the good parts, and minus the bad parts. And somebody will.

The good parts:
- Browser metaphor
- Ultra powerful web apps
- User interface
- Browser

The bad parts:
- Google branded everything
- The cloud.

Why is the cloud bad? Because I need to be in control of my data. Nobody else. Since I don't run my own cloud on my own servers, I want all my data on my local machine.

I still think that Chrome OS will provide a means to keep all data locally, and then all of a sudden all those Google web apps will run with gears, e.g. locally, and suddenly there will be very strong competition to the entire range of MS products. The OS, and office, and email, and whatever else they come up with.

The truly disruptive power of Chrome then comes from the fact that the Chrome browser + gears will also run on OS X and Windows, plus all those super powered web apps. And bingo, you suddenly have a cross platform development environment like it's never existed before.

That's exciting.

Good article! I am sorry I immediately bought into the if you can't win, sue hype - it seemed so logical. But only if you have no clue about the sleazy world of patent trolls and "standards" bodies.

To me, it sounds like patent hoarding is what these companies do in those standards meetings. They try to one-up one another, which may or may not work very well. But what it's very effective at achieving is leaving any new up and coming would-be competitors out to dry.

In a better world, governments would demand all standards be free of patent claims - if you use a tech that's part of a standard you should be indemnified against patent claims pertaining to the same standard. Likewise, if you supply technology as part of a standard, you should have to give up any patent claims on that technology. In my world, governments would not approve a standard (like GSM) unless it's free.

But we don't live in a better world, it's more like the mafia slicing up a neighborhood. Joe gets this, Ricco that, and if anyone new comes in, we all start shooting. In that world, a new player can enter only by force.

Apple has not yet forked over the cash because if they did, Motorola and all the others in "the family" would stand in line to get their protection money. Apple is checking its own guns, namely its own huge pile of patents. It has hundreds of iPhone patents, lots of iPod patents, and a mountain of old software patents. It's going to cherry-pick 10 really strong ones and counter-sue Nokia.

yah, it's like the death of vinyl. remember vinyl?

Mac forums and sites like these are the only places where people even know what Firewire is, let alone care about it.

It was once exciting, but now it's just old technology that needs to go away. With Apple pulling support, Firewire peripherals will disappear quite suddenly too, in fact I'd be surprised if any company made a new FW peripheral in the past year.