“Google yesterday launched its new packaged apps, dubbed ‘Chrome Apps,’ for the Mac, making good on a promise from September when it kicked off testing,” Gregg Keizer reports for Computerworld. “Chrome 31 for OS X, released three weeks ago, now supports Chrome Apps, Google’s souped-up, cross-platform Web apps that are much closer to “native” software, the kind written for a specific operating system, like Windows or OS X. Chrome Apps can run without an Internet connection and call on several Google APIs and services barred to traditional website-based apps.”
“Written in HTML5, JavaScript and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets), Chrome Apps also look more like a native application since they run in a bare-bones frame minus any browser ‘chrome,’ like the address bar, toolbar and menus,” Keizer reports. “Chrome OS and the spin-off Chrome Apps have a tough row to hoe, analysts have said. ‘To go consumer mainstream, Google will have to radically add off-line capabilities to Chrome OS,’ said Patrick Moorhead, principal analyst with Moor Insights & Strategy, in an interview yesterday. Chrome Apps have another problem: App inventory.”
Keizer reports, “Currently, there is just a handful of Chrome Apps in Google’s Chrome Store, the app distribution channel for the packaged apps.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Yeah, um, no.
Related article:
Google offers Chrome Apps to Mac users – December 11, 2013
As I said earlier, this is the cyber equivalent of a greasy long haired man pulling up in a cargo van with no windows and asking little kids if they’d like some candy. We need to be educating our youth to be aware of the ‘stranger dangers’ in the corporate world.
It could be argued that there was some utility in using Google apps in particular their MS Office suite equivalent (Google Docs) but with the advent of free iWork apps on the Mac platform and iOS devices, the raison d’être for using Google Docs is now gone.
Despite the somewhat iffy interface elements of the redesigned iWork suite, I much rather prefer using them than Google Docs. At least they conform largely to the Mac way of doing things and not a halfway house between Mac and Windows.
I would love to hate it, because it is from google, and google is evil. But it is not so bad, I’ve tested it. So if and when one day there might be an app, which I do need and which is not in the AppStore, I would use a chrome app.
But most likely that won’t happen because I found an app in the AppStore any time I was looking for anything. In most cases more then one or two. Apple was so right to bring the AppStore to the Mac, one of their best moves.
So this is basically Google admitting that its Chrome always-connected, must-have-internet-to-be-useful OS and app strategy is not working and will never work because people are not always connected but still need to use their computers?
Eric T Shit considers this a double win as he’s not only peddling your offline personal details to advertisers but also to the NSA.
Too bad they don’t stay offline forever. I’m Googled Out
I’m Goober Free!
The better to track you with! Brought to you by Google and the NSA, do evil!
No thanx
I like my Mac virus n malware free 😉