Opinion: Back to basics? iPad vs ChromeOS

Posted on 1 Feb 2010 at 12:29

 

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Despite my best efforts, most of the people I know (who aren’t technology journalists) are incredibly unambitious with their computers. This isn’t a criticism, but an observation. Actually, it's a bit of both.

While my home computer is often engaged in editing high definition video or Photoshopping batches of images, my friends and family are more likely to be using their computers for less strenuous tasks, such as giggling at YouTube videos or uploading photos to Facebook.

Normally, I would snort at such a lackadaisical poverty of ambition with the disdain and contempt that it deserves. However, my nearest and dearest may be reduced to using their computers as nothing more than glorified typewriters through no fault of their own.

While computers have grown exponentially more powerful and capable in the past 20 years, they still have the same desktop graphical user interfaces (GUIs) they did 20 years ago. User interface improvements, such as the Taskbar or Expose, have been made but GUIs are still fundamentally the same.

Although increased capability often inevitably leads to increased complexity, today’s GUIs may nonetheless be too bloated and complicated to be fit for purpose if they discourage people from taking advantage of the technology available to them. Even if you have no interest whatsoever in creating and editing content and just want to consume it, today’s GUIs could be better designed to serve this purpose. Plus, while configuring and troubleshooting a computer is easier than it used to be, it shouldn’t be necessary at all.

Apple’s iPad and Google’s Chrome OS could change all this. Both do away with the desktop metaphor, drop down menus and overlapping windows we’re familiar with in current computer GUIs. The iPad uses multitouch gestures, while Chrome OS will use a single tabbed browser window as an interface for web applications.

Both are currently designed as companions to more powerful computers and are designed more for consuming content than the complex creating and editing tasks I hope more people will use their computers for. Nevertheless, the potential to make computers dramatically more accessible is there. If my non-nerd friends and family are any indication, most people are far more comfortable using an iPhone or a web browser than they are with any other piece of computer hardware or software.

Of course, I haven’t used either an iPad or a Chrome OS computer so my hope could be entirely misplaced. The iPad could turn out to be an overgrown iPod touch, while Chrome OS may be a jumped-up web browser with ideas above its station. Either way, I can’t wait to find out.

Author: Alan Lu