Stratechery: The Best Analogy For Chromebooks Are iPads

An excellent follow up piece (to his original post) on where Chromebooks fit into the tech world. Also read his link to Vance McAlister's response, both are very insightful.

From Vance:

The true value in ChromeOS is what it DOESN’T have. Critics say “a Macbook or Windows laptop will give you the same Chrome browser, plus a lot more as well!”, but that misses the point entirely. Those laptops don’t come with the killer feature of ChromeOS: the LACK of a traditional OS.

The lack of a traditional OS means you do not have to deal with the myriad frustrations of Windows, Mac or even Linux. You get instant on, constant updates, no registry corruption, no accumulated accretions and eventual slowdowns, no viruses and conflicts. In theory, as long as the hardware holds up, a ChromeOS device will be as slick and responsive in five years as it is out of the box.