Interesting article on Tegra, nVidia's competitor to the Intel Atom, by Kevin Tofel at jkontherun: Confirmed: Nvidia Working on Chrome OS Tegra Devices. With the ASUS EEE series of netbooks, Asustek blew apart Microsoft's conception of what the next generation of computer should look like. Now nVidia hopes to do the same:
Consumers still want support for x86 and Windows, but why? It's all in the application support these days, but with the rise of the web as “the ultimate app store,” Nvidia is poised for the shift.Poised, yes. But making the shift, the way that Asustek did, is another matter. Here is a point made by commenter HereAndNow [along with my comments in italics]:
One of the key benefits of moving to Web apps is that, without any porting effort, they will run on:
- Any OS (Windows, OS X, Ubuntu, ChromeOS, Android, Moblin, iPhone, Symbian, WebOS, Blackberry, WinMo, …) [Any OS that has a Web browser capable of handling today's advanced Web sites, that is.]
- Any device type (smartphones, netbooks, notebooks, desktops, tablets, eReaders, photo frames, carputers, …) [Web browsers have to be adapted for the device, however.]
- Any CPU architecture (x86, ARM, MIPS, …).
Plus:
- Web app improvements or bug fixes can be propagated to millions/billions of users instantaneously. [Well, I'm not keen about automatic updates that induce fresh bugs.]
- Web apps can be offered for free/sale/subscription, to any user located anywhere in the world. [Language is an issue.]
The good thing is that HTML5 & WebGL are advancing quickly, so web app developers will be able to base their implementations on native browser standards, instead of proprietary, CPU & power-hungry plug-in technology like Flash & Silverlight.And that's what I am finding. As long as the device supports the Opera Web browser, then I am a happy man.
Comments