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Chrome Apps Gaining OS X Finder Integration to Open Mac Files by Default

I think web apps would become far better if they left the browser altogether.

Imagine an "app" that you launch just like any other, except 99% of its contents is pushed from the internet. This can include UI elements like buttons, scroll bars, and maybe GPU interaction, etc...

It would be pretty much like a web page today, except it wouldn't be forced to stay or even exist in the browser. Windows could be bigger, smaller, they could be closed and reopened from the Dock, you would never need to type in an address to get there.

Why aren't we seeing this yet?
 
baryon said:
Why aren't we seeing this yet?
Click to expand...

The internet is nowhere near ready for this. In high speed areas it could work, but in my area with a top broadband speed of 256kb/s and 2G mobile speeds it would be terrible.

I prefer to have my software on my HDD for now. Where I know it'll load just fine no matter where I am.
 
baryon said:
I think web apps would become far better if they left the browser altogether.

Imagine an "app" that you launch just like any other, except 99% of its contents is pushed from the internet. This can include UI elements like buttons, scroll bars, and maybe GPU interaction, etc...

It would be pretty much like a web page today, except it wouldn't be forced to stay or even exist in the browser. Windows could be bigger, smaller, they could be closed and reopened from the Dock, you would never need to type in an address to get there.

Why aren't we seeing this yet?
Click to expand...

arent you basically describing how much of the apps for ios and such are?
 
Horrible! Google gets access to your files by default

This is horrible.

By default, Chrome has access to your files. This means Google can read your files in the background and can gather your data. Talk about spying on you.

This also means malware in websites have access to your files when using Chrome. This is dangerous.
 
Google is getting annoying and scary. I do not want to sell my private information to Google to get their ''free'' products. I stopped using all Google services, I am using iCloud instead of gmail and Google Drive, Safari instead of Chrome and Bing instead of Google Search. Sorry Google you do not care about your customers and you became ''evil'' and greedy.
 
jameskatt said:
This is horrible.

By default, Chrome has access to your files. This means Google can read your files in the background and can gather your data. Talk about spying on you.

This also means malware in websites have access to your files when using Chrome. This is dangerous.
Click to expand...

Actually, it isn't by default, currently you have to both be running Canary and specifically turn the feature on in chrome://flags. Even if it was, it wouldn't automatically become the default app to open any files, you would have to change this yourself. Afaik sandboxing in OS X doesn't even give other apps access to that without a password.

As for the spying on your files, this wouldn't give Google any more advantage since the files are still being opened by you; there is no more potential for "background snooping" than there was before because this doesn't work by reading your files in the background. Basically Chrome just tells OS X "hey, btw I can now open .doc files, can you put an entry in that 'Open With' menu to hat says 'DocFree'?"

As for malware...I could go either way with that. Tbh, I'd be more worried about enabling this on Windows where malware has had generally better access to hijacking various parts of the browser/system (and many computers are already compromised as it is). In general, if you don't install any web apps in the first place you don't really have anything new to worry about.

I could easily see how this could end up being abused by developers, though. Hopefully Google will include some controls within Chrome to mitigate this before it hits Chrome stable.
 
numlock said:
arent you basically describing how much of the apps for ios and such are?
Click to expand...

Hmm yes maybe that would be similar. But we're not yet seeing that on the desktop at all so it could be interesting to see if it would work...
 
Renzatic said:
It's entirely acceptable to not like the way Google structures its business, but at least understand exactly what they're doing.

First, they're not giving away private data. If you used their services, they wouldn't be collecting info on a "PhilipK", you'd just be a number that gets tracked jumping from website to website, or by clicking certain advertisements. It's all analytics, and it'd be amazingly difficult to figure out who you are by the random number that's been assigned to you.
Click to expand...

I disagree... I interviewed with them and they knew exactly who I was.
 
"Chrome apps can be associated with OS X files, bringing Google one step closer to replacing desktop functionality with its browser"

Maybe I'm in the minority, but I don't want to replace my desktop functionality with a browser app. For the most part, I find web apps to be bloated, horribly buggy messes.
 
Parasprite said:
Seems legit.
Click to expand...

It is. I was sent to Room 101 for not having a gmail account. Still scarred to this day with all the personalised ads I had to endure there. No man should have to suffer such horrors.

The war continues. (Google are at war with Apple and always have been.) :rolleyes:
 
roadbloc said:
The internet is nowhere near ready for this. In high speed areas it could work, but in my area with a top broadband speed of 256kb/s and 2G mobile speeds it would be terrible.

I prefer to have my software on my HDD for now. Where I know it'll load just fine no matter where I am.
Click to expand...

This is what no one seems to get! We are nowhere near the capability of meeting internet demands for these kinds of operations. It will be many years before Internet is fast enough to match internal storage and decades before that internet is implemented globally. I like the convenience of light cloud storage use, but I will not try to outsource my HD.
 
roadbloc said:
The internet is nowhere near ready for this. In high speed areas it could work, but in my area with a top broadband speed of 256kb/s and 2G mobile speeds it would be terrible.

I prefer to have my software on my HDD for now. Where I know it'll load just fine no matter where I am.
Click to expand...

Yeah but I mean to replace current web apps. Current web apps load slowly on your connection anyway. What I'm saying is that what we call "web apps" today should actually be apps and should not appear inside a browser, but rather in the OS, and look and behave like a native app (no address bar, no Back/Forward buttons, window size tailored to the app, works as a separate window in Mission Control, etc...). The issue of slow loading is already a problem, my idea won't make that problem any different.

Of course important apps could still reside on the HDD, and web apps could work for things that you do on the internet anyway, such as Google Docs, Facebook, etc... But instead of going to Facebook.com and loading a webpage, you'd open an app called Facebook that would look like a native app, like the iOS app, but way better and tailored for OS X.
 
baryon said:
Yeah but I mean to replace current web apps. Current web apps load slowly on your connection anyway. What I'm saying is that what we call "web apps" today should actually be apps and should not appear inside a browser, but rather in the OS, and look and behave like a native app (no address bar, no Back/Forward buttons, window size tailored to the app, works as a separate window in Mission Control, etc...). The issue of slow loading is already a problem, my idea won't make that problem any different.

Of course important apps could still reside on the HDD, and web apps could work for things that you do on the internet anyway, such as Google Docs, Facebook, etc... But instead of going to Facebook.com and loading a webpage, you'd open an app called Facebook that would look like a native app, like the iOS app, but way better and tailored for OS X.
Click to expand...

There is an option for web developers to add a bit to their code which makes it possible to have just this (own window, custom icon, no address bar, etc.). However many of them end up more like a glorified bookmark, which is unfortunate.

This one is a neat example of it's potential, use Safari's "Add to home screen" and see how well it fits your description.

http://pattern.dk/sun/

(no affiliation)
 
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