Page 3 - index

Phil’s Ramblings
April 2017
The robins are back and
our neighbor’s crocuses
are in full bloom. It must
be spring! Is it just me, or
are the seasons moving
faster….?
Speaking of spring, it is
time once again for our
annual Anniversary Party
and elections. Please plan
to attend our April LCACE meeting to partici-
th
pate in both. It’s on April 15 , the third Saturday
of April.
Microsoft will be introducing their free “Creators
th
Update” for Windows 10 on April 11 . While
bits and pieces about this update have ap-
peared in the popular press during the last six
months or so, I am now beginning to see com-
prehensive descriptions of the changes being
introduced in this update. I plan to cover some
of these changes at our April meeting, but I’m
sure we will see considerably more information,
analysis and reviews once the update is re-
leased.
News on the Chromebook front is less positive.
In early 2016, Google announced that it would
be making modifications to its Chrome operat-
ing system and/or Android apps, to allow many
Android apps to run on Chromebook comput-
ers. This would vastly expand the applications
available to Chromebook users, who are cur-
rently limited to the relatively small number of
apps in the Chrome store.
As part of this announcement, Google identified
three new Chromebook models scheduled for
release later in 2016 as the first of many that
will be Android-ready out-of-the-box. They also
identified many existing Chromebook models
that would be updated later in the year, to allow
them to run Android apps as well. Unfortunate-
ly, we have not heard much more about this
initiative since the original announcement. (If
you go to the Google website and search for
their Chrome blog, all you will find is the original
announcement from early 2016.) In a February
3
2017 column on The Verge, Walt Mossberg
provided an update on this initiative. Here is
what he wrote:
“I’m happy to report that the first Chrome-
book designed from the ground up to run An-
droid apps out of the box has arrived, albeit a
little past the end of 2016. It goes on sale this
week for $450. It’s called the Samsung
Chromebook Plus, and it runs on an ARM
processor, the same type of processor that
powers the vast majority of smart phones
and tablets. It was designed in close cooper-
ation with Google.
Alas, in my tests of the Plus over the last few
days, I found the Android execution frustrat-
ing.”
While Mossberg goes on to compliment the
Plus as a very nice Chromebook, he cannot
recommend it as a bigger-screen version of
your favorite Android phone. It turns out that
the problem is pretty basic. Most Android
apps were never designed to look right and
run right on a large screen. As a result,
Mossberg ran into many situations where a
favorite app did not run well on the Plus, or
had a compromised display.
Google is supposedly hard working to opti-
mize it its own Android apps for the Chrome-
book, and is urging third-party developers to
do the same. However, it seems clear from
Mossberg’s article that they are way behind
schedule.
Bottom line, if you are thinking of buying a
Chromebook once they are fully compatible
with the full range of Android apps you are
using on your smartphone, it appears that
you will have to wait for quite a while.
In other disappointing news, the House and
Senate have just voted to block newly-
developed FCC regulations designed to bar
ISPs from storing and selling their users’
browsing histories without their consent. In
the battle to protect Internet user privacy, this
(Continued on page 6)