It’s Easier to Add than Subtract (Premium)

Watching Chromebooks evolve into truly capable PC replacements is a fascinating reminder that it’s easier to add than subtract.

This is a topic I’ve raised from time-to-time, and it has important implications for Microsoft and Windows, in particular.

When we look at the evolving state of personal computing, we can see very clearly that mobile devices—mostly smartphones, but also tablets—have long outstripped traditional PCs and Macs. This is true of both unit sales, or marketshare, and usage. The PC once dominated personal computing but it is now a bit player.

To adapt to this seismic shift, Microsoft has tried to simplify its aging, legacy Windows platform. In doing so, it is, in effect, trying to subtract from Windows. It is trying to make Windows simpler or, using its own terminology, more streamlined.

But you can’t subtract from a complex, well-understood platform like Windows without losing functionality. And in many cases, this makes the platform less usable and familiar. And less useful, especially to the billions of people who rely on things working a certain way.

The best-known example of this subtraction, S mode, is artificial. While running in S mode, Windows 10 still includes all of the functionality needed to run desktop applications and other software. It’s just hidden from the user. And it hasn’t gone well at all, as is well-understood.

This approach makes sense, at least conceptually. As it turns out, Windows actually requires all of that legacy desktop code to run. Windows isn’t just not the same without it. It’s nothing. Hiding its legacy past is just about as sophisticated as this will ever get. Microsoft would pretty much need to start over otherwise, and its previous attempt at doing so—Windows Mobile nee Windows Phone nee Windows Mobile again—failed about as hard as anything can fail.

And that’s too bad. Because it’s much easier to add than to subtract.

As I wrote two years ago in Can Google and Apple Pull the Plug on the PC Market?—and have discussed many other times, both in writing and on podcasts—the makers of simpler mobile platforms face an easier task than Microsoft does with Windows. They can simply add capabilities to their platforms over time, as they have, and make the products more sophisticated.

That said, Android and iOS have both moved awkwardly into this future. In the two years since I wrote that article, Android has continued to fail on tablets and has never emerged as a serious contender on PC-type devices. And the multitasking features Apple has added to iOS on iPad Pro are almost laughably bad: They are impossible to discover organically, do not work logically, and are further hampered by Apple’s tunnel-vision on the separation of desktop PC and device.

These failures would give Microsoft and Windows some breathing room if it weren’t for one little problem: Chromebook. Google’s browser-based OS provides the right mix of “good enough” and “it just works” to trigger an education market revolution both in the U.S. and abroad. And the arrival of Android app support and the Google Play Store has finally put this platform over the top for mainstream consumers and business users too.

The melding of Chrome OS with Android isn’t completely seamless, for sure. But it’s a lot more useful than Microsoft’s addition of a mobile apps platform in Windows 10.

And you can see the growing maturity of this combined platform in modern Chrome devices that can better take advantage of all the new capabilities. The Google Pixelbook may be a tough sell at $999, but it’s a truly lust-worthy and aspirational convertible 2-in-1 Chromebook whose design rivals any MacBook or Surface PC. The recently-announced Acer Chromebook Tab 10 is the first of what will no doubt be many Chrome-based tablets. And now we have the first Chromebook detachable 2-in-1, the HP Chromebook x2.

A quick look at this device will show that it very closely mimics the Envy x2, which comes in both Qualcomm/ARM and Intel variants. It features lower-end specifications, but it can because Chrome OS doesn’t require all that overhead. The result is a device that looks just as good as its Windows-based siblings but costs much less, at $600.

Some will argue that it also “does” less, but that’s myopic. This device, with its Chrome and Android app compatibility, does exactly what most people need. Only a handful of niche vertical markets for hard-core gamers, developers, graphic artists, video editors, and the like would not be served by such a machine.

As such, this new generation of Chromebooks constitutes a serious threat to Windows. And it comes at a dangerous time because productivity is pretty much the only big market that Windows has left. These new Chromebooks may be better than just “good enough.” They may be … gulp … better.

I mean that in a very general sense, of course. And I know that for my own personal use that a Windows PC remains the right choice. This is true for many of you as well, obviously. But if you look past your own needs, preferences, and deeply-ingrained expectations, I think you will you agree that Chromebooks have evolved to the point where they are serious competition when it comes to the mainstream mass market of users. It’s pretty obvious.

We used to joke that [insert year here] was “the year of desktop Linux.” That fantastical alternate reality never happened, of course. But it is quite possible that Google, after many fits and starts and broken promises, has finally arrived at something even more chilling: The year of the Chromebook. And this hybrid system, unlike Linux, isn’t just a viable alternative to Windows. It’s one that is simpler and, in most cases, less expensive. In short, better.

And it just isn’t clear how Microsoft subtracting from Windows 10 will ever rival Google adding to Chrome OS. In fact, this contest may already be over.