Google will warn you about this, but it’s worth noting that the dev channel is for, well, devs. It’s more prone to bugginess, unresponsiveness, and crashes than the polished “stable” channel that’s built for consumers.
If you make the switch, it’s a good idea to back up whatever data you might have on your device.
This was annoying, but it’s not something I can really knock in these very early days. If those performance-related hiccups are still around when the Play Store hits the stable channel in September, it’ll be harder to forgive.
Same if you wanted to, say, use a dedicated Spotify app, instead of having to stream in the browser.
A mobile-centric app like Snapchat highlights a good chunk of the appeal here. If everything’s done well, it makes it easier to keep your endless stream of info confined to one Chromebook screen.
It’s like the convenience of having iMessage on a MacBook; functions that were once fragmented between devices now feel more unified.
This feels especially right with messaging clients, note taking apps, streaming services, or anything else you’d normally leave running off to the side, while you get the bulk of your work done in the browser. Laying that stuff out in app windows is cleaner than switching between tabs, too.
These apps won't replace Chrome as the anchor of everything you do on a Chromebook — YouTube, Facebook, Google Docs, Google Maps, and most other major apps still work better in the browser — but they undoubtedly make the OS more versatile.
Going back to Snapchat: It's not as natural here as it is on a phone, clearly, but it translates decently enough. Where you’d normally swipe and tap, now you drag and click. (This is a common sentiment.) I had a problem where the Snaps themselves didn’t format correctly to the app’s window, but again, that’s something I’d expect to see sorted out as we get closer to a genuine release.
It’s a far cry from running Steam, but there’s still lots of good in Android’s game catalog. Again, having the Play Store breaks down barriers — when I’m bored, I don’t have to dig out my tablet to play some Lara Croft Go.
Because most of these games are designed with simple touch controls in mind, they aren’t hard to translate to a mousepad, either. You can pick up something like Angry Birds without any need for a tutorial.
This is especially evident with games that require more precision — I’m bad at Alto’s Adventure, as you can see — but in general, these are still Android apps. That means they’re still made for Android devices, which have touchscreens.
It’s not a coincidence Google’s enabling the Play Store on three touch-enabled laptops first. Without it, getting around is always going to feel just a little bit unnatural, unless developers specifically built things with multiple inputs in mind.
Writing Word docs, playing games, editing photos, reading articles saved to Pocket — you can actually do things now when your Chromebook isn't connected to the web.
You’ll still be online most of the time anyways, and Windows and macOS still look and feel less patched together, but having more options is a plus.
Major players like Uber, Instagram, WhatsApp, and MLB At Bat here aren’t ready for the transition just yet. Others, like Slack, had technical issues even when I could download them. (In that case, Chrome OS's struggles with external links kept me from using the app completely.)
The result is this marvel of UI design.
Google isn’t virtualizing each app, but everything's presented in windows that are meant to resemble a phone or tablet form factor. It's all running on Android 6.0 Marshmallow, which means the apps themselves can’t scale to varying sizes.
Thankfully, Android N is coming, and its “freeform window” and split-screen modes should be able to help with this.
In other words, from phone view to tablet view. It’s still not ideal, but it makes fitting more apps onscreen a little bit easier. Most of the time, landscape view is the default.
Other reports have said this wasn't a problem, though, so it could just be me. Google wasn’t immediately available for comment on the protocol here.
If Google is going to let the Play Store and the existing Chrome Web Store live side-by-side, it should make it easier to separate which apps you got from where. They're different experiences.
As it stands now, when you download something from the Play Store, it goes into the “All Apps” folder — which itself should take less clicks to reach — just like a web app, with no clear demarcation. If you have both versions of an app, though, you’re stuck with duplicate icons. This looks sloppy.
There are other issues here — the fact that files saved in Android apps don't appear in Chrome's file manager, the way notifications don't pop up unless you have an app open, how Chrome OS plans to get around Android’s persistent security risks, etc. — but gaming, working offline, and streamlining how many devices you have to use at once are all Good Things.
With a little time to mature, all of this should give more people more choices among inexpensive laptops. Considering how flimsy and sluggish cheap Windows laptops continue to be, that’d be welcome.
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