It’s been roughly a year since Jolicloud‘s alpha release and the company founded by Netvibes founder, Tariq Krim, has just launched Jolicloud 1.0 to the public.
The iPhonesque open source OS oriented towards netbooks has more than just an incredibly sexy interface, with an App Store-like selection of over 700 apps (going on 1,000 before the end of the year) – giving users access to everything from Spotify to DropBox in a simple click. Jolicloud has also blended in a bit of social, allowing users a practical way to discover the best applications out there according to what their friends download and rate. Does that mean that the days of the unused Windows desktop icons are over ? Even better, users with the “Anywhere OS” installed on multiple computers automatically have access to all their applications and from whatever machine they’re on – definitely practical for when you are also transfering all your data entirely from one computer to another. Gotta love the cloud.
The Paris-based company is definitely aiming to make waves in cloud computing with its futuristic approach to operating systems, building its vision on the idea that tomorrow’s desktop computer market will be a combination of high-end Macs or netbooks – with not much in between. For anyone without the dough for a Mac, well, they’re probably going to shell-out no more than a few hundred bucks for a netbook. Thus, Krim could ultimately be banking on anyone without a Mac. Oh, but Jolicloud actually runs on a Mac as well.
Plus, that doesn’t mean Jolicloud is necessarily aiming to wipe out Windows either. Users can actually install the OS alongside Windows and use Wine for Windows-only products on the virtual desktop.
The start-up took $4.2 million from London-based Atomico Ventures and Mangrove Capital Partners last summer and should be introducing their Freemium business model sometime soon. For now, everything is entirely free and given that the number of users supposedly increased by 50% within the first day of version 1.0′s release, I figure I’ll finish with one last thought (which also happens to be the company’s tag-line): you don’t need a better computer, you need a better operating system.
1 comment
Comment by kulamaker
kulamaker August 16, 2010 at 2:00 pm
Installed it on Maria’s netbook because Win7 was a little too demanding in terms of resources. It works just fine and it’s not a big revolution from a usability point of view.