First, the update fixed a case of “extensionitis” that was preventing Hangouts from working on my main profile on my Chromebook. This was, I think, a case where one of the extensions I was using being slightly incompatible with the previous beta. Next, it’s enabled optional editing thru QuickOffice. You can now make modest changes in Word-formatted spreadsheets and documents, and that’s a big step forward with the platform. You have to enable this thru a flag on the Chrome://flags page. It also adds the ability to tweak display parameters, something that’s not an issue on a Chromebook (except with a secondary monitor) but is a big deal on a Chromebox. It has fixed bugs and improved stability, and it seems to me that it’s also dramatically improved memory usage (a big deal on a 2GB Chromebook). Here’s the list of release highlights from the ChromeOS blog:

• Kernel 3.8 landed on Pixel and Samsung 550.
• New “immersive” mode – hit the fullscreen button to hide the toolbar and shelf and until you hover at the top for a more immersive browsing experience
• Pin apps to the shelf using Drag and Drop from the Launcher
• Consumer Kiosk Mode allows you to build your own Chrome OS powered kiosk
• Default wallpaper selection will sync across all your devices
• Monitor Scaling allows you to scale the UI
• Two-finger history navigation
• App launcher Search just got cleverer

I was pleased to see that browser access to iWork documents stored in iCloud has been enabled on my account. I’ve tried a few things in Pages, Numbers and Keynote. I was using my Chromebook to access my iWork documents stored in iCloud (it gives an error stating that the browser is not fully supported, but you can click OK and the results are good). I brought up a couple of presos in Keynote to edit and ran thru the presenter mode. Another file gave errors and wouldn’t load, but it was a pretty large one and this Chromebook has limited memory, so that was likely an issue. I looked at some documents in Pages and Numbers. I created a new presentation in Keynote on the Chromebook, saw that it was quickly visible on my iPhone in Keynote, and then ran the presentation from my phone. Very cool. The overall look and feel is very nice. I think that Apple may finally be addressing its long-standing issue of quality in browser-based cloud-hosted software. This just added a lot of value to the $30 I spent for the iOS versions of Pages, Numbers and Keynote. Nice work, Apple!