Look, I really like the idea of the Chromebook, but I feel like Google's kinda moving in the wrong direction here.
What power user lives completely in the cloud?
* Coders obviously can't use this machine.
* Designers need photoshop or other non-web apps.
* Writers are not gonna migrate from Word to something like this, because either they were already using Google Docs and are fine with their crappy old netbook, or they like Word and are gonna stay with it, because writing is still just plain better in MS land.
* Video editors obviously need real apps
* Social media experts will just continue to use their iPad3 or Nexus 7/10
Apparently the codename for the Pixel (in the chromium os issue tracker, svn, etc) was Link[1], and recently they've added a metallic (i.e. chrome) android statue (without a corresponding android update) [2]. I might be just over-analyzing things, but there might be some software update in Google I/O signalling a merge between Android and Chrome OS (where the latter is already starting to get features like Google Now on that mobile-convergence pathway like Apple's OS X Lion).
Android has arguably more high-performance, graphics-heavy and touch-enabled apps, and has the toolchains to compile more sophisticated applications (IDEs, etc).
Also, Google has a weird ironic naming paradigm. First is Chrome which is named as such because they want to minimize the browser's chrome (tab bar, menus, buttons, etc.), and now is the Pixel which has a HiDPI display so people kind of forget the pixel. It would probably be a bad idea to call their self-driving car Crash though.
Judging by this interview three years ago, it seems to have crossed the minds of the Chrome OS team, but it would be strong to call it a "plan".
JS: And this also gets at another issue. I know that Sergey made some comments that were widely reported about a future merging of Android and Chrome OS, and to me this seems more like a statement of the obvious. In the sense that, once the hardware is full-featured enough to support all the things that you have on Chrome OS, then why do you need something as stripped-down as Android.
MP: Yeah, it's unclear. We get a lot of questions like this, and the truth is, I don't know the answer. We're so focused on shipping release one right now, we spend less time than the outside world speculating about what we're going to do next... how will we integrate this with Android... how will we do any number of things like that. -- http://arstechnica.com/business/2010/01/chrome-os-interview-...
The interview as a whole shows where Google's head was at regarding Chrome OS just a week before the iPad was announced, which is itself fascinating.
You really think he's going to say something like: "Yeah, I know that's what Sergey said, but we don't want to merge with Android. We think that the web platform is important and that would be a step backwards"?
I think the evidence says it all. Three years later and Chrome & Android are no closer to a merger.
There is an SSH app for Chrome. If you're "in the cloud" you have a computer to SSH to to code on. I do this with my Chromebook and it works fine; windowed Chrome apps don't steal keys anymore, so C-w is kill-region, not "close the tab".
There is also nothing stopping you from porting your favorite development tools to NaCl. This is something I'm planning to look into in the near future.
they were already using Google Docs and are fine with their crappy old netbook
Also, Google Docs looks really nice on a Macbook's retina display; significantly nicer than on a regular display. If the Pixel renders it the same way, it is a nicer experience.
That seems like a reasonable use for a $250 computer, but using a $1300 computer with a 2560x1700 display as a dumb terminal is a bit of a waste.
Your average end-user is going to be pretty disappointed when they find out that all they can do with their expensive laptop is browse the internet.
It seems like the best use of this of this might be to run Linux, but if you accept a slightly lower resolution, you can get a pretty decent Thinkpad or Envy that has a lot more flexibility.
Paying an extra thousand dollars for a much improved experience of a device that you'll look at 5-10 hours a day for several years, doesn't seem to me to be out of line, even if it does act as a dumb terminal.
> So why wouldn't you spend the few hundred more and get a MacBook Pro that isn't a dumb terminal ?
Chrome (both the browser and ChromeOS) have always been about making it so that "browser" and "dumb terminal" aren't at all the same thing. Certainly, I think its reasonable to say that its still at the point where, for many power users, it isn't suitable as a replacement for a traditional desktop OS.
But then, this is clearly aimed at early adopters that are more heavily into web-based tools than is generally the case, and who value a low-configuration means of getting to those tools.
He/she may have come off as abusive. But I think that's actually a good question.
Yes, the resolution is great. But why would someone spend 1300 bucks on something that has great resolution just so they can ssh into something else? $500 maybe.
Whoever down-voted you was a dick, there's still more decent folk than dicks though, just ignore it. And, have some karma back, good point for discussion above.
Paying an extra thousand dollars for a much improved experience of a device that you'll look at 5-10 hours a day for several years, doesn't seem to me to be out of line, even if it does act as a dumb terminal.
The real answer is: depends on what $1000 means to you.
> Writing the code is only half the story. You also need to test that code and that means running the code on a target machine similar to your customer.
Right. And unless you are writing desktop software, that most likely means running it on a commodity physical or virtual servers, which aren't going to be your dev workstation.
For user-facing web software (as opposed to pure web services), ideal UI testing means having a wide variety of hardware/OS/browser combinations available for testing, but none of that needs to be your development workstation, either.
So neither of thos are strokes against using a Chromebook for development.
Most simple editing stuff, like what's in Picasa or Paint.Net/Pinta can be done in a ChromeOS app. My bigger concern is the CPU is overkill, and the GPU may be underkill... the latest/next gen Tegra chipset or similar with that screen would probably be a better combo at a lower price... Without a local OS, I'm afraid I wouldn't even consider this thing for over $800, at the price they are at, they're in Macbook territory, which although getting more locked down, is still much more versatile. Not to mention without VM host support.
> There is also nothing stopping you from porting your favorite development tools to NaCl.
You expect people to dedicate YEARS of their life porting development tools to a platform that in all likelihood is going to be dead soon ? Not happening.
> If the Pixel renders it the same way, it is a nicer experience.
Sure. And if we are completely ignoring price/value then reading it on a supercomputer connected to a Sony 4K television would equally be better.
I tried using a chromebook and an ipad as my sole dev setup for a week or so over the holidays. I actually found it was more freeing than a traditional setup in certain ways!
Once I got a linode server set up I stopped worrying about not having my dev env. With persistent 3G I was actually able to SSH in and get work in settings I never would have considered previously.
The obvious thing that was missing from the chromebook experience was a core set of native app. 1password, skype, spotify, and a few others haven't quite made it to a web app yet. However, most of these apps have a native client ready to go for iOS. So between the chromebook and iPad mini I felt like I had everything I needed to be productive.
Ultimately, I simply wanted a nicer machine to work on day to day. Chrome OS is a real pleasure to use (I like it more than modern OS X in some ways!), but the hardware on my Samsung laptop just felt, well...cheap. This new machine fits that sweet spot really nicely. I could see myself considering to purchase this machine as a dev laptop if I hadn't just bought a new macbook pro.
It certainly would have been a more flexible experience! I have a friend who frequents a coffeeshop I hang out at who I have been teaching Python and misc. hacking to. I ended up giving him the chromebook, and he's set it up with ubuntu (both by dual booting and through booting of a thumb drive!). So I definitely appreciate and accept the flexibility of ubuntu on the chromebook.
If you want to say it's "better," I'd ask "to what end?" I personally really like the security model of ChromeOS and having working 3G drivers was a huge benefit when I was experimenting with this setup. I love having a secure client I can trust to connect to sanctioned dev environments on. It's much harder for me to vet that my ubuntu rig hasn't been root-kitted vs. trusting the block-level cryptographic hashing on ChromeOS.
I think this is probably where most people would call me a tin-foil hat weirdo, and I wouldn't disagree. This might be just a fun exercise to think about right now. However, I think it's an increasingly important factor in considering personal computing setups and it definitely played into my choice of platform on the ChromeBook. Plus, it's also just plain cool to see how much mileage you can get out of just chrome + ssh!
Am I missing something here, or did they build a machine that even their own developers cannot use? When you go to the Google campus, will everyone still be toting around a Macbook?
Many of their developers use Chromebooks, I believe. Code is not allowed to be stored locally on mobile devices so they use Chromebooks and SSH (or any other laptop and SSH).
Additionally, I think that going forward on-site interviews at Google will use Chromebooks to type code up, rather than white-boarding (which makes me sad, but I suspect will make all the people who hate white-boarding a lot happier).
Google engineers are not actually allowed to write code locally on those laptops. The macbooks are only used when hanging out around campus to view email and ssh into workstations (linux desktops) where actual work is done. That same thing can be done from chromebooks.
I just think they are moving in the wrong direction between ChromeOS is for $200-$300 machines, not $1300 machines, no matter what extra specs they give it. Why buy such a powerful machine if you can't use Photoshop, IDE's or 3D games anyway?
But as a $250 web machine with 10h of battery life? Sure.
Depends what they are coding; developers working with PaaS platforms using one of the many cloud IDEs can certainly use it.
> Writers are not gonna migrate from Word to something like this, because either they were already using Google Docs and are fine with their crappy old netbook, or they like Word and are gonna stay with it, because writing is still just plain better in MS land.
If they are using Google Docs on an existing laptop/netbook, well, eventually its going to need replaced, and if that's their main use, ChromeOS presents a lot less distraction than traditional desktop OS's for that use role.
We've recently shifted to developing directly on a development instance on EC2 and haven't looked back. The IDE we use supports editing over SSH, so we simply treat the machine as if it were on our laptop. The best part is access anywhere. Last week I set up a local-only development box and everything was going swimmingly -- until I needed to work from home. I realized just how amazing being able to work from anywhere truly was.
There needs to be a balance. If I can't use my IDE on a chromebook, that obviously won't work. But if I can have access to my tools locally that manage remote service and data -- I'm golden.
I'm curious, what IDE are you talking about? I have the Samsung ARM Chromebook, and I've been forcing myself to learn vim so I can do development on a remote system over SSH, or on a local chroot environment. For my day job, I'm a Windows developer, so I'm used to the Visual Studio tooling.
I wonder if Brackets has any aspirations for a Chrome OS port. It's already a packaged JS app, but I don't know how portable their device API layer is.
I don't understand why I'm getting downvoted. Brackets is an HTML5 based IDE that's currently targeting the web development set, but could easily branch out (like any text editor) into being a good editor for any language, and is built to work in a browser. Make the remote repository for you code a bunch of files by SFTP, using SSH for commands, and you have a remote IDE for any development process, including eventually a debugger.
How many breathless stories have been linked here about dudes in Oregon pedaling their mountain bike out into the forest and setting up their iPad 3 and Zagg keyboard, and using their LTE connection to do remote dev? Same thing for the Chromebook.
I didn't downvote you, but are you seriously suggesting that all you need for arbitrary development is a nice-looking, syntax-highlighting text editor? Leaving aside the fact that Brackets itself is relatively immature.
It may work if you use SSH, as others have mentioned, but that still restricts your use case and that's not what you implied at first.
I was reacting to "coders obviously can't use this machine" because coders, with SSH and a nice IDE that fits into the environment, obviously can use this machine. As others have observed, you're not buying this for the processor, you're buying it for the large, high-res touchscreen, aluminum body, built-in LTE, and light weight. If you want raw CPU and hard drive space, you'll get a Mac. I don't think screen-and-body is an invalid reason, either, to pay a premium. When you use a tool all day, the surface quality, the experiential quality, makes a difference. I've never really understood being cheap with something that you're going to look at and touch 6-10 hours a day for 3-4 years, on average.
That said, yes, brackets is immature, but fairly brightly points to a future where a browser OS like ChromeOS is more than sufficient for a really wide variety of use-cases.
Do you realise how completely ridiculous and illogical you sound ?
> I've never really understood being cheap with something that you're going to look at and touch 6-10 hours a day for 3-4 years, on average.
So if that is the case why on earth would you buy a laptop that doesn't do anything ? Why wouldn't you spend the few hundred more and get a MacBook Pro that runs Eclipse, Sublime, Visual Studio, Photoshop, Office etc.
You can do all that in the browser or via remote desktop to a server or desktop. Eclipse Orion works in the browser (as do several other IDEs such as cloud9). Office works in the browser (but I prefer Google Docs).
For simple image editing, I just use pixlr.com. If I really needed advanced features from photoshop (or gimp), I can A) remote connect to a desktop or B) boot to ubuntu from a flash drive.
If you need Visual Studio and don't have access to a desktop computer you can remote connect to, then yes, don't buy a chromebook.
Or of course if you are developing native iphone/ipad apps (i.e., not phonegap, etc.) and don't have access to a mac computer, then yes, of course, get a macbook instead of a chromebook.
Probably because you're basing your argument on a bunch of things that don't exist, to justify a product that will take $1,300 out of your bank account today, not 3-5 years from now when it might be useful.
Probably not that well at first, but if you throw the possibility of a laptop that competes with a Retina MBP into the mix, I'd imagine there would be some desire in the community to work on it at least.
(edit: competes in terms of screen resolution... 4GB RAM and an i5 is not as good as 8-16GB RAM and an i7 of course)
Not just what, but where are the power users? Both models of the Chromebook Pixel are still available with immediate shipping from the Play Store. Contrast to the Nexus 4 sales launch.
You have multiple good points. But I don't think that writing really requires Windows, that is a pretty extravagant claim. You can write with a typewriter or a text editor, it's not DTP. And I don't see how someone whose job is to operate sites like Twitter has any serious reason why they would need Windows per se.
I wasn't claiming it requires windows whatsoever. Word is available for mac as well.
And if you're the kind of writer that doesn't need it, you probably already are using docs, on your $300 netbook, and you really don't care. This isn't going to improve your life in any way, because frankly, a computer from 1995 would be all you need for writing. I'd say earlier, but you at least need a half-decent print preview.
I still feel they haven't resolved the Android vs. Chrome OS debate. I can't imagine this doesn't create some tension within the organization. Maybe they're hoping to sell Android to Oracle (yikes).
> I still feel they haven't resolved the Android vs. Chrome OS debate.
The long-term strategy, which they announced years ago, is to converge the two platforms. (Its been obvious for some time that, in more detail, Android was the near-term comparatively low-risk [for Google] option, and ChromeOS was the long-term, higher-risk option.)
"We're pushing computing forward. It'll definitely make the
ecosystem rethink touch," Pichai said. "I think people will
take the first step toward building tablets with this." [1]
I would think HN is the kind of place where that's exactly what people would want to do. I'm not convinced by this Chromebook either, but stock configurations / things I can change are definitely not the reason.
So a little bit lighter and thinner than the Macbook Pro, with a slightly higher-resolution but smaller screen, but with a much slower CPU (1.8 GHz versus 2.5 GHz), and a much smaller SSD (32 GB versus 128 GB), for $200 less.
I'm not seeing the value proposition here. What can you even run on a Chromebook that would need a Core i5 CPU?
The more interesting one is the $1,449 model with LTE and 64GB, but I don't think it's particularly compelling. I have a Verizon 4G LTE hotspot and the highest plan is $90/month for 10 GB. I blow through that in 20 days or so even though I don't watch Netflix, use the office wi-fi whenever I can, etc. That's a lot of money to pay to use apps (GMail, Google Docs) that aren't even very good.
You need an i5 just to drive that crazy screen. People have reported that the 13" rMBP (which uses the same GPU as the Chromebook) can barely handle its retina display.
Not quite the same thing as the air isn't actually displaying at 2560x1600. Well it is, but it isn't, anyway you get the point. It is more the graphics card and the scaling in core graphics. It isn't an apples to oranges comparison exactly as they both aren't doing the same amount of processing for an image.
I think what they're going for is the computer-on-cloud concept taken to new heights -- not worrying about viruses or malware (Google is effectively the new system administrator of your machine), not worrying about data being unavailable going from one device to another is the value proposition they're offering.
If you really consider what the bigger half of people use computers for (watching videos, social networking, basic word processing, etc.) it suits their needs well, and the value proposition will probably resonate with them.
> If you really consider what the bigger half of people use computers for (watching videos, social networking, basic word processing, etc.) it suits their needs well, and the value proposition will probably resonate with them.
A tablet suits those needs a lot better than a $1,300 device that can do less locally than a $500 iPad.
My mom is in her 60s, speaks very little English, has great difficulty using computers... but she's gotten down the routine of how to access her 'addresses of contacts' list (basically just a document in Google Docs, with names of people and their addresses/phone numbers). She can do that anywhere, anytime -- she logs into Gmail, clicks Google Drive and there you are.
She cannot do this with normal desktops (she doesn't know how to use file explorers).
You're underestimating how valuable it is to have your data be available anywhere, anytime, you're underestimating how much of a burden very basic desktop usage is for the average Joe out there. Sure, that's probably not as true for the newer generation, but lifting the burden of system administration (managing data) is a pretty significant deal.
Personally I hate the idea of anyone but me being the guardian of my data -- to me this is just an excellent method for Google to introduce their ads into everything. Even to access my own static data I will keep getting served with ads, I hate that -- but it looks more and more that this is how things will be in the world of tomorrow.
My mom is in her 60's, speaks English poorly, and has great difficulty using computers. She absolutely loves her iPad and can do a lot with it. It was $500.
It's still not clear why a Chromebook is better than a tablet for this purpose, but even if it were, I'm not sure there's a compelling reason for someone like your mom to buy a $1300 Chromebook as opposed to a $200 Chromebook. The text may look better on the $1300 Chromebook, but most people who aren't technologically literate (and many people who are) would probably prefer to read off paper anyway.
What I was really hoping they would release was a marriage of the Samsung Nexus 10 and the Samsung Chromebook (ARM). I have one of each, and if I could get the screen of the Nexus in the Chromebook, I think it would be my perfect laptop (though the build quality of the Chromebook is a little lower than what I prefer, and who doesn't love a backlit keyboard).
> It's still not clear why a Chromebook is better than a tablet for this purpose, but even if it were, I'm not sure there's a compelling reason for someone like your mom to buy a $1300 Chromebook as opposed to a $200 Chromebook.
For the same reason a good chunk of my neighbors upgraded to iPhone5 from iPhone 4S (even though some of them didn't have the iPhone4S for more than a few months, and probably had to pay full (non-subsidized) amount to make the upgrade). Notice Google's marketing and branding efforts for this Pixel being eerily similar to Apple's, the pitch that the device somehow transcends in value over all of your other silicon-based products. They're trying very hard to have their brand be in the same rank Apple is in. It's a thing you're going to use to keep your pace in the 'Keeping up with the Joneses' game, it's like a Gucci bag, it's an alternative to the Macbook for when you're in Starbucks. There's no good reason to buy a Benz over a Corolla, but a lot of people do. Worse, a lot of people who probably shouldn't do.
Computer-on-cloud is pointless unless you've got the processing power on the cloud to get real work done. If Google were to throw their computing power behind an online photoshop clone, or video and audio editing software, then they'd have something.
If you really consider the actual market for computers, most users are going to laugh at Google's ridiculous price tag and buy a Windows machine for less than half the price.
Videos? On a 3:2 display? Don't get me wrong, I've been begging for laptop and display manufacturers to bring back displays with usable vertical resolution for writing code, but it's definitely not for watching video.
Um, that's barely narrower than a standard 16:10 aka 3.2:2 display, or a 16:9 / 3.55:2 HD panel. There's be minor letterboxing on a 16:9 DVD, but it would be barely noticeable.
Aside from the screen, the Air is a bit lighter, thinner,[1] has an equivalent processor, 4x the SSD, is $100 cheaper, and has access to the whole Mac ecosystem.
Again, I'm not seeing the value proposition.
[1] Arguably... this looks like 0.64" all the way across, while the Air tapers from 0.68" to 0.11". In practice I find the taper helps a lot for shoving into briefcases, sleeves, and holding it one-handed.
Why is Google calling it's products things they aren't? Google Chrome was the first browser which basically eliminated the Chrome. Google Drive replaces a Drive with an online service. Chromebook Pixel is the first Chromebook which doesn't let you see Pixels.
Is this a common naming strategy or Google specific?
This is pretty cool, I was thinking that the next Macbook Air would be a iOS device kind of like this.
I find it really amazing we've got these choices, MBPro, MS Surface Pro, Google Pixel. All of the variables are getting cover (high res / low res) screen, local/net storage, local/remote compute, attached/detached keyboard, cellular/wifi-only connectivity.
PCs and laptops had gotten so boring, but now, they are interesting again.
A higher-end processor also helps decode 1080p or higher-resolution video, or run Native Client apps and games, or just render browser content at 2560x1700.
> Wasn't the point of "fully living in the cloud" that you wouldn't need a powerful client?
No, the point was that you could seamlessly move between different clients in the event of hardware failure, being away from your primary device unavoidably, etc.
> Wasn't "thin client" the dream?
"Thin client" may have been someone's dream, but it certainly hasn't been Google's rich clould-based apps vision.
> No, the point was that you could seamlessly move between different clients
One word. Dropbox.
I work on three computers every day. Documents, Preferences etc all sync immediately. And how does living in the cloud help me when there is network failure ?
>> No, the point was that you could seamlessly move between different clients
>One word. Dropbox.
Yes, Dropbox is an example of using the cloud to make it easy to move between client machines.
> I work on three computers every day. Documents, Preferences etc all sync immediately. And how does living in the cloud help me when there is network failure ?
Using Dropbox to provide immediate sync of document and preferences is living in the cloud.
And "living in the cloud" works fine in network failure, if you have a mechanism to operate offline when the network is unavailable and resync when the network is available -- whether that's because you use a desktop OS and local apps with synchronized cloud storage or webapps with offline functionality, the latter of which is a feature Google pushed very hard for years on.
> "Unlike previous Chromebook versions, the Pixel is aimed at power users who fully live in the cloud."
> I thought that was always the point
Supporting users who "fully live in the cloud" has always been the point of ChromeOS (and, therefore, Chromebook).
The idea that those users would include "power users" has always been a Google goal, but hasn't been the focus of the design of previous Chromebook devices.
I always thought that power users use native local apps and casual users live in the cloud. Hence the emphasis on making Chromebooks as cheap as possible.
> I always thought that power users use native local apps and casual users live in the cloud.
Allowing native apps that run locally to be delivered via the web has been a long-term Chrome (browser and OS) goal (hence Native Client), and, from a broader perspective, enable browser-based apps (whether "native" and running locally, running in the cloud, or a mixture of cloud and local components) has always been the overarching Chrome goal.
IOW, making it so that all users, including power users, can live in the cloud has been a long-term, strategic focus of Google. The Chrome Pixel release is an indication that Google thinks that that vision is ready, if not for prime time, at least for early adopters.
I wish that laptop manufacturers were not so blatant about copying Apple designs. Apple designs were not successful because they found some mysterious perfect design but because they were different enough and look reasonably good.
But there is still a lot of things that can be improved on that design.
I like Apple's design because they've managed to pack a really good keyboard and an excellent trackpad into something that is relatively light and thin. The problem with most of the knock offs is the okay keyboard, but terrible trackpads.
I don't know about yours, but my MacBook Pro has one of the worst keyboards I have ever seen in a laptop. Lenovo, they make good keyboards (or at least, used to).
If you mean you wish that Apple were not always the first to market with obvious good ideas such as higher pixel density, then you should welcome their competition getting in on the act.
I think he's referring to physical form. PC laptops were roughly boxy things in 2 colors (tan and black) for a long time. After Apple released the solid color iBooks (after the 'purse' versions) you started to see smaller and whiter laptops. After Apple moved to aluminum and started making their laptops very thin, suddenly all sorts of PCs were aluminum and thin.
Apple doesn't own 'thin laptop', but tons of the thin laptop market just happens to be aluminum with a black keyboard with space between the keys.
I'm in the Mac world and haven't really looked for PCs, but it seems like every laptop I see either has a striking resemblance to a Mac or is a 'pimped out' Alienware desktop replacement type machine with interesting lines and multi-color LED lighting and such.
That is in fact what I meant. Pixel even has the little dent for the user to put the finger in when opening the laptop. I feel like even if I wanted to buy a non-Apple laptop, the fact that a lot of designs are so similar to Apple makes me feel as if I was buying Adidos shoes which cost roughly the same as real Adidas shoes (and I'm far from being an Apple fan boy). And again, I feel like there is still a lot that could be improved on said design.
That little dent is actually what I hate most about my current MacBook Pro. It looks nice, especially when closed, but the radius on corners is way too small, so it's pretty uncomfortable when you poke yourself on it.
2nd worst is not having a USB port on the right side, but they've changed that in the 2+ years since mine was made.
Who is target user of this laptop?
Question for people who own a chromebook already: Would you recommend your chromebook or chromebook-pixel to other developers?
I have the $249 ARM Chromebook. I like it better than a regular laptop because I rarely use a laptop, and every time I need to go somewhere, my normal laptop is out of date and not sync'd with anything. The end result is that I mostly use my laptop for updating its software, not actually using it. Chrome OS handles all this automatically, so can just turn it on and it's ready.
For $249, the ARM Chromebook is built pretty well. It's small, light, and the battery lasts a long time. The screen is fine. The keyboard is fine. Sometimes it feels a little slow, but so does my 8-core i7 desktop :)
Exactly, a "$249 ARM Chromebook" hits bulls-eye what Chrome OS laptop should be. Developers(and other users though less likely) would not mind paying $249 for a laptop which obviously has constraints compared to its more powerful and more expensive counterparts.
Chrome Pixel looks like a powerful laptop plagued by the limitations of Chrome OS. Chrome Pixel is not going to be (in my opinion and probably Google doesn't expect it to be either) a sellout product but it highlights Google's vision of how laptops would be in coming years.
I have been dogfooding the pixel for a few weeks and I have to say it's an amazing device. I have also had other chromebooks and the pixel really makes them feel like cheap toys. I use it for writing code only via ssh, but it works really well for that and the screen is just breathtaking. I haven't really experimented too much with any web IDEs out there, but hopefully that is an area where we'll see growth very soon. I definitely agree that the price tag is pretty tough for a chrome device, and I'm not sure whether I'd buy one myself, but using this thing is absolute pleasure and I find myself reaching for it much more often than my retina mac book pro.
After getting an invite to action.io, I can do a lot of my side project development in the browser. I've been using it for about a week, so far, but I really like it.
Not really being able to write code was really the only thing that turned me off from buying a chromebook. I would be willing to get a regular chromebook, but the $1299 price tag of the pixel doesn't seem worth it. I don't see the touch screen being too useful, so if I was going to spend that kind of money, I'd rather just get a macbook air.
I have the $249 ARM Chromebook from Samsung. It is great if your workflow involves developing remotely over an SSH connection. I also have the Nexus 10, so I couldn't help but to notice the difference in screen quality when going between them. I don't know that I need a Core i5, in fact, I would probably prefer to keep the ARM processor for battery life/weight/etc, but a high resolution screen and backlit keyboard are the things I really feel like my current Chromebook is missing. That said, I don't think they're compelling enough for me to spend that kind of money.
The low end chrome book has been perfect for my mother. She can do email, facebook and run her etsy - all she needed. Wealthy mothers might be in the target demographic for the pixel, then. Devs? Not for a primary development machine, and it's too expensive for a secondary. Business traveler? They probably still need offline office or iWork or whatever other apps their company requires. Would be interested to see if anyone here plans on buying it.
Just needs to run Ubuntu on it well and I might just get it. Having a nice resolution screen for coding is worth it for me (but keyboard has to be good as well!).
The problem is that Ubuntu (at least in my experience, please correct me if this is wrong) just does not handle high resolution screens right now. Maybe it's just something I have set up wrong, but I've had nothing but trouble trying to get Ubuntu work well with a high dpi screen without making everything incredibly tiny.
I really appreciate the help! I've tried this in the past and it doesn't really seem to solve the problem, just compensates for some of them. It ends up being weird though when some elements are small and others are the size you would expect
Does anyone know if it has a "developer mode" switch like the ARM Chromebook, that lets you give up DRMd content apps and in return get full control of the machine (and install e.g. Ubuntu, or since this is an x86, maybe even some flavor of Windows?)
I'm not sure I could justify that much for an internet-only laptop. The hardware isn't half bad, to be honest, but the software offerings seem like something more suited for an internet tablet than a more-powerful laptop.
Err, why would they? I don't envision any high speed data transfers occurring on a regular basis, or really anything but a phone or a keyboard being plugged in.
Because its available and better and this is being marketed as a premium device. Since you mentioned phones though I remember reading that 3.0 could enable faster charging than 2.0. Also, with the 1TB of cloud space, I would probably want to copy something off there from time to time and would like the faster speeds.
What about a camera? Or backup hard-drive? Heck, I rarely use online backup services for my photos since the files are so ridiculously large so I just end up using multiple HDDs.
Or accidentally have any background processes running which happen to use data...
I imagine most likely whats going to happen is you'll be on wifi with like 18 tabs open and one of them will have a stupid flash ad and wifi will go down for 5 seconds but in that time the ad will refresh and sync a new video and all your bandwidth will suddenly be gone. :P
If only Microsoft understood it should release a laptop like this... just 256/512SSD + 8Gb RAM, I would be happy to pay 2K for it. No borders, a lot of vertical space, why is it that hard to copy a MBP and put Windows on it ?
HA, my gay friends might buy this. It has the I'm gay rainbow sticker on it.
Other than them, I'm not seeing how this sells. A refurbished Retina MBP is cheaper. And even at full price, $200 for a superior OS that can run apps like MacVim, VirtualBox, keep my stuff local, has much more storage and sync to my private 250GB storage. That's priceless.
What power user lives completely in the cloud?
* Coders obviously can't use this machine.
* Designers need photoshop or other non-web apps.
* Writers are not gonna migrate from Word to something like this, because either they were already using Google Docs and are fine with their crappy old netbook, or they like Word and are gonna stay with it, because writing is still just plain better in MS land.
* Video editors obviously need real apps
* Social media experts will just continue to use their iPad3 or Nexus 7/10
* Gamers can't go without DirectX seriously
What power users are they talking about?