Introducing Pixel C | Hacker News Reader

Introducing Pixel C

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133 pointspearjuice85 comments

What a poor product page. And the official blog post is very light on information too. Only the press conference had some details.

https://youtu.be/Jc-LEG0T_4c?t=4382

I was hoping for OLED, which wasn't mentioned. What I did notice is that the screen is incredibly reflective.

Right. Could you POSSIBLY design a less-helpful, less-informative page?Maybe one with even more annoying keyhole-cropped images? Maybe! But you could not possibly under-improve on the random little rainbow bug bottom right that does nothing and says nothing.

You guys are misunderstanding the purpose of the page. It clearly says this is a SNEAK PEAK. It's like a teaser instead of a trailer. Obviously it will suck if you look at it as a product page, because it simply isn't one.

Exactly. The point of the page is to pique your interest, ideally to the point where you decide to sign up for email updates. In many ways, giving more concrete information works against that goal, so the page doesn't do that.

But we don't want that, hence the complaints. Sign up for a newsletter just to get the technical specs for a random tablet? Come on. Marketers needs to stop taking drugs.

The complaints I replied to above were directly to a product page, and this is no product page. Therefore their complaints are simply misguided.

And what you want is irrelevant, are they not allowed to put up a website like this you think?

Sneak peek.

http://theoatmeal.com/comics/sneak_peek

https://twitter.com/stealthmountain

And there I was excited for a minute of a new C language variant focused on graphics...

me too!

You are not alone.

Kids with high Karma post the darndest things ... Daddy, when I grow my Karma will I be able to post such content and have it fly high on the first page?

The rumors expected this to run ChromeOS because its codename is apparently Ryu. If that's true, there are still changes being pushed to the ChromeOS codebase regarding this device:

https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/platform/ec/+/1...

which tells me there's still more to know about this device. I'm curious what it is. Even though I'm typing this on my first generation Pixel, is there really enough of a difference between a Chromebook and Chrome for Android to justify porting both OSes to the same piece of hardware?

Devtools and Crouton would make this a pretty interesting device

Key problem is it's ARM and not Intel processor. How much of a real developer experience a crouton style solution enables on ARM, I'm not sure. But I'm guessing it's a lot more limited.

Limited in what respect? There's plenty of Linux distros which run on ARM/ARM64.

I guess I was only referring to being able to install anything precompiled for Intel linux, which would include just about any proprietary software. I had a few problems running things in my past attempts with this (running Ubuntu on an Android tablet). However I was surprised to see from Googling around that people have indeed now got most common dev tools working on the Samsung ARM chromebook so I might be completely wrong about it

As voltagex_ pointed out you will have no problem with open-source packages, but I imagine you could try QEMU for running proprietary x86 bits in a pinch.

Limited in two respects:

1. The lack of a pointing device 2. Missing keys on the keyboard: escape, tilde, brackets.

Are there Linux distros that work well under those constraints? Honest question.

How do you know that it runs ARM?

It runs Tegra X1 SOC : http://www.nvidia.com/object/tegra-x1-processor.html

Sorry this is snarky but a quick Google search would have shown you some good short resources to data.

http://lmgtfy.com/?q=Linux+arm+support

I never understood why ChromeOS existed in the first place. To me, it would make much more sense if these devices ran Android. After all, there's no apps for ChromeOS -- other than glorified Chrome extensions, and it's not easy for developers to create ChromeOS apps (whereas if I could recycle my Android app, life would be good). Arc welder doesn't seem to work very well either.

Analogously, Apple only has iOS. There's no SafariOS.

Because it's the perfect Enterprise OS for companies, schools and other organizations that have moved to the web. Currently there's just no OS that would rival ease of deployment for large scale thin clients.

Android on the other hand has very limited provisioning tools and even iOS/OS X is orders of magnitude more expensive and harder to provision, keep updated and running.

> Android on the other hand has very limited provisioning tools

But Google could have improved Android provisioning instead of pushing another OS.

(Which would probably be sensible either way. There's billions of Android devices in enterprise environments that'd benefit from it.)

> Android on the other hand has very limited provisioning tools

It would be orders of magnitude more cost efficient to just create those tools, compared to creating an entire new operating system.

Considering that the "new operating system" is pretty much Chrome running over Linux without any Window Manager, I'm not that sure.

The cost is not just in the form of development expenses. It's about having to support two systems, creating a confusing message for consumers, having to foster and support two different app ecosystems, marketing two different competing platforms, etc.

> Analogously, Apple only has iOS. There's no SafariOS.

I'd say the Apple analogy would be iOS vs.MacOS. One could argue that the iPad Pro makes more sense if it ran MacOS.

Why is this running Android instead of Chrome OS? Internal politics are clearly at work.

Moreover, why isn't there a stylus. I really, really, appreciate 1:sqrt(2), but without an accurate, ultra low-latency stylus you can't treat it like a pad to express ideas on.

The build looks fantastic, though.

Arrrrgh, so much promise...

the hardware has never been a problem, it was the terrible tablet apps. Seems to be getting better.

It makes more sense to run Android; a tablet without apps isn't nearly as useful.

One could argue that internal politics (in the form of the rise of Sundar Pichai) are what propped ChromeOS up to the point where it was even a question whether a device like this should run Android or not given that ChromeOS's functionality is theoretically a subset of Android (given a full-featured Chrome browser for Android).

I realize that in practice many people buy ChromeOS devices primarily to run Crouton or their own bootloaded Linux build which this is a complication for, but I don't believe that is relevant to the internal politics issue.

I disagree. I see them as very different value propositions.

Chrome OS is about giving you a baseline (80-90%) computing environment with as little administrative overhead as possible (easy to setup, easy to share device, no driver issues and so on). That's why Chromebooks are doing well in the education sector.

By contrast, an Android convertible like the Pixel C is about giving you a general-purpose Android environment in a different form factor.

There's some blurring around the edges (Android has a Chrome browser missing some desktop features, Chrome OS can run some popular Android apps), but they're nevertheless aiming at very different targets.

And a device like this points up those distinctions rather well. It's a 2-in-1, like the iPad Pro and the Surface/Surface Pro line. But, and I'd say weirdly even more than the iPad Pro highlights the dichotomy between iOS and OS X, the Pixel C really drives home the difference between Android and ChromeOS. To get the full Google 2-in-1 experience (something that offers all the promise of a tablet AND all the promise of Google's version of a notebook, you'd want something that can run the offline versions of Google Docs that ChromeOS has (not the Android versions that seems geared more towards consumption) and the tablet apps that Android has. So it's a 2-in-1 that's an Android tablet AND an Android notebook.

(And honestly, I think this also points out how weak Google's OSes are outside the smartphone space. Android still doesn't have the sort of high-end creation apps for tablets that iPad and Surface have, and ChromeOS doesn't have the sort of productivity apps the Windows, OS X or even Linux offer.)

What would be the point of having Chrome OS on a tablet? I can't think of anything that the Chrome OS would be better at doing on a tablet over Android.

Android M has Bluetooth stylus support as standard.

Also, I wouldn't give up on native pen support just yet.

NVIDIA's DirectStylus technology is supposed to be processor-based and, more importantly, uses standard touch sensors (no active digitizer required), though it does seem to require support for a faster-than-normal touch refresh rate (NVIDIA's DirectTouch).

With luck, good pen support on the Pixel C might be just a software update away...

If anything running Chrome OS instead of Android would be a display of internal politics at work. As Android is way more popular than Chrome OS. Plus, Chrome OS aligns better with Google's primary business.

> Why is this running Android instead of Chrome OS?

Because you can already get convertible touchscreen Chromebooks (e.g. ASUS Chromebook Flip, ThinkPad Yoga 11e Chromebook). Yes, a Chrome OS Pixel C would add a detachable keyboard, but overall it would be a much smaller step from existing Chrome OS devices than the Android Pixel C is from existing Android tablets.

I've never understood the point of Chrome OS's existence as a separate thing from Android. So I'm glad it's an Android device.

I used to question this, too, but then again, I also sincerely appreciate having a Chromebook that boots in about 5 seconds ... compared to my phone that takes about a minute to go from off to "useful".

I know it doesn't matter for consumers as much, but it's far easier to centrally administer ChromeOS devices than Android devices, too.

The funny thing about that is that my MacBook Pro boots in a few seconds to a full desktop OS, just as my Windows 10 machine does. The cold-boot time of Android is pretty terrible. Admittedly the devices are pretty slow that it boots on, but still.

ChromeOS may have the best security architecture in any networked consumer device ever sold.

Android, on the other hand, is not.

I think this marks a step in Google's jump into hardware.

An important one to denote that "Pixel" does not mean Chrome - it means Google.

The previous Pixel, even the first was the "Chromebook Pixel"

This is the "Pixel C"

One might fathom we could see a "Nexus Pixel" in the future.

What "Pixel" denotes is "cargo cult dogfooding." It's when you sell your customers dry kibble dog food and you have some high-end dogfood around for your engineers, some of the canned stuff that you let the really clever dogs cover in veal demi-glace through Crouton. (Yes, I understand that I'm comparing Ubuntu to something top of the line, it's not a perfect metaphor.)

Google, outside of their smartphones, makes computer products for children. I'm serious about this, I'm not being condescending to Google users, I mean actual children. Android tablets are the tablets you give to a four-year-old to occupy them on a long car trip or while you're making dinner. They're small enough for a child to hold comfortably and they're cheap enough for you to not stress out what the child is going to do with them. Chromebooks have caught on in exactly one market, education, because children can be real assholes and giving them a computer that can't actually run software eliminates a lot of the headaches that come from giving Turing-complete devices to real assholes.

But Google engineers aren't children. They want real computers. What they probably really want are MacBooks, just like everyone else. But MacBooks aren't dogfood. The Chromebook Pixel exists pretty much entirely so that Google can claim to dogfood ChromeOS and engineers can get a laptop that works for them, if you consider putting up with Ubuntu over OS X working for them. It's all an elaborate charade, in that running a high-end Chromebook Pixel and using Ubuntu through Crouton or just wiping the thing has about as much in common as the $200 Chromebooks that most ChromeOS users actually have as just giving the Google engineers their MacBooks, but Google seems to regard dogfooding as something more honored in the breach than in the observance, so that's just par for the course.

So why is this a Pixel and not a Nexus device? Well one, because Google makes it themselves. But why are they making this themselves? Or at all? Because Google engineers want a Surface or iPad Pro. And people who work for Google are about the only market for a Surface or iPad Pro knockoff running Android, because Android is such a terrible tablet ecosystem for anyone who has app needs beyond Netflix and Toca Pet Doctor and I don't see this thing moving the needle on that point. And since it's running Android and not ChromeOS you can't even get any of that Ubuntu demi-glace on it. So even by the standards of the Pixel line this is such an awkward compromise between dogfood and something edible.

Meh, it's not a C library nor a compiler. The name fooled me.

> The Pixel C takes an entirely new approach to the tablet experience.

It looks like any other tablet.

If only it had an ESC key (vim), and backtick (markdown) above the Tab key. I don't get it.. they had me for a second, but then that kind of ruins using it for anything "serious". I know, I know.. I'm probably not the target market...

The lack of bracket keys [ and ] is most serious.

How do you know?

It's missing: `~[]{}|\

I wouldn't be able to type some of my passwords or URLs on this thing. I thought the Chromebook keyboards were bad enough.

In the nexus presentation, they mentioned that a few symbol keys were moved up to soft keys to fit the keyboard while keeping a laptop-like distance between keys. So, it might not be super convenient, but you can likely still type your passwords.

I've switched to longer passwords but all lower-case - mainly to ease the pain of entering them on a phone.

On a proper keyboard it takes the same amount of time to type, it's easier on my brain and you can achieve the same entropy with just a few more characters.

(And then some f%£$ing website will tell me my 16 character password is insecure because it's all lower case.)

It looks like there's a new meta key "..." immediately to the left of the directional arrows. Perhaps there's a chording mechanism to bring back the symbols?

I've been surprised how well I've been able to adapt to the Chromebook keyboard; my daily-driver notebook is a Chromebook with crouton. I think I miss having delete the most. The loss of the windows key as a user-defineable meta key was offset by the fact that I never use caps-lock for anything...

Fair enough, but the keyboard is why I regret my Chromebook which I also use daily. I thought it would not be a big deal (and I did manage to remap Power to Del -- just don't hold it too long!). But missing F11/F12, home/end/pgup/pgdn, meta, insert, etc. annoys me constantly.

Interesting, what other characters are in your password?

I think the presentation mentioned that the keyboard is extended by another row of keys on-screen. Not great, but that is how they intended to fix that.

Except you need to be a master of origami to handle "laptops" these days.

It's so entirely new that it looks remarkably like a Surface Pro and iPad Pro. Except they forgot to copy the stylus, because that would be getting the point.

The only thing I took away from that page was the fact that they removed the pipe symbol. Basically rendering 20 years of linux programs garbage. (I guess we can remap it, but wtf).

The pipe symbol is like the windows-button of linux – except way more powerful.

It's not just the pipe.

* no braces or square brackets

* no tilde

* no backtick

* no backslash

* no ESC key

* the TAB key has also been severely shrunk, the quote/double-quote key is also much smaller than normal

> all the function/quick access keys are gone

Its most likely optimized for YouTube, Netflix, google docs and hangout... You should look out for Chromebooks if you are looking for a small laptop to hack on and install Linux

Hard keyboards on mobile devices are meant to make typing faster. Soft keyboards enable you to easily access symbols and other less-often used parts of a character set quite a bit more easily than using shift keys on a hard keyboard. You also have handwriting recognition that recognizes diacritical marks, which makes those easy, too.

You can also use any bluetooth or usb keyboard with any Android device.

Once there is some information this might be interesting, but just the visual sneak peak doesn't seem special: its clearly a not-too-small Android tablet with a (standard? available?) keyboard case, but what makes this different from, e.g., Samsung's top-end Android tablets?

I'm sure there are technical features that distinguish it, but this sneak peak isn't highlighting them

Google has Microsoft envy?

This might be the first convertible to lack a trackpad...

If Microsoft is going to get solid hold on Mobile, it will be through tablets. The Surface line is relatively well liked. The number one detractor for Windows in mobile is the lack of apps. If Microsoft can use their desktop dominance to push their way into tablets. Life could get very uncomfortable for Google and Apple.

That's because it's a touch-first mobile device. Surface Pro is a PC in tablet form-factor.

I was recently whining about the lack of a modern Sony VAIO P replacement.

If this has a built-in 4G/LTE modem, I may want one, especially if it is possible to run Linux on it (maybe via Deploy Linux?).

That's something else I recently whined about: why there is no 4G/LTE modem in any ultrabook (except for one or two unaffordable chromebooks not available in my country anyway)? It seems to be only in tablets and high-end 15" laptop. That makes no sense to me.

The Lenovo X series Thinkpads have an optional LTE modem.

I wondered this as well. My last laptop purchase was the Lenovo X1 Carbon 3443CTO, which I believe is the 2013 version. It's not easy to get to the WWAN card and replace it, and no idea if the BIOS would even let you.

Shortly after I got the laptop, Optus rolled out LTE in my city on a non-standard frequency (LTE-A on 2600mHz). This is one of the reasons I prefer a USB dongle or Wifi "hotspot".

There seems to be an Ars Technica coverage of it http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2015/09/google-pixel-c-hands-...

If this is a response to the Surface and iPad Pro, the apparent lack of a stylus is going to make this a tough sell.

As @bsimpson had mentioned, i see this as a smart(political?) move to be the first hybrid chromeOS running android apps (or Android OS itself).

I've tested Android apps running in Chrome and it seems very promising. Excited to see if there is going to be a convergence/overlap! :)

Want it to be a productivity tool? Include proper mouse support. Include proper multitasking.

Perhaps not such a great choice of name as years of web browsing have me instinctively associating the "pixel.*" domain with a tracking pixel - and that's what I initially thought this would be about.

Pixels have been shipping since February, 2013, so your comment is a few years too late. :)

Chromebook Pixels, yes. Those have a page at https://www.google.com/chromebook/pixel/ which is definitely far less unambiguous.

shrug People get kerfluffled about the strangest things.

From a Google related website I would except at least a CSRF protection [1].

[1] http://cixtor.com/pastio/dp9zi0

Why do all the Pixels look like Gen 1 Apple products?

No function keys? C'mon, the keyboard 'looks' good, but lacks the keys you need for work.

This is something made at the last minute, Google saw the Ipad Pro, so they made a tablet quickly to show / to compete with Microsoft and Apple.

Well, Pixel Java actually...

Does "Linux Deploy" work?

I am an iOS user, but I would go Android (a clean one, with O/S security updates) if I can have a tablet GUI with a working Emacs, Bash etc under Debian.

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