Google retires the Pixel C tablet as it shifts focus to the Pixelbook
techcrunch.com
techcrunch.com
Aren't chromebooks (except for the pixelbook which is very nice but not cheap) the direct successors of netbooks ?
Was flying United not long ago and the entertainment system supported on iOS and Android so you could use with a CB but not Windows or Mac laptops. Confused the heck out of the person sitting next to my son. Finally explained to him why it was working on my son's laptop.
I had a friend shopping around for a professional level digital camera recently, and he didn’t realize until I told him that he could buy a 1-2 year old model with near identical specs and save some cash to buy lenses/accessories/etc or just save it.
Second Microsoft freaked, because Vista could not run on them.
End result was that we got a combo of hardware and software that was not fit for anything, along with a bunch of gray-box rebrands (particularly of a certain MSI model).
You and I clearly have very different definitions of "real keyboard".
I've actually been wanting an Android tablet that I can connect a USB mechanical keyboard to (probably an Atreus[0]) as a Chromebook replacement. Problem is, I want vanilla Android (no bloat), and for it to get updates for at least 3 years.
It used to be ultra-cheap, ultra-small (in all dimensions, not just thickness), underpowered machine running Linux that had just enough oomph to do some basic surfing and e-mail. It was the laptop you brought with you when you didn't want to risk your real laptop. The early eeePC was a perfect example.
Now it's a Chromebook which is pretty much a laptop by another name.
We sort of knew this would eventually happen but it still sucks.
Developing on Android in Java is pretty gross, esp without rooting.
I would love some sort of vanilla Linux tablet that had something like a 10 year SLA and basic support. Ideally a system with PC architecture hardware that has great support by vanilla linux kernel.
The idea is to reduce your dependency on a Big company that only cares about consumer whims for a couple years at a time.
The built-in UI elements for stuff get you 80% where you need to be, then for the last 20%, you have to basically throw out the built-in implementation and create your own element.
Built-in support for stuff like scrolling data-tables is awful, and the third party ecosystem is even more of a cesspool than HTML5 land. JS devs have no idea how good they have it :)
When interfacing with external hardware, like Bluetooth or USB devices, I have found the official documentation to be very lacking. There's simply not a lot of good documentation out there about under what circumstances your user-space BT or USB driver will be allowed to bind to a device, bypassing any kernel drivers, and when it can't. And this is something I needed to do because you're never quite sure what kernel drivers the particular tablet manufacturer decided to include or modify...
Android studio is incredible bloatware and keeps on growing. Granted, XCode is as well, but that's no excuse.
The Java Language is probably the least painful part of the platform, but it's not much fun either. Glad that Kotlin has become an offical language.
Would you be prepared to pay twice as much for it as the cheap tablets that may not be here next year? The production lifetime of a product is determined by the production lifetime of its inputs, and the cheapest components have the least guarantees of anything.
It doesn't actually look too bad. Someone's selling one of the HPs running Windows 10 on ebay. I can't imagine it being maintenance-free over that lifetime though, it would need to be either fanless or regularly cleaned. Thermal paste wears out. Batteries have a 3-5 year lifespan.
Mind you, I'm sitting at work surrounded by ancient point-of-sale hardware that's still in use...
(The iPad, which completely redefined "tablet", came out in 2010!)
IMO a consumer tablet is absolutely the wrong device for a kiosk application. They don't have the ruggedness, the warranty or the mounting options to provide a reliable and hassle-free installation.
http://cdn2.blocksassets.com/assets/aopen/aopen/0a5bKLXyDqjI...
https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/3134673?hl=en Use a Chromebook as a kiosk - Chromebook Help - Google Support
As someone who both writes mainstream Android/Java code and supports rooted Android devices on a daily basis, I would be most curious to hear a more detailed complaint.
A few years ago, my parents bought Nexus 7 tablets to use as e-readers and for games. At the time, they were obviously the best small Android tablets and the purchase was a no-brainer. If they broke today, I'm not sure what I could recommend as a replacement.
The 2013 (with rear facing camera) is still more than usable. I'm more than happy and have bought several over the years. (Rough environments, but £50 used on ebay is doable)
I don't want any manufacturer "features" on Android, I just want a pure Android experience. And also looking for a replacement for my parents aging Nexus 7.
I thought a smaller tablet with active pen features & microSD slot for ~$225 USD was a bargain, definitely made the iPad Pro look ridiculously overpriced. Unfortunately it seems Samsung never sold the 8" S-Pen model in the US, and have discontinued the S-Pen on the 2017 8" models. It's still on the 10" model though.
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2016/12/lenovo-yoga-book-rev...
I disliked the slippery glass back, but a homemade skin (plastic stickyback film) worked great.
The glass back is ridiculously impractical and makes the Tab4 8 Plus slip down from furniture a lot.
If anyone wants to get that tablet make sure to get some sort of case for it. Otherwise it's a decent device and Android feels very close to stock except for a few unnecessary Lenovo apps you can't remove and the software update app which seems to be customized unnecessarily and a little poorly as well.
I think this really only leaves the Samsung S3 as a premium Android tablet out there, which is a shame.
I had high hopes for a Nexus 7 replacement with Pixel branding - and I understand the whole "phablet" argument against a mid-size tablet - but it doesn't sound like that will be the case.
So far it has been amazing. The hardware feels top notch.
I have a hardware/software integration gripe though(edge case maybe): when the pixelbook is suspended whilst connected to external displays, if I leave it alone for 30-45m the displays will no longer function on wake up. Have to unplug displays, open pixelbook lid(so it wakes, no response to external keyboard), then reconnect the displays. It's probably not a common use case, but I reported it to google anyhow. No gripes other than that.
This imo is the same as planned obsolescence. Can we really not get phones that will be supported and working for 5 years or more? Not all of us get a new phone every year like you Americans.
I’ve considered jumping ship many times, but device support seems so poor across the board in Android land I find it hard to justify the move. Like you, I don’t want to buy a new phone every year. I’m watching to see how the Pixel phone support plays out.
ChromeOS's window management is far suited for productivity than android and in some cases (IMO) even mainstream desktop operating systems. Android app ecosystem is an added bonus, albeit missing some essential features like HW acceleration, better clipboard management etc.
ChomeOS + android > Android + Chrome browser !
- They currently have an aging nexus 10
- my dad does not want an apple product
If Google had created a new Android tablet instead of the pixelbook, I would have bought it.
The pixelbook looks really nice but I am not sure that the mix of Android and Chromebook will be easy for my parents to pick up.
This model runs Android apps natively, so it has access to all apps in the Play Store. Some weren't converted to take full advantage of large screen resolutions, but so far I haven't found anything that doesn't run.
She had a very short learning curve; in a day or two she was doing everything she used to do with Windows (which wasn't much - email, photos, browsing, spotify, some light printing). The fact she was an Android user probably helped a bit. Also having a touch screen and pen was a huge bonus, so she doesn't have to fiddle with the mouse trying to click on tiny spots.
I considered buying a Pixelbook, but at 2x the price, it was hard to justify considering her use.
(Full disclaimer: I work at Google, but in a different team, not related to hw or Chrome/OS. I purchased the device at the store, full retail price)
Note : I don't own a printer, so I am not entirely sure.
Purchase my wife on at Best buy last week and it was $50 off and came with a regular Google Home.
She loves it but does seem to use it for Animal Crossing with the stylus more than anything.
The ridiculous price point of the Pixelbook literally makes me laugh out loud. A thousand fucking dollars for a damn Chromebook?? Absurd.
I personally like the $199 price point and would love to see manufactures deliver a kick-ass chromebook at that level....something that almost matches the Pixelbook performance.
That's not going to happen, for obvious reasons. The processor in the Pixelbook costs more than the entire BOM for a $200 laptop.
The Pixelbook is sort of a crazy idea, but it represents Google's belief that ChromeOS can be more than just a cheap option for schools and casual users.
I think a new cheap and small ARM Chromebook with 8GB would be very attractive option for me as a travel laptop. Sadly I am such a minority...
...soon. It will eventually happen, but the question is always, does having the better device now provide more value than saving money now and waiting for the better device to be available at the desired price point?
And by the time the better is available at the desired price point, will we want an even better device, perhaps because applications and our tastes have inevitable ratcheted up to demand even better performance?
Try one think you might be surprised as what Google created.
They get alpha geeks away from OSX and Macbooks. They get a platform they can own and leverage. Get the developers, expose them to the tools, let them build stuff, and cross compile it or whatever to ChromeOS and Android.
Have it dual boot into ChromeOS so your family can give it a spin.
It's nicer than a dual boot, as you can swap between the runtimes on the fly.
Adding dedicated delete, home, page up, page down, etc. keys would make the chromebooks even better.
Furthermore, connecting to a projector on ChromeOS is way less fiddly than fighting with xrandr. (n.b. I've used Fluxbox as my WM since ~2002. Newer interfaces in the Ubuntu strain of things are probably easier/smarter.)
i lold.
People used to say the same sort of thing about the iPad. You could put Linux on a tablet for half the price. Yes, but only 1% of the population would be able to use it.
Of course Pixels aren’t aimed at ordinary consumers though. They are high end devices aimed at developers, because Google wants to support an active community of highly skilled and capable developers working on apps for the chrome book, or at least ensure that their cross platform web apps are Chromebook compatible and take advantage of the platform’s features. They’re much more likely to do that if they have a Chromebook they actualy enjoy using and do dev work on, rather than just having an extra low end device around for testing.
[1] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/06/how-to-install-linux...
Yes this is less secure than the default config.
As far as I know, chromeos has no option for that. Either it has only google's signing keys, or secure-boot is entirely disabled via devmode.
That's clearly a massive step down in security from most modern x86 laptops.
Ok, but what much of the (sadly) uninformed commentary around chromebooks and devmode fails to mention is that you can turn it all back on - and still keep devmode.
There's a simple script left there for you to set a password for chronos, and the big motd thats printed on the console (but not crosh) tells you about it. Run it, choose your password, and those who have physical access no longer have automatic root (or even chronos) access.
Turn verified boot back on, and disable legacy and usb booting. Now you have a machine, still in devmode, thats MORE secure that standard x86 machines.
- you can't boot from external media
- you can't pass args to the internal bootloader, when booting chromeos's kernel, so no more single-user linux kernel tricks (ie: instant root)
- you can't somehow modify the on-board kernel and get past verified boot
Nothing's totally unhackable, but this seems reasonably secure to me ...
Ideal will be when Google releases the KVM work they have been doing that gives you gnu/Linux without having to use a fake Chroot or put in dev mode.
You are crazy. The first thing a company like Google has to do when creating a new product is ask themselves how they monetize. It's something Sun Microsystems failed at and subsequently went out of business because of.
Google doesn't make money selling hardware, and has no plans to. They make it by getting people onto google apps and google search. Releasing proper linux support accomplishes neither of those goals. There are way too many people around here who seem to think Google loves Linux. Google loves Linux because it's a means to an end - they're jump started on drivers/hardware support, they have access to source (so they can control their own destiny), and it costs them no money.
They fact they're actively working on replacements for Linxu for their mobile strategy (and it's not open source), should tell you everything you need to know.
Google is working on making the Linux KVM work in ChromeOS and there was a comment in a commit to stop disabling the KVM as it will be used for Docker support in the future.
This would solve the issue of the work arounds and will make the CB a great GNU/Linux dev machine.
BTW, with Crouton you can use docker containers on CBs. Since Linux kernel they run native.
I still use my Nexus 9 (typing this on it)...and skipped the Pixel C due to costs and bad reviews
Google's entire "upscale" Pixel effort seems doomed. The Nexus effort was mostly perfect: decent hardware at attractive prices and stock software with reasonable updates.
Apple commands a premium in part due to Apple Stores being plentiful. When my son cracks his iPhone screen, he walks to the Apple Store and he has a replacement screen in about an hour. What can Google offer? Nothing similar.
Similarly, I know people who buy or lease luxury cars because they know they will get a nice loaner car when they send theirs in for maintenance at the dealership. For example, some of those people really would be satisfied with a Camry, but they spend the extra money on a Lexus ES to get a better service experience.
Note: Not saying I agree, only that not everyone can afford / wants to pay a premium for Apple.
[1] https://chromeunboxed.com/googles-pixelbook-the-target-is-bi...
Questions like warranty, who to ask?
(Disclaimer: I own a first-gen Pixel phone.)
Been surprised how many posters on Reddit shared they purchased one. Couple people also on this thread.