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>pulled off right, this "shared ecosystem" approach across manufacturers can be very strong, and from a competition perspective is probably pretty healthy.

I wish the Steam Machines didn't fail, they were pretty much this https://web.archive.org/web/20160303080731/https://store.ste...

One can say the Steam Deck is a better successor but I think mostly because of Proton itself became mature through the years (compared to 2016)

There is Steam for ChromeOS in the Beta channel right now. It's working surprisingly well, running inside a VM with virgl acceleration.

I could imagine a gaming Chromebox or Chromebook with dedicated graphics in the future.

What could be a wonderful asset would be a streaming service for games. Google would just have to make a credible, consistent commitment to such a service, commit to it through its initial wilderness period and not shut it down on a reflex, so customers would have the confidence that their time learning the platform wouldn't be wasted.

Then, with something like this launch event for 2x faster Chromebooks, it could emerge as a mature offering whose moment as come. All it would take is discipline not to instantly give up and a willingness to have a vision extending beyond quarter-at-a-time release cycles.

This is painful to read. Too soon.

My bold prediction is that as consoles become more and more architecturally similar to home computers and MS & Sony continue to port more titles to PC, we will eventually see a unification of sorts where games are by default available on PC, with consoles serving as essentially a consistent and well-tested PC configuration for people who don't want to futz around with PC building. That's the role Steam Machines were supposed to play. They were a little too early IMO but the concept seems solid.

Game companies don't just want consistent and well-tested, they often want to also prevent user tampering. Consoles + iPhone security have long put extra effort into that, and streaming is looking like a viable replacement. Not a good solution for people extremely into video games, but they've got gaming PCs anyway.

And they want walled garden, subscription fee for network access, etc.

Yeah now anti-cheat (and lack of moddability) is the most significant difference for PC vs console. Steam Deck is interesting that they want to be a console like experience but it's flexible unlike traditional consoles.

> Laptop shopping is harder than it should be. You can easily get lost in a sea of numbers and technical specs,

> We’re launching eight new laptops

This reads like satire.

I have the pixel watch and I don't use the Fitbit stuff. Google fit is now first class on it, and it is a super well thought out and polished implementation. I'm really pleased with it

> when they're not working at cross purposes with a dozen other manufacturers.

Manufacturers of Chromebooks mostly only deal with the outer shell and branding of the device.

The computing hardware is controlled by Google, who set strict guidelines for compatibility. The ChromeOS software is of course completely controlled by Google. This announcement sounds like it's basically creating a new brand around an even more restrictive set of higher-performance hardware requirements.

> for a lot of fitness tracking you also need a separate FitBit acCount, and have to use a separate FitBit app

not for long. you will soon be required to migrate to Google by 2025. new Fitbit comes with controls for YouTube Music and none else. so the integrations are coming, which I absolutely love.

don't let Nadella hear you say you're moving from the Microsoft monopoly though ;)

> Eight new laptops from Acer, ASUS, HP and Lenovo.

From the article:

> Laptop shopping is harder than it should be. You can easily get lost in a sea of numbers and technical specs, and it's hard to know what products will actually give you what you need, at the price you want.

Kind of funny...

I also love Apple's OS and first-party apps' seamless integration. However, Google has a better story with cloud apps in gsuite. My Mac is overkill hardware for running a browser, but I like the build quality.

> However, Google has a better story with cloud apps in gsuite.

Except that they just set a death date for my go to whiteboarding app.

It was great to be able to have a dead simple paintbrush level drawing app that was shared in the browser, and I could sketch out on my tablet without dealing with drawing "boxes" and text labels to get an idea across.

The generic solutions are cheaper and more flexible, while the special all-included one is more user-friendly and can be better-optimized. It's similar with other products.

Do you know of all Chromebooks have cellular modems? It seems like it would be a basic requirement but the article doesn't mention anything.

Why would it be a basic requirement? Cellular modems in laptop are an incredibly niche feature. They're only included in a handful of top-end business laptops and (in my experience) nobody even uses them when present.

Further to actually use cellular modems you likely need to pay an additional fee every month to a cellphone carrier.

That requirement probably makes the already tiny subset of people who could use a cellular modem even smaller.

There is a fee, but typically it’s a data-only plan and isn’t super expensive. I’m on T-Mobile and it’s $20 for unlimited data. You can pay even less for limited data.

wouldn't it be easier / cheaper to just tether?

Cheaper, probably. Not easier though.

After thinking about it a bit more, Chromebooks biggest users seem to be schools and they don’t want 5G modems for everybody. I would guess they would want some for kids who don’t have decent home internet. It makes sense for the default to be Wi-Fi only.

Clicking the wifi hotspot icon and connecting to a wifi network is not only significantly easier than setting up a billing account and paying $100 for a data-only cellular modem plus $20/month for a bare-bones data plan, it's worked flawlessly on at leat the last 4 phones I've owned when it was an android built-in feature.

$20/month is absolutely expensive if your laptop is hardly ever going to leave your home wi-fi (like most laptops)

Right! Is there a term for this phenomenon where people think their incredibly niche requirement should be ubiquitous and are astonished that it isn't?

It’s weird though why it’s so niche, because it’s incredibly useful.

I wonder how many laptops have cellular options right now. From a cursory look they're awfully niche (mostly business BTO models).

My best guess would be that the including the cellular chip and paying whoever (Qualcomm ?) holds the licensing fees, doing the qualification etc. is just that prohibitive.

PS：Qualcomm's fees based on the total product price sure won't help: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-qualcomm-licensing-idUSKB...

Qualcomm’s horrible licensing fees are cancerous. It’s the only reason I can imagine why Apple especially doesn’t do this for Macs the way they do for iPads.

Beware? On Amazon, Samsung sellers are advertising their chromebooks as “plus”.

You can get a 16" 2.5K 120hz 12th-gen i3 Chromebook from 2022 for $430[1].

Are any of these "Chromebook Plus" models better? I don't think so.

[1] https://www.walmart.com/ip/Lenovo-Ideapad-5i-Gaming-Chromebo...

That's because this one is a Chromebook Plus.

> In addition to new Chromebook Plus devices, some existing Chromebooks will qualify for an OS update to include the enhanced features found on Chromebook Plus devices in the coming weeks.

> See here for details on eligible devices.[1]

[1] https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/14128000?visit_...

Fair enough. Still a bit sneaky with the marketing, but that's par for the course.

I'm just over here wishing the "enhanced features" included coreboot support...

It does. This is a Alder Lake device so it's either a Brya or Nissa mainboard. Sourcecode is here[1].

[1] https://chromium.googlesource.com/chromiumos/third_party/cor...

I stand corrected!

Is there a more discoverable way to find this info?

AFAIK there are only a few Chromebooks that don't run coreboot. You can check this[1] list for the board codenames and correlate that with the repository.

[1] https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-f...

thanks. I'm glad the framework chromebook is listed.

"I've been pretty happy with my Google hardware so far".

I have a pixel phone. The hardware is impressive. The software is total junk. Everything is designed for to make you into an obsessive-compulsive phone junky. How many stupid alerts and notifications do I need per second. How many ads must I watch? I went back to an iphone despite feeling like the pixel was actually a really good piece of hardware. And an iPhone is not that much better any more.

    Everything is designed for to make you 
    into an obsessive-compulsive phone junky. 
    [...] And an iPhone is not that much better 
    any more.

Regardless of OS, this seems like it's almost entirely down to the apps you use and the notification settings you pick. No? I rarely use Android so I may just be unfamiliar.

The defaults are different. I was surprised to find that Android apps didn't have to ask to send notifications, rather you had to turn them off, but this was changed in Android 13 near the end of 2022.

I switched to an iPhone about a year ago, and got annoyed at the pushy things iOS was doing that Android wasn't. So I switched back to Android recently, only to find that many of the annoying iOS things had now been adopted by Google. Great, thanks. I'll stick with Android for the near future though, as with a custom rooted ROM I can at least remove a lot of 'unremovable' stuff, even if I now have to play annoying cat and mouse games with apps trying to detect my rooted device and disable themselves.

I'm honestly confused by this comment. I use a Pixel phone and the reason I prefer it over my previous Samsung experiences is the UI is toned back and doesn't hit you with distractions.

Does pixel have forced updates? Samsung phones do.

The best thing about Google phones is they're ironically the easiest devices to de-Google. Install GrapheneOS on it.