The Chromebook Pixel
chrome.blogspot.com
chrome.blogspot.com
Perhaps this is a vanity product for the wealthy. But wealthy people are going to just surf the web on an iPad.
I really don't get this product.
Am I just imagining all the posts I've seen on HN from people talking about being extremely happy using Chromebooks as development platforms?
I'm used to using Linux, command line, text editors, local installs of the product I'm developing for, virtual machines, etc...
Are you simply forced into using ALL websites to actually develop and unable to use anything else?
Seems strange to pay $1250+ to develop on a machine that cannot even run or test the code you write.
My current job gave me a Dell Latitude E series machine for work. I work exclusively in AWS. The screen on this laptop is so horrifically bad that I practically get sick looking at it. Compared to my personal (2010 era) macbook pro, or the Retina MBP's I've used at my last two jobs, there is no comparison. I'd much rather have a lightweight powerful little machine that I can ssh from and have some sort of IDE or text editor to work on my AWS projects then worry about a big bulky crappy laptop that is overkill for my work.
Obviously I realize this is MY current use case, however I'd be willing to be that the majority of dev/devops type folks on HN have a similar type of use case. AWS, Heroku, just about any PaaS, Saas, or Iaas, etc... would take advantage of a machine like this beautifully.
Oh and the last time I had an Air (right before upgrading to the rMBP), My use case? Chrome, Chrome, Terminal, RDP, Chrome. That was at a PC Game dev/publisher company where I administrated all windows based desktops, mac laptops as well as all servers of misc variety...
Sooo.....Is this machine useful? I think it is, and I am excited to check it out and may look to getting one.
One more thing, I too am one of the lucky Cr-48 owners and LOVED the concept. Biggest reason I hacked it to load ubuntu? SSH. Had the plugin existed back then? ChromeOS ALL THE WAY BABY!!!
/rant.
How much did you pay for your laptop?
Very very odd and very unexpected but it made cloud9 totally unusable for me. Chromeos is also horrible for nearly everything else i do, even reading pdfs, so i cannot think of any reason to shell out for another machine with it installed.
I honestly don't think of them as IDEs more as text editors with syntax highlighting.
[0]: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...
I don't see the point of having a pixel density that high; almost no one has sharp enough eyesight to distinguish individual pixels at even lower densities than that, and enough people have poor enough eyesight that they won't be able to read text on software that doesn't scale its fonts properly.
That resolution is appropriate for a monitor with twice the diagonal size.
Also, what's up with the 3:2 aspect ratio? That seems awfully odd.
That's exactly the point. Apple markets its high-PPI displays as being higher-resolution than the human retina[0]. It does need some help from software to not cause usability problems like font scaling and tiny images, but we've had the hardware capability to do this for a while. It's past time we improved on this.
Also, what's up with the 3:2 aspect ratio? That seems awfully odd.
If I had to guess, I bet a lot of the people involved in bringing this machine to market wanted 4:3, but someone in marketing and/or a focus group said that would be perceived as old-fashioned, so they got as close as they felt they could get away with. I'd really like to see a writeup on the reasoning from someone involved though.
[0] I believe the accuracy of said claim is disputed.
But the resolution doesn't need to be any higher than the maximum resolution of a human retina. By definition, you'd be unable to see the difference; you're just left with the scaling problems of an extremely high resolution on a very small display.
As I mentioned, the claim that the resolutions sold are higher than the human retina are disputed. See http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2364871,00.asp
Apple's successive retina devices have decreased in pixels per inch, but have increased in pixels per degree at their intended viewing distance as larger high-PPI devices were introduced. Of course, sometimes people use devices at distances other than those the manufacturer intended, and some people have better eyes than others.
The point is, current high-PPI screens haven't actually banished the pixel from human perception just yet. There are still gains to be made, but they aren't nearly as significant as quadrupling pixel counts over previous devices.
As a general rule, most of the time when people say "this is going to be a failure" they are right. The iPad is the exception, not the rule. And Apple has market-making ability that Google can only dream of.
So, that having been said and because this is the internet, I'll rush in with my probably foolish and ill-advised explanation for with this won't be a game changer: In this case, I think the price vs. capabilities will make people compare this unfavorably with other ultrabooks/macbook airs. For the price, there isn't much here that can't be copied, easily, and quickly – and if I really want the cloud connectivity, I can get that on my ultrabook.
What's the unique value proposition in this product? I just don't see it being compelling – except that it's not an Apple product (don't get me wrong, I'm typing this on a Macbook, but I recognize that some people don't like the fruit vendor).
I think it's gut reaction: I wouldn't use this product or recommend it to my friends. I think most of the time, that gut reaction is on point. Sometimes it's wrong, like the iPad, because you don't see the use for it until you try it, but that's the exception.
Here's a great article on that subject "How to be right 90% of the time, and why I'd rather be wrong": http://paulbuchheit.blogspot.com/2007/03/how-to-be-right-90-...
I agree though that I probably wouldn't buy this for development work. But I do think that browser's are still better on beefy hardware than on gimped hardware.
Really? If you're the one person in the world doing heavy WebGL this might be the product for you.
I do agree that $1300 is too much, at that price range you might as well get a mac. If it was 600-800 i'd probably jump on it. However, I think the curve ball here is the touch screen. I'd be willing to bet that Google's strategy for this laptop is to do a smaller production run, and get these in the hands of tech/programmer types, and then use the lessons learned to develop a model targeted toward a wider audience.
If that's the case, pull an Apple and ship great dev tools on the installation disk. As far as I can tell, there are no top-notch Chrome OS development tools, just various ways to remote into a real machine to do that work.
Now, you'd never write code in the Chrome Developer Tools (except maybe the occasional one-liner in the REPL). But the Chrome Developer Tools are great — best in class even — for profiling, visualizing, and debugging.
Once you've already decided you want to live in the cloud, then your question becomes, what is the best possible device I could buy for doing that? And that is what the Pixel is for.
Is that the target market for the Pixel? People whose main concern is reducing maintenance burden and having an easier to use interface? Okay, now how many of those people are better served by an iPad?
When your entire OS is cloud based, I think you get some synergies - you can reliably sit down at any computer and everything "just works" with all your state exactly how you left when you got up from the previous one.
So yes, you could purchase a Mac Pro, but because it's not cloud based from the ground up there are massive gobs of local state such that you continually need to worry about sync'ing things here there and everywhere, installing apps everywhere, etc. So in world where the default thinking for every application is to store local state, removing the capability for local state is necessary to achieve a true thin client.
> Is that the target market for the Pixel? People whose main concern is reducing maintenance burden and having an easier to use interface?
I think that's not really the selling point of this high end machine. This is Google's statement that cloud based computing is better even for people who do demanding, complex tasks (I'm not saying they are right, but I think it's what they believe).
> Okay, now how many of those people are better served by an iPad?
As I said, you're underestimating Google's ambition for what can be done with a thin client. An iPad is not suitable for highly intensive desktop tasks at all. A chromebook has all the physical features of a high end professional laptop, but is 100% cloud based, and thus can be used as a real computer for real tasks.
Except it can't. There is a theoretical possible future in which everyone has 40 mbps unmetered LTE and powerful apps exist in web form, but if anything the trend has been the opposite in recent years (carriers eliminating unlimited data plans, apps moving back to native on tablets and phones).
This is an aspirational device. They should give a few away in Kansas city. Im sure it would be beautiful with Google fiber.
None of the ones who need to write documents and emails, or edit spreadsheets.
For spreadsheets, it's still less than perfect because Google Spreadsheets are still worse than Excel wrt scripting and managing large datasets. But security, ease of use, and lower maintenance burden might make up for it depending on what your needs are. For my parents, this would be perfect.
However as the other reply said, it seems silly to buy a big powerful incredible machine just to do all of your actual work on a virtual server. Why not just buy a cheap machine and an expensive server instead of vice versa?
I want good performance and it feels wrong to buy a beefy, sexy machine and gimp it with a 1 core 512MB development bottleneck.
AKA lesson learned: the pixel is not for cost-conscious developers.
Originally released October 2012
13.3-inch (diagonal) Retina display; 2560-by-1600 (227 dpi)
8GB of 1600MHz DDR3L SDRAM
128GB Flash StorageMany of us consider this screen's aspect ratio a big improvement over the 16:9 of most PCs for working with code/text as well.
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/secure-shell/pnhec...
Why not just buy a $300 super cheap laptop and do the exact same thing? Sure I'll have less resolution on the machine, but seeing as the developing is happening on another machine all together, it seems like the performance would be similar.
There are other alternatives, of course, Cloud9 premium account gives you full shell access, Action.IO gives you full shell access as well.
Also, how would you set it up so that you can log in to your laptop from outside your LAN? I have a few old machines lying around and it would be great if I could put them to use as servers.
I purchased dynamic DNS, which IIRC is around $35/year, well worth it for the convenience of logging into my home server whereever I am.
This took me about an hour of reading, 45 minutes to go from sealed boxes to linux, and a small phillips screwdriver (one screw on the back to get to ram+hard drive).
Things that are cute on a $250 machine are not so cute on a $1,300 machine...
It's likely possible to even run Windows on this machine.
I personally have little interest in the Pixel based on the specs. I think X86 is excessively 'big iron' now for a majority of needs and I find the lack of USB3 is mystifying. The screen looks interesting, but it's nothing I actually /need/ and certainly not worth another thousand bucks. I've personally taken to just using X86 for storage/cross-compile servers for the rest of my cheap ARM/MIPS/etc. crap and I've made it a point to stop buying expensive hardware. What $250 buys you now is actually pretty ridiculously awesome.
* Drop Crouton[2] onto Chromebook to get a full dev stack and unfortunate Ubuntu/XFCE environment.
* Set up chroot and start building other people's crap.
* Write to SD Card/internal storage and reboot.
Which step here is hard? Tedious to roll your own I'd give you, but you don't even need to as there's stuff like ArchLinuxARM[3] which skips the middle two steps.
[1]: https://sites.google.com/a/chromium.org/dev/chromium-os/deve...
[2]: https://github.com/keyboardsurfer/Crouton
[3]: http://archlinuxarm.org/platforms/armv7/samsung-chromebook
I'll probably buy the Pixel as well. The more I use ChromeOS, the more I realize how much time I waste on other crap that doesn't really help me get done what I want to do. And using ChromiumOS, there is the "dev_install" command which will set up a Gentoo chroot in /usr/local, that points to the machine that you built it on, and if you're running the devserver, you can run emerge pkgname, it will shoot it off to the server to build it, and once it's done compiling, installs in the chroot. There is also gmerge which will install ChromiumOS packages for you (e.g. A new version of the browser or maybe a newer kernel, without rebuilding everything) OR you can build a new image, hit up the Help page in settings and it will generate a diff on the server and update the entire install to the latest image. It's really an interesting setup, and I really like it.
Everything goes through gerrit, so you can even help out with version bumps and or patches fairly easily. The documentation is really good, and if you happen to hang out on IRC, the ChromiumOS developers are extremely helpful when something isn't clear, and even update the documentation for clarity.
Reminds me of what every techie said about the iPad too.
You buy a computer with faster processor so it can support applications in the future.
The Pixel will be the same a year or so from now. I don't think the hardware is upgradable. But it will be handle resources-intensive apps coming in the future.
Imagine a video-editing app or 3D games.
Many people are not rational when they buy products. All you can do with a pair of jeans is wear them. Nice denim, nice rivets, nice pockets, and a nice zip (or buttons) - and then some quality control. And yet people can pay very much money for jeans. (Sort by price, high to low. (http://www.mrporter.com/Shop/Clothing/Jeans?sortBy=price-des...)
You say that wealthy people are just going to surf the web on tablets. This is just a tablet with a keyboard. Some people type enough to make on-screen keyboards painful to use.
But right now ChromeOS is and should be for light web machines. And I've said it many times before. There's absolutely no reason for Chromebooks to use x86 chips. I've said Google will almost surely mess up the pricing of Chromebook Pixel because they never seem to understand how to price a new product.
Maybe if they would've made a quad core Cortex A15 machine with this display and for $500, that would've been a little more attractive - although for people just looking for browsing the web, there was no need for such a high resolution anyway. Just keep Chromebooks at $250 and use ARM in them, and get to that 10h battery life.
It's cheap, adequately quick, easy to use and has all-day battery life, and charges up at night with the iPad and iPhone used by my toddler.
And forget having them all loaded where I left them when I next return to Chrome.
What about people that prefer trading some battery life for some performance?
Wouldn't it be both more powerful and have more battery life, if it had waited for the tegra 4? Or am I missing something?
Benchmarks tend to be always favor other camp, depending which attributes you are testing.
link for the curious:http://www.anandtech.com/show/6529/busting-the-x86-power-myt...
Cache and instruction set.
Intel is still more powerful than ARM because of its instruction set.
Question being, performances for doing what? What are you going to do with a chromebook to need the extra oomph?
a) companies build desirable hardware
b) companies realise having a good screen is a feature
c) companies build screens with more code friendly aspect ratios
Let's hope Lenovo takes a look at this. I'd love a Thinkpad with a high-res screen, 3:2 display, and of course, the venerable TrackPoint and keyboard. Touchscreen is a nice novelty feature but really isn't required.
I really hope that hardware makers will finally realize that the primary reason for buying a notebook is not for watching movies on a 15" screen.
My thinking is that a screen that's close to square works better for a wider range of tasks than one that's very oblong. A rotating oblong screen that could be tall or wide might work nicely for a lot of situations too, but it would be hard to implement well on a laptop.
(At this point some wag is going to suggest portrait mode, but I've never seen a laptop with a portrait screen that can be used at the same time as the keyboard).
If someone proposes a Kickstarter project for a mobile developer workstation with a solid design, 4:3 high-res screen, pointing stick, and great keyboard, I'll be the first to hop on.
Or maybe I should go ahead and make that Kickstarter project a reality instead of waiting for someone to.
The lack of something like this is why I'm still using a 7 year old Thinkpad.
I hear this complaint a lot and I think it's based on a flawed premise.
Taller aspects might be better on very small screens that only fill tiny portions of your vision but on bigger screens -- the sort you should be using if you're working regularly on a computer -- you want wider not taller. It's the only way to usefully use your field of view. This is why wider aspects exist.
On my 16:9 aspect 27" desktop screen, my vision is practically filled in the vertical direction -- it is easier to glance to the horizontal edges than the vertical ones. I would use more horizontal space before I used more vertical.
And this is the point of wider aspects -- they use your eyes better. If you buy three screens for your desktop, you don't stack them vertically -- you arrange them horizontally so you can actually see them.
People who keep asking for squarer displays for work should simply get bigger displays and stop pretending that a 13" laptop display is ever a good choice for a working display.
Frankly, anything sub 24" is not a working environment. Anything smaller is either (a) something you use occasionally when you're not at your desk or (b) for people who are not working.
8:5/16:10 or even 3:2 fill the horizontal field of view well while also delivering more vertical space.
Even if 16:9 is theoretically better, why shouldn't we have a choice? Every notebook computer out there besides Apple has a 16:9 display, and I'm sick of it, and many others are as well. At least offer us more than one choice.
Could you go into more detail on this? I've been using 12 and 13" screens regularly for my day job for years, and I find the extra physical area of larger screens rather arduous. Basically, if there's some kind of ergonomics concern I'm prepared to change, but not otherwise.
> wider aspects -- they use your eyes better
Seems false, otherwise letters would be typed in landscape. There are other things in my FOV and that's a good thing.
It's true that in reading, we're only good at scanning approximately 8-10 words per line. This is why letters are the width that they are. But I'm not talking about making a single document fill the width of the screen. That document behavior is a relic of a small-screened world.
Modern computer working environments (particularly programming) generally involve opening a few different documents simultaneously and having them open side-by-side. Multiple editors, browser windows, debug tools, documentation, file-trees, etc. This all needs to go somewhere. It is easier to place these separate documents side-by-side than stacked vertically.
> I've been using 12 and 13" screens regularly for my day job for years, and I find the extra physical area of larger screens rather arduous.
Maybe you've only ever opened documents fullscreen or your work involves little more than punching brief commands into a terminal window but if you've ever wanted to edit two documents side-by-side there's little you can do on a screen that small. You're pigeonholing yourself into a mono-tasking environment because you don't have the real-estate to present multiple documents simultaneously.
No, neither of these things are the case. I'm currently working with Xcode, Blender, terminals and a debug app, as well as my internet distractions, and it's not slow. I do make heavy use of virtual desktops and cmd-tab, and when I was working on a dual-screen workstation I found that most of my work centred on a single screen because I would rather move the app than scan the screen. For me at any rate, a large spatial organisation is visual clutter, and lends itself to hunting for information, whereas the apparent bottleneck of cmd-tab actually sorts information efficiently.
I'm not sure if this is making sense, I'm going down with a cold and focus has gone out of the window in quite a different sense today, but there's my 2c.
I'd agree with you if you're running Gnome 2, or KDE, though.
b) View financial reports
c) Read research papers
d) Write web based apps
e) Write apps so that more actitivities can be done with specs like this.
I completely agree. If I pay $1300 for a laptop, I expect to be able to do some serious graphics work or video editing. Instead Chrome Pixel gives you powerful hardware coupled to an internet-connected OS with basic, limited apps like Google Docs. (As an example, Google Docs is so basic it can't even span table cells. Worperfect 5.0 could do this over 20 years ago. Pay $1300 for an OS so lacking in features or capable software? Is this progress?).
MacBook Air 13": 50Wh - starts at $1200
Pixel: 59Wh - starts at $1300
MacBook Pro 13": 74Wh - starts at $1500
The battery life depends, not on the watt-hour rating, but on the watt-hour rating divided by the power required. More power, fewer hours. Maybe Google knows something about the actual power requirements that resulted in this estimate.
Just as an example, if the unit requires 11.8 watts, then the battery life will be:
59 watt-hours / 11.8 watts = 5 hours
> For comparison, Apple advertises the MacBook Air 13" battery to be 40% longer (7h) when their capacity is 15% less (50Wh).
Different battery, but also different power requirement.
> Maybe Google calculated it while assuming you were using the LTE wireless network, or streaming HD movies, or something else quite power-hungry.
You're speaking as though all these units have the same power requirements.
It occurs to me that, if they exaggerated battery life in normal usage -- typical user brightness settings and typical peripheral activation -- it might create a public relations disaster not unlike the infamous Tesla test drive.
Also, even with the same battery technology, units won't necessarily behave the same as the battery voltage falls. Some will cut out sooner than others as they approach the end of battery charge, a trait that depends on the power supply design.
On general principles, I just don't think they would intentionally undercut their own unit.
So my point is that Google would not specifically have the goal of underestimating battery life, but just that it is almost guaranteed that they have different standards from Apple for measuring battery life.
The only way to fairly compare battery life is to have the same person/group run the same test on the 2 laptops. But even that is prone to human-error (eg. what if the tester forgets to disable LTE when testing the Pixel?).
Yes, most likely, which is why Consumer Reports articles are often such interesting reading.
> The only way to fairly compare battery life is to have the same person/group run the same test on the 2 laptops.
Yes, and (just to make it more scientific) the testers shouldn't be able to tell which laptop they're testing. Not so easy to do, but necessary for an unbiased evaluation.
I just think Google's battery life specification is most likely correct -- they have no good reason to over- or underestimate it. But I agree that an independent test would be useful.
It does seem weird, yes. My guess is gaming is definitely something it will be able to do (if not now then soon) via Native Client.
I can see the appeal of a small (thinner than a MacBook Air), well constructed, blazingly fast laptop. If I could run 1Password on it I would be very tempted to take it for a spin, with the LTE it would make an excellent travel machine.
seconded.
I'm sure Apple will Retinize the MBAir in 2013 or 2014. I just don't get why LTE chipsets don't appear in any Mac products. I have a VZ MiFi and it's such a pain by comparison -- I'm fine paying $10/mo to Verizon for each mobile/etc. device I have.
A macbook is more than a thin client running SSH and a browser.
Note also that I could probably develop on it as I use Vim in a terminal, which I believe ChromeOS has.
Not a single positive comment on the entire front-page, and Ars isn't exactly madly pro-Mac.
I have to admit my feeling of schadenfreude is pretty strong right now...
In all seriousness though, I was really excited about this when I saw the first video, then it was reported to be a fraud, and now all of a sudden it has an i5 and it costs twice what I thought it would.
At 600-700 bucks, I was ready to trade in my iPad, but for this amount, I'd rather get an XPS dev edition or a 13" retina macbook for just a bit more.
If ChromeOS wants to do these things, they need something like Pixel.
You got it the other way around.
1. Google purchased Nik Software a few months ago. Nik makes several industry leading tools for photo retouching.
2. Before the acquisition, Nik had started transitioning their desktop technology to touch, for use in their tablet app Snapseed.
3. The Nik folk have been kind of quiet since the acquisition.
4. Now Google comes out with a hi-res, touch-oriented laptop, an absolute dream machine for photo editing.
5. ... New Chrome OS native photo editing app?
For an extra $200, you can get twice the RAM, four times the storage, a better battery, and the ability to install whatever OS suits your fancy.
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/21/4013480/google-chromebook-...
It looks an awful lot like a Macbook: Just witness the aluminum-like color and the black bevel around the screen. Where it looks different, it's uglier. The hinge looks particularly bad. And judging by the pictures it's an awful lot bulkier than a Macbook Air.
Chrome OS strikes me as an underpowered OS. That is, there's a lot it won't do and it seems mostly suitable for underpowered machines.
UPDATE: this paragraph is wrong; I stand corrected! -- The ChromeBook Pixel has a 4:3 display. Now, I recently came across an old laptop of mine that had a 4:3 display and it looked off. I'm not saying that 4:3 aspect ratio a bad choice in an objective sense, but it strikes me as a bad choice from a marketing point of view.
For one hundred dollars less you can get a 13" Macbook Air. For two hundred dollars more you can get a 13" Macbook Pro with Retina Display. Both these machines seem better than the Chromebook Pixel in every way, including battery life (7 hours versus 5).
In conclusion, I think this is going to fail badly.
That would be 2560x1920. ChromeBook Pixel has a 2560 by 1700 display, which makes for a wider aspect ratio of almost 3:2.
Last time I had to deal with non-square pixels on x86 was when programming mode 13h graphics for DOS at a 320x200 resolution (which was then stretched to 4:3). The only thing that comes to my mind that you could do now with modern equipment would be to connect your laptop/PC to a bargain bin plasma panel that has a 1024x768 physical resolution and achieves a 16:9 aspect ratio by virtue of non-square pixels [1]. My first encounter with one of those caused me trouble when I wanted to use it with a Linux PC some time ago.
[1] http://hometheater.about.com/cs/television/f/aaplasmafaq5.ht...
Edit: expanded first paragraph.
Other than not having a touch screen.
I am disappointed though. One of the images they showed was in low light and it made it look like the whole surface of the keyboard area was charcoal sort of shade. I think that would look way more sleek and professional looking, and at the same time it would help to differentiate it from Apple products.
I'd rather have 4:3, and my current laptop is a semi-custom Thinkpad I built by shoehorning a newer motherboard in to a T60p just so I could have a decent 15" 4:3 screen and 8gb of memory in the same laptop.
Unfortunately, this particular machine is a little pricey for what it is and not a size I'd like. It should diminish the "these are the only screens we can get" excuse that PC makers keep trying to give us though.
- Linux drivers working out of the box
- Amazing screens
- Very easy to transform into a full fledged Linux development machine
I hope it can fit the bill, certainly looks promising from that perspective ! Anybody has a link to full specs ?
But otherwise yes, it looks great.
http://www.google.com/intl/en/chrome/devices/chromebook-pixe...
So search for "Full specs" on the page and click on it.
For heavy-duty work, I use my 15-inch Retina MacBook Pro, which not only has a much better screen, touchpad and other hardware, but it also has a big SSD and a full-fledged OS. Chrome OS is not a OS X competitor, and there are a lot of things I simply cannot do on ChromeOS. The beauty of ChromeOS is that its a lightweight OS that can be placed on cheap hardware to make it usable and fast by serving as a thin client. I don't see it as a great OS to stick on expensive hardware.
I find the Pixel to be an intriguing device, and hope that all laptops have high pixel density screens within five years. This price point is too high for ChromeOS. I'm not spending $1,000 for a machine that cannot do certain computing tasks.
There are no good graphic or photo editors in the cloud. Editing audio and video is very difficult to do as well. Using your machine as a development device without connecting to a server is not possible. Not to mention that the MacBook Pro can play games, run Windows and Linux, etc.
The Retina MacBook may have cost more than the Pixel is going to, but it is worth several times more. Not to mention that Apple has spent a lot of time working with hiDPI screens and has made the OS work well for it.
What would make an intriguing price point? $799. Perhaps $999. It will come down to the software, however. I've never see ChromeOS with a touchscren. Maybe it'll work well, and maybe what would really work well is a Pixel-like device with a detachable screen. But the kind of people that spend more than $1,000 on a computer are looking for more than just a thin client.
It looks awesome, but at $1,299, I don't think it's priced well. That's $100 more than a 13" MacBook. I just don't see that much value in a Chromebook at this point in time.
So far most of the devices they sold were priced to be cheaper than Apple's counterparts. This pricing move is trying to say "we have better technology than Apple and it's worth the price", possibly in anticipation of other high-end products such as Glass.
I have no idea if it will pay off, but it's a bold move.
I don't think the average consumer will understand what it does and why it's priced the way it is. I understand what it does and does not do, I work in front end web engineering, and ultimately would really like to see Chrome OS take off (selfishly because my skillset would be very well suited for writing software for it). This is all a step in the right direction as far as I'm concerned. I just wouldn't plunk down $1300 for one.
It's bold, but it's not going to sell. The reviews are going to rip this to shreds ("nice screen, but doesn't run anything.") In the end, it's going to be a "what the heck were they thinking?" product that will dilute the brand.
I think that this depends almost entirely on how slick it looks and how well it is marketed. Plenty of moms have MBPs that they shelled out the extra $1k+ for to take get on FB and send emails.
I'm not saying that it's _smart_ to do that :) but never underestimate the allure of a well-marketed product.
How about the original Macbook Air? That was $1800 and pretty much a beta test of the good Macbook Airs that are out now (slow CPU, slow HDD, stuck with 2 GB RAM forever).
Some will see that as "So Chromebook is better than a MacBook then? They wouldn't have priced it that high if it wasn't. I want one".
Kind of how some expensive wine is sold. Sell it for $15 / bottle and it gets lost on the shelves among others. Put it in a special glass case and sell it for $120 / bottle and surprise people will buy, taste it and think it is really the best one they've ever head.
Not only this, now a cheaper Chromebook will seem like a really good deal.
Chrome OS is an unproven platform that doesn't have nearly the popular support of Apple's products, and it's coming from a company that's still fairly new at both software and hardware design. That's not to say this will be a bad product, but this is certainly a risky marketing strategy. I'd love it they pulled it off – I like the thought of a web-only notebook, even if I don't want one myself – so I'll be crossing my fingers and hoping they pull this off.
Plus, of course, there's simple media exposure. Most people don't associate Google with laptops, but this is on the BBC homepage at the moment (first story under technology).
>Most consumers are relatively uninformed, regardless of what they're buying, and loads of people buy things for no other reason than that they saw a commercial on TV and can afford it.
I have a few friends that work in creative at ad agencies and they would laugh at this.
Also, I am not trying to be superior or critical - I'm not slamming Mac owners, I own Apple products. There is nothing wrong with not knowing the GHz on your CPU. It doesn't matter for many people, and that isn't an arrogant judgment (or at least I don't mean it to be). I just think it's silly that we sometimes assume all people will evaluate technology the way we (tech people) do. Just because a thing is more/less expensive, more/less powerful, has more/less storage, does not mean that it might not be the perfect solution for someone else.
edit: I should add that I buy things for weird reasons all the time. I know nothing about fashion - I assume that the $80 jeans are nicer looking than then $40 jeans. Or I assume that the BMW 3x is a better car than the Accord. I do of course try to look into these things thoroughly, but sometimes I don't care, and I just want to buy a credible product. I suspect that lots of people do this with lots of things that aren't their primary concern - that's all I'm saying. A well-marketed, slick Chromebook could find an audience if for no other reason that there are a lot of people who think about computers like I think about cars: "I want a good one. This one looks pretty good to me, I haven't heard anything bad, it has a good reputation, it looks well-made, I don't want to spend the cycles endlessly investigating it, it's in my price range, I'll grab it."
I don't think computers are comparable to wine.
I can foresee scenarios where that would be useful: when we have unmetered 30-40 megabit wireless service everywhere. But very few people in the U.S. find themselves in that situation.
Even if it was only working on home Wi-Fi, it would be far from worthless. People pay $200 for a Wi-Fi home NAS. Having your home NAS available anywhere is a nice plus.
Also there is the screen that is higher resolution and multi-touch.
$100 more? Is it better than a MacBook?
$200 less? Wow...MacBooks are so overpriced.
http://store.apple.com/us/product/FD212LL/A/refurbished-macb...
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081505
- http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081140
The first poll is especially telling. Overwhelmingly, people said they wouldn't get this device (2/3 of the voters). The initial iPad was obviously very successful.
The complaints in the second thread are largely a mirror of the conversation in this thread, except for back then, nobody came up with counterarguments in favor of the iPad. Does that indicate that the market for this sort of thing is different these days?
Honestly, the only thing I really miss compared to my girlfriend's newer model is that her backlight gets dimmer than mine.
Overall though it seems like a nice product. I'd probably be interested if I could install ubuntu on it.
Apple exclusively owns US Patent No. 7311526 ("Magnetic connector for electronic device", issued in 2007) and does not license the MagSafe connector or the patent.
Edit: I looked up the patent, and it appears they've patented various improvements to the connector, such as universal orientation (can plug it in either direction), and something to do with the polarity of the magnets.
Luckily (for them) most of the incumbents have patent cross-licensing deals, so MS doesn't worry about Apple suing them for patent infringement, and vice versa.
(Alternative: there's no way they could do a "Retina" Chromebook for reasonably cheap, but the Nexus 10 would seem to disprove that)
Hell, just adding some project management to the inspector to act as a psuedo-IDE for Chrome apps would be a start. I've got personal attachment to *nix from using so much of it, some 12-year old that stumbled into the devtools has no such attachment.
Besides, the fact that Chromebooks are running linux under the hood is an implementation detail. They could very well be running FreeDOS as far as the user should be concerned; the platform is Chrome.
Stay maintenance and virus free?
I think it's all about establishing more demand for web apps.
Already I can do everything I need to in Chrome except for a nice development environment, though Cloud9 is getting closer, and music apps like Logic. Those are quite doable though, especially with the Chrome App APIs, someone just needs to get the ball rolling.
The current crop of Chromebooks were really inexpensive and nice for the money, but they weren't going to appeal to the cutting edge tech users who will loudly demand and use better web apps. Chrome needs something that inspires, and I think the Pixel will do that. I've used it for a while now and the hardware is incredibly nice. It'll also create space between the $200-300 Chromebooks and the Pixel for some decent mid-range devices.
I want this machine to work, I just don't see how it can without being self-hosting.
Which is not to say I think you're wrong. No one's going to spend this much money on something so limiting. If we were 10 years in the future and we all had gigabit network speeds, and there were enough awesome web apps to replace the hard working desktop apps (photoshop, IDEs, CAD, etc)... then yes.... but I would still hope the specs would be better for the price. 4GB of RAM in a $1300 machine? What is this, 2005?
But I am really bothered by the fact that it is...
A Chromebook.
I hate "cloud" stuff, I like to have stuff where I know where they are, and who can see them.
Also I live in Brazil, where internet is patchy, at best. And it is sad it does not support Ethernet... I like Ethernet! It is faster and more stable!
But impressive, very impressive, well done Google.
If anyone here has a idea if there are a way to use Chromebook as non-Chromebook (specially, non-cloud), tell me :)
The display specs are amazing, but storage is a paltry 32GB so I guess it's compensated there.
I envy anyone who can actually make use of that.
Most ultrabooks don't come with ethernet either. But it has USB ports, and USB ethernet adapters are not too expensive.
MacBook Pro = about $1,200 MacBook Pro Retina = about $1,500
The screen is magnificent. And I love the move to a taller aspect (it's slightly larger, vertically, than the 13.3" screen I'm using now).
The board itself is pretty meh, though. Dual core Ivy Bridge with 4G. That will run desktop stuff, but it will do virtualization poorly. Big software builds are going to suffer a lot vs. my quad core laptop (which looks to be about 3x faster). And the 32-64G of built-in storage is mostly a joke; that just isn't going to cut it for serious development work.
So I won't buy one. But wow, I like that screen.
"Intel® Core™ i5 Processor (Dual Core 1.8GHz)" - What's the model number? There are numerous Core i5 processors and their performance varies, which one am I getting? http://www.cpubenchmark.net/laptop.html
32 GB SSD - What kind of read/write speed? Standard SATA or mSATA interface?
4 GB DDR3 RAM - Is the RAM soldered or user upgradeable? How many ram slots? What's the maximum capacity?
Perhaps I'm in the minority, but at that price, I do actually want to know if I'm buying an appliance or a computer.
I only found two current Dual Core 1.8GHz i5s: http://ark.intel.com/search/advanced/?s=t&FamilyText=3rd...
The SSD specs don't matter because you can't run anything that would stress it and officially it's not replaceable.
Likewise, RAM is officially not upgradeable/replaceable.
Chromebook Pixel 1TB for 3 years = $1,300 + free laptop
Or put another way, commit to Google Drive for 3 years of 1TB, get 30% off and a free Chromebook Pixel.
The way it is it's useless for me (and I guess most people on HN, though I think basic Ubuntu could fit into 32/64 GB), but it still makes me cautiously optimistic that after years of stagnation and perhaps even regression, the 1366x768 era might be nearing it's end. I can hope that in a year, "reasonable-resolution" (as Linus called it) laptop like the Pixel will be not outrageous or top of the line but simply normal.
And the screen aspect ratio is just a cherry on top.
I'm guessing that the ram is soldered in though, due to the thinness of the device. Oh well, 4gb is workable.
This laptop screen is amazing. Since we today have light, fast, power efficient and sturdy laptops. The next big thing, is the screen.
A TN screen on a laptop is just sad. My first Macbook pro felt horrid just because I was used to a PVA desktop screen. I kept adjusting and adjusting the screen.
If you take a moment to appreciate your crummy laptop screen you will notice a few things.
1. The screen has a tint to it. Ranging from green to purple from the top of the screen to the bottom. Put the screen on its side and this is very clear.
2. The viewing angles are horrendous. Put on a black background and try to adjust the screen so that it's evenly black top to bottom. At arms length this is impossible, and really annoying when watching a movie.
3. Try having a friend stand behind you while you work and show him a picture of your girlfriend, he'll be shocked at how pale she has become.
I'm currently on a Macbook with retina screen. I have an iPad with retina screen and I have a normal 24" 1920x1200 desktop which used to be my best screen, but is now only better than the screen on my old ipod touch.
People complain about their laptop keyboards. I complain about laptop screens.
Also, I can't help but think that making a chromebook touch screen is a waste of money. Gorilla arm, anyone?
Having touchscreen available in additional to traditional keyboard and trackpad laptop interface doesn't raise the gorilla arm problem (since you can still interact the normal way, and aren't forced to use touch to do anything), but enables using touch for workflows where gorilla arm isn't likely to be a problem.
EDIT: KevinEldon corrected me below, it is 1 TB for 3 years, my mistake. Normally that would be $49/month.
On the other hand, if you weren't going to use that much originally, but buying this machine lures you into storing everything on Google Drive, and prices don't drop a lot in the next three years, it might in the long-term be a very expensive device...
Since this Chromebook is for people who live in the cloud, one terabyte of Google Drive cloud storage*
Seems like they release a new chrome os device every few months, I would much prefer updating my chromebook every year for 400$-500$ with faster lighter version, instead of investing 1300$.
One used to be able to expect both freedom and choice. Now they have neither.
It was a kicker too, starting out with a service here, a device there, a bit of infrastructure over there.... but now? Now its one big system. From bit to brick, its all one big pipe - an experience fully enclosed, encapsulated, enumerated, evaluated and.... exploited. For every single bit of information about, well, everything.
They worked their way down the layers. What was once a web service is now the actual physical net.
You cant push a packet without them seeing it.Most people don' care though - they bought into the web services decades ago. Phones were next, then laptops, service providers and frequencies.
Its basically the commercial version of the NSA these days, hell, there hasn't even been a real difference between the two for some time now.
Now, pretty much any connection is provided by them. They started out nice enough... do no evil and all... but when you're the only game in town - it's pretty hard to not abuse your power. Hell, its more than power. Power is limited... omnipotence is not. That's what they are now - omnipotent, and there isn't anything anyone can do about it now, either.
Every spoken word, every communication mashed out from keyboard to carrier is captured in the goog. They pretty much own thought at this point...
A high-PPI screen is heaven for using Google Maps. I always get so frustrated on my 1080p screen: even with the browser map in full screen mode, I can't seem to see "enough" of it when browsing random geographical locations and trying to get a sense of how the surrounding area looks.
A 239 PPI screen allows displaying a character in an 8-pixel font (eg. "fixed" on Linux) in a 1x1mm area. You could have all the tiniest roads and cities labelled on the map, even if barely readable.
Who needs this kind of laptop to just browse the web? I would buy this in an instant if it had some custom Linux distribution on it.
I guess it's Retina or nothing, then, unfortunately.
It strikes me odd that Google, a company with no shortage of talent, can't get retail right. Who is this laptop for? The 12 year old Engadget/Verge reader who thinks this Chromebook Pixel is the nail in Apple's coffin?
This is so misguided. I know I shouldn't be so infuriated over a botched product launch, but this irks me for some reason. I guess it's because I like Google's products and want them to succeed in hardware, but I lose hope when I see questionable decisions like the manufacturing of this neutered MacBook Pro ripoff. Ugh.
I think it's interesting they chose a 3:2 aspect ratio. The price is a bit high for the specs you get, but I suppose a lot of that is the (multi-touch)screen.
We wouldn't be on Hacker News if we didn't try to push things to do something it wasn't designed for :)
Anyway, the Retina Macbook you talk about is missing the touchscreen part which is a big thing for Windows 8.
And it's being praised?
Wow.
Pathetic is what it is.
This is the first time ever I've seen a laptop design that is not a total Apple rip-off and looks classy. At least it doesn't scream "compromise" like 99% of all other non-Apple laptops.
Yes, it has a touch screen... do people actually like touch screens on their laptops? Is that worth such a huge premium for such mediocre hardware otherwise?
[1]http://cdn2.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/7734569/2013-02-...
Uh, will there be a non-wifi version?
It is a thing of beauty. It just seems uneconomical / impractical at this price point which is necessitated by the display.
Edit - I was going to suggest a PC laptop with touch display, that you could always install ChromeOS on in a boot partition, but your're just not going to get that resolution. This is for someone who wants a beautiful thin client above all else.
In fact, I really won't be surprised if Google has a bag of online goodies under its table right now just waiting to be unveiled alongside with the launch of the Pixel. Unless they push with this, I just don't the current market place for such an expensive Chromebook. If Google does push forward a new set of online tools/cloud offerings, it might be groundbreaking.
I realize they're completely separate teams, but at what point do they converge to provide a greater value-add to the product?
What user is going to drop $1200 on a machine that only lets you browse the web? Unless GOOG plans on providing some large backend for virtualization or offloading CPU processing what's in it for the "power" user.
There's more to this than we're privy to. I don't see a user needing this kind of horse power for just cloud-based applications. That doesn't make sense.
Now I wish you could switch to portrait on this one and still keep the keyboard.
Will the Pixel be locked? I doubt that Google would make this arrangement, but it is a question worth asking.
>In PC pro stores with a Google Zone, sales of Chromebooks represent over 10% of our notebook sales.
That's a far cry from "10% of all UK laptops are Chromebooks".
First they're talking about sales, while your statement is talking about install base.
I suspect the "other" below is mostly Android, so it's not even a blip on the radar in Statcounter stats for UK.
I was wondering if this could be worth installing Linux on it.
What's the point of a mobile chromebook if I won't use it ouside my home or my workplace? And last time I checked there isn't open WiFi in the streets.
I suspect this is a pure enterprise play for Google. Institutional customers who value the management features of the ChromeBook platform but want to give their employees something nicer than a $300 netbook with a laptop screen.
Apple Store // App Store // iPhone // Macbook Pro
Microsoft Store (http://content.microsoftstore.com/Home.aspx ) // Windows Store // Windows Phone // Microsoft Surface RT
ok, very innovative strategies I'd say..
People really need to thanks Google for bringing up the competition all the time. Now Apple have little reason not to add support for retina, lte, multi touch display in the coming MBA models.
On the other hand, it is a little strange that Google didn't mention the weight of the Pixel.
I wonder how long it will be before other manufacturers pick it up?
http://www.theverge.com/2013/2/21/4013932/chromebook-pixel-h...
Verdict: Could be a good Windows PC if the design was original and the specs were better.
Google's second biggest strategic mistake will be Glass.
I just hope Google would recover.
Well, its Chrome OS, so anything that runs on Chrome browser anywhere (including Native Client apps), plus additional apps using the Chrome OS-specific APIs.
> Chrome OS wasn't a touch based OS as far as I recall... have they integrated touch into the OS now?
Chrome browser (and, therefore, Chrome OS) has been integrating touch features for several versions. Since I don't use Chrome on touch devices (except Chrome on iOS, which is a different beast) I'm not that familiar with it, but my understanding was that the support was pretty far along by now.
Too bad the OS is seemingly always tied to low end - dog slow hardware.
If the next iteration looses the touchscreen and is fully Ubuntu supported, I might get it.
PC/XT keyboard: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/85/IBM_5150_...
Discussion briefly mentions PgUp: https://plus.google.com/+JeffJarvis/posts/g9gcXLPuVVQ
YES
FUCK YES
I WANT TEN (provided I can install a different linux distro on them)
Too bad google won't sell one to me yet.
Must say I'm somewhat feeling meh about this on many levels.
Initialy the price was a wake up and I thought, ok I'm missing something so I did a little digging and still think its too expensive for the sum of parts.
Issues I have are:
1) Price 2) Limited local storage 3) Only USB2 and no USB3 4) No 3g or 4G options in the UK and given the price I'd expect at least 3 years worth of unlimited 3G internet based up consumer prices and that spec. 5) battery life, is somewhat lacking
Concerns that may also be worries when I know more are:
1) Keyboard mic could be used to snarf passwords via applications that have access to the mic 2) No vents apparent and suspect hidden under the keyboard which is worrying in case of spill/splash 3) Screen mooted to have good viewing angles so more mindful to shoulder surfing
But in general for what you get it seems way too expensive and look forward to a teardown.
Now all that said Google did somewhat get burned on the Nexus 4 pricing and I don't know if they are over compensating or what. They may be releaseing at a silly price for those with more money to burn, then gradualy lower the price to fit all price pockets.
Another aspect a friend said was it has 1tb for 3 years cloud storage and whilst nice and with that local storage overly needed I do think such lockins to Google without being able to tap alternatives and cheaper alternatives distracting from the price. Remember Microsoft many years ago got lambasted for tieing in everybody to IE on windows as default and not offing a simple-janet-and-john alternative for the happy people. This ties in more than that, but different times.
When I factor all that it is and is not I still think if I had that money I would get a macbook air and I have never had Apple product and very much a google fan, but this is so over priced to me that it would be insane to buy one at that price, least for me.
I would also add that two wifi ipads with retina screens and a bluetooth keyboard works out cheaper and with that, it does somewhat again highlight the price factor.
So with all that I'll stick with my plans to get a Chromebook (cheap one) and probably get one even cheaper 2nd hand now :) that and my netbook with built in 3g modem and twice the battery life is still nothing to worry about.
I would like to see a resolution like this but with more storage, USB3, built in 3g modem (3G in the UK is faster than USA 4G and CDMA 4G with voice is a battery nightmare apparently as well as a kludge somewhat). Also at the very least twice that battery life.
So I will with for a tegra 4 version, which will make more sence on more levels.
On the Drive integration, there is access to other developers for FS for apps and extensions, so it is not just tied to drive http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/fileBrowserHandler.ht...
There is quite a lot of local Storage 32gb and 64gb.
I want all my data in the cloud + permanent access on a powerful device where I can do everything (ie I don't want something underpowered causing limitations).
The $150 difference for a minimal LTE connections makes this thing attractive - that means no need to look for wifi hotspots and then spend a minute to ask for the damn password to restaurant owners.
The 1TB cloud storage, if it can be shared with other computers at home, would just kill any need I have of Dropbox and others. That is also a big plus. If the cloud storage can somehow be used to host static websites with a custom domain name, I would also cancel at least 2 hosting accounts. (add some PostgreSQL capability and that'd be 3 hosting accounts I'd cancel)
BUT :
- 4Gb of RAM? Who though that it could be decent for a high-end laptop? 8Gb is the bare minimum I will consider. I will want to run heavy stuff on that thing if there is an i5 and a low battery life instead of an ARM. (heavy stuff: a gazillon tabs, editors, many pdf files, editing documents, cpu-hog websites doing pretty graphs like http://hdr.undp.org/en/data/trends/)
- 64 Gb of flash??? Really??? How will I get permanent access to my 1Tb of data if I'm in a place without LTE or WIFI ???
I purchased a 512 Gb SSD for my Macbook Air as soon as it was available on OWC, just because I can't stand the pain of missing some document or music or whatever
I don't want to care. I want my problems to be solved. 1Tb: ok, 64 Gb cache: fails.
As attractive as this chromebook may look like, I won't buy one because it is not solving all my problems - even if I'm one of these users who want everything in the cloud.
I want everything in the cloud but the online storage is only up to 1 Tb. I have more data that this, but ok, I can live with that minor limitation. However, I want a full backup locally accessible for whenever connectivity might be a problem.
If it is somehow possible to upgrade the RAM and the SSD (in the early days of Zaurus and Simpad, there were shops doing BGA reflow for such needs), and if for say $1000 more I can get than done and get at least 512 Gb of SSD and 8 Gb of ram, I may buy one.
1 Tb of SSD and 8 Gb of ram means I will buy one, but only if at this $1400+$1000=$2400 pricetag there are no better options to run Linux or OSX on similar hardware (1.5 kg, high res touch screen, slim laptop) - because I don't care about the brand.
These are a lot of conditions for me, so I'm not sure about what the market is for that thing. Certainly not me at least.
What use is the touchscreen apart from scrolling or tapping on links in the browser?
The Verge calls it a hair thicker than the Air, am I the only one that feels that it's a lot thicker? Comparison photo: http://cdn0.sbnation.com/entry_photo_images/7732773/theverge...
>And then there's the touchscreen. Google repeatedly told us how smooth and fluid it is to swipe through webpages on the touchscreen on the Pixel, and how it would enable developers to target a broader ecosystem for their apps by allowing their tablet and smartphone creations to have the same experience on the web. If only it were true: the touchscreen response is far from fluid, if Google's on-stage demos and our own hands-on impressions are any indication.