Google's Goals with Chromebook Pixel | Hacker News Reader

Google's Goals with Chromebook Pixel

chaz.me

30 pointschaz23 comments

My guess- Google's goal is to replace all of the MacBooks that their employees use internally. That's 40,000 sales right there. They know that they need a high quality machine- no one wants to be sitting in meetings with chintzy hardware.

Furthermore, with the recent Java-based Facebook & Apple attacks it's becoming apparent that OSX is becoming a significant hacking target. Google already ditched Windows for security concerns (http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/d2f3f04e-6ccf-11df-91c8-00144feab4...).

In short- this is a Google Employee computer, that they happen to be selling to the public.

Perhaps a Chromebook would work great for a Javascript or Dart developer, but what about C++, Java, or Android? Or even Go? I'm curious how well Google dogfooding Chromebooks would work out.

Google developers are not allowed to ever have any code copied to laptops due to security concerns. The laptops that they give devs are mainly for ssh, remote desktop and browser usage already.

don't they use Eclipse IDE or alikes? (honest question)

Yes, on workstations. Not on laptops.

This (and the top parent) are the only reasoned, insightful comments I've seen about the Pixel all day.

If you have to be on a laptop, the screens on the new Macbook Pros are simply a joy to use - as long as you aren't mucking with bitmaps too much, the clarity of web and code is really unmatched, eyestrain is greatly reduced.

Within the above restrictions (laptop, must be a locked/stripped-down OS), the Chromebook Pixel begins to make a lot more sense as an attractive laptop option.

When I'm writing code, I need a proper keyboard and a nice, big desktop monitor (preferably two). I still use a laptop, but it's hooked to a keyboard/monitor for the majority of my work.

When I do have to work directly on the laptop, I find it much less comfortable and slower. This is due to both screen real-estate and ergonomics. Your mileage may vary.

At the moment I'm primarily doing iOS and Java development (for a GWT web app), so I'm dealing with Eclipse, XCode, the iOS simulator, and a few browser windows. The secondary screen tends to be where I park reference material, IM, and sometimes logs. Eclipse likes to have a lot of pixels, but is a necessary evil to make Java development bearable.

How does Google deal with Java IDE's? Remote desktop?

This wouldn't be the primary development device. This is what you take to meetings and on the train. Googlers all have pretty beefy development workstations for the "real" work.

This. Google is the perfect example of a company that runs primarily on Google products (GMail, Docs, etc) and even devs don't use their laptops for more than just ssh, remote desktop, and their browser (at least, in theory, they shouldn't need to). Plenty of companies that are in similar situations will find that the Chromebook Pixel is the perfect device for a lot of their employees.

That said, the Pixel is still a niche device and I don't think Google is expecting it to be more than that. There wasn't even any hype leading up to this announcement, just a simple blog post. That's not the type of thing you do if you are announcing, what you think is, a game changing device.

Price = Quality

When something is $1299, you don't even need to read the specs. You just know it will be worth it. But when something is $249, hmm better check the specs to see why it's so horrible.

It's just basic human nature. Google isn't wrong to capitalize on this principle the same way Apple has been doing from the start.

Except that's not true at all. Plenty of people check out the specs and build quality of expensive items. If anything, some people are more picky, because they're spending more and they want to make sure they're getting their money's worth.

Yes, that's Apple's big secret. Just price something high and it'll fly off the shelves!

Blindly looking for a higher price is almost never worth it; high-priced products tend to be priced as luxury or status items. If someone goes shopping for a laptop with the metric of "pricier = better", they'll end up with some 15-pound plastic monstrosity from Dell.

That's not necessarily true. I think you'll find a lot of $1300 laptops from Dell, HP, etc that are all of questionable quality.

Whatever Google's Goals might be, I won't buy it since you can run native apps. I need my IDE, my server setup and want to install and remove native apps as and when I want. That is why developers are not impressed with Chromebooks, agree?

I love my highly portable Chromebook for ssh'ing into a dev machine and doing real work via vim and whatnot. But I don't see myself paying $1,299 for what essentially is a thin client.

> Whatever Google's Goals might be, I won't buy it since you can run native apps.

I think you mean "can't" (though that's arguably inaccurate, given Native Client), unless you are saying that having Native Client is the reason you don't want it, which doesn't make a lot of sense.

> I need my IDE, my server setup and want to install and remove native apps as and when I want.

Okay.

> That is why developers are not impressed with Chromebooks, agree?

I would say that that's why people who are attached to traditional desktop environments aren't impressed with Chromebooks, but I don't think that has much to do with "developers". Some developers are interested in cloud IDEs and apps running on cloud-based servers, and I would suspect that they would be well-served by Chromebooks.

Nope, I'm a developer and I fully see getting a Chromebook in the near future as I develop some of my applications through SSH on my remote EC2 instance anyways. The reason why I didn't get it just yet is because I wasn't too impressed with the 3G connection of the Google CR48 that I got a while ago. Once I see good 3G/LTE connection reviews of Chromebook, there's a high chance I'm getting it.

I really wish they'd focus all their energy on Android instead. They've come a long way in the last few years but there are still a lot of holes to stop up and I don't see why Android couldn't be adapted to run well on hardware like this too.

If they really are going with those stores (I have no idea), they need something better to show off, and to sell to those with the dollars (leaving aside the "more dollars than sense" debate), than the current line up.

Picture a Mac store and a Google store side by side. (Not that this is going to happen.) Where are people going to hang out, given the current line ups?

Just a note, but this is actually very likely to happen, at least somewhere.

They built a new Microsoft store at La Canterra mall in San Antonio directly across from the Apple store. I think it used to be a Victoria's Secret.

Google's goal with the Chromebook Pixel - to make money.

But is it a direct or indirect goal? If they're using ChromeOS as an indirect way to make more money through something such as user feedback in some way... then it might make sense.

Or, it's a long term initiative.

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