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.
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:
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 "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.
> 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 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.
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 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...
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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".
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.
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.
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.