Owner of a last-gen Pixel here. I don't see myself upgrading any time soon, but as far as refreshes go, this one seems to address most of my complaints, namely:
- More RAM
- Better battery life / charge time
- USB-C ports
Here's what I'm not sure if it will fix:
- Overheating (original Pixel gets HOT on the top-left corner where I'm guessing the CPU resides)
- OpenVPN support (ChromeOS does not support simply loading a .ovpn profile--I have to do some hacking from the command-line to get it to work)
- Longer warranty (1-year limited is all that is provided with the previous model--and since these are directly from Google, you can't get an extended warranty through the retailer)
- Weight (Love the metal slate look, could be lighter, however; based on the specs it seems like not so much)
And finally, the things that Google will never fix, and you should simply be aware of ChromeOS's limitations:
- Lack of apps
I will say, however, that in the past year, Crouton, which allows you to sideload a linux partition onto the device, has come a long way, to the point that you can actually have an Ubuntu chroot running in a tab inside ChromeOS as though it were just another window/app. It has proved incredibly useful for running things like Sublime or Eclipse without having to do the complete environment-shift that was required some time ago.
Price is still a little high, however. I feel like those looking for a high-quality Linux laptop could probably get an Acer Aspire for cheaper.
I purchase all expensive electronics on my AMEX card. They offer an additional year on all manufacturers warranty at no additional cost, along with 90 day purchase protection for any accidental damage. Its fantastic.
Visa Signature offers similar coverage, however making a claim with Visa vs Amex is a much bigger headache.
I've submitted multiple warranty and purchase protection claims with AMEX and its about the easiest process imaginable. Highly recommended.
I feel obligated to mention, that although I was happy with my AMEX card while I had it... When I lost some physical copies of my statements that I required for tax purposes, I called up AMEX and asked them to send me copies.
They did so, at the cost of $10 per month. I paid $120 for them to print out about 40 sheets of paper and mail them to me snail mail.
I did the same with my Visa that I had at the same time, and they only charged me $2 per month. Still abhorrently expensive for paper transcripts imho, but 5x cheaper than AMEX on that respect.
That wasn't an option for me a few years ago when I tried. I'm not sure if their arbitrary cutoff date (~18 months?) had passed or if it simply wasn't available back then.
I download all copies of my statements every year now though, that's for sure!
Yes, if you purchase the item using the card. It's an extended warranty. Quote from benefits section of the gold card:
Extended Warranty can extend the terms of the original manufacturer's warranty on warranties of five years or less. We match the length of the original warranty if the original manufacturer’s warranty is less than one year, and we provide one additional year if the original manufacturer’s warranty is between one year and five years. Shipping and handling costs for the purchase will not be refunded. Certain purchases are not covered, e.g. items with physical damage, damage as a result of natural disaster, software, motorized devices and vehicles and their parts. Other important exclusions apply. You will only be covered up to the amount charged on your eligible Card; coverage is limited up to a maximum of USD $10,000 per occurrence; not to exceed USD $50,000 per Card Member account per calendar year. You may be required to send the purchased item to us, in which case we will reimburse you for shipping cost. This product is in excess of other warranty plans that you have in place for the eligible item.
I always recommend getting a warranty through your insurance company. My wife got a surface pro, and in her hands I give it a 2 year half-life. We got a personal articles policy on it that is about 45$ a year, and it covers any situation except terrorism or government/cdc seizure. Those policies are a good read. Squaretrade was over 100$ a year and did not cover theft etc. Oh and no deductible. She broke the 60$ charger a few weeks ago and got a new one fully covered.
I've found it far cheaper to go with a rider on top of my renter's insurance than with a device-specific policy (and with better service, since they just deferred to the Apple Store re: repairs, vs making me send it to them like back when I had a computer-specific policy in 2007ish).
I've got my DSLR and my MBP covered for $60/year—I got it mainly for the camera, in case I dropped it in a lake or something, but it was cheap to throw the laptop on it too and then that saved my ass when I spilled water in it.
I don't know in which part of the EU you live in. I am from Germany and I can tell, there is no such thing as a 2 year warranty required by law.
What most people mix up is, that there are two different types of warranties. One that is given by the shop and the other one is given by the manufacturer.
The warranty given by the shop is required by law and is 2 years. It covers _only_ that the shop gave you a device without defects at the time you received it. After 6 month you as the customer has to prove, that a defect was there when you received the device, which is hard to prove.
The warranty by the manufacturer is a free given by the manufacturer. Apple give you a 1 year limited warranty. If something breaks during usage, than Apple will replace it within this 1 year.
That basically means, if something breaks between 1 year and 2 year, then you can't use the manufacturer warranty. You could try the by law required shop warranty. But then have luck in proving to the shop, that the defect was there when you bought it.
Not necessarily. Making extra units to replace broken ones (or spare parts to replace broken parts) is typically more expensive than simply making units or parts more durable so it makes the two year mark.
Also, insurance companies are not non-profits. They take a cut as well. The factory already makes a profit, but that's not going to increase simply because they have to lawfully offer two years of warranty. They'll have more costs but it probably wouldn't affect the profit margin as much as an insurance company would.
Yes, except that it's not really the case(not always). Personally, I come from a EU country where it is the law(Poland) so everything has to come with 2 years warranty, but living in the UK, it's really hard to exercise the 2 year warranty given by the EU law. Basically it protects you from manufacturing defects within those 2 years, if you buy a laptop with a 1-year warranty and a hard drive dies after 1.5 years it's still up to you to prove that it died because of manufacturing defect, which in all likelihood you won't be able to do.
Technically you have even longer rights if you're in the UK, at 6 years, where under the a Sale of Goods Act 1979, if a product was not fit for purpose you can send it back.
I cannot endorse this more - I bought an additional 3 yr everything-covered warranty on an Elitebook, and it ended up saving me $1100 in repairs to the laptop. Even Squaretrade warranties are better than nothing.
Perhaps I am just lucky but I out of principle never buy any insurance if it is not required by law. If something breaks I either try to fix it myself or buy a new one. I never calculated it but I don't feel that I miss out or pay more in the long run. Quite the opposite, I have almost no running expenses and can invest the money others pay the insurence companies into new stuff.
The only exception of that rule are insurances which cover stuff I might accidentally do to other people.
> Perhaps I am just lucky but I out of principle never buy any insurance if it is not required by law. If something breaks I either try to fix it myself or buy a new one.
Insurance companies know the odds better than us, they set the premiums, and they still manage to make a profit every year (billions of dollars in lots of cases)
It glaringly obvious that "on average" the average person should not get insurance when not required, because otherwise you're just paying for the profit of said insurance company.
No one is the average person. Even average people are not likely to be the average insured person. So it depends how much and in what direction you deviate from the mean.
For example, I kill cell phones regularly from dropping them; for me, insurance might be more cost effective; for the people who keep cell phones turned off except for emergencies it probably isn't good value. But, anecdotally I would say that these are the very people who have insurance. They are buying 'peace of mind', a very expensive product created by Madison Avenue.
I use a similar approach. The insurance companies are in business to make money, so (on average) they don't sell policies that lose them money.
I buy insurance if either:
1. I believe I'm significantly more likely to break the item then their estimates (ex: you use your phone at your construction job, and are significantly more likely to break it).
2. It's enough money that it would cause significant problems for me (home insurance, renters insurance, etc).
Otherwise, I figure I am 'self-insuring', and will come out ahead over the long term.
> The insurance companies are in business to make money, so (on average) they don't sell policies that lose them money.
Not necessarily. Insurance companies on average lose money from policies and make it up by investing the float. Think of the money they lose on policies as the "interest" that you get paid for lending them your premiums.
USB-C has been "a standard" since August last year [1]. The new MacBook and, now this Chromebook, are amongst the first devices to support it. This is actually pretty quick adoption of a new port standard. I think the industry is really going to get behind USB-C as it has almost all of the advantages of the competition, and is a compatible upgrade path for older peripherals. Thus we only need one port to support the new devices, as well as the old.
Why do you say Google will "never fix" the "lack of apps"? What do you call adding support for running Android apps? Clearly they are working on addressing this, even if they're not there yet.
Android apps will help fill some of the holes, but how likely is it that we'll ever get an Android port of the two apps I had mentioned previously, like Sublime and/or Eclipse? I suppose it's theoretically possible, but there are some programs that are, frankly, unlikely to ever leave the "desktop" OS's (i.e. Windows, OSX, Linux).
Of course, I'm happy for Google to prove me wrong. I would have firmly thrown Photoshop into that category until Adobe announced they were making a ChromeOS-compatible version of it. I happen to quite like my Pixel, so if the Chrome Apps can one day let me do everything I need to do without needing to go to a Linux chroot, I'd be thrilled. Until then, however, I need Sublime (Caret is pretty good, though), I need git, etc.
Android port of the two apps I had mentioned previously, like Sublime and/or Eclipse
I believe the Eclipse folks think that Orion (http://www.eclipse.org/orion/) is the path out of that jam. I'm super stoked about that project, and think it may have real legs if they don't lose focus.
That is their solution to your git need, also, unless one requires a dedicated git client to do rebases or other ninjary: https://github.com/creationix/js-git
I'm only speculating, and/or it could even differ per organization since in my mental model deploying Orion is only one step of many, but I would guess the two stacks you mentioned are famous for their watch-and-refresh development model. Thus, the coder presses "Save" (or perhaps "Commit", if "Save" is not atomic enough for deployment) and then either the CI system pushes out files or deploys for you or Orion pokes the development server to grab the latest files.
I am 100% positive it will take some mental and maybe even logistical reorganization to switch to a cloud-based coding environment. Almost every change I can think of in a professional capacity is evaluated in a cost-benefit analysis.
But today I am home sick, and thus have no access to my properly configured PyCharm, nor access to the local feature branches on my machine and it would be a bunch of ssh hoop jumping to deploy anything that I did write while at home. My interests are pretty much in descending order of that list. I would love a copy of cloud-PyCharm.
Exactly what it's the advantage of an "írregular" laptop, which sells at the same price point of a "regular" one, while crippling most of the things you can do with it and offering basically nothing in return ?
IMHO, these chromebooks are not laptops - they are large screen tablets with the bluetooth keyboard attached to them.
So the idea, and if I recall correctly, proof of concept, of ChromeOS running Android apps isn't a large stretch.
edit: I just watched the promotional video, and I was right about their interest in ChromeOS running Android apps, I was just wrong about its maturity level. The video states that ChromeOS runs "select" Android apps.
I think on a computer with a Core i5 and 8gb of RAM, choosing between web apps and Android apps is kind of a false choice. Windows or Linux both offer you far more applications that are built to take advantage of that form factor.
I have 4 chromebooks, the original pilot program, 1st Gen Samsung, Acer c720, and the Pixel. Totally love the pixel, pilot book and Acer, hate the 1st gen. AdmiralAsshat's criticisms are valid about the pixel but it works well for me since it has a lot more memory than the other chromebooks. Crouton linux makes even the smaller chromebooks quite useable for most situations. Sometimes I have a hard time deciding which chromebook to use. Mostly it's come down to the Acer for travel, and the Pixel for home. The Pixel has poor battery life compared to the other chromebooks though, but glad to hear that's been taken care of.
I know a beta tester of the new Pixel, and the battery life of 12 hours is absolutely for real. I've been pretty impressed from the bit of it I've seen.
Comparing similar models at exactly the same price, similar weight and form factor (top of the line Pixel vs. base Macbook Pro 13), information taken from Apple Store and Ars review of the Pixel:
The Pixel has:
Better processor (i7 2.6Ghz vs i5 2.7Ghz)
Slightly better resolution (2560×1700 vs 2560x1600)
Double the RAM (16GB vs 8GB)
The Macbook has:
Double the SSD storage (128 GB vs 64 GB)
Better integrated GPU (Iris Pro 6100 vs HD5500)
So I would say there is no clear-cut winner.
Regardless what people thinks, the base specs for the Pros are quite fair for the price.
EDIT: I was forgetting that the Pixel has a touchscreen display, somehting that Apple doesn't offer at all, at the moment.
MacBook had much faster Processor, Chromebook Pixel use UltraLow Voltage CPU which tends to have much lower TDP and much less sustained clock. In this case 2.2GHz for Chromebook vs 2.7Ghz for MacBook.
I´m comparing the top end Pixel model (the same price as the base macbook), which mounts an i7 at 2.6Ghz, with more cache than the 2.7Ghz i5 of the base Macbook pro.
Cpuboss gives the edge to the i7, but if you have some source with benchmarks comparing the two CPUs (or similar ones) I would be really interested in seeing them, in particular how TDP affects performance.
In my opinion the recently refreshed 13´Macbook Pro is one of the most interesting machines on the market, for the price.
About your Acer Aspire remark: I've had some bad times with Acer in the past, and I bought a new one in January. Pretty good specs, low price, clean design, but very, very plasticky. Wouldn't call that a high quality alternative.
I managed to work on a Chromebook for a few months. I was doing a mixture of web frontend (Angular) and Go based backend. I was using terminal for most things tmux, shell, vim, git, ssh which is how I work on my MBP anyway. Postman for api testing and I found some chrome apps for screenshots and other little things. It was all quite good. The only apps I really missed were Inkscape and Gimp and I could run those under Crouton if needed but my Chromebook was a bit memory constrained. I guess Skype was a bit of an issue as well. In the end I stopped because the hardware had reliability issues and the screen wasn't all that great.
Notice he said "Chromebook", not "Chromebook Pixel". Considering the Pixel's screen and keyboard were supposedly top-teir, I am presuming he had a normal $200 chromebook.
For what it's worth, I've been using a Acer Chromebook for awhile now. It's been an excellent machine, when you consider I only paid $180 for it and threw Arch on it before its second boot. It can't hold a candle to the Pixel or an XPS, but I never expected it to.
Chromebooks, like Netbooks before them, cut a lot of corners to get under a price. That is why a halo model like the Pixel excites people as it is a rare opportunity to see what the platform can do without the price constraints. Imagine what it would do to quality if the only Macbook you could buy was sub $400?
ChromeOS is not for everyone but I wouldn't dismiss them outright as some people don't need much more than access to a shell environment and web browser to be productive. There are a few small frustrations, openvpn limitations etc. And they could do a bit more to make them friendly to devs/linux users.
I have a bunch of ARM boards around, as well as, a headless x86 server for personal media archive, plus some number of rented virtual servers in the cloud.
Basically, Chromebook is a terminal + a browser for me.
That review is actually incredibly (and somewhat surprisingly) positive.
It mostly comes down to what everyone here already knows: Chromebooks don't run all the apps many people need, like Photoshop:
> Personally speaking, I wouldn't buy one -- but that's mostly because it won't run Photoshop, and it doesn't play nice with certain peripherals like my running watch. Barring that, though, I love the Pixel. Between the design, display, keyboard and battery life, it's among the finest notebooks I've had the pleasure of using. I'm sad to have to give my review unit back.
Jesus, designing a usable ultrabook must be very difficult.
We have one contender from California, but their ideology has them offer just a single USB-C port. Now we get the competitor from Mountain View, who have rightly recognized the need for more than one fucking port when that's how you charge the damn thing, and what do they decide?
What most people have missed is that USB allows charging and data over the same port. So you can easily get a power adapter that has a charging tip which has on the same cord another USB-C port (socket) which you can plug into your display chain, or port replicator or what not.
In Apple's case I fully expect they will make it so that when you plug your Apple display into your laptop it also charges it since the charger is permanently connected to (or built into) the Apple monitor/display.
You might win 500k or more a year, good for you, you are successful. But for people who have kids who will have to go to University ,even at 100k a year , $1300 isn't a small amount of money.
If you think people buy laptops like they buy candies well you're a privileged man, and again I wish you the best,but that's not the reality for most of us.
It's not even so much about it being affordable but rather how much it costs relative to other devices on the market. $1300 is a pretty high price point for a laptop and in that range you're competing with high-end notebooks like Apple. A Chromebook fits a niche for lightweight web-browsers, but I'm not prepared to spend $1300 for a notebook built solely to surf the net.
The thing runs linux. Like if you ever wanted a linux laptop this is for you. I just bought a toshiba cb2, and with crouton installed it's one of the best laptops I think I've ever owned (for the price).
All my laptops run Linux. Two of them came with Linux preinstalled. Two of them came with Windows preinstalled. All four had the preinstalled OS overwritten by my Linux distro of choice. So what they came with isn't really that important. (Granted, if something comes with Linux then that saves you the step of making sure all the hardware has Linux support before you buy it.)
(Random and probably a little minor) But what about those keyboards? How about those Ctrl and alt keys? Have both on each side? Actually in the same order, and spaced well for programming / emacs? That's the reason I hate my Mac pro so much, and I haven't seen a win based keyboard doing much better. The CB key layout is the best I know of.
Well, my current ASUS laptop (about $700 ~3 years ago, including the Swedish 25% VAT, Windows preinstalled) has so far worked almost flawlessly with Linux. My bottom row is Ctrl Fn Super Alt Space AltGR Menu Ctrl. Some keys are a smaller than on a full-size keyboard, but everything (except for home/end/pg/...) is in its usual spot and it works absolutely fine for me (I'm primarily writing in IntelliJ or Vim though, not Emacs).
spot on my friend, I do better than most, and still have to budget for a purchase like that.
what this does mean for me, is that older models will come down in price and become much more affordable. might even be able to pick up last years for $2-400 on ebay.
$500K/year for a developer is generally unrealistic. (Not that they don't exist, but even if you made it your life goal to obtain one of these jobs you probably still shouldn't count on it.) $100K/year for a developer is very realistic, but keep an eye on the cost-of-living; even in the US that can be anything from upper-middle class lifestyle for an individual to "barely getting by" for a family.
I live in the Midwest and have what in the US would be a sanely priced house that bears some resemblance to its cost-of-construction. I have done business trips to Silicon Valley to developers who are making only modestly more than me, if not the same as me, who are living in houses worth 5 times as much on paper (and in their mortgage payments), and they'll be in there putting in top-of-the-line granite countertops or something that I wouldn't dream of putting in. My theory is that their house is just so gosh darned expensive that the idea of dropping $2K on a new laptop or getting The Very Best Countertops (TM) seems like a drop in the bucket compared to the debt they're already carrying anyhow. While I could certainly afford a $2K laptop, it's certainly enough to make me think twice, thrice, and a fourth time before I bought it (and I tend to come in more in the $1K price range when I do, since I run Linux and not Mac. There's some nice stuff at that price point).
While many of us routinely spend this amount of money on laptops or other hardware, the average Joe doesn't want to spend more than 600-700 euro on a laptop (which translates to up to $650 in practice).
So yes, for most people, this sounds like a fortune for a laptop.
I think it's actually addressed half of shortcomings of the old Pixel: 4GB of memory has been upped to a reasonable 8GB or a generous 16GB. The CPU bump is also a welcome change. Only the limited disk space is an issue.
I just wished they doubled the storage (at least) and sold them with plain old Linux as developer machines. Would be a great way to get into the hearts and minds of many programmers.
To ghrifter (I couldn't reply to your thread): yes it's a tax thing, and also the cost associated with the EU mandated 2 year minimal warranty programs. Electronics are generally more expensive in euros than in dollars, even though the exchange rate of a dollar is still below 1.0 euro.
A friend of mine just sold his 2009 MacBook Pro for $1500, he originally purchased it for $2400 IIRC. That's only $900 worth of deprecation in 6 years.
I agree, it isn't a fortune, but it isn't cheap either. The people who complain about the price can't/don't want to spend the money to buy a high end device, but they want a high end device.
The people who wine about the costs of going high end (MacBook , Watch, whatever) aren't part of Apple's target demographic. Apple wants to (and always has) sell well made devices to people who don't want cheap, and aren't afraid to pay for it.
I'm typing this on Thinkpad T430s with i7, two SSDs (one of them in ultrabay), 3G modem... when it was bought, it was as expensive, as Macbook Pro can be. Yet, I consider the Thinkpad worth the asking price and Macbook Pro not.
It is entirely about what you value in the product you buy. You may be totally utilitarian, or you may want fashion item. In the end, it is just stuff anyways ;)
> In Apple's case I fully expect they will make it so that when you plug your Apple display into your laptop it also charges it since the charger is permanently connected to (or built into) the Apple monitor/display.
Adapters will exist for now. I think a solution to a single port (though, having more than 1 is probably better) is great. Why do we need 8 different port types? We should have one and it should do everything. But we should have 2 of them.
I haven't seen anybody complaining about the move to a single port type. Most of us in the tech world recognize that as a Good Thing. What many of us don't like is that you have to unplug the power adapter just to plug in a flash drive unless you have a dongle.
It does not. Here's the adapter; the separate USB-C cable (one is required to use this adapter) Apple sells for $30 does not include a hub or extra ports either. I'm sure there will be some third-party option that does this.
Because if anyone has ever thought that Thunderbolt would be used for all accessories they were very, very, very wrong. You wouldn't plug in a printer, or a flash drive, directly to a Pciexpress bus, would you? There's simply no need. And yet, this is pretty much exactly what Thunderbolt is. It's fantastic for things which need this kind of connector - external graphics cards, 10Gb optical network cards, RAID controllers - but not pendrives.
But if I have external storage plugged in (I'm copying a large file), and I need to charge the laptop, then I need to disconnect the drive in order to charge the laptop?
There are countless examples where daisy-chaining these devices becomes very inconvenient.
"In Apple's case I fully expect they will make it so that when you plug your Apple display into your laptop it also charges it since the charger is permanently connected to (or built into) the Apple monitor/display."
Some of us are still waiting for our Displays with MagSafe2 and USB3... when was the last MagSafe1 laptop made? Yet Apple is still manufacturing the TB display as-is.
> What most people have missed is that USB allows charging and data over the same port. So you can easily get a power adapter that has a charging tip which has on the same cord another USB-C port (socket) which you can plug into your display chain, or port replicator or what not.
What you seem to have missed is that this is nobody cares.
Nobody is going, "I really wish I could charge my laptop through the same port I connect my external hard drive to." This just isn't a problem people have.
However, plenty of people say about the MacBook Air, "I really wish I could transfer data from my external storage hard drive to my thumb drive while my MacBook Air is plugged into my monitor." The new MacBook Air that they've oddly rebranded to confuse with the entire MacBook brand will have a much worse problem in this respect.
It's a problem I have. Apple don't have docking stations; it's frustrating unhooking multiple devices so I can wander to a meeting room, only to hook them up again later. A single cable would be amazing (even more so if it was MagSafe, but oh well).
You could certainly do that with 2 ports, or 4, but you're being forced to do it now. I'm not okay with that. Just a simple scenario where you're charging and want to connect your 6th gen iPod to the computer needing an adapter is mildly annoying. 2 would be preferable. Apple should really host a survey on their site regarding this.
That doesn't account for my screens, charger, etc. It's an admittedly minor concern, but I imagine it'll be very nice when I can just plug in a single cable :).
The thing I've come to appreciate better is that everybody needs different tools. When I was working as a Systems Engineer and needed to connect via serial port to ratty old servers, this new Macbook would have had me screaming. As a developer at my current workplace, I don't need infinite connectability, just portability :).
Consider the people you are hearing it from and are around.
Most of the people in my life (outside of work) have no issue. Most of them don't have second monitors or external hdds. They might have a thumb drive or a Chromecast.
If you're a power user get a power user machine. Get a MacBook Pro.
If your MacBook Air is connected to your monitor then it will likely have standard USB ports on it like most do today. That said few people use external storage or thumb drives anymore especially the target demographic of the MBA.
Gotta admit it'll be pretty cool when Apple updates the Studio Display to provide your MacBook with video, audio, power, and USB over one cable. A return to the dream that ADC promised.
With the amazing difference of being an industry standard, so I can get that experience with Dell products if I desire.
So I have to purchase and carry around peripherals just to use my machine in anything but the most basic scenario? Not a fan.
To be clear, I am a Mac laptop user and have been for years. I love them from a build perspective, but I don't agree with the one-port-to-rule-them-all decision.
What about when you're not using the power adapter?
Even two USB ports on my MacBook "Pro" is too limited for my daily use case. I use a USB yubikey for multifactor auth with LastPass and it takes up one USB slot permanently. I prefer wired mice, so my mouse takes up the second USB port.
If I want to charge my phone, Fitbit or in the past Google Glass with the USB port, I have to unplug my mouse.
I would not buy the new MacBook as it's unusable for me unless I carry around a hub everywhere.
Having two of them on opposite side as the new Pixel does is certainly convenient, even more so because the port is flexible: you can just plug your stuff in whichever port is more convenient in terms of distance/position. Have a power plug to the left? Plug it to the left port. To the right? Plug to the right port. That is by far the main reason why I'm bothered by Apple's MB and its single Type C, while having a single one may be sufficient having one on each side is significantly more convenient.
At this point, I find this whole thing funny. Again.
How many times has Apple done this in modern times? Remember the outrage when Apple removed floppy disk drives? Optical drives? Ethernet ports? Remember how mad everyone got when Apple replaced their old, thick connector on the iPhone 5? Nobody complains about how thin their phone is now that the old 30pin connector is no longer the limiting factor on size. Nobody is bemoaning the fact that they can't watch a DVD on their laptop - we've moved on from optical media.
Nobody will even bother examining the bellyaching about this in a couple of years because we'll all be so happy with the obvious (in hindsight) decision to switch to USB-C.
What happens if that port fails or beaks? Your laptop stops working...
I'm not a fan of their single-port decision either, but in fairness: Every laptop stops working when the charging port breaks. No matter how many other ports it may have.
> Every laptop stops working when the charging port breaks
That is true, however if you are using the same port for a multitude of things (plugging/unplugging USB sticks, monitors, etc...) it's going to get a lot more use, and therefore increases the likelihood of something breaking.
I've broken USB ports before on laptops, usually by crushing the floating center plastic thing (USB cable gets ripped out weirdly or something), but I have other USB ports so life goes on. USB-C has the same center floating plastic bit -- just waiting for it to get broken off.
DC ports tend to be pretty robust, but do break from time-to-time. Apple's solution to this was the Magsafe connector, which avoided the issue for the most part. Seems like a step backwards for laptops to now rely on a single, potentially fragile port for everything.
> That is true, however if you are using the same port for a multitude of things (plugging/unplugging USB sticks, monitors, etc...) it's going to get a lot more use, and therefore increases the likelihood of something breaking.
By design it allows at least 10000 cycles of insertion/removal. Using it 8 times a day every single day you'd need about 3.5 years to end them. It's probably ok for most workloads.
Of course this is purely anecdotal, but amongst my friends and coworkers I've seen magsafe connectors fail at about the same rate as normal power adapters. Usually at the end where the wire goes into the wall plug brick part.
Yes the cheap to replace wire end breaks easily. But the expensive-to-repair computer side port is solid. You're going to see a lot more expensive computer repairs with the USB-C charging port.
True. Although I think it would be much better for durability if Apple used the same wire/power brick layout as everyone else: have the power brick in the middle of the wire, accepting 120/240 V from a standard "figure-eight" cord. Then that cord would be the one that breaks, and they cost $1 to replace. Of course this conflicts with Apple's business model...
At least over here in Europe, you can attach a bog-standard 240V cord to the Apple power brick so it sits in the middle of the cord. However, this does not help if the computer-side plug does not disengage if your lovely child barrels down your living room.
Magsafe has prevented a costly fall or other here.
All the Apple laptop and iPad adapters I've gotten accept a standard figure-8 cord if you just slide off the national plug. For my it's the slim cord between the charger and the machine that wears out.
Interesting. I've never seen anyone using it with the figure-8 cord. My intuition was that having the adapter stuck to the wall tends to often bend the thin cord on the DC side. As you say, that's what usually fails.
MagSafe was great when laptops got 3-4 hours (or less) of battery life which required re-charging in hostile conditions. MagSafe3 is 8-10 hours of battery life. No one can possibly trip over your charger if it's not plugged in.
that's an interesting point-- i was wondering why not having MagSafe anymore wasn't making me that upset (considering how magical and awesome i thought it was when it came out) and it definitely comes down to this. i guess we hit the point where the magnetic fanciness has become less useful than reducing cableage sometime in the past few years...
What I hear people complaining about is that the product isn't complete out of the box: You immediately have to go out and buy a hub, or at least a charger that also acts like a hub, and/or an HDMI adapter. Some of these gadgets are, for now, a little expensive -- $40 for something that used to be built in is, for some people, an insult. (I don't mind myself; I take the long view about things like this.)
The product is complete out of the box, just not complete for every use case. Even as a commercial editor my need for multiple ports decreases every year. Currently I work on broadcast spots with one client using one drive and dropbox. If I was on the print or web side I could get rid of that drive. I haven't used a thumbdrive in probably a year. Everything is dropbox or google drive if it's not large video files that require a raid. Two years ago I cut spots for Reebok on location using a 13" air, I have no doubt I could do the same with the new Macbook.
Now I wouldn't buy the new Macbook for my main editing rig, but I might buy it to use when traveling and consulting. I don't understand people complaining about a product that was obviously not designed for their use.
It's complete, but most people will want and need to buy some kind of adapter for their external drives or whatever.
Some of the anger seems to stem from confusion about what the new MacBook is. It's clearly a smaller version of the Air, not a replacement for the Pro.
If you have devices that immediately require you to buy a hug for the new MacBook, it's obvious you're not the target market, and you need to buy one of the more "Pro" ones.
I see people complaining about the Macbook like Apple is forcing you to buy it. You're exactly right, for the people who are complaining, Apple makes a Macbook Pro with multiple ports on it. Or even a Macbook Air with a couple extra ports.
Just because Apple has an iPad doesn't mean you can't buy a Mac Pro, you know?
It's intended to be used with a Bluetooth mouse (if the user wants to use something other than the trackpad).
Even now, this is sort of like saying 'Forget about watching a movie on these laptops' about it since it doesn't have a DVD drive! (I was going to say 'in a little while', but really, wireless mice are so common now)
High end mice still don't come in plain-bluetooth version. I've a couple of Logitech Performance MX and there's still no succesor (either from Logitech or an alternative from another company) that's just plain bluetooth with no dongle.
> [...] wireless mice are so common now)
I never made any mention of a non-wireless mouse. All highend mice come with USB dongles, regrettably.
Lack of optical drive is still annoying. And I still have a good laugh every time I watch an Apple user trying to give a presentation, struggling to connect to wifi because they don't have an ethernet port, and then not having the right adapter to connect to the projector. Or failing to find a charger for their phone.
You're right that this is classic Apple, but I wouldn't call any of those decisions obviously right. And there have been plenty of bad calls along the way - remember when Apple tried to get you to use Firewire hard drives rather than USB? Remember PERCH? Remember those magnetic ethernet cables? Having fun adaptering back and forth between DisplayPort and Thunderbolt?
Totally! And moreover, Apple's been on this get-rid-of-all-the-cables kick since at least the introduction of AudioVision 14 Display... in 1993. Anyone else remember the NeXT's unified power/display/keyboard/mouse/audio cable? ADC cables that passed power, display, and USB through the Cinema displays?
Aside from not relying on outside technologies for their success, eliminating cables has basically been Apple's central theme since (and before) their comeback. At least it's based on a standard this time.
While Apple has been in the business of simplifying ports there is a difference at least in previous cases we were ready to move on I'd argue. Back in 1999 I don't think I had used a floppy for a few years, zip drives? Sure, but not a floppy. Dropping the optical drive was bound to happen, I don't think I've really used a optical media bay outside of a game console for years.
However, every day at work, I plug my MacBook Retina into two monitors, plug in my USB 3.0 drive, sometimes my iPhone to charge or do dev stuffs, and charger, and frequently use my SD card slot as a 3rd HDD. Apple now is in the business of offloading the problem of I/O to the user, they haven't fixed it. It wouldn't have hurt the MacBook to include 2-4 ports, all USB3c
I'm more than ready to move on to this, and would have been ready years ago. In 1999, floppy disk use was far more prevalent than the need for multiple USB ports is now. For your described use case, you'll just plug your Macbook into a USB3 hub or dongle with HDMI (I don't think this machine has enough graphics power for multiple external screens). You will actually have fewer cables to manage.
And it actually would hurt the Macbook to include more ports. The current port is above the keyboard, likely because it can't fit under the keyboard. Adding more ports would mean increasing one of the dimensions. Given the versatility of the USB3C port, I think it's the best possible tradeoff. If you absolutely use lots of ports day to day, and can't use a hub, then this really isn't the computer for you, and Apple will even sell you one of those.
If you plug all that stuff in every day, why not just get a the inevitable hub apple is going to sell? That way just one cable to plug in each morning instead of 5.
Yeah, every day you are reminded because someone forgot their apple adapter. It's nothing but pathetic.
Optical drives and floppy discs were obvious, they were never used on a daily basis when they were removed and that they remained so long in laptops (macs included) is just astounding. But something like Ethernet is just ludicrous. Unfortunately, if you want a slim laptop Ethernet will have to go - but it sure as hell will be missed in the coming decade.
Non-replacable batteries... Another milestone? No one was stupid enough to come up with that before apple, and thanks to that we all have to throw away all of our devices after a few years. But who cares, right?
You have to plug the non-part-of-the-laptop PCMCIA card, just like you have to plug the non-part-of-the-laptop USB adapter. Not much big of a difference.
Or where you'd needed an adapter dongle that connected to the PCMCIA card.
I know there was a laptop or at least a concept of it with something similar to the (parent) XJACK connector, but have never seen it in real life. Would love to see them in ultrabooks.
"At this point, I find this whole thing funny. Again"
Yup. It's more than just funny. The number of people I know who are carrying around "our thinnest, lightest macbook yet" with a bagful of adaptors that weigh more than the laptop is HILARIOUS.
As for me, I'm carrying around a 2012 Macbook Pro (the last model with a non-glossy screen). Even though my work involves dealing with iOS projects etc., my next laptop will probably be running Linux and I'll learn to rely on my iMac for iOS specific work.
> bagful of adaptors that weigh more than the laptop
They would have to carry around somewhere between 30 to 50 adapters to reach 2 pounds. I'm excluding the power adapter since that's a baseline for any laptop.
But doesn't the giant bag of fiddly adapters become more cumbersome than just a laptop with everything built into it? Like your parent, I am running a non-retina 2012 MBP and it's great - no need for an array of tangled adapters. It's all in there.
> Nobody complains about how thin their phone is now that the old 30pin connector is no longer the limiting factor on size
Yeah, they do. Ask someone whose iPhone has just died (again) if they'd take it being a bit thicker with a bit more battery, and I don't know anyone who wouldn't make the trade.
And I personally still miss living in a world where no matter where you went you were never more than 5 feet from a 30-pin cable.
I think it's great that Apple has replaced all those ports with USB-C, and as you point out it is exactly in line with previous decisions to prune almost obsolete tech which turned out very well. There will be a lot of unjustified moaning and then people will be happy when the whole world runs on USB-C (at last, one fast standard for connectors that everyone can agree on).
I'd rather have two USB-C ports though than a pointless little audio jack - they should have put one on either side as Google have on their pixel. People could use bluetooth headphones with it if they really couldn't find some other place for the headphone jack, but I'm sure they could have squeezed it in if they tried hard enough. As it is one port is rather limiting (yes I know it shares data and power).
It'd be nice to be able to charge an iphone and charge the computer at the same time, so on port means many people will require a hub. They should also have sorted out their monitors with a refresh which actually functions as a hub for USB-A and USB-C - perhaps they'll do that before launch or I hope soon after.
> Remember the outrage when Apple removed floppy disk drives? Optical drives? Ethernet ports?
Not really. What outrage? Floppy and Optical drives were dropped when they were already old. I remember some people complaining about the lack of USB, but you can get a thunderbolt<->ethernet adapter when you purchase it. Also, an ethernet port itself if thicker than the laptop itself, so it's understandable.
> Nobody is bemoaning the fact that they can't watch a DVD on their laptop - we've moved on from optical media.
I bemoan that about my work laptop. It's not possible to legally stream all the things I'd like to watch, and for whatever reason building USB boot drives is still more painful than burning ISOs to DVDs or CDs (no good reason for that, but each time it's been the case).
I understand your general point and think it holds true. However, I would say in my mind that the way Apple can decide to change their connector and suddenly make redundant a full range of downstream devices (house and car chargers, general chargers, audio equipment) is a real negative and one of the 3 or 4 things that keeps me from moving back over from Android.
They kept the 30-pin connector around far, far longer than most companies kept their proprietary power or data connectors. When they switched it was to something robust enough they wouldn't need to fiddle with it for a long time.
Standards change, but at least this one hasn't changed very often. I think "once" is an allowable amount of change.
Your inner fanboy is leaking. It wasn't Apple's lead.
Samsung did it at least twice before Apple switched to Lightning, another time after Lightning and will probably also move to Type C soon. Same for HTC, they switched port choices before Apple did as well, the HTC Dream has a different USB port than the HTC Evo and both came before the iPhone 5, and they're also likely to change to switch to this as well.
So basically Apple is the only choice that comes closest to behaving as you expressed a desire for and instead you shit on them out of complete ignorance. Good job.
Android OEMs recently stabilized onto Mini-B but I've seen Android phones with Micro-B on them in the past and Samsung even had their own Apple 40-pin knock off for a while. Now all signs are pointing towards Android OEMs adopting the Type C port soon too, so you're getting a fourth port option for Android in the last 5 years.
Good point, but you have Mini-B and Micro-B reversed. Mini is the old thicker connector that you don't see much any more, and Micro is the newer thinner one.
Samsung also had USB3 Micro-B (the wide connector) on the Galaxy Note 3, but went back to a regular Micro-B in the Note 4.
Yeah. GP's point is just plain wrong, if he was concerned about 3rd party stuff lasting for more than one phone purchase, iPhones are clearly the winner with only have two connector options since 2008 while keeping their form factor consistent for two generations (and there are adapters for the first switch, and possibly a third switch this fall, where adapters are still plausible all the way back to original accessories).
Samsung and most other Android manufacturers aren't even guaranteed to maintain physical dimension compatibility between different models of the same exact phone (S6 vs S6 Edge, for example), let alone if you were to just stay with Android as an OS and were switching between manufacturers each upgrade. No way in hell you're keeping any nice-fitting docks or cases around for more than one Android phone purchase.
3rd party market lock-in is one of the reasons I switched to Android too. I understand Apple is out to make money like everyone else, but skipping micro-usb is (from my perspective) not a product enhancement.
Their delayed support on NFC arguably killed the user adoption for the tech as well, but i digress.
For all of Apple's focus on "simplicity" and "elegance" in design and whatnot, the company sure makes you carry a shitload of ugly dongles and extra cables and adapters along with your iDevices.
Wouldn't they be more elegant if they would, you know...Just Work?!
During my day to day use, the only time I plug in to anything is when I sit at my desk, power, Thunderbolt and HDMI to get a glorious three display setup out of my MBPr.
That being said, when I am in meetings, or on the move for work, I don't carry dongles with me. Pure laptop for me. All of our meeting spaces have Airplay compatible projectors, so I sit down, make sure I am on wifi and connect to the display.
Transferring large files? We've got 1 Gbit to our desks, I can sling data from our Denver location to our St. Louis location at almost 300 Mbit/sec sustained. Also, wireless N/AC throughout the building.
In the world where you no longer NEED those ports, having a smaller lighter laptop makes all the difference. I already don't carry dongles with me, the new laptop with less ports wouldn't change that.
Depends on the world you travel in. And I don't mean third world, first world, I mean the sort of places you have to visit.
Most defense facilities will NOT have wifi, and their meeting rooms will still have projectors with VGA in only. For travelers in the world that I inhabit, all those ports are a necessity. We would even still love to have a DB9 serial port because we often connect to embedded systems with serial consoles.
You and I live in different worlds, even though we both probably work on very technically involved things.
Eh … if you need a dongle maybe it’s just not, you know, for you? What a novel concept!
I practically never plug anything into my laptop except the charging cable. I suspect there are many people like me out there. This one is for use, not for you. Apple isn’t into being all things to all people, you know. Or at least their single products never are. Sometimes something is just not for you and that’s ok.
Then why put a data port on it at all? Either they expect you to do everything through the cloud or they don't. If they expected enough people to plug stuff into it that it was worth putting a USB port on it, that means expect that the same people would sometimes do that while it was charging (given that these things last through a day of heavy use at best). Which means they do expect people to have to use a dongle.
They don't make you. Apple's approach is you do everything wirelessly. For the laggards, well, you might need an adapter or two, but it's still more portable than a thicker and heavier laptop.
I use a wireless mouse and connect to the Internet wirelessly. My external HDD is over USB, but the latency (from it not being an SSD) is bad enough that wireless would change nothing.
That's great, but even at 1GBit over Google Fiber that has still less bandwidth than an actual SSD. And of course the most important part of why you use an SSD in the first place is latency, where cloud storage is significantly slower than 1995 spinning platter hard disks.
So even if I accept that the storage is in the cloud, it doesn't make sense since the hardware is clearly not there, but the software isn't either. I can't tell VMWare to use Google Drive for storage. It's a propietary data-dump, not an actual drive.
To be fair, you're not running VMWare on the Pixel either (i don't think?). I'm skeptical that it is even a problem for just about anything you can actually run on the OS. It's a Chromebook afterall, running disk-utilizing programs is not it's design speciality.
Sure, you could dump Linux on it - but i'm not sure how many would choose a Pixel over some other highend brands for a Linux machine.
I believe the disk is mainly just used as a cache, for web apps (music/etc). Just about everything is stored in the "cloud".
(I own a first generation Chromebook, but things may have changed)
I'm a huge fan of the Lenovo X1 Carbon. Despite their stupid moves regarding preloaded software, it's tough to beat a Thinkpad for Linux support.
Even better than the Linux support though is their warranty support. For under $100 you can get a year of accidental damage protection with onsite service -- Not long ago I knocked my X230 off a desk, cracking the LCD. Lenovo sent an IBM tech out the next day with an LCD, who then installed it in my home office.
Yea, i'm heavily debating a highend Thinkpad as a replacement for my Macbook Pro.
Mostly, i want Macbook Pro "quality", in a system that has good Linux support - mainly for containers, i'm sick of running a Linux VM on my OSX machine.
Surely a majority of people buying this won't be running the actual Chromebook system on it? What application can you even run on that system that would use 8GiB of RAM and an i5? And last I checked, you couldn't even run Skype on it, so I mean I just come up pretty much empty for the set of people willing to run Chromebook the OS and buy a 1k machine to do it.
Since Chromebook is Linux under the hood, they'll presumably have the driver situation down. So this makes for a very nice Linux system.
Sure, many of the people buying this won't be running ChromeOS.. but then they shouldn't really be complaining that it doesn't fit their needs. A Chromebook is not a general purpose device, it was specifically designed for a narrow use case, ChromeOS. The fact that you can do something else with it, does not mean it was designed for that.
I'm not going to buy a vehicle designed for hauling freight, and complain that it isn't sporty enough. Which, in my opinion, is what complaining about the lack of storage in a "Webbook" is like. You're buying a device, specifically tailored and designed for people who are using a web based operating system. It doesn't even let you install things by default, outside of web apps.
I just bought more RAM for my PC because the 4GB I had wasn't enough for all the tabs I keep open in Chrome. Every time I switch to a tab that wasn't open for a while it would swap like mad and become unresponsive.
... would be fine until I want to talk to my mother, who uses Skype. And then it would feel strangely limiting to not be able to do that on my $999 computer.
The newer versions of VMware are html based instead of using the thick client. Managing them and accessing the console should work in theory. Also the Citrix receiver and Remote Desktop clients both work well on the newer chromebooks. If you mean running vms I would consider a more powerful machine with more ram and a supported operating system.
Too bad that VMWare still hasn't upgraded their VMWare Integration plugin to use the new plugin architecture for Chrome, and that Adobe no longer makes Flash for Linux because right now the only way I can manage my VMWare/vCenter is using the Freshplayerplugin that wraps the Pepper Flash version that comes bundled with Chrome so that I can have the VMWare integration plugin function so that I can upload/download OVF's.
---
Suffice to say, the newer versions of VMWare are not HTML based. It's a full on Flash application.
I apologize I read that last line right after I hit reply. I still cannot transfer files. I use it to manage the existing FreeBSD\Windows\Linux boxes that we currently have and have a bunch of templates that I use already.
> The whole point of a chromebook is that the storage is in the cloud.
The whole point of a Chromebook is that the Chrome browser is the app platform. But among the many big pushes of Chrome to enable browser to be a compelling app platform (and one that eventually moved into web standards) is enabling local storage for browser applications so that they don't need to rely on remote storage for everything.
So it makes sense that it would have less storage than a laptop with a traditional OS, but more storage than you would expect from a "the storage is in the cloud" model.
It seems like the first models where initially intended to be more of a thin client type deal, but that doesn't seem to be the case with this model (given that it can go up to an i7 with 16gb of RAM). The disk space is disappointing mark on an otherwise excellent ultrabook report card.
In a world where cable companies monopolize broadband Internet and cell phone carriers charge for data by the megabyte, I'm pretty sure I don't want to rely solely on the cloud.
I upgraded my acer c720p chromebook to 120GB NGFF drive so I'd have more space for my debian chroot. The chromeos is nice. But I really depend on running linux (debian).
It's a nice laptop... but underspec'd for me. I'd like to see USB-C and more than 1920 x 1080 resolution. I don't care as much about the resolution on a 13" screen. But I'd like to be able to drive a 4K monitor. It's not clear to me whether it can drive a 4K monitor with its display port.
What's got USB-C other than the Macbooks released yesterday? If it catches on it might be nice in the future, but unless you're daisy-chaining expensive laptops...
That's because you're supposed to store all your data on Google servers (this is not sarcasm).
For 1000 USD however this is ridiculous. Just go DELL or Asus or similar. The XPS13 is excellent for example, come with proper ports, disk space, is light, is fast, has long battery life, has great screen, etc.
Getting an Apple or Google ultra-light laptop just because they're big, rich, trendy companies doesn't seem like a great idea this year. Maybe they'll catch up next year.
I think if you look at the numbers, they are pretty fine.
The full HD (1080p) version is considered the low-res and according to Anandtech it lasts 15 hours of normal use, while the higher end model with a 3200x1800 screen lasts 10 hours of normal use (according to Anandtech), and 7 hours of video playback according to the CNet review.
1) It's signature edition PC which means it's a pure copy of Windows 8.1. No trialware, no bloat, or any other crap. Even if you end up dual-booting into Ubuntu or Elementary OS, it's nice to have a clean copy of Windows.
2) You can take it into a local Microsoft Store if you have any issues, no need to deal with Dell's often horrid phone support.
3) You can buy Microsoft Complete Care for $130 which includes 3 years accidental warranty. If you break it, they replace it in the store with a brand new model instantly. I've seen them often simply replace it with an "equivalent or better" machine if the item is no longer available as well.
That's an absolutely terrible idea if you intend to run Linux on it. If you select the Ubuntu version and it's preloaded with Ubuntu at factory then Dell knows that it's worth working (and paying for) Linux support. If you take a Windows version and load Linux later then Dell things you are a Windows user and won't care about Linux support.
This is one of the biggest issues with Lenovo even though lots of Linux people run them.
The mystery of Dell's website. Go back to Google and search again. Dell gives you different options (and prices) depending on how you enter and navigate the web site. It's a maze of wonderful discovery!
Dell uses targeted discount links. People post on 'deal' forums. The lower prices available on Google search results are special offers that people posted. They won't be accessible through the standard menu.
It's Dells model: coupons, discounts, offers, combo offers and all.
Google's marketing strategy for the Pixel isn't geared towards the "hacker" and developer type, it's more geared towards students and people who solely use their computers for simple web browsing and document processing. Offering 1TB+ of online storage is enough for all your office/school documents and all the photos you could ever want for the average person. If Google were making hardware only for developers and the hacker type, you bet they'd put more local storage in it and make it more "offline" friendly.
It's a 3:2 display with an i5 upwards and minimum of 8GiB of RAM. That doesn't particularly fit into the simple web browsing and document processing crowd, who would presumably be much better served with something like the Intel Core M Apple uses, which could easily yield twice the battery runtime at a zero cost for these usecases.
Here[1] is a break down of a core M and i5 mobile processor. I don't know if they are the specific processors, but there are some interesting differences, mostly around cache size, graphics chip, and graphics capabilities (the i5 has more hardware decode capabilities it seems). That said, since they are advertising 12 hours of battery, it's not like it's a slouch in that department.
The most important part is TDP, 4.5W versus 15W. Now sure, both processors tick all the boxes, but at the end of the day, you get performance as you put watts in (certainly when you are comparing processors as similar as these two).
So the M will perform perfectly fine for YouTube, web browsing, office etc. but it will suffer significantly in benchmarks (and subsequently any high load / long time situations). Which is a very good tradeoff to make since you get 1/3rd of the power consumption but can run all the important usecases, if the office is what you're targeting.
There is a class of developers these are being marketed towards. For example developers working with c9.io, and other dev tools inside a crouton chroot could be interested. And the heavy weight machines these developers may need would be hosted in the cloud....
You could even triple it with the new 200GB SD cards, but the performance won't be that great. Not so bad for storing documents and large media, I suppose.
Any idea if it uses one of the many standard-ish SSD SATA or PCIe interfaces?
You can upgrade the NGFF drive in many other chromebooks. I suspect you should be able to do the same for the new pixel. For example, see bubble 4 in the image at the bottom of this page: http://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-information-fo... I upgraded my ngff to 128GB on my acer c720P chromebook.
I have bad news -- the SD card reader on both the new and old Chromebook Pixel is hooked up over USB2 (i.e. max 20MB/sec transfer rate). There is no internal expansion via msata/pcie. And the SSD is soldered down.
I guess so. The question is whether it's worth spending $1k on a laptop with such a restriction, vs. just buying a different one for about the same price that's actually expandable.
Most chromebooks these days are NGFF... And you can get a 256GB NGFF on amazon. It's a common upgrade for chromebook users. Especially those running a chroot with crouton.
Neither Apple nor Google, when designing these ultrabooks, really seem to consider 'usability' a top priority in the way the typical HN user would define the term. They seem like fashion accessories first, brand adverts second, and general purpose computers... somewhere further down.
Of course i'm one of those cranky old dinosaurs who likes cords and ports and who doesn't particularly like 'the cloud' so obviously it's not for me anyway.
Is there such a thing like a "general purpose computer" anymore?
My computers need to be light. I don't need a powerful CPU and, since I run small VMs, not a lot of memory. With containers, the needs are even more spartan. What I do need is a good battery, screen and keyboard.
Were I running simulations over large datasets, I would prioritize a large amounts of memory, fast CPUs and the fastest GPUs I could lay my hands on. And a fast network so I could move the datasets easily. My general purpose computer would have Xeons (E7s and Phis), Nvidia GPUs and Infiniband interconnects across multiple chassis.
My mom needs a keyboard, a mouse and a screen. And a browser. And that's about it.
I'd say a general purpose computer at the very least is one that doesn't make too many assumptions about what you should and shouldn't do with it. These ultralight notebooks seem indended primarily for consuming media and the web - which is fine, if that's what you want. But having more ports and more local storage is still less opinionated.
My mom needs a webcam and Skype to chat with her grandkids.
She needs a USB slot so she can load a document from a conference.
She needs flash to play that silly train game she found online that the grandkids admire her for. She needs a decent CPU and RAM because webbrowsing requirements are legit ridiculous these days.
I see this as a slightly more flexible docking station. I don't mind having a hub on my desk. Connecting one cable when I return the laptop to my desk would be amazing - currently it takes 3. I need peripherals frequently - but only at my desk.
Well yes, I think designing an ultrabook probably is difficult. I mean, you have to cram a lot of powerful components into a very small computer. You've only go so much space, so something's gotta give.
if you use a hub as a charger i don't really see a problem. At home i have a usb hub and outside i don't even use usb.
One cable ought to be enough for a portable device.
The first gen Air was probably the most unusable machine Apple has created since the NeXT acquisition. It also didn't sell well, so it hardly 'created a market'. Only when second gen came out, with much better harddisk, more ports and better chipset, they really took off. The first gen was a good investment into the future by Apple, a testbed to try out new manufacturing technologies and probing the market. I suspect this Macbook could turn out the same, even though it's probably much more usable than the first Air.
And there are other models to choose from, even if you're an Apple diehard. Yes, Apple is incapable of making the perfect machine for your needs at this precise point in time, but it's pretty good for some group of people. I'm in the group of people that will get the MacBook Pro version of this with a stunning array of two USB-C ports.
Well, you just store all your data on the NSA cloud from your NSA terminal.
To your point about he MacBook one port. They do offer a rather smart "splitter" dongle at $60-$90 that allows you to charge while I/Oing other data when that uncommon scenario uncommonly arises.
I just don't get the whole Google approach. They think far higher of their "OS" than is warranted. They should have been selling this thing as a loss leader at around =<$800. I don't know too many people ... as in none ... who want to spend $1k on a Google "OS" machine.
If it had 256GB and Ubunutu it would be the Linux Macbook we need. A large portion of buyers will almost certainly be trying to run GNU/Linux on it anyway.
It's really not though. There's crouton which makes it trivial to setup a chroot - https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton which is good enough for most users.
If you'd rather blow away ChromeOS and install Ubuntu, it's just a few commands on the command line to boot from USB and install Ubuntu.
My biggest worry is the ease with which one can accidentally wipe out everything and reset it to factory settings every time you boot up. I might be super careful, but all I need is for my four or seven year old to turn it on wrong, and suddenly I fear I'd have a several hour fix-it session.
If it came with a setting that would let me make changes more permanent (e.g., a BIOS setting), I'd want one in a heartbeat.
My wife accidentally wiped my fully configured Crouton Ubuntu install off the drive when I was first playing with my Gen 1 Pixel. I chatted with a few Google Chrome OS devs right after this happened and managed to convince one that some sort of a setting, even if it's super obscure, would be a good idea, but apparently nothing ever came of it.
Crouton has come along way since then and you can back your chroot off to an SD card now, but it's still a pain point for sure.
ChromeOS is Linux and chrome, with a drastically simplified desktop environment. The hardware is well supported (AFAIK). But it's easier to run crouton atop than reinstall. So most people who want more do that.
I think that this device as a 256GB Ubunutu box would be very popular on the Google campus as well so there would seem to be some internal pressure for this configuration. (At least in 2013 when I was there, the Pixels were popular laptops as were small Goobuntu laptops.)
The problem is that the Pixel as a Chromebook fits in really well with Google's larger business model.
What's wrong with the Dell XPS 15 as a linux macbook? I've seen the two side by side and they're practically identical. The only problem is battery life, and I suspect that's mainly a software problem at this point, not hardware.
I don't really understand the appeal personally. At this price level you could get a dell xps.
ChromeOS seems brilliant at a few hundred bucks, especially for kids & elders who get the browser/video/text experience, without the complexity, bloatware, viruses etc of a windows environment.
But at $600 or $1000, there just seem to be better windows alternatives, to me at least. And above that you get into OS X range. ChromeOS just doesn't seem to provide the environment where you really need beefy specs (e.g. compiling large code or editing large videos), so if it's just consumer-type stuff, I'd rather have a 2014 Macbook Air 13' at $800-900 at Best Buy, or a Dell XPS, than this.
Would love to hear from peoples usecases and experiences. I think there's a genuine usecase for people to put linux on it, or SSH into something else, but for your average straight up consumer, why the pixel and not something else? I understand the low-price Chromebooks, the higher price is hard to grasp for me.
Google as the ecosystem provider (ChromeOS) does not really want to compete with the companies that are intended to use the OS.
Google does not want to compete with Dell, HP, Lenovo or Acer, but to convince them to use ChromeOS.
Google creates hardware as a reference for others to follow. This is very important, as there is a before an after the release of the Nexus phone.
Google releases high quality hardware with their OS to prove that a good machine could be make with it, but at a price that does not compete with others.
> Google releases high quality hardware with their OS to prove that a good machine could be make with it, but at a price that does not compete with others.
That is a very interesting notion that I had not considered at all, but can that be entirely true? It must cost a small fortune to get a device like this ready for public consumption, even if they don't sell very many of them.
Vendor lockin is certainly huge (especially data for Google to drive their main ad business), but Apple's app store is a fraction (something like 15b/180b. I'd say vendor lockin is still much, much more important to drive their hardware sales, despite making very big steps in earning from software (app stores) in the past decade.
Writing this from my 2011 MBA. Looking at a replacement, and the CBP is a strong contender. If I swap out the storage for a 256 or 512 GB drive and throw linux or windows on it, then it's better hardware than a macbook air, for cheaper. In fact, it's impossible to build a MBA that stands up to CBP's hardware.
the chromebook represents essentially what i wanted out of a macbook air refresh, instead the ipad-with-a-keyboard Macbook showed up.
But why wouldn't you get the Dell XPS 13 instead? (Linux edition coming out soon.) The Pixel is heavier than the MBA, while the XPS is lighter/slimmer and has a real harddrive. There are minor trade-offs here and there but it's the limitation of ChromeOS that really makes this a strange option.
I myself am debating both options, but I've ordered a Pixel specifically because I'm hoping the keyboard is a bit better than the XPS, and to see how well it will run Debian natively.
If only the US had ultraportable options like they have in Japan.
As someone who runs Linux and ChromeOS on my personal laptops, was looking at the XPS, and just ordered a Pixel, I can answer that:
1. Chromebook is zero-hassle. It's great that Dell is putting native Ubuntu on their laptops, but fundamentally those are still machines that were designed for Windows first and awkwardly adapted to Linux. They'll always have a few niggling issues that a designed-for-ChromeOS machine won't have.
2. I prefer ChromeOS to Linux. The ultra-minimalist ChromeOS UI is just amazingly clean and elegant, in a way that none of the Linux desktops are (and I say that as a huge fan of GNOME 3).
3. The high-DPI version of the XPS 13 is more expensive than the Pixel (and might not be the one that gets released with Linux, they haven't announced it); high-DPI is a mandatory thing on an expensive laptop now for me.
4. 3:2 screen is the perfect aspect ratio, and the XPS isn't that.
5. USB-C charger is sweet.
But the XPS 13 looks like it'll be a nice laptop when the Linux version comes out. Still, I wish Dell would design Linux-first laptops rather than trying to awkwardly retrofit Linux onto designed-for-Windows machines.
Your point (1) is incorrect, actually the reverse of the truth. Dell specifically deserves credit for sourcing and designing the XPS hardware to natively support Ubuntu. There are no "niggling issues" because hardware components and all elements of the supply chain are required to work with Canonical to ensure that Ubuntu is a full experience.
So sorry but the XPS range is a "Linux-first laptop" in the sense that you mean - Dell deserves credit for that work.
Both Dell and Google basically work to define a spec requirement, then put it out to tender to ODM's to respond. In both cases part of the design requirements will have been certification for the OS. For Google it would be ChromeOS, for the XPS from Dell it was Ubuntu and Windows - Window will work anyway for obvious reasons, but it means additional work for the ODM and Dell to ensure that Ubuntu works.
What is the difference between a laptop designed for Windows and one designed for Linux? Apart from device drivers (graphics, Wi-Fi, bluetooth) which are usually not a problem, I can't think of any difference. Perhaps Linux might not look very good on very high DPI screens, but that's it.
Look at what the Project Sputnik people are saying about getting Linux working on the current XPS 13 -- they're working on drivers for various portions of it that don't currently work currently on Linux. (If you install Ubuntu on the XPS 13 today, it will have problems.)
It's great that Dell is doing that, it really is. But if they were building a laptop for Linux first, they never would have sourced those components.
Can you replace the drive? I dislike the newer Macbooks because nothing can be upgraded. If I can throw a 512GB SSD in this thing, I'd honestly sell my Retina Macbook Pro and replace it with the Chromebook.
Speculation: I suspect the way its going with storage and processing that they are pivoting it to be a contender with Air etc. The cloud storage thing is nice but it just doesn't really have a use case above a few GB of data. The cost of storage just keeps coming down and the price of bandwidth hasn't really moved in years.
I think its in a transitory stage, can't really compete with the air yet but likely will in a couple of iterations (think android vs iphone, iphones were cheaper spec wise but android caught up and imo overtook iphones in only a couple of iterations.
I do agree there is still a use case for ssh'n into something else, but I also can't see the original use case working at this price point.
> What's in the box: Chromebook Pixel; Universal Type-C Charger, 60W; Quick Start Guide
So the new MacBook isn't the only USB-powered notebook anymore. It does, however, appear to have two type C ports, along with two type A ports (USB 3.0), headphone, and SD card. The type C port also supports display out (up to 4K).
It also has a "regular" processor (Intel® Core™ i5 Processor, 2.2GHz or Intel® Core™ i7 processor, 2.4GHz) and "up to 12 hours" of battery life; but it weighs 3.3 lbs (1.5 kg) to Apple's 2.1 lbs.
The MacBook is a completely different machine than this. Now the MacBook Pro Retina 13" is a more proper comparison. In which case they are pretty close when it comes to specs, price, weight, size, battery life, etc.
You can install linux on it. I own the previous version of the Pixel and I run ubuntu on it and its close to perfect.
Two things I would change are
1. Improve thermal cooling or move to a underpowered cpu. I have worked around it by rate limiting my CPU to not go over 800 MHz. With a few tweaks, it sips ~8.8W and gives me > 6 hrs of battery life.
2. Make the hinge a bit stiffer.
My only other complaint is that it refuses to install FreeBSD.
Did you get touch features working on your older Pixel? I'm very curious about whether the Pixel series would be a good machine for Ubuntu .. care to share your experiences?
Touch sorta works on my Pixel running Debian. By which I mean I can tap on the screen to click, but all of the multi-touch gestures don't work.
I have put absolutely no effort into getting it to work though (honestly I'd disable it entirely if I wasn't too lazy to bother), and a desktop environment like GNOME might be able to configure it to work. I'm not sure there.
Edit: (Multi-touch on the touchpad works fine for me.)
It should be possible to get working. All the drivers are in the chromiumos source repository. Until very recently X was used, so the X server should have the touch support. (Haven't tested on the new Pixel because I don't have one, but the old one, definitely.)
The kernel drivers are in src/third_party/kernel/v3.10 for first-gen pixel, and v3.14 for this one. If you're going to run your own Linux, I'd use that kernel rather than the one the distro provides. Or figure out what patches are different between the two, and cherry-pick those onto your distro's kernel.
Multitouch on the touchpad works out of the box on ubuntu including gestures. Touch on the screen works too, but I dont use it since I dont like smudging my screen. If there is interest.
I write C/C++ code on the machine, so my storage needs are minimal. If I was to guess my total storage footprint on the device would be less than 1 Gig over the base ubuntu desktop install. The machine has 64 Gigs of storage, which is more than enough for my needs.
I have been a Linux user for sometime, so when I got the laptop I first installed linux on it. Subsequently I have grown rather fond of dtrace, so I like to use FreeBSD when the environment permits. So I tried installing FreeBSD on the machine in November last year.
Laptops are sold to be general purpose computing devices, not to "run Windows".
The reasoning you gave seems to be some sort of fully general counterargument to ever installing GNU/Linux, as there are hardly any devices that are "sold to run GNU/Linux".
In general installing GNU/Linux on devices not meant for it is, indeed, a bad idea. Bad drivers will usually make your computing experience a hell filled with non-REISUB-able freezes and other goodies. If you're like me and you can handle all the crap then it's fine. Otherwise stick to Windows. Or, better yet, just buy a Mac. A Dell developer's edition or a Thinkpad might be problem-free. Might. I wouldn't put money on it, though, especially with future regressions likely to fuck something up.
I get what you're saying, but I feel like the example you're providing is off. When people buy a laptop, the major selling point isn't that it runs Windows, it's typically the hardware in it. It just happens to come with Windows because that's what most people use. A major selling point of the Chromebook is that it runs Chrome OS, so in this case yeah installing Linux on it kind of defeats the purpose of buying a Chromebook.
The reason people like to buy Chromebooks to run Linux is that chromeos uses the Linux kernel, so all the hardware has to have Linux drivers available. Most laptops have at least some issues with Linux. Even my thinkpad, a line known for Linux comparability, can't use the discrete graphics card under linux.
The major selling point is that it runs Windows which runs the software and games they want, and their old data. Try offering one with BeOS or even Linux and see how many you sell.
Out of curiosity what laptop do you use? What do you do on your laptop? How does the vendor that you bought the laptop from enable your intended use (out of the box)?
The whole ChromeOS project seems to have gotten underway because someone at Google observed how much of the computing time was spent inside the web browser.
the problem with ChromeOS, imo, is how limited it becomes once you pull out the net connection. Never mind the whole lockdown unless you flip that "developer" switch.
"the problem with ChromeOS, imo, is how limited it becomes once you pull out the net connection"
The other problem with ChromesOS is that it's a gigantic privacy sinkhole.
Everything you do in the OS is tracked and recorded by Google. Even printing to your desktop printer. None of this tracking is anonymous either since you must sign in with your Google account to properly use ChromeOS. (Just a reminder that a Google account equals your name, gender, email, date-of-birth, location and mobile phone number).
Google fail to state in their lengthy privacy policy how long they keep your data (presumably forever) or whether your activity is disassociated from your identity when viewed by Google. In my view, this is simply unacceptable when you consider the gargantuan volumes of private date collected and the unprecedented degree of tracking.
The reaction on this site to an entire OS that tracks you by default has mostly been: "Yeah, you're being tracked. So what? Get over it." Presumably everyone happy to recommend ChromeOS would be equally happy to switch on their Mac/Windows/Ubuntu machine and have it track everything they do, have that information sent back to the OS manufacturer, and for none of that data to be anonymous?
In order to purchase the Pixel, I had to create a Google Wallet account. This needed all my contact info.
Once I get the device I will use a different fake google account, but they can suspect there's a link between the purchasing account and the account that uses the machine.
Besides the terms of service violation, if you provide an invalid phone number you're likely to get locked out of something and not able to verify your identity to get back in.
But again, that doesn't really matter to people who are using their laptops as a browser on steroids. Whether you're using a Macbook or a Chromebook, you're SOL in either case if you mostly do your work in a browser.
The thing is, home computing is, for the vast majority of people, accessing email, Facebook, and various web information sources 90% of the time. If the Internet's not working, for the most part, they wouldn't be able to do whatever they were doing in the first place, ChromeOS or not.
Using office-type apps at home is not something that's done every day any more - my family do it incredibly rarely on their Windows desktop.
> "Never mind the whole lockdown unless you flip that "developer" switch."
Speaking of which, it would be nice if that were a physical switch on Pixels. With the original Pixel at least, there is an issue that if your battery runs completely dead, the bit that tells the computer it should be in developer mode is unset. When that happens, if you have linux installed on it, you are hosed. Everything on the drive becomes inaccessible, and the only thing you can do is reflash ChromeOS.
If I am wrong about that, somebody please tell me. It is making me paranoid as hell about leaving it unplugged.
The issue is fixed on Pixel 2: "And yes the issue with dev/legacy enable state being lost when the battery drains has been fixed as the state is now saved in the TPM instead of CMOS" (comment to https://plus.google.com/+OlofJohansson/posts/1yopVMjEhjK)
The backup battery is gone because Intel datasheets advised against it for years, and they got more insistent over time. It's surprising enough that they still didn't manage to kill of that part of the PC80 architecture (RTC clock and associated memory). They certainly try for years by now.
As for the TPM, Chromebooks come with them for a long time now. They're cleared when entering or leaving developer mode. The main difference is that after clearing, the devmode mechanism also records the state there (instead of in CMOS).
If you're concerned about "final keys", read the spec (eg. http://www.trustedcomputinggroup.org/resources/tpm_main_spec..., Part 1, Section 9.5). The only key that is never deleted is the "Endorsement Key". That one is similarly annoying as the Pentium III serial number (ie. it allows secure identification of the TPM if you let software send requests to the TPM).
> The whole ChromeOS project seems to have gotten underway because someone at Google observed how much of the computing time was spent inside the web browser.
Well, I think there is something in that direction, but quite a lot in the direction of "the whole Chrome project at Google -- including ChromeOS -- was started because someone at Google realized that Google would have more reach if people spent more time in the browser and had less reason to use non-web software, so they set out to address the issues that make out-of-browser software necessary for what users want to do with computers."
First I saw mention of it, it seemed that they wanted to make a minimal OS that was very quick to boot - minimal in part because it was only the browser, or whatever.
Then soon after that SSDs happened and I stopped caring about boot times.
The "audience" or market for the Pixel are Googlers - hardly folks looking for a browser on steroids. Although that being said, I'm not sure "browser on steroids" is exactly a knock given what you can accomplish these days.
I use the Asus Chromebox (small "desktop" ChromeOS machine) as an OpenELEC media center. It runs absolutely flawlessly, mostly because it's just a basic Intel Pentium system. From what I've heard, the ARM Chromebooks like the Samsung ones can be a bit trickier, but it can be done.
You're thinking KRITA probably. Germany though I believe, because of the GMBH thing on its group. Krita really bogs on my system when using painting tools so ready for primetime, I think not. But hey I've been wrong before. The best photoshop / Illustrator replacements underway right now are coming from Serif Software under the name Affinity. Not opens source BUT definitely going to make a dent in Adobe's fat head.
It is possible to write software like photoshop for ChromeOS, thus it is a real computer. It's just that no one has. Nobody has written this kind of software for Plan 9, and a computer with Plan 9 is still a real computer.
I agree that it's really senseless that you can't even look at the product pages if you're outside US. Adding ?gl=US to the end of the URLs works, though.
I meant the individual product pages in the Store. The "Visit the US site instead" link they provide works for the main page, but not the sub-pages for products. I don't know why I can't buy the devices and have them sent to a US address, anyway, for that matter.
I'm not sure why this is better than the cheapest macbook air?Similar battery life, similar processor. 4gb more memory, smaller hard drive. And the cheapest pixel is $100 more. What do I get for that $100? For me the downsides are: can only use apps from the chrome web store, no unix command line (maybe it exists and I don't know?).
I'm really happy someone is trying to compete, but not sure why I would buy this.
If you want a full featured local linux command line, you can switch to developer mode and install one in a chroot via something like https://github.com/dnschneid/crouton
This does sidestep some of the security features of the device, but it's fine if you really want it. Or you can just ssh somewhere.
I found OSX with MacPorts to be quite enough most of the time. I can run editors and such on the Mac side and test the application from within a small VM.
My Chromebook Pixel is hands down the best screen I've seen on a computer, and my work laptop is a Retina MacBook Pro. My only complaint is that it's really sensitive to temporary burn-in; then again, so is every other retina laptop I've seen.
Can you explain why the pixel is so much better than the Retina MacBook's screen? My retina is by far the best screen I've ever seen, but I've never had the opportunity to use a Pixel.
FWIW, I've never had any burn in issues with my first gen Retina MacBook in all the years I've owned it. Although based on many of the complaints I've read, that's because I was lucky to get the better screen.
Honestly, I find the backlight less obnoxious. I can use my Pixel indefinitely with no complaints. The Retina is the only computer I've used that hurts my eyes after a couple hours of work.
The screen's also 8% sharper. (220dpi vs 239dpi). I don't have them side-by-side right now, so it's hard to say if that part's noticeable. I mostly base my judgement on the quality of the backlight in conjunction with the super-high DPI and touchscreen.
The new Macbook is not a Macbook Air. The post I was replying to was specifically talking about Macbook Air. All its comparisons were with the $899 existing Macbook Air not the new Macbook.
People I know who aren't interested in computing per se.
They are buying them for children (to avoid malware and viruses and the general cruft of maintaining an OS), and for themselves (because, again, viruses and cruft).
Meanwhile, this OP may well be about a very expensive Chromebook but the other killer advantage of them is they're very lightweight, have very long battery life, and are VERY cheap. If you're sick of Windows and the fact that it just gets slower and slower over time (and everybody is), and you're not the sort of person who has 30 tabs open (which is more or less everybody but us), and you actually need to have a device you can type on, then they're great.
I recommend them to most 'civilians' I know after making sure they don't actually need one of the few things it can't handle.
If I were to buy a second computer for travelling and lightweight stuff at home, and not developing, I guess a Chromebook would be a nice choice. But not at the price of a Macbook Air, though.
I got one when Lenovo refused to replace my thinkpad despite obviously defective hinge engineering. If I'm going to have to buy a new laptop every two years, it may as well be a cheap one. I installed crouton and have been using it as a development machine.
I got some low-end chromebooks for my teenage daughters. It's the perfect device for them. Cheap to replace if they get lost/stolen/dropped, and I don't need to worry about viruses.
Our local elementary school just announced a program to buy all students a chromebook, starting with 1/3 of them next year. They're perfect for the kids because they can't mess them up too much (other than dropping them).
I presume they're not getting the Pixel models though. I don't know who buys those.
People are - just not for anywhere near the cost of a pixel. Schools and parents of kids especially. They're super cheap and everything schools need to do is online.
Hmm, this is a great point. In my mind, the only reason to get anything running ChromeOS is if it's dirt cheap. You would get so much more value out of something that can run OSX.
As a previous owner of a Pixel I have to say it was one of the most beautiful and well crafted laptops I've ever owned. The Pixel had some major flaws, the CPU and overheating was a killer. However the biggest problem here is the underdevelopment of ChromeOS, such promise but it seems to be going the way of most of Googles products.
Personally, if overheating was a major flaw I probably wouldn't consider the laptop well crafted. Thermal management seems part of the overall design to me. I don't dispute it's a nice looking machine though!
Indeed. But it was a very nice machine. Hopefully this one won't overheat. Any idea if it's fanless? There's no specific info about the CPU, but it doesn't seem to be according to the clock frequency.
Apparently it has two fans instead of one now and doesn't overheat like it used to:
Another quirk of the first Pixel was that it could get quite noisy and warm while running. No more: Thanks to a revamped cooling system, which features two fans that spin at lower revolutions-per-minute than the original model's single-fan setup, the new Pixel stays near-silent and doesn't get hot while you use it.http://www.computerworld.com/article/2895014/new-chromebook-...
I've never had my Pixel overheat per-se, but it frequently gets hot enough that it is mildly painful to touch.
My issue was the shit warranty. The sound card on mine completely shit itself (no working speakers, and no working headphone jack. Even while using ChromeOS on it) a few weeks after the warranty expired. I can't remember if they offered any sort of extended warranty at the time, but I think I would have got it if I had seen it, so I think they didn't?
I am also starting to become concerned about the battery life. I googled around for battery replacement and did not find anything. Mine is okay so far, but probably won't be in a year or so.
At least the price of this new iteration is more reasonable.
I don't get it anymore... 8-16 GB RAM for what? I have not used Chromebook. Do you all use it for gaming? For serious computation? with only 32-64 GB SSD?
For this price, it would be nice to be able to upgrade SSD though. Then I will also want to install a Linux distro or Windows on it.
It's made ONLY to use complex web apps, with the data stored on the server. So the SSD is essentially just for web caching / local web storage, and the RAM is for Chrome processes, basic OS use, and additional caching.
I got a Toshiba Chromebook 2 (4 GB RAM, 32 GB storage, decent screen, but an anemic processor), thinking it could replace an old MacBook we use for web, email, and music. The email didn't work so well, because we couldn't easily see multiple accounts at once. I put in an SD card full of music, but the players I tried were all terrible.
I can see wanting 8 GB of RAM, but I'd need Crouton to make use of 16 GB.
The Chromebook hardly stores any files locally, that's why the SSD is so small. But if you have a lot of tabs open, especially with developer tools, it's not impossible to use up 8GB of RAM.
32-64 GB of SSD is plenty enough for a serious work environment (unless you're not into photo-video editing), and you probably run heavy computations that require high sustained CPU load on a server / cloud anyway.
My main issues with my first gen Chromebook Pixel that I received at Google I/O in 2013:
1) Poor battery life (~4 hours)
2) Lots of heat
3) Instability of Linux environment (with Crouton) made it a poor dev machine.
They seem to have fixed 1) and 2), I'm still nervous about making this a primary machine due to 3). I would have situations where the system would force shut down when closing the lid instead of sleeping/resuming properly. That, and two years ago, no Linux desktop environment supported high DPI screens properly. Maybe this has changed.
Other than that, this looks like an amazing machine. Love that 16GB of RAM is an option - XPS 13, which I'm also eyeing, only goes up to 8GB. 64GB max SSD is a bit of a problem though.
Google develops a laptop that I have high interest in, but no use for.
If they want to win the App Ecosystem war, they need to ensure that the developers have the tools to build in their ecosystem. Apple dominates because hackers love macbooks, and provide slick tools that only work in Apple's walled garden. This propagates down to the consumer level, as developers build products consumers love- with Apple taking in the profit all the way down.
Google doesn't have that. They don't have a toolset available to developers to optimize for Android/ChromeOS/etc. They need to fix the fragmentation problem at the App Developer level before they can compete at the consumer level.
That's a fine perspective to have, if you are a corporation trying to own an ecosystem. Me, I don't like walled gardens, and ChromeOS's true platform isn't the Chrome App Store, it's the web. I'm good with that.
The Web: Brought To You By Chrome, at least. And Google is a corporation, who would very much want all your online interactions in their garden.
But you are right, I dislike Apple because its walls are so high. Google has the opportunity to embrace open-source (or at least well-adopted) technologies to shape an open garden- where your interactions benefit both Google, the web as an open platform, and end consumers who don't know any better.
I feel that Google can become caretakers of a "open garden" by aligning the technology available to independent developers and the app ecosystem used by end consumers. And I feel that Google can curate the technology of the web better by targeting the developers than the consumers.
My MBP was out of commission recently, with the video issue. I made do with an HP Chromebook for a month, using crouton to have ubuntu in a chroot.
I was extremely pleased with the setup, and it barely affected my productivity at all. Emacs was a little slower to fire up and sift through my agenda files, but apart from that, I barely noticed the difference.
When I wasn't working, it was great to use ChromeOS to surf or cast Netflix to the TV.
Owner of a 2013 Chromebook Pixel here - This new model definitely excites me. I've switched between running Debian natively on boot and running Ubuntu in crouton. As a Java/Web developer, my main gripes with the original Pixel are:
-4GB RAM is uncomfortable. Usable, but you need to manage what's running
-Battery life isn't great... I was seeing ~3-3.5 hrs during my 'real use'.
-Overheating - Gets very hot when doing cpu-intense tasks
-Charging time feels like it takes forever.
-Hinge is a little loose and the F-keys are weird, but neither are a deal breaker.
This 2015 model seems to fix almost all of this, with the possible exception of overheating... I guess time will tell. Chances seem high that these will be given out at I/O 2015, but if I can't get a ticket for that I'll still buy one of these immediately. Crouton has come a long way since 2013, but I'm hoping they keep the 'legacy boot' option from the first model - That way you can boot into native linux with ctrl+L or ChromeOS (and later crouton, if needed) with ctrl+D.
If this laptop was 15", it would literally be my dream laptop, however it still checks enough boxes to guarantee that I'll buy one.
As an actual owner of a Chromebook Pixel... what would make you buy the new model instead of a similarly priced MacBook Air (much better battery life, more realistically sized SSD, better designed with no loose hinges etc, can still boot into Linux if you want)? Just prefer ChromeOS to OSX? Or the touchscreen? Something else?
I was tempted to get a MacBook Pro instead of the original pixel, but at that price point at the time the only one available was the 13" non-retina model (possibly even with a HDD, can't remember). The trade-up to SSD/High-res and the curiosity of the 'new shiny laptop from Google' sold me.
In terms of upgrading to one in 2015, Google are claiming 12 hour battery life and The Verge said it got 14 hours in their testing - which is more than enough for me. I personally just don't like OSX, although I'd be happy installing linux on a MBP. ChromeOS is fine for a few quick browser tasks (Amazon, Booking Flights, etc), but it's not worth keeping around really. So at that point it just boils down to personal preference on the hardware, and price. The build-quality of the keyboard and touchpad on the pixel are on-par with the high quality of the MBP, and they've made the hinge more solid this time around, so with an i7 processor and 16GBs of RAM at $1300 I'm pretty happy! The 64GB SSD is definitely a major buzzkill, but considering I won't be using this laptop for gaming, and I stream all of my music/tv/movies, I don't actually need a whole pile of local storage. With my current pixel's 64GB I never ran into any issues - the only thing that I feel is a threat to my diskspace is VM images for virtualbox, which I luckily don't have to use much anymore as I now have remote access to windows servers should I need them. The touchscreen (for me) is pointless, I'd much rather have a 128GB/256GB SSD, but it's not the end of the world.
I'm sure it's a fantastic machine, I just can't understand what niche this is aiming for... there seems to me to be a better alternative to this machine for anybody...
I recently bought a ChromeBook for development (The $199 one). It's a super light linux machine that lasts for days. So I have all my dev tools and I can easily work on any git repo. I don't do any Chrome OS development.
I tried using a tablet for this, but as an emacs users, I have very specific keyboard bindings that the tablets always had issues with.
Yes, you bought it and you 'hacked it' in order to make it 'usable'. Most developers will buy a MBA which is an order of magnitude faster with more powerful CPU and feautures MacOSX which has tons of software to enhance development (especially for CLI users).
So definately no, developers are not a niche market for this toy-device althoguh I admit that I like my Samsung Chromebook (and Iinstalled xubuntu too on it...).
I never claimed that developers are the niche market. And I didn't have to 'hack it' other than turning on dev mode. Ubuntu runs in a tab, just like everything else.
It fills a niche in my life, I never claimed it would help anyone else.
From what I understand the pixel is basically built by and for Google employees. They use it to SSH, VNC, etc. into remote servers and development machines to get actual work done.
Can it run Ubuntu? That is the first thing I would do to it.
I've done it with Acer C720 with i3 processor. Initially got it as a portable light machine used for travel. But now it kind of became my default. I used to lug around my trusty old Thinkpad T60.
Owner of a previous Pixel here. It runs Ubuntu just fine under Crouton. If you're trying to completely wipe out ChromeOS and boot directly into Ubuntu, I believe it's possible. Personally, however, I find ChromeOS to be decent, and I prefer simply popping open Crouton whenever I need a linux-only app. The fact that Crouton can now run in a single tab instead of having to do an environment switch makes it even more useful.
I use Secure Shell ChromeOS app to connect to a DigitalOcean machine for all my terminal stuff. Works surprisingly well. The default ChromeOS terminal is far too restricted for me, and Dev Mode has quite a few hurdles.
The Browser is just like regular Chrome, only with better integration with the hardware, meaning power usage is better. You can play or open all files I've tried, though I haven't tried mkv. The battery life is phenomenal - it's changed how I view what it means to be portable as much as the iPad did.
Unpleasant surprises? I have to restart my ASUS Chromebook every few days because the wifi starts to fail. Something about my usage pattern fills up the 2GB RAM and the first symptom is spotty wifi. And the CPU isn't strong enough to smoothly Chromecast a tab with acceptable quality video. This Pixel should overcome both of those.
I've used Chrome OS off and on since it released. There is a terminal that you can get to, but it isn't great. The best solution I used was to use the Secure Shell [1] app to SSH to a Linux box. This actually works quite well.
The other solution is to just install a flavor of Linux on it. Ubuntu worked well, and you can even install it to a chroot and run both at once.
The browser itself is pretty much regular Chrome, but I have no idea about the media files.
No the default terminal sucks big time. You need to ssh through a box and since the keyboard I have is not full-sized vim key-bindings are a bit of a problem.
None of the utilities you mention exists.
Software is scarce.
Unpleasant surprises? Hm no.
Chromebook is a toy laptop. You could use it for work IF evreything you use lives online (e.g. gmail, gcal, slack, etc.).
If you need more you need to install 'crouton' and get linux up and running. That will give you everything you asked.
I am not sure why Google locked down this device in such a way. A good terminal and the ability to install open source software, as done in MacOSX via macrpots/homebrew/etc, would greatly improve the overall experience and turn chromebook in a developer laptop overnight.
What is odd about this Chromebook is that it has ports and decent hardware, but abysmal storage (I have 50GB of MP3s, let's not get started on videos, documents, source code and compiled software) and a crippled OS. It's like a toy, but a toy that is dependent on a remote toy (the "cloud").
I don't understand how the break away from mainframes to microcomputers has come full circle where we now use very very very powerful microcomputers to connect to effectively mainframes (the "cloud"). Surely the liberating part of microcomputers was the ability to be untethered/unshackled and do stuff locally, not do stuff locally for a little bit or to some extent and then resync periodically. Many of the people using chromebooks for development (from what I can tell) SSH to another machine to do work on a remote server (with X or VNC or something like that), which reduces the extremely powerful local microcomputer to a dumb library terminal. It's stupid.
Client/server stuff keeps getting reinvented and it's annoying. I prefer to be a client when I choose, not a permanent client at the mercy of the server.
Would be very interested to see how well Ubuntu runs on this. As a once die-hard Apple fan I'm so sick of the mess that is Mac OS X Yosemite that I'm willing to abandon Apple and try a Linux laptop, but only if:
I get around 6 hours on the old pixel after a few tweaks in Ubuntu. I dont use suspend / resume so cannot comment on that. Wifi and sound work beautifully.
I was Fedora, Ubuntu, and Arch before making the jump to OS X. I agree with you that they've gone downhill, but because of your numbers 1 and especially 2-3 I've always been negative on a laptop that isn't made by Apple. I've just had so many terrible experiences with PC laptops in those areas. They all work, but they have never worked as well.
I use Crouton [1] on my cheapo chromebook and it works pretty OK for lots of tasks. I mainly just watch youtube on that thing, so this solution works since I only occasionally want to hop on Linux to get some stuff done.
Depending on your device, you unlock things by pressing Power-Refresh; that switches the device to unlocked mode. You can continue using ChromeOS, build your own ChromiumOS, or install another OS.
You can also kill off the bootloader completely. I've never done that before, but I believe the linked doc describes the process. I'm not exactly sure how to install Ubuntu, but the hardware is not going to stop you and never has.
The Pixel-specific instructions are here, though this is for the old revision and I'm not sure what (if anything) has changed:
I have a Samsung chromebook 2 and as far as I know I cannot install linux on it. I believe this is due to the chip architecture however, and my understanding is eventually it should be possible. Am I incorrect in any of this?
Is that an ARM one? You can certainly build Chromium OS (which is Linux), including packages that you want, and install that. It is a somewhat involved the first time, but possible. You probably want something more self-hosting though (like, apt-get dist-upgrade works), and that sounds like it would be a lot of work. There's also Crouton which might get you what you want.
But yeah, ARM booting is consistently crazy and I don't understand how it works at all.
I am old school in the sense that I like to run my os as a native install directly on the machine without any chroot / vm / hypervisor trickery. This guide walks you through how to do a native linux install and blow chromeos away on the pixel. http://vger.kernel.org/~davem/chromebook_pixel_linux.txt
I'd just like to chime in and say that this guide is pretty much all you need to get up and running with Debian on the original pixel. It worked great and was my primary side-project development laptop for over a year in this setup.
I recently restored ChromeOS in anticipation of selling it for the pixel 2 upgrade, and I gotta say - ChromeOS and crouton have both come a long way. Ubuntu via crouton handles everything without any tweaking, which was a major problem I had with Wi-Fi on Debian. You can still take advantage of the <10second-to-browser boot time of ChromeOS if you just need to look a few things up real quick.
To take advantage of everything, if you could get ChromeOS to boot in developer mode (ctrl+d at bios screen) and Debian to boot on legacy boot (ctrl+l at bios screen), then you really get the best of all worlds!
Whoaaaaa this seems waaaayy hackier than I expected. Will this void the warranty? I just ordered... I will be returning the thing if I can't get Debian installed and given a thorough trial run.
Edit: Nevermind it's really not that bad, just replacing the BIOS, that should be fine. I see little risk of "bricking" a machine here, I'm sure I can get Debian running with these instructions and return the product if it doesn't work well enough.
Start with creating a chroot. chroots are easy and can be wiped/recreated quickly if you mess them up. I run Debian Jessie in a chroot and have a simple bash script that provisions the additional stuff I want (apt-get, etc..) and edits a few config files.
Addendum; If you ever want it to be taken seriously you must urgently fix two things.
1) Telcos. Being constantly subject to obscene per megabyte usage charges with miserable reliability and speed for access to your bulk storage in the cloud vs $100 per terabyte reliable and fast subscription for life easily portable local storage costs is utterly unacceptable.
2) States. Being constantly subject to unlimited invisible invasive personal data theft without oversight or justification is not an acceptable state of affairs. The existence of states guarantees that they will always insist on being able to do these things. The only potential solution to this problem without actually destroying states (Shock! Horror! ROADS!) is easy and perfect homomorphic encryption.
Until you fix these two (quite possibly unfixable) things, "The Cloud" is pipe dream marketing bullshit.
If you compare the new Dell XPS 13 or even a Vaio Pro 13 (sadly not sold in the US anymore), it's pretty surprising to compare them to the Pixel.
They both have much more connectivity options, 16:9 13" screens while being a full pound lighter. The Sony's keyboard was great. There's not much of a selling point in favour of the Pixel given that it's heavier and doesn't have a real disk drive or many ports / connectivity.
Unfortunately I returned my new Dell XPS13 because I was so disappointed by the keyboard. But it's really not that bad, I was going to get it again when the Linux version is launched. But now I'm going to try a Pixel out instead. If I could still get a Vaio Pro, or a Panasonic Let's Note, or many of the other Japanese high-end ultrabooks in the US, I would gladly do that instead of the Pixel.
$999 (2.2GHz i5, 8GB RAM, 32G SSD) and $1299 (2.g4GHz i7, 16GB RAM, 64G SSD), 2560x1700 12.85" touch screen, Intel 5500 graphics, 2 USB 3.0 ports, 2 USB Type-C ports, SD card, audio jack, 720p webcam, Bluetooth 4.0. Really a very nice machine; seems a little overpowered for the cloud-oriented ChromeOS. Stingy SSD can be fixed with a generous high-speed SD card. Presuming it's dual-bootable, I'd be tempted though. I'd been planning to spring for the new Macbook Air but now that Apple's declared war on ports, this looks more my style.
Pretty neat. And caveat the port issue[1] pretty nice. I wonder what the battery life is like with Linux installed (probably not 12 hours :-) Now if they added a wireless charging option so that when I set it upon my desk it was powered/charging wirelessly that would be pretty neat. I'm amazed as how closely it tracks the macbook 13. They could be twins.
[1] The whole one port to rule them all which is fine except that it becomes a single point of failure for the device, I would be totally ok if it came with two C connectors and either could be power or data or whatever, then if one failed or got gunked up it would still be usable until I got it repaired.
Odd, I read their weirdly scrolling site twice and came away with the impression it had only one. I sit corrected, now I guess I'll have to buy it. :-)
Last-gen Pixel owner here (recently upgraded to the new XPS 13).
I wish more manufacturers would follow Google's lead and start using 3:2 displays in laptops. An XPS 13 (2015) with a 3:2 display and USB C would be the most amazing device ever.
Nice work Google. It has two 2 USB Type-C (vs 1 on the new Macbook) and 2 USB 3.0 ports. This is the way to introduce USB-C and provide practical value to the customer (vs selling $79 adapters).
The first generation pixel ate up many hours of my time installing and reinstalling linux on it. Now I have Ubuntu running nicely on a Surface Pro and don't think I could be happier.
Do you think touchscreen support is up to par? I'm running a Windows tablet with similar specs (Acer Iconia W700P -- no pen support though) and I have really wanted to put Linux on it, but haven't tried. I've just been using a Debian VM for when I need Linux for now.
Its good enough for travel, which is what I use the SFPro for because I like to keep my travel bag weight to a minimum. For desktop work it would make me insane and stick with OSX.
ChromeOS is a non-starter for any development work I'd like. At one time, before 2 kids and a busy job, I would have entertained and enjoyed tinkering and formatting a brand new machine to load up Linux. Now, I don't have time or the energy to waste on that type of thing. I use to like building my own systems, now I just need it to work and do what I need.
At this very high price point (for a computer that just surfs the web) I wouldn't want to be the guy responsible for making sales targets.
I just bought one, I'm going to give it an honest shot at being my only computer. As the reviews say, most of what I do is web (and web dev), so I would really like it to work. The question is will I be able to do any sort of docker/node/server-sidey stuff. We'll see. I'll give it a fair shake and even try running that stuff remotely. The Android apps thing is an interesting stop gap, maybe it'll be easier to get a text editor running from that environment?
I've had a Chromebook for over a year now and my best advice is to skip straight to installing a real Linux distribution (either using crouton or just natively). The reality of ChromeOS apps is much further off than the dream of some totally cloud connected digital worker. Throw Ubuntu on it, get Sublime Text, Atom, etc. and all your development tools, then go to town.
You can try Caret, which is a very nice editor, and Zed, which works with Dropbox. However, you will not be able to do much (if anything) with Docker without going into developer mode, and even then it will depend a lot on whether this model will break Crouton in any way.
I'd say the tiny amount of storage will make it really hard to do anything productive with containers...
Now that Polymer/Paper is out there I wish someone would use that for an editor, as it's likely it'll finally be the standardized UI for Chrome OS. Might be a fun weekend project...
At $999 though, it's about the same price as a MacBook Air. I haven't compared specs (SSD? Ram?), but the Chromebook is a device intended to store all your data in 'the cloud', right? On the other hand, it's got a touchscreen which the Air does not. The Air's a lot smaller/lighter/prettier though.
At any rate, the Chromebook is definitely no longer priced below a premium laptop like the Air.
I have a chromebook (samsung arm7) and a MBA (2011). Comparing the too, if you're not a highschool student (which your only needs are Youtube, Facebook, Spreadsheet and Doc editor) you're comparing a toy with a very powerful laptop. The difference of the OS is so big that talking about HW doesn't make any sense.
It's interesting that this is on "Google Store", not "Google Play Devices". This may explain why it isn't working yet in all countries -- and maybe also why it works in the UK, since London is home to the first physical Google Store.
If the specs* they list are correct, it charges fully in 1.5 hours, which, at 60W, is 90Wh of storage. 90Wh over 12 hours is 7.5W of power usage. That's a nice small number. It's 50% more than the new MB, but significantly more computer as well.
*: They claim to charge enough for 2 hours in 15 minutes. The charger is a 60W charger.
Does anyone know how feasible it is -- using Crouton -- to setup one tab in Chrome that is a shell running tmux, vim, git, server processes, etc, then test the website you're coding on in another Chrome tab?
A lightweight dev environment like that on a cheap and light notebook is pretty appealing.
> *Yes, we know there are five senses, but we don’t recommend trying to taste or smell your Pixel.
C'mon Google. Surely you know that there are more than five senses. At the very least, can't balance and proprioception get any love? Not to mention the entire gastrointestinal tract.
Why do you people like this 3:2 screens? (I presume that I'm writing to an audience of programmers, mostly). Wider screens are perfect to work with to two files side by side. 16:10 is my perfect ratio, but I'm genuinely curious about your reasons.
I always see these spec lists and can't help but think that if I replaced the SSD with a much larger one and installed a real OS on it that this would actually be a tolerable machine; though I remain unconvinced that it is worth the price…
The machine looks good,no question. But 16GB ? 32GB ? 64GB SSDs? frankly, it's a no Go for the price ($999). For half the price one can get a better computer. I don't buy the "but you're supposed to be always connected and store files in the cloud" bullshit. I bought a $500 laptop with better specs ,that runs linux without driver and issues and yes, I can surf the web with it.
I'm no fan of Apple but even the latest 13' macbook air at $999 makes way more sense that this product. And yes,it has a browser and Yes you can run Linux on it.
"The Chrome store in not available in your country". Then it shows the option of looking at the US store page. I click on the Chromebook there and it goes back to saying it's not available in my country.
I am glad they gave this model a reboot. If I was in the market for a new linux laptop, this would be a my number one choice over the XPS13 as a close second.
I am glad more companies like Dell and Google are supporting linux.
I keep my mouse pluged in permanently. With a single port, I can't use my mouse while charging (unless I carry around a USB hub, which just proves my point).
I like its design and specs are good too, but boy is it expensive. I imagine ChromeOS is pretty useless outside of browsing web or taking notes, so why not just buy a tablet for half the price?
>*Yes, we know there are five senses, but we don’t
>recommend trying to taste or smell your Pixel.
You should ALWAYS smell your laptop.
The Surface Pro 3 smells WEIRD.
If it had at least 256Gb of SSD, I would buy it, throw away my macbook pro, and use it as my dev machine. Without it, it's useless for me and is just an expensive toy.
Google is doing, what a $300 Billion enterprise can do., than a billion people need. Most enterprises of their scale are focused on the later.
I meant, Glass and Chromebook are 'awesome'., but did or does it make sense, theverge repeatedly said, it does not make sense to buy it.
I like the notion of 'web' based OS, but I guess, for time being, that's for our tablets or phones only, a Laptop is multi-purpose machine and will remain so for perhaps ever, I meant its ridiculous to have one laptop for 'web' and other for 'work'., when most of them can do both at once.
> How useful is a ChromeOS? Can you use it yet to develop either ChromeOS apps Chromium itself?
ChromeOS apps are just web apps. There are web-based IDEs which work in Chrome that can be used to develop web apps. So, ChromeOS can be used to develop ChromeOS apps.
Google has absolutely no idea of how to run worldwide services w.r.t language/content. Their forcing of Chrome to change its UI language based on IP is one fantastic example of their absurdity. The idiocy of the store is another. Leading to security holes, too! Install app while in-region. App releases critical update. Click app to update, then find out "app does not exist". Bizarre.
Not to mention they often (2/12 months) decide my Denver IP is in Poland or France. Or that my Azure (West-US) machines are in Hungary.
Google, the company, is really selling the new Chromebook (i have one). They're like, "Ok nerds come & watch this video our marketing department made of this product our engineering team built." Great, Google. No one is paying attention!!! There was a new one last year & the year before & it sold then
I really wish this didn't look like a bad imitation of an Apple product. Surely it's possible to build a nice looking laptop that doesn't look so similar to a MacBook.
If you're going to do something different, just be different. I think these things are actually kind of sweet, but I can't stand the way they look.
Show me a good looking laptop and I'll show you a laptop that somebody will say looks like something Apple made first.
There are many ways this does not look like an Apple laptop. But you know what? It doesn't fucking matter. Buy it, don't buy it. Like it, don't like it. Whatever. Just - for the love of Ullr - please don't dirty this otherwise wonderful website with such fucking banal commentary. Say something meaningful, say something funny, but please don't say something that sounds like a failed (or ironic) attempt at trolling.
Believe it or not, it is possible to design great looking products without being called an Apple-clone. Most companies just try to stick with what works.
Try to brush it away, but laptops didn't look like this before Apple made them look like this. This may have minor differences from from Apple's design, but let's be honest about the fact that the design is based on Apple's and not anyone else's.
It's just a seamless metal rectangle, and much more squared-off and flat than Apple products. It's also a different color, has different speaker placement, different screen aspect ratio, different hinge...
I hope we don't get into a situation where every metal slab notebook is considered an Apple knockoff. I prefer that basic design and want more choices than just metal and Apple or curvy, wedgey, plasticy PCs.
Indeed. My last laptop purchase was for a rMBP (Late 2014) because every other laptop I could get my hands on had so much plastic flex, I just couldn't bring myself to buy it. (I'm sure someone is going to list a dozen that don't, but if I couldn't try it out, I didn't consider it.)
I had no great desire to switch to an Apple product, but macbook pros are solid. I wish more laptops were made with metal than plastic; I would love the choice.
I own both a macbook pro and a pixel. In person they are nothing alike at all. The feel of the two devices is very different. And to be honest in my subjective opinion I like some of the details on the Pixel better. (The charger has a small led band that goes from red to green as you charge your device, theres also a colored led strip that fades in / out when you turn the machine on / off. Lastly I have never been happy with the various iterations of magsafe, I always end up fraying the cable, the pixel charger connector is pretty good).
It looks heavier than it's spec'ed for (3.3lbs). I'm not sure what it is but it just looks really thick, like a 2011-era Macbook Pro. I too wish they went a different direction with their industrial design.
There's something to be said, though, for the standard that Apple have set with the unibody design of the Macbooks .. its a very functional design and can take a beating. I wish more manufacturers would just copy this feature, personally .. the only reason I persist with the Macbook is that its not at all a creaky, plasticy slab .. but rather a more functional, industrial-strength product.
I haven't seen enough details about the pixel. But other chromebooks are easy to upgrade. Just a few screws... Look on amazon for NGFF drives. You'll see in the reviews that many people talk about their experience upgrading their chromebooks.
"To place an order, you must have a Google Wallet account."
Ugh, really? Can't I just buy the product?
Will these be sold in stores, or outside of Google's ecosystem? Just curious. Andyes, I want one specifically for the hardware, and will be replacing the OS.
I hope I can use that port to charge my other laptop. The one that I can actually use with practical ports and can run real apps and not just websites.
This was a serious question, I'm legitimately curious. We can't pretend that isn't part of the product offering, and it's a unique aspect of the ChromeOS experience. I can only assume this could partially subsidize the hardware.
In the same line of thinking, I wonder how much a Macbook purchase can be offset by the expected revenue from iTunes and other integrated services. Or the pre-bundled spyware that comes with so many other laptops.
For chromebook pixel to be successful among developers atleast, following needs to be done
1. Provide a good terminal like iTerm
2. Google cloud should provide a free standard instance always powered and run chrome in headless mode with remote desktop enabled via chrome remote desktop app.
3. Provide a ebs worth 100GB at least on the cloud.
Standard instance costs 0.045 per hour i.e, 345$ per year.
- More RAM
- Better battery life / charge time
- USB-C ports
Here's what I'm not sure if it will fix: - Overheating (original Pixel gets HOT on the top-left corner where I'm guessing the CPU resides)
- OpenVPN support (ChromeOS does not support simply loading a .ovpn profile--I have to do some hacking from the command-line to get it to work)
- Longer warranty (1-year limited is all that is provided with the previous model--and since these are directly from Google, you can't get an extended warranty through the retailer)
- Weight (Love the metal slate look, could be lighter, however; based on the specs it seems like not so much)
And finally, the things that Google will never fix, and you should simply be aware of ChromeOS's limitations:
- Lack of apps
I will say, however, that in the past year, Crouton, which allows you to sideload a linux partition onto the device, has come a long way, to the point that you can actually have an Ubuntu chroot running in a tab inside ChromeOS as though it were just another window/app. It has proved incredibly useful for running things like Sublime or Eclipse without having to do the complete environment-shift that was required some time ago.
Price is still a little high, however. I feel like those looking for a high-quality Linux laptop could probably get an Acer Aspire for cheaper.