Google Wants Its New Pixelbook to Win the Laptop and Tablet Battle (fortune.com)

Google is once again trying to make a big splash with laptop computers, this time with its new Pixelbook. From a report: Google debuted its Pixelbook, a new laptop-tablet hybrid during its Pixel 2 event in San Francisco on Wednesday, a high-end version of its barebones Chromebook laptops that rely on Google's Chrome operating system (OS). Google hopes its new Pixelbook, which sells for $999 to $1,649, will give it a viable challenger to Apple's MacBooks and other premium laptops. With Google's low-end Chromebooks, the company supplies the OS while third-party companies like HP Inc. and Dell build the devices. But Chromebooks are bulky, short on processing power, have limited storage, and are incompatible with Google's new Pixelbook stylus pen for drawing digital images on touchscreens. Matt Vokoun, Google's director for Chromebooks, emphasized that his company is serious about the Pixelbook. Although Google previously sold both high-end laptops and tablets, they were mostly "demonstration-oriented," he said, meaning Google didn't produce many of them and that they were instead for showing to potential manufacturers to get them on board with the idea.

Comments

Re:advertising company

[emacsomancer]

At least with Windows 10, I don't think one can make that claim for Microsoft. Perhaps for Apple. So far.

Re:Well, no

[swillden]

Google hopes its new Pixelbook, which sells for $999 to $1,649, will give it a viable challenger to Apple's MacBooks and other premium laptops.

Apple's MacBooks and other premium laptops are OS-agnostic, OSX aside. You can run Windows or Linux on them without having to worry about hitting the wrong key at boot time and wiping out your installation. Google's value proposition is based on collecting data about you and advertising to you; are they going to let you escape their clutches, and install another operating system on the device without extreme hazard at every boot time?

Chromebooks have always had a "dev screw", a switch (originally a screw) that allows you to switch the device into "dev mode". In that mode, all verification of the bootloader and OS is disabled and you're free to install anything you want on it.

Google engineering actually has a pretty strong cultural belief that it's important that users be able to fully "own" their devices. Google can't force that view on Android device makers, but actually has managed to force it on Chromebook makers. So you can be certain that Google's own device has such a switch.

Re:What can you do when offline?

[swillden]

Just curious.

Could one do software development and testing while offline, with one of these puppies? e.g. Can I have linux in a VM or use docker containers etc in chromeos?

No.

Yes. That one is a chroot system running under ChromeOS' Linux OS, but there are other approaches. Crouton is great as a dev environment.

Also note that ChromeOS works just fine offline as long as the Chrome apps you're using support it. Most do.

In addition, there's always the option of flipping the device to dev mode and replacing ChromeOS with whatever you like (and can get to run; many Linux and *BSD distros work fine on Chromebooks. I'm not sure you could get Windows to run and I would be amazed if you could make OS X work).