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The Chromebook Pixel

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Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#301

Post by [deleted] »

jonknee wrote: post #296
javajosh wrote: post #58

There are only three meaningful things you can do with a computer with specs like this: development, design, or gaming. And yet ChromeOS can't do any of these things. Perhaps this is a vanity product for the wealthy. But wealthy people are going to just surf the web on an iPad. I really don't get this product.

Using that logic I don't know how Apple sells so many of its MacBooks. They're all expensive and have "specs like this", but the vast majority are not used for development, design or gaming. I can see the appeal of a small (thinner than a MacBook Air), well constructed, blazingly fast laptop. If I could run 1Password on it I would be very tempted to take it for a spin, with the LTE it would make an excellent travel m…

[deleted]

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#303

Post by ebbv »

MatthewPhillips wrote: post #207
ebbv wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And yet Microsoft has magnetic power connectors on the Surface tablets.

Doesn't Microsoft and Apple have a cross-licensing agreement?

Not on MagSafe, no. Apple doesn't license that to anyone. Microsoft got their own patent for a different design.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#304

Post by pyoung »

rayiner wrote: post #173
Kerrick wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plenty of people already do this with the $250 Chromebook, and even iPad. The $1,299 isn't for the 32GB SSD. It's for the 239ppi 2:3 multitouch Gorilla Glass display. It's for the 4GB of RAM. It's for the dual core Intel i5. It's for the impressively made aluminum chassis. It's for the 1TB of cloud storage. It's for everything a high-end cloud device should be.

If you're logging on to a remote server to do development,you're not taking advantage of the dual core i5 or 4GB of RAM. You're logged into an image that's giving you maybe 1 GHz of CPU and 512MB of RAM. You're buying a $1,300 machine to do development on a $300 machine, over a shitty internet connection.

But if you also have ~20 tabs open in your browser, and are streaming music etc... I am doing a thin client setup of sorts, and by the end of the day things start slowing down quite a bit.

I do agree that $1300 is too much, at that price range you might as well get a mac. If it was 600-800 i'd probably jump on it. However, I think the curve ball here is the touch screen. I'd be willing to bet that Google's strategy for this laptop is to do a smaller production run, and get these in the hands of tech/programmer types, and then use the lessons learned to develop a model targeted toward a wider audience.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#306

Post by masklinn »

Teckla wrote: post #230
mtgx wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. ChromeOS is not for such powerful machines, because the OS itself is not powerful. So ChromeOS with a $1000 machine is far from a perfect match (at least it isn't yet, maybe 5-10 years from now). But right now ChromeOS is and should be for light web machines. And I've said it many times before. There's absolutely no reason for Chromebooks to use x86 chips. I've said Google will almost surely mess up the pric…

There's absolutely no reason for Chromebooks to use x86 chips. What about people that prefer trading some battery life for some performance?

> What about people that prefer trading some battery life for some performance?

Question being, performances for doing what? What are you going to do with a chromebook to need the extra oomph?

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#307

Post by polshaw »

CGamesPlay wrote: post #232

To help get context on this, I went back in time and looked at discussion about the initial iPad launch: - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081505 - http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1081140 The first poll is especially telling. Overwhelmingly, people said they wouldn't get this device (2/3 of the voters). The initial iPad was obviously very successful. The complaints in the second thread are largely a mirror o…

1 in 3 people saying they want to get a new device is an extremely good result. IMO the ipad 1 wasn't that great either.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#308

Post by masklinn »

jonknee wrote: post #296
javajosh wrote: post #58

There are only three meaningful things you can do with a computer with specs like this: development, design, or gaming. And yet ChromeOS can't do any of these things. Perhaps this is a vanity product for the wealthy. But wealthy people are going to just surf the web on an iPad. I really don't get this product.

Using that logic I don't know how Apple sells so many of its MacBooks. They're all expensive and have "specs like this", but the vast majority are not used for development, design or gaming. I can see the appeal of a small (thinner than a MacBook Air), well constructed, blazingly fast laptop. If I could run 1Password on it I would be very tempted to take it for a spin, with the LTE it would make an excellent travel m…

> Using that logic I don't know how Apple sells so many of its MacBooks. They're all expensive and have "specs like this", but the vast majority are not used for development, design or gaming.

A macbook is more than a thin client running SSH and a browser.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#309

Post by weej »

I could see ChromeOS converging w/ Android into a single platform that allowed for android app emulation while running x86_64 apps natively.

I realize they're completely separate teams, but at what point do they converge to provide a greater value-add to the product?

What user is going to drop $1200 on a machine that only lets you browse the web? Unless GOOG plans on providing some large backend for virtualization or offloading CPU processing what's in it for the "power" user.

There's more to this than we're privy to. I don't see a user needing this kind of horse power for just cloud-based applications. That doesn't make sense.

Re: The Chromebook Pixel

#310

Post by rayiner »

zmmmmm wrote: post #292
rayiner wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So you pay $1,300 to log into a $5/month remote box with 20GB of storage and 512MB of RAM?

I think it might work reverse to this. You don't buy your think client and then figure out how to live with it. Rather, Google is betting that in the future people will be using thin clients and cloud services because of all the other reasons they are attractive. Once you've already decided you want to live in the cloud, then your question becomes, what is the best possible device I could buy for doing that? And that…

Thin client, thick client, cloud, local, etc, these are all only relevant to technical people. Focus on use-cases. What does the Pixel let you do that a Macbook Pro does not? Have access to all your documents from anywhere (over internet connections of various levels of unreliability?) No, because you can do all that on a Macbook Pro. Does taking away the ability to do things locally improve the user experience in some other way? Arguably, it improves maintainability and makes the UI easier to use.

Is that the target market for the Pixel? People whose main concern is reducing maintenance burden and having an easier to use interface? Okay, now how many of those people are better served by an iPad?

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