Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Hardware makes cuts to laptop and tablet development, cancels products

arstechnica.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

241–250 of 270 posts

Re: Google Hardware makes cuts to laptop and tablet development, cancels products

#241

Post by dehrmann »

robocat wrote: post #87

Please build me a Linux laptop for software engineering, Google. For engineers only. No software support beyond ensuring the BIOS and the drivers work and are updated. I hate Dell, but I got a Dell XPS 15 because it was the only laptop I knew would: boot Linux reliably; last two Ubuntu LTS upgrades (4 years); have a high spec (i9 etc); and was reasonably priced (Apple tax was 50% higher for worse hardware). Is it imp…

This doesn't fit with Google's product direction (charitably, the cloud; less charitably, a data vacuum), business direction (supporting the ad business), or the way they see the world (opinionated).

Re: Google Hardware makes cuts to laptop and tablet development, cancels products

#242

Post by dehrmann »

s3r3nity wrote: post #34
on_and_off wrote: post #9

It seems that the company is entirely unable to have a vision about anything. Too big to dare might also be a good way to describe them. They are not going to dare making e.g. one great messaging product (or even 2 .. there are after all some niches like office communication). Instead they do 7 and see which one works. Apparently launching a new product is also the only sure way to get a promotion at Google, not impr…

I am not an Apple fan-person by any means, but Steve Jobs had a Product philosophy that stuck with me many years after he described it: You can't start with a cool technology and build a product / user experience around it; you have to start with a vision of a coherent user experience, and build the technology around _that_. I think that's my biggest frustration with Google: they have interesting and really cool tech…

> You can't start with a cool technology and build a product / user experience around it; you have to start with a vision of a coherent user experience, and build the technology around _that_.

That's another way of saying don't build-out solutions looking for problems.

Re: Google Hardware makes cuts to laptop and tablet development, cancels products

#243

Post by dehrmann »

ohaideredevs wrote: post #4
burtonator wrote: post #3

Google can't seem to do anything right anymore. They're last place in cloud. They don't have a good search API product to compete with Algolia/Elasticsearch. They can't release new products. Can't build new hardware. The only things they have going for them are Youtube, Google (the search engine), Android, Chrome,... Basically everything they did 10 years ago. Even Android + Youtube were acquisitions. Another good ex…

GCP is the cleanest cloud platform by far. But it's also the one I know only in theory, whereas I have worked with Azure and AWS enough to seem them fail miserably, so maybe I have a case of rose-tinted glasses.

I don't have Azure experience, but I usually look at it at AWS has better marketing people. On the tech side, they'll happily packing an open-source project into something managed. GCP has done some serious engineering for products like Spanner, Bigtable, and Bigquery, but there are gaps in the product offerings.

Re: Google Hardware makes cuts to laptop and tablet development, cancels products

#244

Post by pjmlp »

naner wrote: post #232
vkaku wrote: post #231

Well, Google wanted to promote ChromeOS, and now it's killing it and slaughter all the engineers involved in the project. Doesn't that sound hypocritical to say the least? Why axe those engineers? Why not get them to fix Android, Fuchsia or whatever needs fixing?

I don't think they're killing Chrome OS, Chromebooks seem to be as popular as ever with schools. Schools that can afford to buy Pixels probably would go for iPads instead, though. I doubt there is much of a market for high end Chrome OS hardware.

US schools, hardly used anywhere else around the world.

Re: Google Hardware makes cuts to laptop and tablet development, cancels products

#245

Post by gonesilent »

bubblethink wrote: post #207
automathematics wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you kept up with the Pixelbook development? Chrome OS is pretty great for general "cloud" work (AWS management for example). It runs containerized Android apps (which I use to run the native Gmail app to fly through my inbox). But that's nothing compared to the new stuff. It runs containerized linux with a great abstraction layer that connects GUI calls from linux into the beautiful hi-dpi Chrome OS desktop envi…

The main downsides are the wimpy processors, soldered ram, storage and wifi cards, poor repairability, non upstreamed code.

Mostly it's the keyboard that pisses me off on the pixel books

Re: Google Hardware makes cuts to laptop and tablet development, cancels products

#246

Post by pjmlp »

drdeadringer wrote: post #23

I may be soon in the market for a new Android tablet. Does anybody have suggestions?

Like others are saying, Samsung or Huawei.

However when tablet dies, I will rather go for a Surface like tablet.

Eventually iPad Pro as alternative.

Getting fed up of Android J++, and a NDK experience that seems like the outcome of a 20% project.

Re: Google Hardware makes cuts to laptop and tablet development, cancels products

#247

Post by pjmlp »

gst wrote: post #224
readittwice wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google just recently abandoned Android and pushed ChromeOS for tablets. Now this, there is just no continuity with Google. Unless you absolutely need Android for some reason, I would recommend the iPad.

> Google just recently abandoned Android and pushed ChromeOS for tablets. Now this, there is just no continuity with Google. It's GTalk/Hangouts/Allo/etc. all over again, just this time with Android and ChromeOS. I wouldn't be surprised if they announce that they're going to abandon ChromeOS and that they're going to only use Android instead. How can the different product teams at a company be so completely disconnec…

Internal politics.

Similar to the whole .NET vs C++ at Microsoft, and how that influenced Longhorn, WinRT and such

Re: Google Hardware makes cuts to laptop and tablet development, cancels products

#248

Post by valker43 »

robocat wrote: post #198
mav3rick wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hey most Intel Chromebooks now support Crostini i.e. you can run native Linux programs . It runs in a VM under the hood and it's well integrated with the outside OS. Give it a shot.

I would love to, but how many Chromebooks have an i9, 32GB of RAM and 1TB SSD?! (I wrote another comment for why I use a high-spec laptop: basically multiple VM's and greedy development tools).

Maybe a dumb question. But why run those VM's (or the development tools) strictly locally? I have a small server at home for that. Or alternatively there are free tiers on GCP/AWS/Azure. The advent and maturity of WebAssembly/PWA, could help there as well. But we're not there yet obviously.

Re: Google Hardware makes cuts to laptop and tablet development, cancels products

#249

Post by rayiner »

snazz wrote: post #106
tannhaeuser wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is it about Dell that you hate? Anyways, Thinkpads are also held in high esteem for running Linux. I'm currently using a Dell XPS (2016 model) at home and a Thinkpad at my current customer project, both running Ubuntu 16.04, and I can recommend both. I chose the Thinkpad over a MacBook Pro, and would do again, but the display and touchpad is no match to Dell's, much less Apple's; that's however no problem becaus…

And once you learn to love the TrackPoint, the touchpad won’t matter any longer.

That’s not true. My work laptop has been a ThinkPad for the last five years, and while I like the TrackPoint for some things, I use the precision touchpad on my X1C6 more. Modern touch pads have good heuristics for fine motions versus large sweeping motions. And the touchpad is way better for scrolling through documents or web pages.

Re: Google Hardware makes cuts to laptop and tablet development, cancels products

#250

Post by dekhn »

tannhaeuser wrote: post #157
kamarg wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's almost certainly a driver issue. Drivers that are provided by Dell. I'm not at all blaming the hardware for the issues. I'm blaming Dell. To answer your question, I don't switch OS because the machine belongs to my employer and they set the rules. They say everyone runs Windows so I run Windows. It's actually a very usable OS. You also seem to have missed the part where I spent 4 hours on the phone with Dell sup…

FWIW, my aforementioned Dell and the Thinkpad both are running Ubuntu flawlessly and without any reboots for months on end, as true workhorses should. In fact, out-of-the-box experience for Linux desktops with first-party support by manufacturers has never been better IMO.

agree 100%. every dell and thinkpad (and now thinkstation) I've installed ubuntu linux on for the past 3-4 years has worked flawlessly (wifi, sound, and gfx being the big three). What really impressed me was the Dell 5520 I had when working at Google- it had a nice nvidia card that was dedicated to running tensorflow training while the rest of the machine was perfectly usable for software development. All of this on battery.
Post reply on HN