One strong point for installing arbitrary Linux distros on the pixel is that the Intel linux gpu drivers are fully open source. The downside of the arm chrome book has been the Samsung binary blob
The Chromebook Pixel
351–360 of 507 posts
Re: The Chromebook Pixel
#352Earlier quoted context omitted.
Unless you wanted the gorgeous 2560x1700 display... Many people have paid close to the whole computer's price just for the screen (I'm typing this on a 2560x1440 screen that I paid $999 for).
Is your 2560x1440 screen only 13" though? I don't see the point of having a pixel density that high; almost no one has sharp enough eyesight to distinguish individual pixels at even lower densities than that, and enough people have poor enough eyesight that they won't be able to read text on software that doesn't scale its fonts properly. That resolution is appropriate for a monitor with twice the diagonal size. Also…
almost no one has sharp enough eyesight to distinguish individual pixels at even lower densities than that
That's exactly the point. Apple markets its high-PPI displays as being higher-resolution than the human retina[0]. It does need some help from software to not cause usability problems like font scaling and tiny images, but we've had the hardware capability to do this for a while. It's past time we improved on this.
Also, what's up with the 3:2 aspect ratio? That seems awfully odd.
If I had to guess, I bet a lot of the people involved in bringing this machine to market wanted 4:3, but someone in marketing and/or a focus group said that would be perceived as old-fashioned, so they got as close as they felt they could get away with. I'd really like to see a writeup on the reasoning from someone involved though.
[0] I believe the accuracy of said claim is disputed.
Re: The Chromebook Pixel
#353Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 so…
> Arguably, it improves maintainability and makes the UI easier to use
When your entire OS is cloud based, I think you get some synergies - you can reliably sit down at any computer and everything "just works" with all your state exactly how you left when you got up from the previous one.
So yes, you could purchase a Mac Pro, but because it's not cloud based from the ground up there are massive gobs of local state such that you continually need to worry about sync'ing things here there and everywhere, installing apps everywhere, etc. So in world where the default thinking for every application is to store local state, removing the capability for local state is necessary to achieve a true thin client.
> Is that the target market for the Pixel? People whose main concern is reducing maintenance burden and having an easier to use interface?
I think that's not really the selling point of this high end machine. This is Google's statement that cloud based computing is better even for people who do demanding, complex tasks (I'm not saying they are right, but I think it's what they believe).
> Okay, now how many of those people are better served by an iPad?
As I said, you're underestimating Google's ambition for what can be done with a thin client. An iPad is not suitable for highly intensive desktop tasks at all. A chromebook has all the physical features of a high end professional laptop, but is 100% cloud based, and thus can be used as a real computer for real tasks.
Re: The Chromebook Pixel
#354Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 If that's the case, pull an Apple and ship great dev tools on the installation disk. As far as I can tell, there are no top-notch Chrome OS development tools, just various ways to remote into a real machine to do that work.
Chrome Developer Tools, built into Chrome and Chrome OS really are top-notch Chrome OS development tools... because everything runs in Chrome.
They're toys compared to Visual Studio or XCode (or Emacs).
Re: The Chromebook Pixel
#355Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
He's not claiming otherwise, he's claiming that they frequently aren't used for anything more than that.
Re: The Chromebook Pixel
#356Am i the only one seeing this as a high-end computer with : - Linux drivers working out of the box - Amazing screens - Very easy to transform into a full fledged Linux development machine I hope it can fit the bill, certainly looks promising from that perspective ! Anybody has a link to full specs ?
Nope, I was wondering whether sticking Ubuntu or Mint on this would transform it into a kickass Linux laptop. It's close, but there is a measly 32GB SSD and no option for i7 or 8GB RAM.
I've been using my Cr-48 with Linux for development and it's actually pretty doable, and it only has 16GB and obviously much worse specs. This is, of course, going to depend very heavily on what kind of development you're doing.
Re: The Chromebook Pixel
#357Why is the screen nearly square???
Re: The Chromebook Pixel
#358Earlier quoted context omitted.
2560 x 1700 display is a big deal for devs, but I think I'd find the extra $200 and get a Macbook pro.
On a 13" display, those specs are a gimmick, MAYBE useful for examining professional photos.
I spend 12 hours a day looking at screens. Sharpness makes that more pleasant. So does a wide viewing angle, good contrast ratio, accurate color reproduction and adequate brightness. This screen likely does pretty well on all of those factors. Considering how much time programmers spend interfacing with screens and keyboards, it might make sense to spend a couple days' pay on good ones.
Many of us consider this screen's aspect ratio a big improvement over the 16:9 of most PCs for working with code/text as well.
Re: The Chromebook Pixel
#359Earlier quoted context omitted.
>>Kind of how some expensive wine is sold. I don't think computers are comparable to wine.
Depends who buys it. We don't view them that way because we are programmers and we know what an 8GB of ram means or what i5 means. Others look at computers differently (oh, I like the metal finish, this machine feels so fast). Not saying there is anything wrong, it is just how it is.
I think you're dead on and that's the factor a lot of techie people seem to completely fail to understand. We look at this stuff through a completely different lens than the typical consumer. Back in the awful days when I was retailing computers, I can't count the number of times people bought one laptop over the other because of the color or finish or some other minor detail. One of the main reasons Apple succeeds is that they make beautiful products, and it looks like Google is trying to share that market.
Re: The Chromebook Pixel
#360I've never understood why Mark Shuttleworth and Cannonical never built a halo laptop for Ubuntu. If they knew this was in the works, it starts to make sense