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Googlebook

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Re: Googlebook

#871

So, I'm only slightly trying to be a smartass here, but... Who is this for? They are marketing what is ostensibly a computer for people who seem to not want to use a computer in scenarios that I don't think even exist. Beyond that, this is a laptop that is running a really shitty, 'apps only, no you cannot do anything useful with this' operating system. I have an awful lot of complaints about MacOS's relatively restr…

Without pricing information, it’s hard to the question "who is this for?".

Below $500? Same as the cheap Chromebooks market.

Around $700? (Or $600 educational) Direct competitor to Macbook Neo, educational market and the middle of the road laptop market.

Above $900? No idea, maybe for Google Platform die-hards.

Re: Googlebook

#872
I know this is not for me. But if correctly executed, it could sell like piece of cake. It should be thin, light, massive battery life, fast and seamless. It seems Intel, Qualcomm and MediaTek will be supplying chips and curious to see how it will pan out. Do you think this will be a market disruptor similar to chrome books 15 years ago?

Re: Googlebook

#873

I know this is not for me. But if correctly executed, it could sell like piece of cake. It should be thin, light, massive battery life, fast and seamless. It seems Intel, Qualcomm and MediaTek will be supplying chips and curious to see how it will pan out. Do you think this will be a market disruptor similar to chrome books 15 years ago?

Also, not clear if there is any linux support yet. Could be a dealbreaker for power users who choose it.

Re: Googlebook

#874

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I like the top panel in gnome. You need a place for your clock and you status icons. I don't really care much if it's at the top or bottom or sides. As an aside: From a 'clickability' perspective the app menus in the top bar are nice of course and I theoretically agree that's the best place for an app menu. But in practice I really dislike macos' 'separated' app menus when a window is not maximized.

On MacOS it was a great example of the use of Fitts law, a vertically infinite target for your mouse pointer for commonly used tasks when you didn't memorize the keyboard command. But on a giant monitor it's too far away from your work. Macs, for the longest time, had 512x342, 640x480 or 512x384. It was already getting far away at 1152x882.

Many apps these days have tabs at top like chrome or firefox and having a top panel (with or without menu bar) means you loose the useful of the fitts law for accessing the tabs of such apps.

Re: Googlebook

#875
Although there's a lot of consumer tools that won't stick, because they just don't actually help, AI is going to make big inroads for lots of different categories of task (just not all). It seems software engineering (or the act of coding specifically) is going to be heavily affected, because a lot of the labs focus is going into developing AI coding skills, and because it's easier to verify correctness than it is in many other problem domains. I've moved my focus to retooling - consolidating much of my workflow in a tool I'm working on https://www.agentkanban.io - A remote kanban board with agent harness integration (Github CoPilot currently) and context management. It's a tool that I use everyday in my own agentic coding workflows, and I can honestly say that it improves the quality of the code produced and reduces friction in organising working on concurrent features.

Re: Googlebook

#877

So this is essentially Android desktop mode with Android 17 Gemini integration. Please get rid of that top panel. I just don't get why this and desktops like GNOME tries to copy macos top panel when clearly in macos it is menu bar that host app menus but that concept doesn't exists in these other desktops and yet they have a top panel. This is just bad UX. This will follow same model as Chromebooks i.e different devi…

>Please get rid of that top panel.... This is just bad UX.

How so? It displays useful info at a glance. Where's the bad UX?

Re: Googlebook

#878

Would prefer a 'Google Linux'—a native desktop OS with a unified UI philosophy, similar to a macOS experience but built on a standard Linux foundation. Instead of ChromeOS or Android as the base, treat them as subsystems for compatibility. The real 'next big thing' would be integrating an engine like Gemini with OS-level hooks (similar to the OpenClaw approach) so agents can manipulate app windows and state directly.…

I don't know, but they do let you run Linux in a VM already on Chromebook. Hopefully that will continue.

Android now runs a Debian VM, too. It's early days, but I'd be surprised if they don't get Linux GUI apps integrated into Android in desktop mode soon.

Re: Googlebook

#879

So this is essentially Android desktop mode with Android 17 Gemini integration. Please get rid of that top panel. I just don't get why this and desktops like GNOME tries to copy macos top panel when clearly in macos it is menu bar that host app menus but that concept doesn't exists in these other desktops and yet they have a top panel. This is just bad UX. This will follow same model as Chromebooks i.e different devi…

>" Dex which is much better then the current Android desktop mode"

Maybe it is better but my experience using it as desktop was absolutely atrocious. I mean it works as designed but it sucks

Re: Googlebook

#880
post #877

So this is essentially Android desktop mode with Android 17 Gemini integration. Please get rid of that top panel. I just don't get why this and desktops like GNOME tries to copy macos top panel when clearly in macos it is menu bar that host app menus but that concept doesn't exists in these other desktops and yet they have a top panel. This is just bad UX. This will follow same model as Chromebooks i.e different devi…

>Please get rid of that top panel.... This is just bad UX. How so? It displays useful info at a glance. Where's the bad UX?

Not sure what Googlebook is, but in general: I want to be able to move my pointer to the top right corner and click to close the window.

And before you make some claim like "use keyboard", the UI includes these window elements for a reason. Top bar makes them less friendly to use: They're tiny and with top bar it's an aiming game instead of a quick way to do something with a mouse or a touchpad.

As an i3/sway user I don't greatly care about this because I already have things the way I like, but I understand the frustration of the OP.

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