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

Googlebook

googlebook.google

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

981–990 of 1001 posts

Re: Googlebook

#981

Post by isityettime »

ajross wrote: post #953
isityettime wrote: post #931

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't get Gemini to not cut me off mid-sentence and reply to only half of what I wanted to say. It doesn't reliably integrate with Google Maps. I can't trust it for basic shopping tasks because it doesn't reliably evaluate stated criteria. I can't even ask it if a specific web store has a specific item in stock and trust the answer. Google hasn't gotten the bare-ass basics right. They're not about to "make apps irr…

> I can't get Gemini to not cut me off mid-sentence and reply to only half of what I wanted to say. This kind of criticism is unpersuasive: "USENET and ftp are fine! Why do I need this monster 'mosaic' thing which needs 8MB of core just to try to see some buggy 'dynamic page' someone threw together where the server is always down anyway!" New technology is incomplete, rushed to market, inconsistently reliable and rap…

I never mentioned any alternative to the Googlebooks, let alone said something like "$PRECEDING_PRODUCT is fine". You're refuting a kind of categorical naysaying that I haven't actually done.

Maybe some day, someone will make a computer with integrated digital assistants that virtually everyone really wants. Maybe that someone will even be Google.

But I wasn't writing sci-fi or putting together a pitch deck on Google's behalf. I was considering the actual technology (and priorities) they have on offer.

Re: Googlebook

#982

Post by chrsw »

przemelek wrote: post #655

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.…

Good idea, I would like to see this. But how is this going to help them serve ads and collect user data?

Re: Googlebook

#983

Post by xd1936 »

peesem wrote: post #577
xd1936 wrote: post #39

They weren't feeling "book.google"?

They bought that TLD and then never did anthing fun with it. I can forgive them for not doing https://google, since that's discouraged apparently, but not even fonts.google? docs.google? mail.google? Apparently once upon a time you could do com.google for an April Fools prank but they didn't even keep a basic redirect. The only thing they ever permanently used it for (afaik) was domains.google, and they sold that to…

They have several.

https://blog.google

https://ai.google

https://about.google

https://environment.google

https://safety.google

and a few others

Re: Googlebook

#984

Post by rtgfhyuj »

reisse wrote: post #907

I see the vision here, which the top commenters (sorry, couldn't read all of them) seems to miss. This should be a moonshot bet on the next generation of user experience. People are complaining about apps, but the idea here should be to make apps irrelevant as a concept. You don't need "apps", you need data feedable to LLM and a visualization toolkit for presenting results. And maybe some tools to manually wrangle th…

product dependent on LLM what could go wrong? a sucker born every minute

Re: Googlebook

#985

Post by Kadecgos »

einsteinx2 wrote: post #870
Kadecgos wrote: post #402

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…

> MacOS's relatively restrictive use cases I’m very curious what you mean by this.

I mean a lot. I purpose left it vague because I fear unpacking it is going to turn into the worst parts of a reddit thread, something that I would definitely be contributing to myself.

The big bullet points though are:

• Apple has crazy opinions about hardware

• And increasingly crazy opinions about what software you can put on it.

• And goes out of it's way to not work with open standards because 'fuck you'.

So examples here - non-exhaustive, just examples.

Hardware is not something I need to explain. You are stuck on their hardware. You can't upgrade it, by design.

Software has been touched on re: DRM nonsense, but they are leaning more and more into 'only signed apps' and even 'only apps you get on the app store' (which I assume is the future for that OS). They also just don't really give a shit about compatibility and will happily break API when it suits them.

Open standards is completely obnoxious and just an unforced error, but it's not actually an error because they want users and developers both to be exclusively in their ecosystem. Vulcan is example prime in my head. They could support that, but they choose not to because they want everyone on Metal. The platform is not about being useful - it's about generating mind share and revenue.

---

There are a lot of Apple users who will insist they don't feel like they are missing anything, and I do genuinely believe that they do feel that way. They just don't know what they are missing and if something isn't introduced as an option, it's not even in their mental model when choosing a solution for a problem. It's like trying to explain the virtues of a mouse and keyboard and an OS that supports multi tasking to a modern day teenager attached to an iPad and a phone - the idea of a more capable, more complex input stack is so foreign that it doesn't even register meaningfully. I don't mean to be a dick here, but I wouldn't go around saying, 'I've used Mac for 20 years and haven't ran into any issues with the OS' -- You're kinda telling on yourself a bit there.

Re: Googlebook

#986

Post by Shuddown »

boomskats wrote: post #557

FWIW my mum is still rocking my 2013 chromebook pixel. It is on all day, every day, and has been ever since I gave it to her a decade ago. I have repasted it three times now, it's been covered in sugary crap, dropped, trodden on by my kids, had charger cables tripped over and ripped apart while plugged in (sans magsafe), and it still looks and feels almost indistinguishable from when I bought it. The keyboard and scr…

With Google handing this off to OEMs, I really don't know how it'll hold up compared to a Pixelbook. I can't remember the last time I got an HP or Acer laptop that didn't use e-waste tier parts. I just hope it's worth the price.

Re: Googlebook

#987

Post by Kadecgos »

drcode wrote: post #660
Kadecgos wrote: post #402

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…

every large corporation is going to come out with a hardware device in the next 12 months where you don't directly use applications, where the AI acts as an intermediary openai, anthropic, meta, google, all of them even you will want one of these devices, probably (not saying this is a positive development in the world)

Press F to doubt.

Brother, I don't even want a phone. I need devices that actually, ya know, do stuff. A phone is barely functional even at the best of times. A device that might do the thing I ask it to 60% of the way there, sometimes, on a full moon, when the LLM cooperates... No thanks. I'm absolutely confident that I will never want such a device - it's simply not useful as a tool because it's not a tool. It's just a toy - an expensive toy that can do a cute party trick.

Re: Googlebook

#988

Post by nfw2 »

reisse wrote: post #907

I see the vision here, which the top commenters (sorry, couldn't read all of them) seems to miss. This should be a moonshot bet on the next generation of user experience. People are complaining about apps, but the idea here should be to make apps irrelevant as a concept. You don't need "apps", you need data feedable to LLM and a visualization toolkit for presenting results. And maybe some tools to manually wrangle th…

It seems to me like most of the predictions that the interface of the future will entirely be agents on top of systems of record are coming from people who never considered hci as a serious field. You can't predict something that exists is going to go away (eg apps designed around to guide specific user journeys) without first understanding the reasons they exist in the first place
Post reply on HN