Gross. This is just more proof that corporations simply don't know how to market AI. Everything is an ad for an ad at this point. The very first thing they show this new machine doing is helping people shop for clothes using AI.
No one is doing that, these people don't exist. No matter how hard corporate America wishes they did. This is why AI doesn't sell. This is why companies like Microsoft and Dell are pulling back on their AI claims and why Apple has nearly wiped it off their site all together, seriously go check out apple.com, not a single mention of Apple Intelligence.
At this point I'm convinced that marketing has been completely taken over by shareholder shills, marketing to customers they wish they had instead of the real customers that exist.
Why wouldn't I use AI to shop for clothes? I'm not much into fashion, but I could see using AI to help me search for a winter parka that meets my needs, for example.
And I did use AI recently when shopping for a car. After doing a bunch of research on my own, I decided why not try feeding my criteria into ChatGPT and see what it recommends. And it did actually recommend a couple of models that I had not previously considered, including one that I ended up considering very seriously.
I also pointed it towards some used listings and asked questions like "does this listing have ventilated rear seats" - and it was able to respond that it likely doesn't, and told me where to look for the controls in photos to verify for certain. I probably could have figured out on my own with a bit of digging, or else contact the seller, but this was a pretty quick and easy way to get the information I was looking for.
Is that gross?
I didn't look too closely at the Googlebook, so I don't know why I would use that instead of just an app on my MacBook. But at some point when competent models can be run on comodity hardware I think hardware and OS-level support for AI will definitely become a selling point for me. We're just not quite there yet.
Nobody is picking their laptop for the best AI integration. You can do those things just as well on every other platform. In fact, additional AI integration is universally a turnoff to most normal people.
Given how Search-Engine-Optimisation (SEO) has been gamed, what will make you think that somehow this NEW system, that's really prone to prompt hacking & already promotes sponsors' products over alternatives, won't be?
Not super relevant to the Googlebook ad, but in case the perspective is interesting to you: I'm quite tall (194cm) but not very wide, so I usually struggle with buying clothes online. I used AI to scrape a bunch of clothing stores to see whether they sold a men's shirt with an LT or slim fit size, in stock, and matching a particular vibe.
This is kinda the exception that proves the rule. I can imagine lots of cases where people with specific needs would find benefit from the “AI clothes buying” experience, but I will bet you anything that any searches you try to do will lead you to the same half-dozen giant mail-order clothing vendors that everyone already knows about.
That's not how that works; "someone is doing this" doesn't prove a rule "no one is doing this" -- quite the opposite
"The exception that proves the rule" is for things like "closed Thursdays" (rule = open on other days), "no parking after 8 PM" (rule = parking allowed before 8 PM), "no refunds on games" (rule = refunds available on other items), etc.
You're confusing "The Exception That Proves the Rule" (in English, as used colloquially) with "exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis" (in Latin, which has a use similar to what you're describing.) While the law attempts to be precise, common usage embraces ambiguity.
ChatGPT has helped me find multiple niche products and vendors. It is really good at that. Products I fruitlessly tried to find for years, ChatGPT found right away.
> I can imagine lots of cases where people with specific needs would find benefit from the “AI clothes buying” experience,
That is kind of the idea of serving the long tail. Everyone is unique, and there are a lot of everyones.
That said, I don't get online clothes shopping. The fit is 80% of the product.
> ChatGPT has helped me find multiple niche products and vendors. It is really good at that. Products I fruitlessly tried to find for years, ChatGPT found right away.
isn't that what search engines were built for? we've just forgotten how to build a search engine that's not just an ad factory, so instead we're putting an ad factory into our new search engine?
No, because you want to be able to answer arbitrarily complex or incremental questions using all sorts of info found across any number of searches where search results inform the next round of searches. Aka research.
Where you might have googled "best itx mobo site:reddit.com" a few years ago is now one of the many searches the agent is running to answer your specific questions.
It seems like search vs research is the distinction at play here, thus search engine vs agent is the right separation of concerns.
ChatGPT and similar are, in some sense, a semantic web search engine combined with an operator that's able to jot down its findings, pivot to different lookups, and filter/combine outputs.
That's fine? Especially if the AI does the searches for me, and does them more frequently than I would.
I have a half dozen facebook marketplace searches going. I used to automate craigslist searches before craigslist became irrelevant. It's nothing complicated but "AI searches for me and notifies me" is better than me remembering to look.
Uhh I don’t think you shop for clothes if you think there’s just a half dozen giant mail order clothing vendors.
Well obviously you shop for clothes, but nowhere like the way people who like clothes shop for clothes.
Finding clothes is about matching the vision in your head. If you’re the type that just buy clothes whatever, this is not a problem that exists in your world.
Actually, I think you're really underestimating how many people struggle to find clothes that fit them well. Most people's bodies are not perfectly average. For clothes not to fit well, you don't need to be a significant outlier in one dimension. Just the accumulation of several smaller deviations from average can be enough to create an awkward fit.
Beyond that, even if we limit it to height alone, there are hundreds of millions of people who are much shorter or much taller than average.
I can assure you having observed the process of clothes shopping for the women in my life, that as far as they are concerned, clothes do not just “fit them”.
Yeah, that’s how AI should be used. If the ad was using AI as a tool to solve a real problem then I’d be down. But that’s not what this is. This is AI as a shopping cart, or a thing to organize the busy life of a casually rich person who flies to Japan to buy vintage clothes.
Basically I’m only saying the ad is wildly out of touch with reality.
There have been several startups focused on helping consumers find clothes that fit properly due to lack of consistent sizing between brands (or dress size "inflation" for women). Some of these used optical or laser scanners, or asked consumers to measure themselves. I think they're all dead or on life support now, but it still feels like there's a profitable business opportunity in there somewhere?
Big issue that also seems to unfortunately be more and more common is variations in sizing within the same brand and article of clothing! Different batches with minor variations of the same exact size, or sizes changing over time.
There are multiple Thai tailors that fly around to major US cities. They'll take your measurements, and then sit down and design a bunch of custom clothes for you.
Quality is amazing, fit is incredible, and the price is only 20-30% more than off the rack, but the clothes can last a decade+.
Sometimes the ancient solution (meet another person with a measuring tape) is the best one.
Quite possibly! But Google Gemini, who obtains the specs from the same flawed, inconsistent, contradictory, or absent size charts that I have to look at, is not positioned to be the solution to this problem.
I don’t think there is. People who care will go out and try the clothes on in the fitting room or just order online and return. That’s a much nicer experience and more foolproof.
I use chatGPT to track my nutrition goals, and adjust exercises. I also let it code review my personal projects to (at worst) gain exposure to new patterns.
I wouldn't buy a deeply-ingrained AI laptop even if you paid me, and even then I'd install Linux on it in a heartbeat.
Heh when I came to this country I was overjoyed to see that they had a "Big & Tall" store. Until I realized they actually meant the conjunction there...
Undecided. One of the sites didn't have an LT but the LLM flagged that chest dimensions on their large were narrower than others, so could be worth trying.
That you didn't just search for "Big and Tall" or some-such tells me the search engines aren't as decent as I might think. Are search engines really that useless? Or did you start with a search for "clothes, tall" and then use AI to scrape the hits to find more details?
Your valid use case doesn't contradict the point that so far most consumer-focused "AI features" are rarely useful and often just get in the way. I'm pretty sure a specific "AI Shopping Feature" wouldn't actually do what you're already doing, or if it did, it would add more steps/distractions than you have now.
Just asking a web search / browser-enabled chatbot, as you are now, is already close to the optimally efficient tool for you. Unfortunately, aggregating results from many disparate retailers into one seller-neutral page filtered down to what you uniquely need today is no longer considered optimally efficient by most web retailers. Just like they erected barriers to stop being indexed by unaffiliated shopping aggregators, most large retailers will try to stop automatic aggregation of their current inventory (or lack thereof).
Sadly, we're now in a post-enshittification world where Amazon's learned removing search features like requiring or excluding terms increases revenue and Google's learned giving you the search result you want first reduces ads served.
What were your results? I'm nearly the exact same height with a shorter torso than leg length but super long arms, so I tend to need a medium tall, 36" inseam pants.
Researched men's sneakers last night. Super conflicting TMI for my odd size so going to a store for human sizing and gait evaluation. Info on durability was complete garbage. Suspicious about tuning for favored brands but AI recommended shoes will have the edge in my purchase decision since I've done some research.
I asked Gemini for help with something similar recently and it just made up a bunch of stores and items. When I pointed it out it said sorry and that it won't do it again. Then it did it again.
It's called Gemini because there's two of them responding to you. One that tells the lie, and the other to apologize for telling the lie (which, of course, is just a different lie).
Hilariously I've done something similar for the same reason. Medium shirts/sweaters are generally too short on me but large sizes feel baggy. I only travel occasionally to the US for work, so last trip I had ChatGPU look at several US-based retailers (eg Land's End, LL Bean, American Tall) to see if there was stuff in stock I might want to have shipped to my office/hotel.
Just curious, did you check the stores’ sites afterwards for false positives or negatives? eg, “no this store doesn’t have anything for you” but it did?
At my height, I have to do custom on a lot of things, though LT sizes can work for some pieces (short sleeves anything, some long sleeve items if the cut is intended to have longer sleeves).
AI is good for shopping today because all other platforms are fully enshitified but AI is still in the pre-enshitification phase. It will be infested with ads soon enough. Enjoy it while you can.
By that logic though wouldn’t Google have wildly successful products instead of a long line of failures? Googles product strategy is akin to throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
Sure some stuff sticks but most falls off the wall and is axed barely half way into the product life cycle.
You're on HN, you should be aware of the idea of not needing every product to succeed. They only need 1 in 10, or 1 in 20, or however many moonshots to succeed. You can not like that strategy, but it's basically the entire tech industry.
Pretty much all companies have a long line of failed products, only the ones we heard have successful ones. Google is definitely one of the most successful companies ever existed
People need to understand Google. They have a long line of failures, because they are an innovative company. Their whole goal is to scale products to billions of users. So if they release a product, and they see no path to billions of users they cut it and move on.
This has always been the way Google has worked. This is why they are literally the most successful company in the history of the world.
let's be clear: Google is a titan because they successfully sold ads to people who sold to you. We were never the target market beyond building a monopoly on eyeballs, and it's questionable if their ad empire continues. Outside of that they've had very few successes, and while traditionally the hardware is high quality, the bundled services and level of enshitification now is a no-go for my family. If you're buying into the single vendor for the rest of your life, the choice is currently Apple IMO, because they're "least bad".
I think CEOs are so drunk on the shareholder buzz for AI that they think this is also what the customer wants. I love integrating AI into products, but only in a way that is seamless. For example, I did my taxes recently and there was a button to upload my tax pdfs to do a best effort auto-fill of some forms on the tax website. No mention of AI even though AI was almost certainly used for that button, just a simple plain button.
Sry to say this, but I honestly just want a working shopping AI model.
I want to make a picture from me, add perhaps height and one or a second other metric, then i want it to generate styles for me, finetune it with me and then it helps me buy it.
I'm waiting for this for ages as i HATE shopping but I would find it nice to look better.
Nonetheless, when I saw this page for the first time, i was very impressed with the case not with anything related to softeware. Might be a second type of device which might be a good alternative to an apple product. Framework and now this (perhaps)
If such an AI shopping thing existed, I wouldn’t trust it to do a good job. We consumers probably wouldn’t pay enough for it in enough volume to be the customers (Are you a Stitch Fix subscriber? Why not?). The fashion brands would be the customers and we’d be sold to them. The AI tools would tell you and show you that your skin tone really works well with a shirt from $BRAND who bid the highest that day, and the brand that can afford to do that won’t be one with low margins (aka: a good deal), it’ll be one with high margins, and that means some combination of cheap construction and high price.
I'm tall and thin. When i want to shop a sport shirt, i would go to Adidas (german company, german person) and would accept the brand markup just to get something 'stable' and more controlled quality control despite the shirt being a lot cheaper somewere else.
Despite this, adidas does not have a tall thin filter despite them selling tall thin shirts in shops.
I do not know why.
Now i have to start searching around what brands have this option to filter.
I do not know why ecommerce online is so shit at least it feels shit for me.
If AI would find something in that price range and it would just work, man i would be happy.
I actually worked in ecommerce, including clothing brands. In one company, we built our own bespoke ecommerce website, using third party software only for the fulfillment part. In another, we used Shopify.
Building your own is expensive, which is a stretch to cover with the margins of ecommerce and not go broke. And the off-the-shelf things are shockingly bad in their core functionality (e.g. Shopify, which may actually be the most developer-friendly and innovative, has no native concept of a color swatch that works the way you'd expect, nor does it have filtering other than by a single, painfully-manual, non-composable "tag" feature). Shopify's got a huge ecosystem of one-trick-pony "Apps" that add all the missing features, but running 50 "apps" doesn't fix things either - not only can they be fundamentally incompatible with each other, but nothing can fix the underlying deficiencies of the core data models (or if I'm being more charitable, their suitability for one's unique business domain).
Brands fit for the country of the store. For example, you won't find anything for a tall but not wide person in Singapore, except a few special stores, that won't be Adidas for sure. Unless ordering from overseas (and that costs nice money).
If giving the customer more filter/searching power was something companies wanted, Amazon's search result page wouldn't be like visiting a flea market.
I'm pretty sure what Decart is building does exactly what you want.
I saw a demo - it took you, put a piece of clothing on you, and showed in realtime how that clothing moved on your body in the size you'd selected. I think it even picked the size.
You sent Anthropic a picture of yourself and had it generate images of you wearing various articles of clothing and then bought them based on the images that it showed you?
Meanwhile i just tried to have Gemini AI on my Android read the screen to add an event to my calendar: it can't do it. It could, some year ago, which several articles wrote about. It no longer can.
God this is so annoying. The actual functionality we need is not there or is half-assed.
Someone on HN a few months ago said that they gave up and decided to try Copilot in Outlook, which Outlook kept nagging him to do. He tried the example prompt that the nag screen gave him, whatever it was, and Copilot said 'sorry, I don't have that functionality' or something.
Not only the actual functionality people want is missing, but the functionality they're nagging us to use is missing./
Try now. I tried several times with different types of content/apps displayed, to no avail. It analyzes the screen and tells me whatever Gemini would say, instead of actually doing it.
I just tried it now, it worked. Specifically, I long-pressed the home button to pull up Gemini, pressed the "+" to add screen content, and said "add this event to my Google calendar". Confirmed it worked by opening my Google calendar.
Plus the random decision to split Google Assistant functions off from the bottom search bar. I still randomly try to tap that bar with it's mic button to ask the assistant to do something only to have it try to do a Google search. That's leaving aside all the random things that worked rather well in assistant until they started trying to push Gemini, can't think of a reason that should correlate (/s).
Also the homepage search widget, the app drawer search, and chrome address bar search are three near identical experiences, yet with enough differences to be painful. Either unify them, or make them distinct!
It acts like it is now but it used to act like it was one team and was an alternative assistant trigger, or you could even type to the assistant if you couldn't/didn't want to speak. Now that's basically only available via the "Hey/Ok Google" wake words and at best the bottom search bar uses the Google home page AI.
Yes, I absolutely use AI To find stuff to buy. The results are mediocre but the alternatives are even worse. Google search for any product is SEO garbage. Reddit is somewhat useful for filled with astroturfing and tedious to get actual signal from. AI can summarize the Reddit recommendations and set filters to save time a bit.
From what I see of my own use and friends use of "AI" - it is a glorified search aggragator with nice pretty print output which has replaced Google search because all involved are tired of wasting time with the cesspool that vanilla search has become.
this is def. the #1 use case, and it's why we can't have nice things. I use the internet to go to places I already know most of the time; when I use a search engine to try and find something it's a complete failure - often because of all the LLM generated astroturfing.
Unfortunately, they do. "Normie America" loves that shit. It's why they've been pushing it so hard: it's one of the few areas they're getting serious traction in day to day life.
We were talking about the clothing mockup using AI: "The very first thing they show this new machine doing is helping people shop for clothes using AI."
Also, Japan is a cheap travel destination right now. Two people can do a 14 day trip easily for $3000 total. That's not nothing but it's also in the realm of many middle class people regardless of where they live.
You probably don't even realise how far you are from average Americans, who are currently struggling to pay for their groceries. Shelling out three grand for a two-week vacation is simply unattainable for the vast majority of the population.
So really, you may be the one who's disconnected from reality. Not to say that things aren't getting better, I think they're getting worse. Just that you've got a bit of a doomer mindset.
No, 40-60% plan to travel, and the average amount of that travel is 3000. That is not at all the same thing as “40-60% of americans spend $3000 a year on travel”!
The data provided simply isn't sufficient to support the claim.
More people travel overseas than ever before. To the extent major tourist destinations are having to take measures to limit the number of tourists coming there.
People will order clothes they see on tiktok without ever having touched them. Having something where their users can basically say "order me that shirt" while they are tiking their tok or rolling their reels, and it works most of the time, is a company's wet dream.
Though, people "want" a lot of things that actually end up making them less happy. So responding to demand doesn't necessarily make it a good thing, but only time will tell.
Mate I'm in the EU and neighbor has got a statue of big gorilla on his balcony.
The EU is just as consumerist as the US. I can't tell you the number of young dudes who think they look cool because they're wearing a fake Hermes manpurse and who wear a cap as if a videoclip from the 90s from Vanilla Ice just called (don't get me wrong: I love Ice Ice Baby and I read Vanilla Ice is a good person. But it's 2026).
And there have been several EU companies getting funding to create an "AI personal shopper app" (all getting pwned by Google and other big players).
> I don't really get why people have the audacity to presume what other people like and do.
Part of this is that we are increasingly in self-selected communities of people just like us. Prior to the Internet and social media, you more often interacted with people that all you had in common with was spatial location and a dash of socio-economic status. It wasn't an unbiased slice of the populace, but it was at least less biased.
But today, it's much easier to have all of your social interactions limited to a social media bubble that reflects yourself.
That in turn makes it really easy to believe that whatever is true for you must be true for everyone because it seems to be largely true for all the people you see on a daily basis.
My friend just bought a Pixel instead of an iPhone because it had better AI voice chat integration, he's non-technical and has been on iPhone as long as I remember
The Google voice chat integration in android auto is vile currently. You ask it to map something. The map spins up and adds the address quickly. Shortly thereafter, the Gemini agent asks you if you want it to plot the directions? And then it starts bothering you with extra questions like "want me to tell you the weather for your destination or figure out some fun activities?". No, leave me alone and do your job better, please.
Sometimes I feel like there's no huge tech companies left* that remember: you're supposed to convince me to give you my money. I'm not just going to do it because you used the right trendy buzzwords.
I thought similarly, until I actually tried using AI to shop for clothes, now I’m a total convert. It’s like the best possible men’s fashion concierge…
The pressure to turn on the money faucet is very real, and as soon as they do, the AI shopping experiences are going to just mean “run an auction and steer the user to the highest bidder”. Like how Amazon, google, etc all have been doing it for ages. It’s way too profitable for them to ignore.
It's like Meta advertising their AR glasses with it annotating prices over fruit at the grocery store - like why are you trying to sell me on some made up use case that doesn't even exist?
How is it getting that pricing data? By reading the giant, three-inch-high price labels that are right next to the fruit?
Call me crazy but I don't think that "discovering how much oranges cost" is a big enough pain point for most people to spend hundreds of dollars on smart glasses to solve.
As for the fact that corps like Apple backing out of AI marketing, it is because AI itself becomes a negatively connotated term that is no more associated with something great and pleasant - but has become a negaive term people associate with fear of job loss, uncertain future, high computer + RAM prices, rising retail electricity prices, AI slop spam etc etc. We basically approaching AI fatigue to the point of AI hatred - and you do no want to raise those feeling and have them associated with your brand. Apple gets that, others will follow suit.
This has btw. nothing to do wheter or not AI does actually have positive impact on society or not - it is the feelings that matter, not objective facts.
yeah, any of the AI bots are bad at helping me find clothes b/c they don't even consider my size, gender, or anything when suggesting things after like 3 back and forth messages (this is both ChatGPT and Claude).
I went to the apple.com homepage, literally zero mentions of Apple Intelligence, just a dropdown option under iPhone's menu items.
Really? I must be hallucinating the multiple people I know who do this here in Portugal. Clothes, random parts for stuff they need. They just point a camera and ask for it, often iterating. They clearly prefer the chat interface that somewhat also limits their choice, instead of the plethora of ad-filled websites that are hard to navigate. I'm aware this poses several problems we will need to solve, but it's still happening.
Related: Bar some of my somewhat AI-resistant friends and some older relatives, almost everyone I know (including college students I teach to, my dad, friends, non-tech co-workers...) no longer uses google as their first choice (they do fallback to it if they need to). They all use ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. Used to be just ChatGPT but now there's a relatively equal divide. And an ever-increasing number of them are clearly using AI for pretty much everything else (proof-reading, writing e-mails, building spreadsheets, tiny custom apps for themselves, creating music, images, jokes, memes, photo editing/touch-ups, student evaluation, school material preparation/creation, personal/intimate advice, and much, much more.)
It is especially fascinating to note that, with the exception of AI-assisted coding, there is clearly more AI usage among the non-tech folks, as so many tech people are immensely resistant to using AI for something other than work. It's clearly shifting, though, as I see more and more of those AI-resistant people slowly also using it in their daily lives, as opposed to "only for work".
Really? I extensively use AI for shopping recommendations now, down to 3d printer filament, I don't touch sites like Wirecutter.
I was even at a shoe store the other day and just took a pic of a whole shelf full of sneakers and asked claude to explain them for my use case (running vs tennis).
It combines research with a buying decision, which most eCommerce sites don't currently do (except for just listing hundreds of reviews)
You are just misunderstanding the job that it is doing.
It is not "shopping for clothes with AI". It is recreating the dressing room experience from home, and it likely will be a table stakes for online shopping in the near future.
I asked an LLM to research some clothing options just yesterday and it's done a great job putting together a list of brands and models with the specific parameters I wanted, very quickly.
Google's product managers live on another planet. Whole Google Stadia fiasco comes to mind. Imagine the claims - real time 4k 60fps gaming over Internet. Went through acquiring game studios. Designed their own controller. A year later - nothing.
Went through acquiring game studios. Closed them before they released a single game.
A big part of Stadia failing was it didn't get traction, and a big part of that reason was Google's history of just giving up on products out of nowhere, so very few people were willing to give Stadia money with the risk of everything they bought vanishing. Then, when Google did give up on Stadia out of nowhere, Google said they'd refund everyone everything they spent - the kind of pledge that might have encouraged more people to actually give it a try.
Then again I heard anecdotal stories from a lot of developers that Google was a pain in the ass to work with because they didn't understand anything about working with game studios; it was just "we'll give you X money to bring your game to Stadia" when that money didn't make it worth taking developers away from the platforms they were already publishing to.
> At this point I'm convinced that marketing has been completely taken over by shareholder shills, marketing to customers they wish they had instead of the real customers that exist.
A bit of a tangent here, but the tldr is that I think this has been the case for quite a while.
I don't have any stats to back this up, and maybe someone does and will prove me wrong, but marketing doesnt feel significantly more effective than it was, say, 50 years ago, and yet the main reason every scrap of data about our personal lives is harvested is supposedly for marketing. Maybe it turns out theres just not that much you can do with the data, I'd certainly hope so, but I think a lot of it is just down to the fact that marketing execs don't actually use the data in any meaningful way, like you say marketing to customers they wish they had to buy the idea they were gonna do either way.
Like I remember a decade or so ago, the promise/warning was that advertising and entertainment would seamlessly blend when it can be tailored to exactly you, to the point where people happily and willingly watch advertisements. We got the opposite, adblockers are extremely common, companies have to strong arm you into even looking at their ads, and people count down the seconds until they can press the skip button
I dont think you are right. In the near future every purchase and every offer request will go through AI. I imagine you request 1000 offers from similar companies for your product wish. No longer do I need to spend 1 week searching for a good priced painter for my house. My AI does it. Same for all other products. At the same time, companies at the other side need to adapt to this situation and have to use AI to handle the massive amount of requests. Requests can be a real offer. But also crawl results from AIs. The circle is complete. Google wins.
There’s no way this scenario doesn’t get wall gardened off in some sort of way - as the AI SEO market will decimate current AI results in the next 3 to 6 months for sure. The slop is already making organic product hunting impossible.
and why Apple has nearly wiped it off their site all together, seriously go check out apple.com, not a single mention of Apple Intelligence.
Which is weird because Apple Intelligence + Shortcuts is the most underhyped corporate use case for AI. For my money, it’s the quickest and easiest method a non-programmer can use to prompt-build a program that both works and that they can understand.
Reminds me of all those facebook portal ads (was that the name?) showing kids talking to their grandparents all excited, or those ads where people point their phone at a thing (I think it's for Gemini?) and it pulls up the item to buy. I've literally never seen someone do that, and I have some insufferably-obsessed-with-AI people in my life who try to use it for everything.
Yeah anecdotal, but it just doesn't strike me as how people shop.
There are several AI companies now with billions in yearly revenue that didn't even exist a few years ago. Many more with many millions in revenue. Saying AI doesn't sell is completely delusional. You're in an anti-AI bubble.
What's funny is that these days if I see a Google product that I'm even remotely interested in, I just immediately write it off because I know it's something they will kill in a very short time frame.
It's just never worth the hassle of buying/using a Google product. Never.
Their hardware is usually fine when it comes to support. Google announces the support lifetime of their devices and sticks to it, with feature updates coming to things like phones even after the support period ended through things like app stores. Just check the support lifetime of the device before buying (early Pixels only had 2 years of support, as was announced at release).
Their cloud services are nothing but hot air but their hardware support has been excellent for the past few years. Easily beats other major manufacturers. I'm still annoyed that Apple won't tell you how long they will support their hardware. Other competitors manage to be even worse.
"support" meaning drivers and basic security updates, sure.
but if you buy this for the gemini integration, what are the odds that google actually sticks with that, or two years from now are you going to have a laptop that lags behind the feature set available in the gemini app for mac because they didn't sell enough of these to bother continuing development?
yeah, even on product lines that they kill (like Stadia) they usually do right by the user (eg they refunded everyone, both on hardware and software people bought on the platform).
That's not how long they will provide software support. It's how long you can get a hardware repair. Some "vintage" products will get current software support but not others. Some products have lost software support before even reaching "vintage" like the first Gen iPad.
Not arguing with your point about Google, but isn't Apple very often accused of forced obsolescence through updates to their phones? Is there any truth to the accusations of "running slower and dying faster" after a new model releases?
The increased update timelines by Google, Samsung and others roughly coincided with EU legislation coming into effect that mandates 5 years of updates after end of sales. We'll see.
Correction: if the manufacturer chooses to provide updates, and they don't have to, they must continue to make those updates available for five years after end of sales.
In other words, manufacturers aren't required to publish updates at all, but if they do provide updates they have to make them available to users for five years after they stop sales. This only stops the case where a manufacturer ships a device and publishes updates for the device, but then takes those updates offline after they stop selling the device (but before 5 years is up).
Google promised their Nexus phones would get new versions of Android for X years then, after selling a bunch of them, just changed their mind.
I'm having a hard time googling it since every result that comes up is about Google cancelling Nexus phones entirely way back when, but I remember a lot of Nexus users were kind of PO'ed about it.
> early Pixels only had 2 years of support, as was announced at release
They also announced a promotion for unlimited cloud storage of photos and then shrank and JPEG massacred the photos. That part of my photo library is still visibly trashy to this very day. Every time I browse my photos, I am reminded that google did this.
Apple might not specify a time upfront but they do consistently support hardware for a good length of time. IPhones generally get OS updates for 5-6 years and security for at least a couple more.
I’ve never used anything they made long enough to get there.
What about Nest? It's great that they announced a lifetime and stuck with it I guess? Sucks for anyone who bought into the ecosystem. You'd have to pay me to try and adopt more google products at this point, otherwise it's almost certainly sooner or later going to be deemed a waste of money/time.
> Their hardware is usually fine when it comes to support. Google announces the support lifetime of their devices and sticks to it
If they announce a support lifetime they stick to it.
For other products they'll just decide they're done with it and give you a little warning period. Maybe some store credit or another bonus depending on the product.
I argue this is both true and not true in stark ways with Google. Just look at Google Groups listserv, it's been running forever and arguably mosts used neighborhood listservs globally and has been very stable.. all largely for free. On the other hand, new experiments get chopped very quickly at Google. So, it's more like if the service can survive 2 years, then Google generally keeps it around*.
* unless it gets merged dozens of times into other similar projects.
It doesn’t matter to me that some of their products have longevity. I don’t know which they will keep and which they will discontinue and there are many vendors out there who have a better track record.
If they don't kill it, they might kill your account with no recourse, or some automatic process might lock you out of certain features, or some major bug might leave you staring at a forum post with a "I have the same question" numbering in the thousands.
Unless Google have magically solved the Android update process, getting updates are the biggest downgrade when it comes to switching from ChromeOS to Aluminium OS.
Back to a world where every device needs the OS specifically built for it.
A laptop built entirely around AI, which is definitely a stable business that will be around in its current form indefinitely and whose cost definitely won't go up once Google needs to start making a profit on it.
As much as Stadia was a gut punch, at least for consumers Google did pretty well at making us whole (Full refunds for all Stadia purchases across the board) [0]
Obviously that's not much recompense if you were a game developer lured into some exclusive publishing deal, or even just someone buying a Stadia Controller, but c'est la vie I suppose
Getting the Stadia controller goes a long way, methinks. If you have one laying around, you can install the de-clouding firmware Google provided that converts it into a Bluetooth controller with excellent ergonomics and feel.
People who badmouth Stadia's shutdown expose themselves qw non-buyers. I'm yet to hear of a better product wind-down than Stadia: every single buyer got full refunds for games and hardware (i.e Chromecast). The firmware to convert Stadia controllers to plain ol' Bluetooth was a nice parting gift.
Google Fiber has been advertising a lot in my area. Despite the legacy ISP being as bad as most entrenched ISPs I can't see myself switching and adding another Google product into my life.
It might be cheaper and faster now, but will that still be true in a few years once Google has gotten bored with the project? Are they going to use this service to spam me with AI slop like they do everywhere else? What happens if a Google bot nukes my Google account, will that cut off my entire internet with no warning as well?
I'm not famous enough to raise a social media storm when they screw me over so it's a big risk doing business with the company.
> What happens if a Google bot nukes my Google account, will that cut off my entire internet with no warning as well?
Yeah, the general approach to get support has been to be famous or to marry a Google employee, but the churn rate on Google employees is at the point that the latter is unsustainable.
I think if I wanted a cheap laptop I'd probably get the macbook neo, and if i wanted a non-gaming expensive one i'd get a macbook pro.
I really don't see the market fit for this, I guess the android integration. But my god, I'd die of cringe if someone asked me about my laptop and I had to say "googlebook". Believe it or not, these things matter a lot, particularly if you're trying to target a young audience.
I used DOS,then Windows, then Mac for a total of almost 40 years. I think using Windows and OSX are insanity, but to each their own.
I now have a machine that boots almost instantly and just works without maintenance, upgrades, or compatibility issues. I can throw it in the river, and for $300 get a machine that will be up and running in about one minute. I can use multiple machines (small/cheap to bring on a trip, laptop for casual working, larger machine for more serious work, even at the same time. I have full access to everything from my iPhone, or access to some computer anywhere. I use remote VSCode via Crostini to do development work (terminal, vi, Codex, Claude Code) on a bunch of beelink boxes and Hetzner servers.
I cannot run installed software and I am dependent on Google for email, files, photos. For the latter, I have backups of my email and files (photos are not as easy).
I take more risks with my Chromebooks than I do with a MacBook, such as mountain-biking with it or leaning it in a car when visiting sketchy neighborhoods. Chromebooks offer a good-enough on-the-go, full-Unix experience, with an all-day battery. Sure, M-series Macs have higher performance and >20h batteries, but those nice-to-haves re well in excess of what most users need, most of the time.
ChromeOS is a very competent, fast, and easy-to-use operating system. For my family, it's basically perfect. It's virtually unbreakable and anyone can pick it up quickly.
Windows is a hot mess and frankly I wouldn't recommend it to anyone outside of gamers. For the technically competent, there's nothing to gain on Windows, and it will just get in the way. For the those less technically inclined, Windows means complexity and viruses. Also most Windows laptops suck major ass.
MacOS is better, especially if you have an iPhone. But even MacOS is a bit too complex for the less technically inclined. If you have an android phone, then a chromebook is 100% the way to go for those people. Also, chromebooks get crazy software support these days, on par with macbooks.
I see this too often. But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes. Most people just want get stuff done in a competent, fast and easy-to-use operating system.
>It also locks you into the cloud services of an advertising company
this is pretty much any company these days. microsoft is guilty of the same.
Until your google account gets locked for some unknown reason and you there is 0 support and recourse. And now you can't even log into your own computer.
Users absolutely care, what a terrible comment. Users have ZERO choice. Tech companies are not regulated, tech companies abuse their monopolies at their users detriment, and tech companies do not have consumer councils to help mitigate these issues.
What it actually appears to be is we have a market where undemocratic business leaders are deciding the direction of technology in a country that only seems to benefit them and not the population.
What a terrible mindset to have and I sincerely hope you never have any capacity to yield power in your life.
>But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes.
Like them I think I am also surprised not because that isn't the case, but because it's wild to see that take on HN, which skews way more towards privacy/owning your compute.
So does Windows. macOS locks you into a company that hoovers up your data but pinky promises not to sell it and will fight tooth and nail to have prevent others from doing the exact same thing on their operating system.
If you care about privacy, Linux and BSDs are the only options, but actually good out-of-the-box Linux laptops are few and far between.
Though if you want to get rid of the persistent nag on your Dock to log in to your Apple account, that's a significantly higher level of magic than what it takes to use Windows without an MS account.
(I just installed Windows a week ago without an MS account, and it was a 30 second step during setup to skip an MS account. The steps to get rid of the macOS nag are daunting enough that I just live with it permanently.)
MacOS doesn't have to force it, users will gladly sign into their iCloud account. Virtually nobody uses the Windows Store, but the Mac App Store is a necessity given how restricted 3rd party apps are on macOS now.
Since when is the Mac App Store a necessity? It's still possible to download DMGs straight from the internet and install the .app by dragging it to /Applications
The only restriction to 3rd party apps are unsigned apps. Very rare these days, mainly small hobby projects. You can still activate them through the System Settings.
Apparently you can create a local account on a chrome device [1], although I can't vouch for the process; otherwise cloud auth is tied to Google, yes. You could use a guest account for everything, if your really want; but then you lose out on persistence.
But as long as you accept that everything you do is in a browser; which is reality for the vast majority of computer users, there's no real lock-in. You can just as easily use the browser version of Microsoft Office as the browser version of Google Docs.
You're certainly locked into Google for the browser and for updates, unless you do a lot of work. But it's been a while since it was common to get commercial OS updates from a 3rd party.
That’s no better than Windows (without a lot of effort and a constant game of cat and mouse only achievable by technical users). At least Google’s cloud services tend to actually be good, if you made peace with the tracking and privacy concerns.
I support a lot of old folk on laptops that are less technically inclined. All they want is Windows because familiarity, despite Microsoft making things unfamiliar every release.
I used to think so too, but when my extremely-non-techy mother's Chromebook died, she was able to switch from chrome OS to Ubuntu with minimal fuss. Chrome OS has some specific features, but if you just need a web browser Ubuntu works fine.
My mother (80+) runs Fedora, and I believe she is incapable of messing it up, even if she did have the root password. Doubleclicking random exe files off the internet is almost uniquely a Windows problem. I dunno about Macs - its users are usually technically illiterate, but Apple has done a pretty good job of locking users out of their own machines.
The HP Dragonfly Chromebook is pretty good. The Asus models are also very nice. The Acers are hit or miss; quality is iffy on those and there's a zillion models so it's impossible to find a specific one.
I wish Framework would keep supporting ChromeOS but alas. You could put ChromeOS Flex on one - it doesn't have Android apps, which is fine for me, and it does support the Linux environment, which is excellent.
...basically, I have "nerd cred" and run linux on my desktop, but for my laptop I wanted: disposable (no leaky hard drive), zero maintenance (no kernel modules for sound drivers), battery-portable.
90% of the time I'm wanting `vim` + `git` + `ssh`, and 20% of the time i'm wanting to run some random stuff locally. Chromebook is basically zero friction and 1/10th the price (and 1/10th the capabilities) of a "very nice mac laptop", plus you can pop into a very capable linux VM (w/ passthrough GUI support) without a lot of ceremony.
Windows laptops are out of the question, and pure linux laptops (until only very recently) were of marginal support and low battery capabilities (especially "close it and stuff it in a backpack for 3 days").
"""last week: Pop!_OS 22.04: kernel 6.17.9-76061709 — module BTF validation cascade boots system to emergency mode #3961
Thanks for taking a look,
Quick update — I'd already recovered before seeing this comment. The path that worked: boot Pop_OS-oldkern, run sudo apt install --reinstall linux-image-6.17.9-76061709-generic linux-modules-6.17.9-76061709-generic && sudo kernelstub, reboot. 6.17.9 came up clean. The reinstall's postinst hooks ran update-initramfs automatically; /boot/initrd.img-6.17.{4,9}-* are both freshly dated 2026-05-06 (~11:44 / 11:46), and kernelstub copied them to the EFI partition. Verified: journalctl -k -b 0 | grep -iE 'btf|failed to validate' | wc -l → 0.
"""
In the year 2026, on my Linux laptop (T14, Linux 6.18.26) I ran the following:
lsmod | cut -f 1 -d ' ' | grep snd | wc -l
And it responded: 53. Fifty three kernel modules are dedicated to sound. I, of course, never had to install any of them by hand, or take any other direct care.
Those modules are all in tree. The distro chose to build them as modules. You could have built them into the kernel. I don't think that counts. When I hear about manually futzing with "kernel modules for sound card" I think you're running out of tree modules in 1997.
> Windows laptops are out of the question, and pure linux laptops (until only very recently) were of marginal support and low battery capabilities (especially "close it and stuff it in a backpack for 3 days").
Dell has sold laptops with first-party Linux support for nearly fifteen years, to say nothing of other smaller OEMS.
As for the battery issues during sleep: that actually has to do with a combination of the BIOS settings + downstream ramifications of secure boot (and how the old-fashioned "hibernate" used to work). Unfortunately, that isn't specific to Linux. My MBP has the same problem, and so do the same laptops running Windows.
This is actually the perfect detail to discuss. ChromeOS printing is literally just CUPS, so it has the same functionality as any other Linux distro. If you have a modern IPP printer on a normal home Wi-Fi, you can expect it to just work. This covers most people's needs.
Where ChromeOS shines is that it has never been affected by severe and numerous CUPS security vulnerabilities like CVEs 2024-47175 through 2024-47177, which were unauthenticated remote vulnerabilities, while Ubuntu and Fedora (and all other major distros) were affected. Why? ChromeOS sandboxes the hell out of these kinds of subsystems. CUPS runs in a PID namespace, network namespace, mount namespace, on a read-only filesystem, with seccomp filters. It cannot use the network, ever. It can only communicate over a pipe with a network proxy. The proxy is only active if and when a user tries to print. The proxy is also in a seccomp jail that prevents it from doing anything except enumerated network traffic and the pipe. The proxy is written in a safer language than CUPS itself, and protects CUPS from malformed, malicious inputs by validating both PPDs and print requests.
Chromebooks make a pretty nice, Linux friendly machine. They're usually cost optimized given the market they address, but that's fine if it fits your needs. Sometimes they have "weird" hardware, keyboard/mouse controllers and stuff at least wasn't always "pc standard", audio controllers seem to be commonly outside mainstream as well.
It's nice to run Linux on a machine that was built to run Linux. No silly windows key, no fighting with firmware that was built for windows first. I have a Chromebox that was a great mini desktop and the pricing was nice. My first Chromebook ran FreeBSD pretty well once it was no longer needed for ChromeOS, etc.
You have to shop carefully, you want something that's easy to put a MrChromebox firmware on and doesn't have any known issues with the OS you want to run. It's been a while since I purchased a ChromeOS device and the current state is different than it was then; I'm not sure how easy it is to find reasonable options now, but there were plenty of good options in the past. You also want to be sure that it has enough ram and storage for you needs or that those are expandable, but I think soldering ram and storage is pretty common across the range.
The number of people who have "installed linux" other than ChromeOS on a Chromebook is probably in the low single digits, while the ChromeOS installed user base is in the hundreds of millions. For any given thing someone is going to try to put linux on that thing, but it is not a common use case for Chromebooks that we need to discuss.
FWIW I'm one of those people. I have an old rotting pixelbook that I installed Linux on back-in-the-day thanks to Mr. Chromebox. It was a huge improvement over chromeos but I'd never buy a chromebook to install Linux on it again because there was too many small annoyances like needing to fix the keymap every time I did a clean install (the caps lock key was bound to super and I vaguely recall some craziness around the higher function keys), and sound didn't work.
I was genuinely asking. In “my circles” a Chromebook is a cheap laptop that one can install Linux on. As in, “oh, I just picked up this used Lenovo Chromebook and installed Ubuntu on it”.
You'll get a more informative answer from them. I couldn't speak to their motivations. But I certainly wouldn't advise doing it. ChromeOS has better security and performance than Ubuntu, and it automatically updates things like peripheral firmware that Ubuntu isn't even aware of.
It feels like the wrong tool for the job in both directions. If you wanted a host platform for Ubuntu you'd choose something else, and if you wanted platform software for a Chromebook ChromeOS is the right choice.
In the real world, Chromebooks are excellent candidates to install Linux. They are highly compatible, low power, excellent size/weight, and run great. You don't sound like a person who has any real world experience with this topic despite the authoritative tone in your responses.
> ChromeOS has better security and performance than Ubuntu [...]
I'm going to need a citation on that, especially performance. Doubly so if Crostini is put into the mix.
> [...] updates things like peripheral firmware that Ubuntu isn't even aware of.
Like what? WiFi cards, etc.? Isn't that generally in kernel already? What kind of updates do you think are not done by Ubuntu or another Linux distro?
Last I tried ChromeOS was on the Pixel Slate way back when. A buggy, unstable, clearly not properly tested, unperformed mess that I would not wish upon my enemies. Glad to see it has improved to usable now, but that it is better than any other Linux distros, I can't say how considering even being on par with e.g. Fedora would have been a miracle not to long ago.
Happy to admit that purely on the UI/UX, ChromeOS is very solid in my opinion, arguably and subjectively the most consistent and user friendly designed desktop environment I know. Far more consistent than anything MSFT or Apple have provided in quite some time, everything looks like it should, placement is easy to grasp and reliable with a clear identity. Consistency wise, only Gnome can hold a candle to the strictness with which the ChromeOS team execute their vision, though there is the clear divergence in the Gnome team pushing new UX innovations and concepts even if they are controversial and may need to time to learn, whilst the ChromeOS team seems purely focused on the most clearly easy to master approach one can take.
> I'm going to need a citation on that, especially performance
Multiple reasons. ChromeOS ships an optimized, platform-specific kernel, built using LLVM with LTO and AutoFDO. No other distro even attempts this. The only one that has even considered it is CachyOS that offers optional LTO, or Gentoo, where you can DIY LTO, but neither supports FDO.
Another reason is that Chrome GPU acceleration actually works on ChromeOS. IPU webcams work, too. On Fedora, Arch, and others you'll be patching and rebuilding kernels to get IPU.
> Like what? WiFi cards, etc.? Isn't that generally in kernel already?
This is another aspect where the ecosystem is the advantage, not the technical details. Chromebook makers are required to furnish firmware updates. ChromeOS will update (silently, without user intervention or notice) everything in a Chromebook: SSD controllers, battery management, radios, touchpad, USB PD controllers, the Titan security chip, the CPU, whatever. This is very different from the situation on random Linux+hardware combinations where the only source for many of these updates, if they are available at all, would be to reboot to Windows.
We tried Chromebooks for our kids, and the instant I could buy Neos I did. It might just be that we're fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, but I had a hell of a time trying to get stuff like parental controls figured out on ChromeOS.
I'm a happy Apple ecosystem user. However, there are many more Windows and Android users worldwide.
I think that the appeal of this product is that the Wintel monopoly of years ago is dying. If the Googlebook is well executed (as the Apple M1 line was), it can be an option for Android users who wish to move away from Windows but are not knowledgeable enough to use Linux. I think the only problem here is Google's track record of abandoning product ideas. A new product like this requires multiple iterations to get it right, but if Google abandons it as soon as the results are not what was expected, it will not have the time to mature in areas like gaming or app support.
I think it's a successor to the Chromebook. In the vast majority of modern K-12 public schools, the school district owns the hardware, not the students.
I recently heard from couple of Technology Directors at schools that they are looking to procure Macbook Neos replacing their Chromebooks. This might be a strategy to defend their Chromebook market in schools.
Macs are very popular in schools today for teachers and staff. Switching to Macbook Neos for students would actually simplify their support burden. I'm not sure they'd be cost justified though.
I don't think these are Chromebook successors. This is supposed to be a premium line according to the "Android Show" video. But I suspect future Chromebooks will use this OS eventually.
Pretty sure when they talked about "very high build quality" and such they're saying this is not a replacement to the cheap chromebooks (which I think the macbook neo is eating anyway) but a higher price point.
Unless they're cheap, it's not going to sell well for K-12.
I used to work for an ed-tech company that was specifically focused on software for chromebooks and in talking with customers the biggest selling point of chromebooks for schools what their price. The school issued devices get absolutely beat to shit and they just expect a certain number to be decommissioned at the end of the year. Most schools are looking to buy the cheapest thing that does the job and the small group that have the money to actually buy premium devices are going to gravitate toward Apple products.
If Google is selling these for less then $500 then maybe there's a place for them, but like we saw it with the Pixelbook, there just isn't really demand for an $1000 chromebook
A Chromebook is far cheaper than a neo. It could be less then a third the price, and that makes a big difference when you're buying a thousand of them.
Got a cheap Acer Win11 machine for like $500 last year. I don’t think they even know what the low-end market is like, it is all about getting the most RAM/storage while everything else is reasonable and cheap enough. In which it is really hard to make a profit there because the price is the most important thing
You might be surprised how good cloud gaming has gotten. I play AAA games at max settings on my MacBook Pro through GeForce Now, and with fiber internet it's nearly indistinguishable from native.
I know people in general hated it, but I found Stadia to be quite good. I'm not too upset because Google paid me back full purchase price, but it's almost a shame that they managed to mess up cloud gaming that badly.
I don't know, I saw quite a few positive comments on Stadia, both as a service and the general approach. Most of the negativity was about it being a Google product and not wanting to get invested in a platform they would inevitably kill. Then of course there was the reaction when it was inevitably killed.
I use boosteroid, which is just steam on cloud. ~4k @ 120Hz for $12/month. No HDR though (they recently removed it). Such a stupid good deal compared to the price of a gaming PC, that I can't really complain. So many data centers with GPU sitting around...
Yes, it's just streaming a video to you. The main limit is your connection speed if you're not near a datacenter as you're limited by ping, so controls can be laggy. You can try it out for free though, which will give you an idea of how good your link is.
Why anyone would view a non-upgradeable phone slapped into a laptop case with minimal computing capability for the price would ever consider a Neo is beyond me. At that point, get a damn tablet. It’s literally the same thing but, like, designed with intent rather than a bunch of scrap pieces.
Seriously, what’s the draw? The 8 gigs of ram? The 200 gigs of storage? The major lack of ports?
Have you ever touched a Neo? It does not feel like scrap pieces. That is the magic.
A phone has great battery life and standby power management. What’s the problem with running a different OS on it if it works just fine?
Different stuff for different folks I guess. At work all files are on the cloud, I have a NAS and a computer I can remote into for development. A Neo is just perfect to make all of that mobile.
As for tablets, I’d only recommend one if you need a stylus for drawing or a smaller form factor. I think that is the market where the Neo is competing, that is where you have a point.
Just the build quality on MacBooks compared to your random PC laptop piece of plastic that falls apart within a few years would make me very picky. I have a random “corporate” Lenovo and everything physical in it is way way worse than in my work MacBook
I wanted to like the Pixelbook, but it had a lot of limitations, ChromeOS being the major one. I recall that people were able to run Linux on them, but no idea what that experience was like.
>but my god, I'd die of cringe if someone asked me about my laptop and I had to say "googlebook"
i'd hate for my computing choice to lack fashion forward qualities -- I wouldn't want to be embarrassed at Gate A-13 with my new Apple perched on my lap proudly while waiting for the next question from my adoring fans.
I hope they appreciate the new color!
real talk : my favorite excuse for using an Apple product throughout my life is the tried and true "my company stuck me with it and I hate this piece of shit.", so I find it kinda fascinating that they're such cult objects -- and to be fair I am sure i'd say exactly the same thing if I was ever stuck in a company stupid enough to try to make me be productive on a fancy chromebook, too.
There's an entire world outside of Silicon Valley and the Apple ecosystem. Apple has a ~9% PC market share. Who is buying the other 91% if there is no demand?
They’re surprisingly powerful for all three games that are available on the platform.
Jokes aside, there are some games with competent Mac ports and if you only have an M-series Mac, you can find some titles that play nice. But most of the stuff that you’d play on a PlayStation or on Windows is simply not available.
Linux gaming is getting a definite boost from Windows 11 being a shitshow.
And pracically _nobody_ does native Linux games, they're all just running Windows games through Proton, and faster. So fast actually that Proton is Microsoft's performance target :D
I encounter a few native Linux games from time to time on Steam, mostly indies and other smaller games. There was a time there was a medium-sized push for this, Steam was pushing it, lots of Humble and GOG stuff came out with Linux versions...
But yeah, Proton is so good now that I don't think there's much impetus to port. Test on Deck/Steam Machine/Proton, sure, but not so much port. Steam Play also handles runtime container stuff for native Linux games so that can be pretty good and stable itself, but I've definitely had situations where switching over to the Windows version via Proton is a better result than the native Linux one.
That wasn't really my question. The M1 Ultra is a 5nm chip up against the 8nm RTX 3090 - for >$2000 and 220W+ you'd kinda hope the M1 Ultra outperforms the 8nm stuff.
My question is, what games are people playing on Mac? Tomb Raider is one of ~6 AAA titles that was ported to Mac in the last decade. All the other big-ticket games - GTA V, Arc Raiders, Elden Ring - are all hamstrung by Apple's terrible translation software and don't run much better with Crossover either.
Apple Silicon, strictly speaking, is the least adept hardware that you can own for gaming. If you are a gamer, almost every single other GPU on the market would perform better for your needs.
I have an RTX 5090 and am an avid gamer. When I travel I use my M1 MacBook Air and play indie games like Slay the Spire, Hades 2, Balatro, and Hollow Knight Silksong. Not cutting edge but definitely cutting edge fun. Those games run with no difficulties.
Slay the Spire 2 is in early access and has some major issues running but I suspect that’s some issues in the game engine because it’s not framerate but some sort of hitching that makes button presses not register.
YapYap which is an intentionally retro ugly 3D style runs barely in a playable state on the M1, but it got me through in a pinch when my kid wanted us to both play.
If I want to play AAA I fall back to my desktop, you can stream using Moonlight or Parsec but unless both sides are wired it isn’t great.
It's sad that the M5 Apple chips don't support Linux better. I'm in the market for a laptop, and I'd buy a MBP in a heartbeat if I could wipe it and put Debian on it.
My 2013 MBP was going strong with Debian until the battery started puffing up last year, and I finally had to recycle it.
I get it, I know I'm not their market, but it still pains me because it was a great laptop.
Why pay $500-700 for Mac Book Neo for the same low processing power experience that you can get on a Googlebook for half the price? Especially considering you can install linux on it natively.
Other then that, Gemini is the biggest advantage. Google can offer Gemini for free because its TPUs are orders of magnitude more efficient than Nvidia stuff. Even free tier Gemini is really good considering it can integrate with a bunch of your stuff like google docs, and the lower last gen models have pretty generous usage limits.
Overall, if you are in Android ecosystem, you don't really even need a cheap laptop anymore, considering things like Samsung Dex exist.
> Why pay $500-700 for Mac Book Neo for the same low processing power experience that you can get on a Googlebook for half the price?
What makes you think a googlebook will be half the price of a macbook neo?
Also, a used M1 macbook air is $300 on swappa/ebay and will be even better than the neo anyway. It's still more performant than every other non-Apple ARM based laptop/chromebook on the market and will have far superior build quality.
Lol. There is zero chance the low end mobile phone SoC shipped in those is remotely as fast as a six year old M1. Even flagship SoCs from qualcomm and samsung still do not exceed it's performance yet.
> Google can offer Gemini for free because its TPUs are orders of magnitude more efficient than Nvidia stuff. Even free tier Gemini is really good considering it can integrate with a bunch of your stuff like google docs, and the lower last gen models have pretty generous usage limits
Good point, that could work. Buy this and you get so many years of Gemini for free and such. "Why pay Anthropic $200/month for Claude when you can buy this and get Gemini for free for a few years". OpenAI and Anthropic are not going to make their own devices most likely either to compete.
> Why pay $500-700 for Mac Book Neo for the same low processing power
I pre-ordered a Neo on a whim to use as a couch laptop alongside my work laptop and gaming computer. It's so fast. It blows everything out of the water when it comes to interactivity.
Plus the whole build quality, screen, touchpad and speakers are all so much better than the work Latitude. Linux support is lacking, but it's still a full usable Unix.
Having seen how people managed to run Cyberpunk 2077 on the Neo with okayish frame rates I don't think there's a single ARM laptop out there that could deliver that performance on Linux. Maybe I'm wrong though.
I imagine they're going to do the same thing with this as with Chromebooks: i.e. do enterprise deals with schools and so on? Google's iteration-style structure where they kill products is fine for SaaS type offerings that are free and that you don't build your world around, but buying a laptop they won't support soon enough isn't that useful. Ultimately, just like with Amazon and their phone, it's obvious even prior to release that this is not a priority for the company and the side gig type stuff doesn't work when you are selling hardware.
Might have been more interesting if it were under a separate company that Google owned a large portion of, rather than carrying the Google brand. Then again, maybe the Google brand isn't toxic to the wider ecosystem of buyers. I still think consumer-hardware-wise Google is the Safeway Essentials version of Apple but others might think Gmail or Google itself which consumers consider best in class.
Please not the schools. We don’t need privacy-invading closed systems with built-in slot machines. We need deterministic open systems where kids’ privacy is protected.
I'd assume this opens up 'Googlebooks' to compete with the GPU/M Series Premium laptops so schools can provide them to teach things like Photoshop, Illustrator, CAD Design, anything that chromebooks couldn't do, right?
The performance of the machine offered at schools seems to get just a little worse every year too... like one of these days they won't have to worry about kids playing Krunker in class because they won't be able to.
It would be so much better for the student's IT proficiencies if the were some ordinary Linux computers instead. Preferably with limited central managment.
The Chromebooks are probably cheaper than the hardware itself could be, but that's a good demonstration of the issue.
It wouldn’t. The central management of Chromebook is what makes the whole system usable. All you’d be doing is sentencing school IT folks to endless, endless support requests.
Funny. At my son's school in Germany, students may bring any device they want without central administration (just Wifi and web platforms). It works quite well without inundating IT staff with support requests.
(To achieve at least some similarity of systems, you get a partial refund if you buy either iPads or convertible notebooks running Windows. My son's notebook technically runs Windows but he mostly uses plain Debian Linux with Xournal++.)
Sorry, I love Linux, but could you imagine managing a fleet of the cheapest hardware possible and also teaching a bunch of 6th graders how to use Linux? School IT workers are already heroes. I don't like Google, but they're a necessary evil to keep those guys from tearing their hair out every day unless we dedicate significantly more resources to computing in schools.
> We need deterministic open systems where kids’ privacy is protected
I don't think we need any computers really. They'll be inundated with computers and technology their whole lives. They'll figure it out. Just keep this tech out of the classroom altogether.
We've had computers in the classroom for over a decade now, scores and learning has not gone up. It's a failed experiment.
> Why are you opposed to using personal computers for education?
They'll have computers at home. And the evidence seems to point in one direction: the more exposure kids have to devices, the more stunted their development tends to be. Add to that the class division, where rich kids are increasingly raised with strictly-policed device exposure, while poor kids' classrooms are littered with iPads and Chrombooks, and I think we can start making blanket statements.
I don’t think we need math really. They’ll be inundated with math and arithmetic their whole lives. They’ll figure it out. Just keep math out of the classroom altogether.
I'd imagine they'll mimic the Chromebook ten year support guarantee, at minimum the eight year guarantee on phones and it'll probably extend to Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo models.
Shipping enterprise desktop hardware with AI integrated features will likely be a priority to improve the cloud footprint amongst fortune 500.
The EU Cyber Resilience Act already requires updates for at least five years (or the life expectancy of the product) after the last unit was sold. So if they sell them for 5 years, they're barely keeping up with the law. On top of that, there are already voices pushing for mandatory 15 years of support.
I think it's the overexposure to the inside workings of tech that leads a dislike of these brands. As long as Amazon delivers to you the next day and accepts free returns, you're pretty happy.
It's possible (likely?) that if the concept takes off that they might license or give the software away to other hardware vendors, just like the Android ecosystem.
I was anticipating an "AI phone" from someone like Google, not an "AI laptop", although it seems to be Android compatible so maybe that is coming next.
What are they trying to gain with this product? Financial incentives obviously won't be the reason as this can only be a loss leader. They have zero chance competing against Apple in the entry market after Apple introduced the neo and obviously no chance in the lucrative premium market against the Apple.
This is not an Apple competitor, this looks to me like a rebranding of Chromebook with a bunch of AI sprinkled on top. (There's very little market overlap between the Chromebook and practically any Apple product.)
My guess is that they wanted to name this Geminibook but couldn't for some ultimately uninteresting reason.
Not sure if it matters that they compete with Apple blow-for-blow, it's probably just the threat of existential risk if they don't own any platform. They want to make sure they don't get Facebook'd by Apple if/when they decide to go fully vertical on AI.
I think you're underestimating Google's ability and willingness to launch and maintain multiple competing products that appear redundant. But you are overstating the lack of support for past ChromeOS devices, because for the enterprise and education markets the support timelines for Chromebooks have been the same as "forever".
> But you are overstating the lack of support for past ChromeOS devices, because for the enterprise and education markets the support timelines for Chromebooks have been the same as "forever".
ChromeOS devices fall out of support on a timeline. Google sometimes extends the timeline for some devices, and new devices have a longer timeline than in the past; maybe it's better for Education targeted devices, but the Chromebooks I've had for personal devices stopped getting updates and you're left with whatever state it is in; my first one stopped getting updates in the middle of the printing switch where cloud printing was discontinued and local printing didn't actually work.
My understanding is that Google has announced they will stop development for new ChromeOS devices and ten years after the last device is released (not purchased) support goes poof ... and I imagine support activity for the last 5 years of the last device's ten year support will be a lot less than the first 5 years.
I bought a Pixelbook during the middle of their product lifetime, and it was one of the best laptops I ever had. I genuinely don't know how broadly that sentiment was shared, but the cancellation of the product line suggests "not that broadly." Google has changed since that time and I am a bit skeptical this will meet that specific niche for me.
Yeah, I had the original Chromebook Pixel and the Pixelbook and they were both great. Somehow I'm still using the Pixelbook today and it chugs along.
That said, its hard to justify the prices for these premium Chromebooks. When I picked them up they were heavily discounted with some developer code or other.
I also agree with the shaky future as far as being able to actually opening these things up with developer tooling. It seems like they've simply been on a path to rollback all of that.
I don't know if these were related but I had a Pixel C tablet and I'm still upset they killed that off too. It was a nicer tablet than any Samsung I tried and felt like a genuine competitor to the iPad equivalent really excellent build quality, and then they abandoned it. I still have it but whatever they did to the software before giving up on it made it crash and blackscreen all the time while completely idle and I haven't had the energy to install something else on it, if something else even exists.
I think the big issue is it's still not a real full laptop, and that dramatically limits the audience. No matter how well it's made, they're never going to actually do what needs to be done to make it a mass market product. Google doesn't really have the dedication to be a real hardware company. Their hardware is more of a showcase to demonstrate things they want other people to do. And at this point they kill projects so often lots of folks are very hesitant to spend money on their things only for it to die, just like you experienced.
I always wanted a pixelbook as I loved the hardware design and the taller aspect ratio screen, it was just too expensive for me to spend on a chromebook only laptop. IMO it looked nicer than the Macbook Pro's of the time.
Likewise I bought the Chromebook Pixel LS and a Pixelbook during that dark period before M-series laptops and these laptops were awesome and IMO well ahead of their time. The ChromeOS with all its faults was a modern OS without legacy. For example the OS settings are closer to the Phone OS like settings vs MacOS settings that are still a mess these days.
They all suffered from severe hardware issues that got never fixed.
Chromebook Pixel 2013 had that atrocious function key row that didn't align with the rest of the keyboard and where made of different material and had terrible travel. The Pixelbook had some terrible PWDM issues with the display and iirc it also had severe ghosting issues. Not to forget the cut in performance of these mobile fanless Intel chips because of Meltdown & Spectre. I think the Pixelbook's WiFi/Bluetooth module made by Intel also suffered from hardware faults where using Bluetooth could degrade WiFi performance and vice versa.
Wiggling the mouse is what people do involuntarily when the computer isn’t working right. They are setting themselves up for Gemini to be the uninvited Clippy, except this will send everything you are working on to Google to harvest data from.
The video they show (which is probably exaggerated by cutting out LLM generation time) is pretty sci-fi. I don't know how it works in practice, but it looks fun to try out. If this could run locally, I'd love to have a feature like that.
Most people don't really seem to care about data collection when it comes to AI usage. A lot of people who will feed Gemini/ChatGPT/Bing/Claude/shady clusters across the internet for bargain bin prices/Mistral every detail of their lives will probably be fine with Gemini as long as it doesn't interfere unnecessarily.
It probably works similar to how Gemini works in Android for a while now.
You can point or select anywhere on the screen and it understands and searches the context. If you select a text block, even text inside an image, it allows to copy or search the text online. Otherwise it can search the image.
I use it often. It's intuitive and fast even on non-flagship phones.
I'd wager their A/B tests went well enough to warrant a port from phones to their new "Chromebook".
It is deliberately designed for maximum accidental invocations so the managers and execs behind it can claim the large user numbers in their promo packets.
Oh my goodness, the use cases are so… badly conceived:
> If a friend sends you a picture on your phone and you need to email it from your laptop, the file is just there — no need to email it to yourself.
So are there really people who will email a photo to themselves from their phone to… send the photo in an email?
Interesting to note that there is no mention of processor or operating system in that post. I’m guessing that it’s Android in a laptop form factor which I suppose might be something that some people would want, but I’m not one of them.
Getting files on and off of a phone is shockingly hard. Shockingly. It's even worse on an iPhone, if you don't have a mac. To get my photos from my iPhone to my PC, I had to first upload them to iCloud and then download them again. My phone and computer are, like, a foot away from each other but I had to send the photos across the country to some server and back just to look at them.
Everyone emails themself stuff, that's normal. The weird part is how often will you ever need to email it specifically from your laptop, but it's already on your phone? If it's on your phone and you need to email it to someone, couldn't you just email from your phone?
Oh, I use use AirDrop to myself for this. Yes, given my photo library syncs to iCloud, just opening Photos seems like it makes sense on a fast WAN which I sort-of do have, but of course, iCloud syncs only happen when the device decides the mood is just right, and can't be triggered manually, because I guess that would just be 'clutter' in the UI.
That's mostly an iPhone problem. Plugging in an Android phone still works, and wireless exchange with QuickShare also works on most devices. With Google reverse engineering Airdrop, I hope they can get the Android <-> macOS experience to finally work correctly soon as well.
I'm super techy but I admit that I just use Signal to send me a "Note to self" whenever I need a file from my phone on my computer quickly. For images I just use immich, but texting myself is honestly the quickest way for files because the experience is indeed terrible.
They should have just said "USE it on your laptop", not email it.
I all the time use my phone as a camera (esp. for coin photography) than e-mail the photos to myself as the most convenient way to get them on my desktop where I can edit them with GIMP etc.
I just open photos.google.com and grab them. No need to fiddle on my phone.
When on wifi, the photo backup upload starts immediately. If it doesn't (possibly due to your settings, this used to be my issue) you can manually open the photos app and tap the backup now button.
I'm not sure if that's an option for me, since I'm not using the regular camera app - I'm using Halide which is better suited to macro (coin) photography.
Google Drive would be another option to transfer, but would be more work (about same to "share" as email, but less convenient to access on desktop).
The e-mail way is actually quite convenient since on the desktop you can just download all the photos you sent in one go - they appear as a zip file that you can then just extract to your working directory, rather than having to save one at a time.
These are usually targeted at kids and newbies. My mom would 100% appreciate that feature for photos and pdfs. She still struggles with files on Windows and managing files are even less clear on chromebook.
Yeah I and i suspect a lot of others email myself little files all the time because surprisingly that's the most convenient way to get those files quickly from phone to laptop.
It’s a poor example. Recently, I did have to email myself photos taken with my phone to access them on my laptop. Would be nice if they were automatically synced. It’s work phone and laptop so I could have gone through OneDrive or Box but just as inconvenient as email.
I feel like very much not the target market for this. Tokyo Vintage Shopping Trip? LOL
I got mad when I bought a Chromebook thinking it was a cheap laptop I could install any OS on only to find it was boatloader locked and the model I bought hadnt been cracked yet. Say nothing of all of Google's recent practices with Android. This whole thing just sounds like the plague.
> For example, imagine pointing to an image of a building, and requesting “Show me directions”.
This is the biggest UI upgrade I've seen in a long time. I see why Google would build a whole device around it. Local LLM intelligence merged into the UI is all but inevitable.
The belittling comments on this story are deafening, but there is a real advance here that could diffuse fast, and more than incrementally democratize compute.
Looks like their Reddit post has a formatting error?
...as computing shifts from operating systems [to intelligence systems](TKTK)...
`[text](link)` is the syntax used to create a link. But since `TKTK` isn't a valid URI, it doesn't render a link. My guess is TKTK is placeholder and they were supposed to fill it in before posting on reddit... but forgot?
I haven't been around reddit much for a few years, but in the past at least, /r/android was one of the best tech communities on the internet. It was even better than the iPhone subs for iPhone discussion.
I mean if you think about it, the type of person to own an android phone and care enough about phones to join a community is pretty much guaranteed to only be a tech geek.
AI mouse pointer is definitely not something I wanted to think about today. A recent HN post implored vibe coders not to modify the mouse pointer and now we get this from Google.
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 restrictive use cases, but it's still at least a General Purpose OS. Android on laptop is very much not.
This is an overgrown phone with all the trash that comes with a phone, and the very finite use cases that come with a phone, only now it has a keyboard. It's solving none of the problems with Android as an operating system and doesn't seem to even be interested in doing that anyway. The marketing is demoing use cases that don't even exist.
No idea. The people that have no need to run real software and want a high end device probably have an iPad with a keyboard case. Those that want a low end device have a chromebook.
Yeah, a Chromebook's killer 'feature' is that it's web browser attached to a keyboard and functional screen for cheap on a platform that you can't otherwise screw up.
If you price that up to $1,000 (which some Chromebooks definitely do), then I start to ask a variation of the same question: Why did you buy that?
I will never buy another google hardware product again after my most recent pixel experience. I was sent a phone with a defective modem that they refused to replace. This is despite having bought 5 other pixels and also using google fi and a bunch of other google products.
I will never trust them with a hardware purchase ever again.
>I was sent a phone with a defective modem that they refused to replace
To be fair, how would they even verify this? Unless it's outright broken (eg. no cell reception), someone with a "defective modem" is basically indistinguishable from the 99 other people with a perfectly fine phone, but nonetheless want their phone replaced for various nonspecific issues about cell reception.
I can't stand websites like this. I get there's no substance to my complaint, but it just seems pointless to do this. If you want a slow reveal, do a video or something (but I won't watch that either).
I legit thought it was just an image. The first panel fills my whole phone screen and there is no indication that there is anything to scroll. I don't like this new web.
Branding is way off. Marketed as an AI laptop sounds like local inference to engineers, but no. The general public are weary of AI. The Neo is selling so well that Apple is running out of the A18 Pro chips. Rumors are that Apple may have 2 steps: mark as sold out, or upgrade to the latest iPhone SOC which comes with an upgrade to 12GB of RAM. I also suspect this is Ternus' first product launch as CEO (not officially until Sept 1).
Anyway, this will be fun to see price point, manufacturer differentiation (surprised that Google isn't building this themselves) and reviews. Hard to see how it competes with the Neo at $499 that can run a full Desktop OS and integrates well with the ecosystem.
Have you interacted with the 'general public' in the last year or so?
Every non-technical person I know uses AI for 'fact checking' now, as well as 'doing the math' before deciding something, despite these two literally being the well known blind spots of modern AI. People have adopted AI suspiciously cleanly into their habits and workflows.
The only person I have seen being weary of AI recently is a labor activist, for good reason.
A simple search for "neo" is now up to 32 results, up from 6 at the time of this comment :) Somewhere someone said why Neo when Googlebook would be 1/2 the cost, but I highly doubt its going to be $250. No official pricing has been released.
Between Crostini and Android, it's "full desktop os" that much of a differentiator? And as far as "works well with the ecosystem", the press release makes it sound like this will integrate well with an Android phone.
All of society is heading towards an incredibly unpopular future. Nobody wants this. Tech was a mistake. I wish them all failure and shame. Feel bad and quit
For those wondering why this isn't using the Pixelbook brand, the Reddit post sheds more light.
A Googlebook is something "above" a Chromebook (maybe the AI featureset imposes hardware demands that Chromebooks can't service) but is still made by third parties. I suppose they're keeping Pixelbook for first-party devices.
The most interesting part to me is the "Create your own widget". I'm really interested to see bespoke UI become a first class citizen. Why _can't_ I just ask Gemini to build a widget that serves the data I want how I want it?
Building "small" UI is for the birds, just expose the API and the basics and let users tell the AI what UI they want.
Indulge some pedantry with me... Why "Googlebook?" Pixel was meant for first-party computing devices, I thought. Nest for smart home and Fitbit for fitness trackers.
If you don't want to associate with past Pixelbooks and want to highlight Gemini, why not Geminibook or something like that? Does Google not have faith in the Gemini branding?
AI polls lower than "congress". People hate it - they hate it so much. They probably _wanted_ to call it that but someone who knows anything put their foot down.
buth the very first two bits of copy are about "intelligence" and "gemini". If they wanted to stay away from AI as branding they didn't do a great job.
Googlebook sounds like a first party hardware product but apparently it's just the new name for Androidified ChromeOS? They should have just called it "Android". And if there's ever first party hardware it should be Pixelbook or Gbook.
If Samsung isn't a Googlebook partner then those laptop OEMs could be shipping the Google desktop environment while OEMs are free to ship a Googlebook or scale up their own desktop environments.
I attended Google I/O in 2013 and was given a Chromebook Pixel, their $1300 laptop. The hardware was very, very nice, and I quite enjoyed using it for a while. One day, I dropped it and damaged the screen well outside of its warranty period. "Oh no," I thought. "This is probably going to be pretty expensive to fix." So, bracing for the damage, I called up Google and told them what had happened. They replied that there was no fixing it. They would replace the laptops under the warranty, but there was no repairing to be done. I was welcome to call around and ask local repair shops if they could do it. That went nowhere, of course.
I've been pretty skeptical of Google laptops ever since.
Looks and feels premium, but ultimately fundamentally disposable.
This pattern extends to so many goods in modern life. Washing machines, microwaves, etc aren't worth the time of a local repairman. Repair is economically incompatible with its life cycle.
Clothes are replaced, not stitched. And after a few washes at that. Cars, phones, etc, consist of proprietary parts all sealed up.
> Looks and feels premium, but ultimately fundamentally disposable.
I'd add that experiences like GP help expose that the main difference in most products between 'premium' and 'disposable' is in the branding and the price tag. With few exceptions, most companies that used to make the respected brand of the thing (e.g. Sony, G.E., Craftsman) now churn out the same garbage as you used to find 30 years ago in a fleamarket with a brand you'd never heard of - and that's if they don't actually outsource the design and/or production to that low-bidder company and simply license their logo directly to them.
And that's because these are all public or PE-owned companies, and it's a shortcut to easy short-term quarterly growth if you can cut your costs while keeping your price high or almost as high (after all, you're a "Premium Brand" so you can leverage your past reputation to trick customers into continuing to pay that premium).
That’s a western perspective because we are spoiled and have no thought for sustainability.
Please take a look at poor countries of the world like Pakistan. They have a repair culture. They have vehicles from the 80’s out on the road doing daily driving work instead of being used as vintage show pieces. It’s a poor country, this is a necessity. But nevertheless seeing the repair culture there in contrast to the disposable culture in the western world makes me pause.
This... I wonder why isn't there a market in Tijuana, Juarez and other border towns for fixing broken electronics and similar appliances.
Here in Mexico there are plenty of "unofficial" laptops/mobile (Apple, Windows, Androids) repair shops that even receive your device by DHL/UPS, fix it and return it. Because the labor costs are low enough to make it worth. The only downside is that most of the spare parts are imported from the US.
In Western countries, the time of skilled repairmen is better spent repairing things which are much more important and expensive than consumer goods.
And a consumer usually has a much higher return from working in his specialized field to earn money and buy a new product, than spending time with difficult repairs of a broken product.
Yeah, this is entirely a function of labor costs. If you want your stuff repaired, ship it to a low-labor cost economy or hire someone to whom it’s worth the time.
> labor costs are largely a function of local real estate costs
Difficult to determine causality in that system. All we can say is places with expensive labour tend to have expensive real estate. (The confounding variable, I imagine, is immigration.)
Good clothes can be definitely stitched. Some brands even offer free or reasonably priced repairs. Patagonia or Citizen Wolf are two examples that spring to mind, and it's even more common once you cross a certain price point. Same applies to good hardware, but you need to do some research before buying.
I am afraid Google's business model is incompatible with this approach as they have almost no customer service because it doesn't "scale". Actually, what they are doing is turning customer service costs into externalities, i.e. environmental waste.
Isn't that a feature not a bug? That means labor, a proxy for quality of life of the laborer, is more expensive than parts. That's abundance.
In fact, in "shithole countries" where everyone wants to emigrate from, it is exactly the opposite: i.e. you try to fix everything even if it takes sooo long.
Absolutely not when replacing costs 100% and repairing usually costs 0.1%.
And the reason people want to leave certain countries is for totally different reasons than not wanting to repair something. In fact, I would say with quite some certainty that emigrees who repaired first before leaving would still do it after emigrating.
The real reasons, in my opinion, are: 1) it takes skill and will to repair something yourself, 2) something new generally feels better than repaired/used, 3) logistics make replacing/repairing less cost efficient, 4) with every replace, companies have a new touchpoint to try to upsell their customers, 5) it takes less time to go to a shop and replace than repair, 6) it takes some giving a shit about the environment to prefer the more complicated route. And probably more.
If repairing usually cost 0.1% then everyone would do it.
The reason almost nobody in first-world countries is getting their microwave repaired is because it often costs more than buying a new one. This is because the new unit is manufactured overseas in a place with cheap labor, but the existing unit has to be repaired locally with expensive labor.
Of course people aren't emigrating because they don't want to repair things. But they are often emigrating because they want to live in a place with high labor costs (i.e. high salaries), or for other reasons that are very strongly correlated with high labor costs.
This is actually a thought-provoking perspective! I have to admit you're right in your conclusions, though the issues are:
1. The waste is still a tremendous shame, both in the materials that will realistically never be recovered in 'recycling', and in the toxicity that results from a lot of that trash created.
2. Jobs in repairing lots of things were arguably pretty good jobs, and we've traded these for, best case, more complete drudgery retailing/supply chain jobs as we get a new laptop every year or two instead of 5 years. Arguably a bigger failing of our economic system, which doesn't seem capable of adapting to global trade, or this shift we're discussing here, nor AI, but still a bummer regardless of fault.
> repair requires more labor than recreating the entire product
It requires specialized and local labor. For products you can ship back to the assembly line, this can sometimes work. If you need a local technician, on the other hand, because the assembly line is in China or the product is heavy, yeah, it very well may be that there is no niche where repairs aren’t a material fraction of a new product.
this logic does not hold up if the reason that labor is more expensive than parts is that the labor involved in creating those parts has been outsourced to a "shithole country"
If anything the causality is exactly the opposite. The labor cost will go up (empirically provable) in such "shithole countries" once work is outsourced to them, improving their livelihood.
What are you talking about. Trash is inexpensive, but Americans absolutely pay for it (solid waste utility bill). I think people conceptualize that they have utility bills?
Where Americans are renters and garbage service is hidden in their monthly rent payment, sure, but for Americans who own a home, they have to pay their local jurisdiction a fee for taking away trash and recycling and compost (and batteries and light bulbs). Also sewage and water.
Wat. Almost all Americans either pay someone to deal with their waste or are dependents of someone who pays on their behalf. Do you think we're all burning our trash in barrels or dumping it in the local river or something?
Horseshit. It means we're doing less with more and anyone with a brain should be able to figure out that's bad for Quality of Life on a long term. Wasting your resources is not how an economy grows strong.
Labor is an input too. Fixing something in a way that saves some materials, but requires hours of skilled labor and specialized equipment doesn't straightforwardly mean you're saving overall.
There are various localities that add recycling fees to electronics. They're on the order of 1% of the purchase price, so it's unlikely to make a difference in the repair vs replace calculation.
I'm going to offer a counter narrative here based upon my experience. I have LG appliances and they have fairly reasonable "fix everything wrong" prices. It's not literally everything, your bells and whistles might not work, but if you want just a washing machine, just a dishwasher, or just a fridge/freezer, it will be less expensive than the cheapest new option out there.
When our fridge stopped fridging, we got it fixed for $300: this included replacing the compressor and the coils. When our dishwasher stopped washing, we paid $250 to have 3 or so things fixed at once. And so on.
I don't know if any appliance makers offer this, but if LG still offers it when we eventually replace, they're going to be on the top of my list.
> Repair is economically incompatible with its life cycle.
No, it's because repair involves labor and unless we ship it across the world to take advantage of people making a dollar a day it's just not worth it.
The cost of making and importing stuff from the third world is just so cheap now that it's simpler to get a new one then to have someone making a living wage in the west fix it.
My washing machine started making weird loud noises recently. Had a repair guy come by and he told me it's the plastic gears in the gearcase wearing down. I asked him what it would cost to repair and he said with parts and labor it would be cheaper to buy a new one. He told me to just keep using it and deal with the noise until it stops working, so that's what I'm doing. When the time comes I'm considering paying $150 for the new gearcase and trying to fix it myself, but it's so stupid to that it's come to this
The rose-tinted era of things being made to last never really happened. For each of the old survivor washing mashines, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and Casiotron wrist watches that are still out there doing good work, countless thousands of others were recycled or landfilled because it was better to buy something different than to fix the old one.
It was never cheap to pay someone to work on stuff. The costs of hiring professional labor and the overhead associated with that labor (for service techs, that means things like vehicles, buildings, inventory, tools, training, insurance, book keeping, and covering next week's paycheck even if this week was slow) have always been expensive.
Parts have always been relatively expensive, too. Availability of parts has always been somewhat hit-or-miss.
It seems like an unpopular opinion, but I don't think it came to this. Instead, I think that it started off this way, and that it simply remains this way today.
So, sure: $150 for a new widget? Not so bad. Maybe a pro could get it done in a few hours (maybe they can even get two of them done in one workday!), while perhaps it will take you a day or two to work through R&Ring this thing on your own for the first time.
Whether the total investment (including time) is worth it to you is a personal decision, but that kind of decision-making is also not new. :)
Plastic gears in a washing machine just seems stupid, though. That's probably on me for buying a cheap one, but the repair guy said it's extremely common now, even in nicer models
It's the result of manufacturing at scale being so tremendously more efficient. It really does use less human effort, resources, energy, whatever metric you want to measure, to just produce a brand new one than to produce a more resource-intensive one and then try to fix in a one-off fashion.
Unlike a lot of hardware and such in our homes, this mostly just boils down to people refusing to learn and is incredibly easy to remedy. Basic stitching is not super difficult. My partner has very light knowledge of stitching, learned it mostly as a kid and never used it much, but has repaired plenty of my clothes. I'm wearing stitched jeans as we speak (pocket got caught on a hook and tore nearly off). Typically gives my regularly worn clothes an extra year or two of life.
Strata
Pixels,
Nest Cameras
Google Smart Speakers
Nest Home Security system
but then I broke my Google Pixel 1 watch. I ended up chatting with service in India and they pretty much told me that there was no way to fix it. After that, I quit buying all things Google and switched to Apple. Now I only buy Google software products, no consumer devices.
How is Apple any different? IIRC Apple watches have an abysmal repairability score too.
If anything, Apple is in general the worst on this particular metric. Switching to Apple because you had a repairability problem with another brand is kinda funny.
I haven't had an issue with Apple, but it's only been 3.5 years.
Are there stories where Apple straight up said they wouldn't repair a watch? I thought they'd repair it even if the repairs were more the the replacement value.
I went all in on the Nest ecosystem when I bought my house eight years ago, and Google absolutely ruined it with the botched acquisition. Half the stuff is Google branded, half is Nest branded, a different half has Google branded software and a different half has Nest branded software. None of it really works reliably anymore. The lock to my front door is completely incompatible with modern "Google Home" and I'm unable to change its passcode.
It's a total disaster and I will never buy Google hardware again.
Tying the browser version to the system version was a mistake too. Once it stopped getting system updates, it stopped being compatible with big corners of the web that expect Chrome to always be the newest version.
That's still the default state of Google Hardware. Just look at their out-of-warranty Pixel Watch repairs.
And if you're not in North America (or EU), chances are very high that any repair to Pixels is going to be either not possible or will cost you dearly. I personally had a terrible experience of this with Pixel 7 Pro that was in warranty and had a water-related damage, since then, I've stayed away from any device made by Google.
I really miss the Chromebook Pixel / Pixelbook / whatever it was called.
It was my travel laptop for at least 5 years.
It was expensive, but the quality, performance, and durability was top tier. And it lasted 5+ years.
The Pixelbook also had a "Google Assistant" button built in the keyboard. Should be easy enough to relaunch the hardware and swap in a gemini button...
Those original Chromebook Pixels were awesome machines.
I wish they'd had open bootloaders, but I seem to recall you had to keep it in developer mode which required a nag screen, or something along those lines, if you wanted to run your own OS on it.
You can easily remove the nag screen by opening the device and unscrewing a screw and running coreboot with SeaBIOS. Pretty neat security approach (not too hard to do, not too easy for a layman to fall for instructions to self-compromise). I have two that work just fine today.
When I was actively hacking my chromebook, there was tons of advice like this, and 90% of it didn't work on both arm and intel-based chromebooks, and the advice-givers never mentioned which category it worked on. Sometimes it was buried 5 paragraphs into the webpage you were sent to for downloads, sometimes not.
Has any of this changed?
Also, I tend to take with a grain of salt any comment that starts with "it's easy/simple/obvious", especially if it doesn't provide details or a link.
I was talking about a specific device on a specific dimension brought up by the GP, i.e., "freedom to tinker for the owner while preserving security for the masses." Whether that became a standardized process is a different story. By and large it has changed across models, but nevertheless it was a good balance of ownership/hackability without compromising security that can be emulated by other devices if they choose to.
Another perspective from the posters saying "rich people"; in most advertising, it is aimed at aspiration and not reality - so "people who want to be rich leisure class people, or social media influencers", which tracks for a low-end laptop for a younger phone-native audience.
Advertising aimed at the actually rich is usually more about saving time, "elevated" experiences, or building legacy.
The ZipAir direct flight can get you a week long trip from SF to Tokyo for ~$750 outside of peak seasons, although I'm not sure what their rates for extra bags are if you were only going to shop.
the last time I went to Japan was I think 2015 and the exchange rate was about 120 yen to the dollar. I bought almost all of the clothing that I wore for the next year or two during a stretch of three days in Tokyo. The exchange rate right now is 155 yen to the dollar and prices on everything in the US have gone through the roof, so this doesn't seem all that ridiculous to me. I am more annoyed by the assumption that I live in SF than the idea that I might go from SF to Tokyo on a vintage shopping trip.
My wife and I actually went to Tokyo for a vintage shopping trip haha. I went to Shinjuku to buy vintage camera lenses and she went to Omotesando to buy a vintage bag. I mean, we did other stuff besides vintage shopping too, like eating good food, but still.
Like most things in tech, it's targeted at upper middle class or rich people since they have way way more disposable income. It's a "premium Chromebook" which, as much as I like Chromebooks, seems like you would need a lot of disposable income before considering since most actually resource intensive stuff (video games, video editing, etc) you wouldn't get a Chromebook for.
From past phone launch ads, its usually the people who were always looking for dinner reservations, concert booking, meeting at drinks. Basically leisure class people. So this vintage shopping trip seems to fit right in.
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 screen are somehow both still fantastic, speakers great, experience snappy. It is phenomenal hardware, and if this 'Googlebook' comes even remotely close (and I suspect it will), I'm buying one as soon as I can.
There are a lot of people here complaining about AI and Google and Android and Ads and clothes and marketing and whatever. I'm assuming a lot of that is HN anti-AI derkaderbs bias, with some Apple/Google tribalism for good measure. Yeah Gemini might be shite at writing code, but Gemini Web / Android is by far the best executed and most useful conversational/consumer AI assistant out there (at least in my experience, it's not even close).
I'm not a Google fan by any means, but credit where credit is due, I don't see a timeline where they don't end up completely owning genpop consumer AI. The more I think about that the more convinced I am, and the more I feel uncomfortable.
Very upfront: "Don't pay attention to RAM, processor, battery, monitor, price, etc. We're not telling you that, because you'd laugh. We're selling access to web services. Lower your expectations, get excited for AI. Please clap".
Very rough. Moore's lesser-known cousin, Les, predicted transistor density-per-dollar would actually start to decrease over time. I guess Google's ready for that world?
And even the most virulently pro-AI people I know aren't using any of these services Google is trying to market as sexy. Who is this for? "Make a band poster for my kid", could they have chosen a sadder example?
It doesn't help that the first result on Google for "Google book" is Google Books. Even their "AI overview" is helpfully telling me about the specifications and pricetags of books on Google Books.
I thought that too, but it looks like this isn't a laptop but a new laptop class, and Lenovo, Dell and HP will all be producing Googlebooks. This does not appear to be a first-party laptop product.
I agree with "who is this for" but to be fair to Google's example, the most common use I see of AI for "normal people" besides chat/homework is creating event/business posters and small business promo graphics. The kind of stuff that used to be a Canva template, can now be created quicker/easier with an AI prompt. I agree it's a super-lame use for AI, but the average person's use-cases for AI as it exists now are still very limited (IMHO).
"Designed for Gemini Intelligence" is the primary marketing tag on the splash page. It's so underwhelming I'm not even going to bother to look into the details. Are people pleading for a laptop that is even more highly integrated with AI, above all else?
Somehow all the Windows laptops are now "Copilot PCs" now. It's crazy...
Anyway, you didn't miss out on anything by not bothering to look into the details. There are no details. No specs, no nothing. Only "get notified" for when it comes in fall.
It's a shame because I love the Pixel series and they're doing it a disservice by not marketing it better. Apple's copy on the other hand is generally excellent.
What is the product here? A chromebook with a different name, and some Gemini stuff thrown on top of the UI?
This really just feels like an incremental upgrade to ChromeOS, with a new name to distance it from a brand that's synonymous with "cheap crap schools give to kids."
Yeah especially the AI stuff is so... not a driving force for anyone to buy this?
For me, unless you can run LLM's and whatnot locally (which is not the case on this undisclosed low-end hardware), "AI" just means doing some API call to a web service and have it serve me some freshly made up tokens. You can do that on a potato. The fact that they happily announce something that can be done on any other cheap-ass laptop as the main selling point, means this product is nothing special at all.
Unfortunately, there is almost no point buying this when the MacBook Neo exists, and runs a full-fledged operating system rather than ChromeOS or Gemini or whatever it is they’re calling it.
No, it isn't. If you're making hardware product, sell me hardware thats worth it. No spec sheet, just AI pushing. Chromebook 2.0 where the chromebook was a browser for an OS.
As someone with a closet full of dead Google devices, I just can’t get excited about new hardware from them.
I think LLMs have the potential to make computers work how we’ve always envisioned them to (i.e. 60s sci-fi), but I’m also not convinced a dedicated laptop is the right form.
With that said, a 128GB RAM MacBook Pro is getting tantalizingly close to running useful local LLMs.
If the Googlebook was announced as a machine capable of running a small Gemini model locally, I’d probably enter back into the abusive relationship I have with Google hardware and preorder it…
I know people are kinda freaky on here with all the LLM love, but saying "tantalizing" here is a little on the nose, if not just plain weird. Get a room!
The second feature shown in this global launch is ... widgets. Like, Windows Vista widgets. And then, I could also open phone apps but not on my phone but on my computer (because I'd want to do that) and then the remaining feature is file sync.
I am just lost.
I wanna watch a documentary on how this kind of thing gets thought out and made and approved by a lot of people and then comes to being annouced as an actual hardware product.
Wow. That has to be one of the worst announcements I have ever seen. A hardware launch that only talks about software and most of the software is AI. This announcement is nothing. This could have been a ChromeOS update.
A plastic macbook lookalike with no ports, a mobile phone OS, a 1366x768 display and probably the cheapest SoC they can scrounge from the parts bin.
This thing, like all other google/android products, will be DOA, and the ones actually duped into buying one will be left with a paperweight in a year or two when the cheap hardware inevitably breaks.
It is not very encouraging that most of the marketing materials on the website show the Googlebook having filleted (rounded) edges similar to Macbook Neo, but the video shows the laptop having a bevelled profile similar to framework 13. Seems like a hastily put together attempt at a response to the acclaimed Macbook Neo. Literally zero information on the page apart from the "fall" release window.
That page has logos of Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo. That makes me assume this won’t be a Google product, but a series of products that carry the “Googlebook” label.
If so, there likely will be some variation in the cases.
The product photos that reveal about as much as a monster in a JJ Abrams movie is because I don't think they have "Google" production hardware it sounds like they'll be farming this out to the ASUSes and HPs of the world.
There was a time where Google could've been competitive in this space, specifically against Apples MacBook product line, but that has long since passed. The 3rd party manufacturer path means Google isn't committed to this and won't have competitive hardware. It'll just be another Chromebook and limited to the Google Play Store too, which just isn't good at this point.
The quality of apps in the Google Play Store has dropped massively. There are still some gems, but for better or worse, the ecosystem is simply not as strong as Apples and it's certainly not comparable to just having a device where you can install anything you'd like in a full desktop grade OS.
Why does this entire page read like an LLM wrote it in response to "Imagine Google is making a new desktop operating system built on Android. It's focused on total app compatibility, parity with the Apple ecosystem, Linux development and power users, and deep AI integration. Write the promo page for this operating system."?
Also
> Intelligent Window Management
The OS learns your workflow patterns and proactively arranges windows, prepares files, and opens apps before you ask.
Bleh.
Edit: Oh, it is that. A fan decided to make an LLM write a promo page assuming the role of Google marketing for an unreleased, unannounced project and make up all the details.
I’ll be blunt and say this looks like a rebrand of ChromeOS with a normal keyboard and AI slapped in it.
Chromebooks are associated with low quality garbage that people only buy if they’re desperate.
I don’t think this product will be successful. Someone buying a laptop at all needs more compatibility than Google’s OSes offer. Even with Android apps, those are all really shoved in haphazardly.
Why am I buying this when I can get a MacBook for $499?
Fuchsia ended up in some Google products, such as Nest Hub, Nest Hub Max, and Google's smart speakers, thermostats and displays.
But Fuchsia won't be in the Googlebook because there's no Chrome browser for Fuchsia. (In early 2024, Google officially stopped trying to port the full, desktop version of Chrome to Fuchsia.)
The dream of Fuchsia is effectively dead, and aside from some older Nest devices, Google only remaining efforts with the OS is basically as a tiny runtime that they'll run in VMs on Android for some secure process needs.
It was just a speculative research project and a bunch of bloggers went wild declaring it the end of Android, Linux (Android of course sitting on Linux), ChromeOS, etc. That was never real.
Zircon is still under development with recent RFC's extending the memory synchronization and attribution model for processes.
There was also more extension added to one of the key disk formats in March which has an eye to more flexible long term evolution and adaptation to particular device form factors.
The publicly available evidence does nothing to support your claims, entirely the opposite.
I used to work on Fuchsia, I have not for many years now and have no idea what their current roadmap looks like, but I do know where to actually look up what's been done recently, which is all public and you could do as well.
Anyway I have no idea if this has any fuchsia code in it.
Okay? Is this impressive? Do you think it shows something? Bizarrely whenever people point out how much of a flop Fuchsia is (relative to the hype a decade ago), there is always someone like you citing commit count. Weird.
The vast majority of the commits are tiny commits to change a version number or rename a test. Or to pass some lint tests. I know tiny two man shops that have much more substantial commits each day.
I didn't say it was dead, though did I? Not quite sure what kicked off your bizarre defensive, asshole-ish screed. I specifically said that it most likely will be a tiny runtime for VM processes in Android.
But Fuchsia, announced A DECADE AGO, remains utterly irrelevant, aside from a couple of poorly received, dogshit Nest devices. And we know that Google massively downsized the team and basically moved on, and from people I've talked to it is now basically a make work project.
Yeah, the chances that Fuchsia powers this device is 0.0000%. I hugely doubt it even appears on the device at all.
So the dream, as constantly restated on here, is pretty clearly absolutely dead.
Calling it "just a speculative research project" is severely underestimating how big of an effort Fuschia was. At its peak it had a couple hundred eng IIRC.
I don't think that description underestimates it at all. Google took a moonshot and threw a lot of resources at it, but they in no way put eggs in that basket so when it didn't yield something substantial they just scattered the team and now they keep trying to get something out of that investment.
I'm curious what this means for ChromiumOS and downstreams like FydeOS.
If Google is now pushing this "intelligence‑first" desktop experience, how much of that work is likely to stay in the proprietary ChromeOS/Googlebook layer vs. land in upstream ChromiumOS?
This is how I feel. No matter what they do at this point it is moot as they cannot be trusted to maintain products into the future. So much so it is a meme at this point.
Mostly dismissive comments, it seems. Maybe justified. But I think a more interesting conversation is what happens if this or other devices like it become a hit? I wonder if the next generation of users will look at computers with no AI features the way we look at MS-DOS.
Love the confidence of launching a teaser page with zero specs. I’m not emotionally prepared to be marketed to before I know how much RAM it has.
Google basically said “here’s a mysterious glowing rectangle” and expected us spec junkies not to immediately start clawing at the walls for a datasheet, and losing sleep for weeks on end until we get them.
Most comments here are about Chromebook/Googlebook hardware. But IMO the more interesting part is AI-native OS features. Unfortunately it seems like not a ton, but I think the future is in custom software created from user prompts.
Ie the other day I wanted to track my clipboard history, and I preferred to trust a locally coded & executed AI-generated clipboard history mac app over a random github project.
Now obviously trusting AI has its own concerns vs trusting people, but interested in other ways companies will reimagine interfaces with AI
Original Pixelbook was amazing and my fam still uses it. Wish they just stuck to the lineup and kept iterating vs giving up and trying to rebrand every few years.
When I saw the name, Googlebook I had my fingers crossed that Google had finally built something that could compete with the Apple MacBook. If that ad is anything to go by, this will flop and there will be no shortage of consumers who will go along for the ride.
If it ends up having ML-centric hardware, like a version of their TPUs, the story could change, especially if they don't try to keep it locked within their ecosystem. Local AI is the future.
so Aluminum OS is finally here. it should be big enough of an announcement by itself but what we get is googlebook; hardware with an AI-tied value proposition. how do they think people would justify choosing a googlebook over everything else only to use gemini?
I wish it was framed around the OS and how it can run on a wide range of devices (similar to android and chrome os) and become something more in time (maybe with apps that can be developed outside the android ecosystem with a desktop experience in mind).
I bet you all share the same feeling looking at it: it will be pretty OK for 2 years and then become abandon-ware soon after, like it is with Google products typically. Or not, but you still have that scepticist gut feeling about it.
Yeah the name is a little clumsy sounding. I think Pixelbook isn't as recognizable as Chromebook.
I guess they don't want the baggage from Chromebook because Chrome is a given Google wants people to think Google == AI the way they think Chrome == internet.
We may not like Copilot but the truth is Google's OS is already delivering what Apple Intelligence promised on laptops and phones. Google has a lot of customers, a good amount of Apple customers seem to want Apple Intelligence. I'm interested in seeing how Google does against Apple (and curious what GoogleBook will cost). It's important to remember that it was in the works long before MacBook Neo was announced and maybe even before it was rumored.
After the Pixelbook, I don't think I'm giving their hardware another chance. When through all the choices, back on Mac for that sweet silicon and a solid desktop.
This is the dumbest branding Google has ever come up with and I am here for it. I can't wait for the memes. Is that your Chromebook? No, it's my Googlebook!
Edit: It lists five OEMs, so it's not a Pixel equivalent, not Google-made hardware. Which makes it funnier, actually. Like if Windows laptops from every OEM were called Microsoftbooks.
I have a hard time seeing how any Chromebook above $ 349,- could still survive in an post-MacBook Neo age.
Say what you want, a cheap Windows laptop at least has an edge on obscure software compatibility over MacOS and a notebook running any modern Linux distro gets the luxury of user control. ChromeOS meanwhile has neither. Paying more for worst in class software compatibility inferior build quality, design and restrictive lock-in sounds about as appealing as a chicken tartare from the value bin.
Prior to (again) getting a MacBook Pro, I wanted to make a high end Laptop (ASUS ProArt P16, about € 3500,- back then) work with Fedora, but purely on a basis of build quality and input feel, it was unusably poor. That trackpad deserves a place in hell and if that (or likely a worse one given cost cutting) is what the Asus and Acer models get, competing with the Neo is a cruel joke.
HP and especially Lenovo fare better, I can at least live with those though a Neos input is nicer if we compare their current devices at the same price, so unless Google is willing to heavily subsidise a brand that, let's be honest, is unlikely to garner any loyalty, I can't see them being overly competitive either, given the software limits of ChromeOS.
> ChromeOS meanwhile has the worst compatibility off all four
ChromeOS can run desktop Linux software and Android software, so it definitely isnt worse than Mac. Its probably even better than Windows. Of course, if you need Mac/Windows software, Web/Android/Linux alternatives might not exist or might be worse. But the devices are hardly lacking software compatibility.
No, ChromeOS cannot. You can only run Linux applications via Crostini. Heavily sandboxed and restricted to limited hardware access, that is not software compatible by any reasonable measure. If that counts, my MacBook is compatible with all software ever made via UTM. Also, lest we forget ISA. If these Googlebooks are arm64, that restricts software compatibility further still as Crostini doesn't translate between arm64 and x86_64, so we are going from poor, limited support, to worse.
For reference:
> Cameras aren't yet supported.
> Android devices are supported over USB, but other devices aren't yet supported.
> Android Emulators aren't yet supported.
> Hardware acceleration isn't yet supported, including GPU and video decode.
> ChromeVox is supported for the default Terminal app, but not yet for other Linux apps.
It’s amazing to scroll through this whole product page and leave feeling like I don’t know what it really does / who it’s for.
Why are these features compelling? I went through the whole page and still don’t know what OS runs on this laptop… the value prop for this is incredibly unclear.
Features like the magic cursor look cool: an infinitely flexible context menu. However, context menus make it clear what you can and cannot do. If the magic cursor can't "do everything reasonable", it'll be just as usable as Siri.
I'd be more likely to believe them if they had already implemented this feature on their Pixel phones, but they haven't so I expect it probably isn't "done".
One of the really nice things of the Macs (from Neo to Studio) is that they have a single UI (that might or might not be ideal for you, but it is unified,) yet underneath it has a Unix OS that lets you run standard compilers, docker containers, vms whatnot. The pixel and chromebooks were nice as a device to run a browser on, but not for development. Getting EMacs to run on them felt like a big achievement at the time.
I cannot think of a product I'd like to own less than a machine fully-integrated with Google. And I'm not some "never Google" guy—my company's entire email infrastructure lives on Google. It's a necessary evil for us.
But... Google owning my hardware? This feels so out of left field. I must not be the target audience.
reminds me of the pixel c! that thing was pretty neat. this thing has the same "glowbar"... i bet it's old stock for them now since the pixel c didn't see many sales; that was from an era where google at least pretended to be a 'good guy.'
i have always liked netbooks more than chromebooks (but I really only ever had the samsung NC10, specifically for the keyboard). i really miss that thing. these days i am wary of the gewgly eyes on my digital person, so i'ma pass on this til someone less on the radar makes another platform pop.
where to next! linux on risc-v? steamOS on ARM? screenless lozenge wirelessly coupled to an EEG that makes me hallucinate images?
I’m not sure I understand the customer use case for this.
1- Chromebooks have made huge inroads in schools because they’re easy to maintain, share, upgrade, and they’re very cheap.
2- Obviously, running desktop software is a huge new piece of the ecosystem, but isn’t this customer already opting for Windows/Mac, who have extremely robust 30-year ecosystems and suites like Office, iLife, Adobe, etc that will obviously never build for this platform
There’s no way Google OS ever hits any kind of parity of exclusive software that is unavailable on Windows/Mac. Best they can do is run Android apps. This also introduces a high new threat vector to their existing customers who might not want it.
Lastly, what will this do to Chromebook buyers who are now wondering which OS will be actively developed in 5 years?
There's now a Photoshop web, and Google has their own office suite. Canva and Figma are websites. iLife is discontinued. Are there specific things in "etc" that you're thinking of? Davinci Resolve and Blender are available for Linux and thus Crostini on a Chromebook/Googlebook. ChromeOS came out in 2011, 15 years ago. So not 30, but it's been around a while now.
Related: How is it possible for Google in 2026 to get away without a cookie banner that allows you to manage your tracking preferences? The cookie notification only links to a "Learn more" [0] page but provides no specifics on how cookies are used on this site? Is this some legal wizardry or plain ignorance of the GDRP?
They don't have to offer a version of the website without consent. As long as they inform you that the site will use cookies if you use it that should be GDPR-compliant.
The main thrust behind their foray into hardware was that they feared being cut off. Whoever controls the terminal has the power to push users toward their own platforms (Bing, Microsoft 365, etc), and I guess they could see the writing on the wall and wanted to have a platform they control.
As for this project, I think part of it is just the conclusion of internal power plays between Chrome and Android. The other half is probably the same fear as before: if Microsoft puts their own AI closer to the user, Google will have a hard time keeping up. So the best defense is to have your own "AI-first" OS.
Keep in mind that Microsoft doesn't need to win to hurt Google's bottom line. For example, if Bing captures 5% of search through OS- and browser-bundling strategies, that's still a 5% that Google can't have.
Seems like they want a MacBook for people with Pixel phones. Okay. I assume it will be an ARM based system running some Android variant, if you can seamlessly launch Android apps on it. "Designed for Gemini Intelligence" is somewhat repellant - look at how poorly MS has done pushing Copilot on people. Overall I'd need way more info to know if this is a device I'd be interested in at all, but since I have a MacBook and iPhone, I don't think I'm the target market. Perhaps their ideal target market, but it seems like this would be best for people who are already knee deep in the Google ecosystem.
HN always disappoints me with these kind of threads, with all the generic disappointment and Google scepticism dominating the conversation.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still disappointed. But mainly because it looks so superficial. I was trying to work out what's new and it just looks like an Android device (or Chrome? I can't tell) with some party trick Gemini features sprinkled on it. There isn't anything technically interesting here.
I'm still waiting for someone to ship a truly AI native device - something with the right sandboxing and UI layers to let an AI model truly understand and work with the device natively, but safely. The OS SDK itself should natively incorporate all these elements as first class primitives. And the model would be trained heavily to explicitly understand and work well with them.
I presume since they're going to be actually showing off the details of the Aluminium OS at Google IO, they probably want to keep it surprising, so that should hopefully explain the sparse details. HN is a bubble... this sentiment about Google really isn't widely shared. Personally, I'm pretty happy that Android is coming to desktop, I really feel like Windows and macOS need more competition. Unless Valve does something spectacular with Linux desktop adoption, Android is probably the best bet.
I really wanted to stay in the google chromebook / googlebook echo system. But the hardware was expensive for what you get. Apple announced the macbook neo and I picked one up. Great hardware. can run light weight mac software. I don't run much beyond chrome and wahoo SYSTM (bike trainer app). It's really solid hardware and cost $600 or so.
I use gemini extensively (and claude). But - do I need this integrated in my laptop? Don't quite see it. And it's hard to beat Apple on hardware now.
Am I the only person who PANICs whenever I accidentally somehow activate the AI on my android? I'm so conditioned to panic whenever I see that floating rainbow that the whole marketing page is covered in I get very negative feelings.
I'm going to need to see how that top bar works. If they've ruined the ChromeOS UI by not allowing maximized windows to use the top of the screen for tab bars then I will be very disappointed.
On the other hand, if maximized windows work properly and Linux apps are still supported and they have a Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme version, I might be interested. The Snapdragon is very competitive with Apple's M5 even including single core performance and battery life.
Who thought wiggling the cursor to invoke AI is a good idea?
People do this when the system is stuck or something is not working for some reason, and this will just add extra burden when that happens.
It's such a bad idea that I can see Microsoft immediately adopting this! (Opens up three variants of copilot, one deprecated and spins without getting the API handle right.)
Yeah, if you now check for 'pc is stuck' by wiggling your mouse, you suddenly eat up more resources if it actually was getting stuck, making matters worse.
But at least your AI can then tell you it will all be okay eventually.
I like the idea of a phone that fully inserts into a laptop bay to get its functionality in a different form factor. Not sure the laptop needs a powerful CPU, if any. Or it could have a really powerful one while adding storage and memory.
I personally would want to also be able to switch off the telco signal.
Perhaps the bay would be in the laptop screen itself and the two screens could operate side-by-side - or in the main body and the phone would go dormant.
What in the Microsoft Surface is this? Are they trying to frame a life-long dependency on Google's LLMs as a feature?
Also, I find it funny that they have burned through the "chromebook" and "pixelbook" branding already, leaving them with the less snappy "googlebook." Not sure if the third time's the charm here.
I am not anti-AI, but if I am going to use AI I far prefer to have control over how I engage with it. Having a piece of hardware to focused on Google's own AI flavor being built in is a big negative to me. Not that I would totally write off this new Googlebook (despite disliking the name), but I can't really see a situation where I'd ever prefer this over an Apple Neo for example.
This is an attempt to flood the desktop interface market of laptops, and likely eventually desktops, with their hardware running their OS so they can enforce attestation at the hardware level across all classes of devices and lock you out of their attested Web if you’re not using one of the big three companies hardware and operating systems.
Had a pixelbook and it was hands down one of the best laptops I ever had. Sure, ChromeOS is fairly boxed in but the Linux VM was reasonably good and the built quality was just something else.
I wish they'd just make ~ pixelbook with ubuntu... it'd be such a powermove, and they if anyone could pull it off
I was excited at first by this, but the "designed for gemini intelligence"... like what does that even mean
Competition is always good. I got a Mac Neo recently to supplement my larger 16” MBP and they really nailed it. It’s the perfect laptop for kids and travel. Most importantly it feels like it’ll last for a decade like my MBP. I hope it’s the same for googlebooks but even pixels have issues with surviving beyond 5 years.
The interesting thing to me is that this is Android based if I understand correctly. The Google TV Android based experience is very good, I've been wanting a good Android based desktop OS since forever.
Does it use ChromeOS or Android? I read an unreliable comment in Reddit that Google may be forced to sell ChromeOS to satisfy antitrust lawsuit. The comment provided zero evidence for the conjecture.
Google Engineers don't even the other *books much for work, if they don't exclusively dogfood their own products, you know they don't have much faith to keep it going. Likewise their own phones.
So this is replacing the "Chromebook Plus" line of AI-certified laptops, and also adding new Google hardware replacing the abandoned Google Pixel Slate/Chromebook Pixel?
Their history of committment in supporting their hardware is too far from pleasing. I wouldn't touch Google hardware again (other than Pixels) with the tip of my toe.
All the shots at the name apart I think this is a very good strategic move. The other frontier labs would die to have this level of surface available for their models as a testing ground, with the current state of things on Apple side the ChatGPT on MacOS integration is probably the best everyone will get for a good time on how a full integration of LLM model with OS could really looks like.
Agents will need a different level of understanding of your activities across different surfaces to act effectively, IMHO the OS is the perfect place to offer it.
It looks great. If the price is good, I think it will sell well. The only thing holding it back is Google’s own reputation of canceling things so rapidly.
WTF is a Googlebook?
"Hey buddy, you got a little googlebook hanging out of your nose, a little nasty looking googlebook. Don't eat it, that's so gross!"
I'd buy it, but for me, Google lost it's credibility when they made Chromebook on an a Linux kernel but kept the specs too low, and even made sure to hijack the market by providing for free to schools
I used to use Chromebooks as a souped-up iPad with Linux terminal support.
They missed a great opportunity to create a special user interface experience supporting multiple tasks (e.g. Gemini-CLI, anti gravity, Gemini-chat, browser) while sharing the same context . It could have been an awesome developer device . Imagine virtual desktops all sharing the same context with various tools : Gemini-CLI working on infra and artifacts, Antigravity running development , Gemini chat generating graphics assets. Hardware enabled with special shared memory / NPU.
Instead, I see a Chromebook with the nagging MS Edge “right click for copilot”.
Something I appreciate about ChromeOS is that updates are basically invisible. I'm worried they're gonna fuck up and overcomplicate something simple by having it run full-blown Android.
Just think of all the times that you're happily using a browser and now these sites are going to demand you install an app after they detected you can because of the user agent. Ugh.
This was my thought too, but I didn't see anything to rule that out, did you? It says "built for Gemini Intelligence" so probably has some hardware requirement like that
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 Squarespace. Why even spend the money?
Why? Are you thinking this will be a 128GB behemoth running models locally? That'd be pretty cool but it almost certainly isn't. I bet it's a very lightweight device that just calls a remote Gemini model.
My understanding is that the shortage has more to do with DRAM manufacturer capacity, rather than specifically making chips with high RAM amounts.
From TrendForce's analysis:
"The laptop market's 2026 shipments have been revised down from the previously expected annual growth of 1.7% to -2.8%, and further adjusted to -5.4%. Brands with highly integrated supply chains and more flexible pricing, such as Apple and Lenovo, have more flexibility to handle rising memory prices. However, low-end and consumer laptop brands face difficulty passing on costs and are constrained by processor and operating system requirements, making further spec reductions difficult."
Google can obviously just make this machine more expensive, but to launch a completely new brand of consumer laptops in a year where production is already very constrained is only going to exacerbate the core issue.
Let me elaborate if it isn't obvious. If it is higher, people will just use their regular laptops ie. there will be no use case. If it is low, it will find it's use. Like when I am travelling, this would be amazing.
"We’re bringing together the best of Android, which comes with powerful apps on Google Play and a modern OS that’s designed for Intelligence, and ChromeOS, which comes with the world’s most popular browser."
Many have tried desk/laptop and phone integration before, but it never seems to work smoothly, which surprises me because it doesn't seem that hard, at least to run phone apps on the larger screen (with some icon modification, etc.); and it doesn't stick as a feature, which surprises me because I'd think almost anyone would want to easily integrate the two.
I wonder why this time will be different? Is there demand now? Does Google have some trick up their sleeve? Do they have a universal development platform that makes it easy to write apps for both platforms?
Is this a rebranding of Chromebook Plus? For those who haven't been following the laptop form factor recently, Chromebook Pluses with Mediatek Kompanio Ultra SoCs are the best deals in laptops today. If this is just a Chromebook Plus with a fashion light bar, I'm not interested.
The current cost spike is very recent. The average computer's RAM size has roughly quadrupled every four years since around 1988:
1988: 1MB
1992: 4MB
1996: 16MB
2000: 64MB
2004: 256MB
2008: 1GB
2012: 4GB
And then, from around 2014 or so, for the last 12 years, we've been kind of stuck on 8GB for some reason. There wasn't a ram shortage in 2016, so why didn't the average computer come with 16GB? The trend continuing would mean we'd have 64GB average machines by 2020. So what happened?
I'm sure you're right. I don't know why the trend didn't continue. But, still, given the current conditions I don't think it's realistic to expect a budget laptop with 128 GB of RAM rolling off the line right now.
> We’re working with Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to make the first Googlebooks.
I'm sorry but these Taiwanese brands Acer and Asus are the bottom of the barrel. Bad build quality, clunky keyboard, bad speakers, everything plastic etc I never had a "premium" experience ever having the luck using one. They just can't make something simple as a Macbook Air/Neo
Why would anyone trust Google to support these devices long-term, even ignoring all the privacy concerns that come with using Google products and services? The KilledByGoogle website should be enough of a warning sign against this company, and with rising hardware costs... this just seems dead on-arrival to me.
If their intention is to target the general public, then I think they're out of touch with reality, and it doesn’t seem targeted at AI enthusiasts either.
Google never sold through their first production run of Chromebook Pixels. Will prediction markets take bets on when will end up at https://killedbygoogle.com?
You mean the average person's problems aren't solved by a custom widget to track their flight to Iceland?
The irony is that most of these things would be better solved by a bot you can text. Create a thread for a trip or whatever, have it text you when flights are delayed or cancelled, reminders, let you ask it question, etc. So just...a chatbot.
Eh sure. Everyone will totally check the vibe coded "widget". Is this really all that's necessary to discount all responsibility when that widget deletes your disk and kills your grandmother?
I clicked on the link hoping to find out the price first thing so I could compare it to Apple Neo's price. Didn't find price anywhere. Also, is an AI subscription required for this?
I can’t really tell who this is for, no specs even listed that I can find, at first I thought it was going to be for running local models based on the copy but after a moment of sobriety and knowing Google clearly this is just a consumer device that they will fail to support in a couple years.
lmao can’t render on safari, get “this page was reloaded because a problem repeatedly occurred.”
Maybe someone could invent a format for presenting text and images over the internet that didn’t each require each text presenter to write custom (buggy) shader code?
So, these will just be dumped into schools and the already deteriorating education system will just collapse because kids won't know anything and Gemini will just be doing everything for them.
"Cast My Apps" - did they, uh, use AI to make that actually work? Because it's very flaky on my Chromebook, which I am otherwise very, very pleased with (especially given the price)
No thanks, I’m sick of companies with their super connected bullshit. MS , Google, Apple etc. We need more isolation between hardware and these conglomerates
There must be such a disconnection between the general people and more technical oriented people. I would never ever buy such a laptop. The reasons are very simple:
- it's owned by Google. Google is the worst tech company out there to trust your data
- it has AI all over the place. Overuse of AI depresses me. And a laptop is something very personal to me. I don't want to be depressed every time i open my laptop
- the "files" functionality is cloud-based. That's insane. I don't want my files in the "cloud". I want a file system
I run linux, and still own Macs (because their hardware is great on laptops). Of course I'm not the target audience. But still.
Gross. This is just more proof that corporations simply don't know how to market AI. Everything is an ad for an ad at this point. The very first thing they show this new machine doing is helping people shop for clothes using AI.
No one is doing that, these people don't exist. No matter how hard corporate America wishes they did. This is why AI doesn't sell. This is why companies like Microsoft and Dell are pulling back on their AI claims and why Apple has nearly wiped it off their site all together, seriously go check out apple.com, not a single mention of Apple Intelligence.
At this point I'm convinced that marketing has been completely taken over by shareholder shills, marketing to customers they wish they had instead of the real customers that exist.
Why wouldn't I use AI to shop for clothes? I'm not much into fashion, but I could see using AI to help me search for a winter parka that meets my needs, for example.
And I did use AI recently when shopping for a car. After doing a bunch of research on my own, I decided why not try feeding my criteria into ChatGPT and see what it recommends. And it did actually recommend a couple of models that I had not previously considered, including one that I ended up considering very seriously.
I also pointed it towards some used listings and asked questions like "does this listing have ventilated rear seats" - and it was able to respond that it likely doesn't, and told me where to look for the controls in photos to verify for certain. I probably could have figured out on my own with a bit of digging, or else contact the seller, but this was a pretty quick and easy way to get the information I was looking for.
Is that gross?
I didn't look too closely at the Googlebook, so I don't know why I would use that instead of just an app on my MacBook. But at some point when competent models can be run on comodity hardware I think hardware and OS-level support for AI will definitely become a selling point for me. We're just not quite there yet.
Nobody is picking their laptop for the best AI integration. You can do those things just as well on every other platform. In fact, additional AI integration is universally a turnoff to most normal people.
Uhm, the only reason I bought a refurbished laptop last year (an M3 Max with more RAM than I've ever had before) was to run models locally.
If Google was launching a new laptop that was meant to run models locally I would be really excited.
Given how Search-Engine-Optimisation (SEO) has been gamed, what will make you think that somehow this NEW system, that's really prone to prompt hacking & already promotes sponsors' products over alternatives, won't be?
Huh, I shopped for clothes using AI today.
Not super relevant to the Googlebook ad, but in case the perspective is interesting to you: I'm quite tall (194cm) but not very wide, so I usually struggle with buying clothes online. I used AI to scrape a bunch of clothing stores to see whether they sold a men's shirt with an LT or slim fit size, in stock, and matching a particular vibe.
This is kinda the exception that proves the rule. I can imagine lots of cases where people with specific needs would find benefit from the “AI clothes buying” experience, but I will bet you anything that any searches you try to do will lead you to the same half-dozen giant mail-order clothing vendors that everyone already knows about.
> exception that proves the rule
That's not how that works; "someone is doing this" doesn't prove a rule "no one is doing this" -- quite the opposite
"The exception that proves the rule" is for things like "closed Thursdays" (rule = open on other days), "no parking after 8 PM" (rule = parking allowed before 8 PM), "no refunds on games" (rule = refunds available on other items), etc.
You're confusing "The Exception That Proves the Rule" (in English, as used colloquially) with "exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis" (in Latin, which has a use similar to what you're describing.) While the law attempts to be precise, common usage embraces ambiguity.
> exceptio probat regulam in casibus non exceptis
Or more succinctly, as first-year law students learn: Expressio unius est exclusio alterius — to state one thing is to implicitly exclude others.
https://definitions.lsd.law/expressio-unius-est-exclusio-alt...
But we all knew what they meant and here you are being tedious about it
I didn't really know what they meant by it. Sounds like "the fact that you do this proves that nobody does it".
That’s why we’re all here together friend.
ChatGPT has helped me find multiple niche products and vendors. It is really good at that. Products I fruitlessly tried to find for years, ChatGPT found right away.
> I can imagine lots of cases where people with specific needs would find benefit from the “AI clothes buying” experience,
That is kind of the idea of serving the long tail. Everyone is unique, and there are a lot of everyones.
That said, I don't get online clothes shopping. The fit is 80% of the product.
>That is kind of the idea of serving the long tail.
I feel like I see a brand new way of saying “something that people don’t really want” on a near daily basis nowadays
No, you don't understand. We're...
- mining the 95th percentile, leveraging the Pareto Principle
- optimizing and ubiquitizing under-optimized paradigms
- pioneering agentic solutions to aggressively expand product frontiers
- innovating high-risk strategies to serve underserved markets
- digging deep into the inner recesses of my being and extracting what's left of my soul through my nostrils
And so much more.
> ChatGPT has helped me find multiple niche products and vendors. It is really good at that. Products I fruitlessly tried to find for years, ChatGPT found right away.
isn't that what search engines were built for? we've just forgotten how to build a search engine that's not just an ad factory, so instead we're putting an ad factory into our new search engine?
No, because you want to be able to answer arbitrarily complex or incremental questions using all sorts of info found across any number of searches where search results inform the next round of searches. Aka research.
Where you might have googled "best itx mobo site:reddit.com" a few years ago is now one of the many searches the agent is running to answer your specific questions.
It seems like search vs research is the distinction at play here, thus search engine vs agent is the right separation of concerns.
ChatGPT and similar are, in some sense, a semantic web search engine combined with an operator that's able to jot down its findings, pivot to different lookups, and filter/combine outputs.
That's fine? Especially if the AI does the searches for me, and does them more frequently than I would.
I have a half dozen facebook marketplace searches going. I used to automate craigslist searches before craigslist became irrelevant. It's nothing complicated but "AI searches for me and notifies me" is better than me remembering to look.
Uhh I don’t think you shop for clothes if you think there’s just a half dozen giant mail order clothing vendors.
Well obviously you shop for clothes, but nowhere like the way people who like clothes shop for clothes.
Finding clothes is about matching the vision in your head. If you’re the type that just buy clothes whatever, this is not a problem that exists in your world.
Great ideas always start with a niche. Moreover, they almost always start out looking dumb.
and therefore, ideas that seem dumb and niche must be great
The example was of someone who is tall and doesn’t find clothes that fit them.
For the average consumer, clothes fit them.
There is no generalizability from a niche possible here, since the mass market is already served.
Actually, I think you're really underestimating how many people struggle to find clothes that fit them well. Most people's bodies are not perfectly average. For clothes not to fit well, you don't need to be a significant outlier in one dimension. Just the accumulation of several smaller deviations from average can be enough to create an awkward fit.
Beyond that, even if we limit it to height alone, there are hundreds of millions of people who are much shorter or much taller than average.
I can assure you having observed the process of clothes shopping for the women in my life, that as far as they are concerned, clothes do not just “fit them”.
Yeah, that’s how AI should be used. If the ad was using AI as a tool to solve a real problem then I’d be down. But that’s not what this is. This is AI as a shopping cart, or a thing to organize the busy life of a casually rich person who flies to Japan to buy vintage clothes. Basically I’m only saying the ad is wildly out of touch with reality.
What made you believe it is not someone else's real problem? You're simply not targeted audience of the ads
It’s not enough people's problem to make it worth building a mass market advertising campaign around it.
even for advertising it's not even a problem to aspire toward having
There have been several startups focused on helping consumers find clothes that fit properly due to lack of consistent sizing between brands (or dress size "inflation" for women). Some of these used optical or laser scanners, or asked consumers to measure themselves. I think they're all dead or on life support now, but it still feels like there's a profitable business opportunity in there somewhere?
Big issue that also seems to unfortunately be more and more common is variations in sizing within the same brand and article of clothing! Different batches with minor variations of the same exact size, or sizes changing over time.
Love the idea but difficult problem to fix.
There are multiple Thai tailors that fly around to major US cities. They'll take your measurements, and then sit down and design a bunch of custom clothes for you.
Quality is amazing, fit is incredible, and the price is only 20-30% more than off the rack, but the clothes can last a decade+.
Sometimes the ancient solution (meet another person with a measuring tape) is the best one.
Link?
Quite possibly! But Google Gemini, who obtains the specs from the same flawed, inconsistent, contradictory, or absent size charts that I have to look at, is not positioned to be the solution to this problem.
I don’t think there is. People who care will go out and try the clothes on in the fitting room or just order online and return. That’s a much nicer experience and more foolproof.
I use chatGPT to track my nutrition goals, and adjust exercises. I also let it code review my personal projects to (at worst) gain exposure to new patterns.
I wouldn't buy a deeply-ingrained AI laptop even if you paid me, and even then I'd install Linux on it in a heartbeat.
Heh when I came to this country I was overjoyed to see that they had a "Big & Tall" store. Until I realized they actually meant the conjunction there...
Yes, you used it but in a way not even remotely close to how they envision you should use it.
Did it work? Did you buy something?
Undecided. One of the sites didn't have an LT but the LLM flagged that chest dimensions on their large were narrower than others, so could be worth trying.
That you didn't just search for "Big and Tall" or some-such tells me the search engines aren't as decent as I might think. Are search engines really that useless? Or did you start with a search for "clothes, tall" and then use AI to scrape the hits to find more details?
But I did this with Google before the LLMs
Hacker News demographics isn’t real!
Your valid use case doesn't contradict the point that so far most consumer-focused "AI features" are rarely useful and often just get in the way. I'm pretty sure a specific "AI Shopping Feature" wouldn't actually do what you're already doing, or if it did, it would add more steps/distractions than you have now.
Just asking a web search / browser-enabled chatbot, as you are now, is already close to the optimally efficient tool for you. Unfortunately, aggregating results from many disparate retailers into one seller-neutral page filtered down to what you uniquely need today is no longer considered optimally efficient by most web retailers. Just like they erected barriers to stop being indexed by unaffiliated shopping aggregators, most large retailers will try to stop automatic aggregation of their current inventory (or lack thereof).
Sadly, we're now in a post-enshittification world where Amazon's learned removing search features like requiring or excluding terms increases revenue and Google's learned giving you the search result you want first reduces ads served.
A good friend of mine has the opposite problem. I'm 5'11" (180cm) with a slender frame and long arms. A small Patagonia jacket fits me great.
My friend is probably 5" shorter than me. A small on him would be too long.
So he's always on the hunt for things that fit him properly in both dimensions.
What were your results? I'm nearly the exact same height with a shorter torso than leg length but super long arms, so I tend to need a medium tall, 36" inseam pants.
Wow, I’m in the same boat - do you mind sharing more about how you did it? I was thinking about that too (I’m 197cm) and would love to learn!
Researched men's sneakers last night. Super conflicting TMI for my odd size so going to a store for human sizing and gait evaluation. Info on durability was complete garbage. Suspicious about tuning for favored brands but AI recommended shoes will have the edge in my purchase decision since I've done some research.
I asked Gemini for help with something similar recently and it just made up a bunch of stores and items. When I pointed it out it said sorry and that it won't do it again. Then it did it again.
It's called Gemini because there's two of them responding to you. One that tells the lie, and the other to apologize for telling the lie (which, of course, is just a different lie).
Hilariously I've done something similar for the same reason. Medium shirts/sweaters are generally too short on me but large sizes feel baggy. I only travel occasionally to the US for work, so last trip I had ChatGPU look at several US-based retailers (eg Land's End, LL Bean, American Tall) to see if there was stuff in stock I might want to have shipped to my office/hotel.
Just curious, did you check the stores’ sites afterwards for false positives or negatives? eg, “no this store doesn’t have anything for you” but it did?
I use AI regularly to consider new looks. Just have it render someone like me in different outfits. Super useful.
I'm a similar build and I could imagine using ai for this purpose but come on. 194cm is like top 1% of human height. It's not a solid business model.
I’m sorry but I’m not buying this argument. This problem was solved in 2005 with search engines.
As 204cm human, I have also built a thing to scrape all the major brands for LT sizes.
It is deeply annoying we have to do this.
6'4" with relatively proportionate body-parts: buy the tall/long and you're likely good. At your height, all bets are off!
At my height, I have to do custom on a lot of things, though LT sizes can work for some pieces (short sleeves anything, some long sleeve items if the cut is intended to have longer sleeves).
It's a frustrating existence.
Can you share it?! Will save me the trouble …
AI is good for shopping today because all other platforms are fully enshitified but AI is still in the pre-enshitification phase. It will be infested with ads soon enough. Enjoy it while you can.
My wife got upset with me when I dns-blocked all the ads.
It sounds totally insane but we’re the minority here. That’s why Google is a $4.5 trillion company.
We are in the minority, but don't think the majority is the opposite and like this kind of thing. The majority just don't care at all about it.
By that logic though wouldn’t Google have wildly successful products instead of a long line of failures? Googles product strategy is akin to throwing spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks.
Sure some stuff sticks but most falls off the wall and is axed barely half way into the product life cycle.
You're on HN, you should be aware of the idea of not needing every product to succeed. They only need 1 in 10, or 1 in 20, or however many moonshots to succeed. You can not like that strategy, but it's basically the entire tech industry.
No one around me cared about Google Reader / their RSS Reader.
Pepole around me don't even know what google is doing besides search and probably maps.
I'm the person with an adblocker, the others are not.
Who is Googles target audiance? Its not me. I might only be a target for when i run some IT Platform in my work as an architect.
>> Who is Googles target audiance?
I think this is an easy question to answer: 1. what's your monthly ad spend? 2. how many ads did you view lasy week? You're probably not their target.
Pretty much all companies have a long line of failed products, only the ones we heard have successful ones. Google is definitely one of the most successful companies ever existed
> Sure some stuff sticks but most falls off the wall and is axed barely half way into the product life cycle.
If you're not failing often, you're not an innovative company.
People need to understand Google. They have a long line of failures, because they are an innovative company. Their whole goal is to scale products to billions of users. So if they release a product, and they see no path to billions of users they cut it and move on.
This has always been the way Google has worked. This is why they are literally the most successful company in the history of the world.
But they do have wildly successful products.
They also have failures, then again most companies have failures as well at all points in the product cycle.
Those failures are funded by a wildly successful product.
> By that logic though wouldn’t Google have wildly successful products instead of a long line of failures?
Failures like YouTube, GMail and Android?
Two out of those were bought by Google.
so you're saying Google DOESN'T have wildly successful products? That's definitely a hot take.
Okay, I just have to pry here: why? Does she like ads?
let's be clear: Google is a titan because they successfully sold ads to people who sold to you. We were never the target market beyond building a monopoly on eyeballs, and it's questionable if their ad empire continues. Outside of that they've had very few successes, and while traditionally the hardware is high quality, the bundled services and level of enshitification now is a no-go for my family. If you're buying into the single vendor for the rest of your life, the choice is currently Apple IMO, because they're "least bad".
[delayed]
I think CEOs are so drunk on the shareholder buzz for AI that they think this is also what the customer wants. I love integrating AI into products, but only in a way that is seamless. For example, I did my taxes recently and there was a button to upload my tax pdfs to do a best effort auto-fill of some forms on the tax website. No mention of AI even though AI was almost certainly used for that button, just a simple plain button.
Sry to say this, but I honestly just want a working shopping AI model.
I want to make a picture from me, add perhaps height and one or a second other metric, then i want it to generate styles for me, finetune it with me and then it helps me buy it.
I'm waiting for this for ages as i HATE shopping but I would find it nice to look better.
Nonetheless, when I saw this page for the first time, i was very impressed with the case not with anything related to softeware. Might be a second type of device which might be a good alternative to an apple product. Framework and now this (perhaps)
If such an AI shopping thing existed, I wouldn’t trust it to do a good job. We consumers probably wouldn’t pay enough for it in enough volume to be the customers (Are you a Stitch Fix subscriber? Why not?). The fashion brands would be the customers and we’d be sold to them. The AI tools would tell you and show you that your skin tone really works well with a shirt from $BRAND who bid the highest that day, and the brand that can afford to do that won’t be one with low margins (aka: a good deal), it’ll be one with high margins, and that means some combination of cheap construction and high price.
I'm tall and thin. When i want to shop a sport shirt, i would go to Adidas (german company, german person) and would accept the brand markup just to get something 'stable' and more controlled quality control despite the shirt being a lot cheaper somewere else.
Despite this, adidas does not have a tall thin filter despite them selling tall thin shirts in shops.
I do not know why.
Now i have to start searching around what brands have this option to filter.
I do not know why ecommerce online is so shit at least it feels shit for me.
If AI would find something in that price range and it would just work, man i would be happy.
I actually worked in ecommerce, including clothing brands. In one company, we built our own bespoke ecommerce website, using third party software only for the fulfillment part. In another, we used Shopify.
Building your own is expensive, which is a stretch to cover with the margins of ecommerce and not go broke. And the off-the-shelf things are shockingly bad in their core functionality (e.g. Shopify, which may actually be the most developer-friendly and innovative, has no native concept of a color swatch that works the way you'd expect, nor does it have filtering other than by a single, painfully-manual, non-composable "tag" feature). Shopify's got a huge ecosystem of one-trick-pony "Apps" that add all the missing features, but running 50 "apps" doesn't fix things either - not only can they be fundamentally incompatible with each other, but nothing can fix the underlying deficiencies of the core data models (or if I'm being more charitable, their suitability for one's unique business domain).
> Adidas (german company, german person)
Brands fit for the country of the store. For example, you won't find anything for a tall but not wide person in Singapore, except a few special stores, that won't be Adidas for sure. Unless ordering from overseas (and that costs nice money).
Because market. 1% just isn't worth it.
If giving the customer more filter/searching power was something companies wanted, Amazon's search result page wouldn't be like visiting a flea market.
I'm pretty sure what Decart is building does exactly what you want.
I saw a demo - it took you, put a piece of clothing on you, and showed in realtime how that clothing moved on your body in the size you'd selected. I think it even picked the size.
I’ve shopped with Claude a few times in the past month alone. It’s really quite good at finding brands I wouldn’t have otherwise.
It’s amazing how confident you are while being completely wrong. A pristine internet rant.
I’m actually amazed and horrified at the same that you have outsourced spending money to robots.
Also aren’t you concerned your behaviour is marketers’ wet dream? They now dictate what you should consume.
There is a difference between blindly consuming something and consuming something you need to consume anyway.
At least i'm not buying pants every month.
Btw. you know who is buying my stuff? My wife :P
We all outsourced our spending to “robots” (via targeted ads) a decade and a half ago.
Nah. Ad blockers are your friend.
Ad blockers do absolutely nothing against fake reviews, fraudulent claims, sponsored articles and influencers manipulating you into buying stuff.
You sent Anthropic a picture of yourself and had it generate images of you wearing various articles of clothing and then bought them based on the images that it showed you?
>> It’s amazing how confident you are while being completely wrong
Welcome to HN? :)
Could be an AI also.
Meanwhile i just tried to have Gemini AI on my Android read the screen to add an event to my calendar: it can't do it. It could, some year ago, which several articles wrote about. It no longer can.
God this is so annoying. The actual functionality we need is not there or is half-assed.
Someone on HN a few months ago said that they gave up and decided to try Copilot in Outlook, which Outlook kept nagging him to do. He tried the example prompt that the nag screen gave him, whatever it was, and Copilot said 'sorry, I don't have that functionality' or something.
Not only the actual functionality people want is missing, but the functionality they're nagging us to use is missing./
It's the new assistant on my phone but it can't even set a timer or alarm when I ask it to. Gave up using it after that.
Yes, the first thing I asked an "AI Phone Assistant" to do was set an alarm. It didn't even try and fail, it rejected the request entirely.
Same here! It's even worse than Siri was!
I dropped a screenshot and it worked great. Like a screenshot of sports practices.
You probably have a custom domain Google account? They have Gemini locked down and barely able to do anything.
Switch to a consumer Gmail account and loads of Google features start working.
This worked for me just a few weeks ago
Try now. I tried several times with different types of content/apps displayed, to no avail. It analyzes the screen and tells me whatever Gemini would say, instead of actually doing it.
I just tried it now, it worked. Specifically, I long-pressed the home button to pull up Gemini, pressed the "+" to add screen content, and said "add this event to my Google calendar". Confirmed it worked by opening my Google calendar.
Plus the random decision to split Google Assistant functions off from the bottom search bar. I still randomly try to tap that bar with it's mic button to ask the assistant to do something only to have it try to do a Google search. That's leaving aside all the random things that worked rather well in assistant until they started trying to push Gemini, can't think of a reason that should correlate (/s).
I bet that bottom mic is a different team...
Also the homepage search widget, the app drawer search, and chrome address bar search are three near identical experiences, yet with enough differences to be painful. Either unify them, or make them distinct!
It acts like it is now but it used to act like it was one team and was an alternative assistant trigger, or you could even type to the assistant if you couldn't/didn't want to speak. Now that's basically only available via the "Hey/Ok Google" wake words and at best the bottom search bar uses the Google home page AI.
I think this is precisely what made it not work anymore.
Yes, I absolutely use AI To find stuff to buy. The results are mediocre but the alternatives are even worse. Google search for any product is SEO garbage. Reddit is somewhat useful for filled with astroturfing and tedious to get actual signal from. AI can summarize the Reddit recommendations and set filters to save time a bit.
For stores with strong curation, you could just skip the research phase and buy whatever Costco or Lee Valley is selling.
From what I see of my own use and friends use of "AI" - it is a glorified search aggragator with nice pretty print output which has replaced Google search because all involved are tired of wasting time with the cesspool that vanilla search has become.
this is def. the #1 use case, and it's why we can't have nice things. I use the internet to go to places I already know most of the time; when I use a search engine to try and find something it's a complete failure - often because of all the LLM generated astroturfing.
Goodness me, when are we just going to stop buying “products” already?
> No one is doing that, these people don't exist.
Unfortunately, they do. "Normie America" loves that shit. It's why they've been pushing it so hard: it's one of the few areas they're getting serious traction in day to day life.
Not where I’m from. No one has the money to fly to Japan for a shopping trip like this ad suggests. Where do these people exist outside the Bay Area?
We were talking about the clothing mockup using AI: "The very first thing they show this new machine doing is helping people shop for clothes using AI."
Also, Japan is a cheap travel destination right now. Two people can do a 14 day trip easily for $3000 total. That's not nothing but it's also in the realm of many middle class people regardless of where they live.
LAX to Tokyo is 1100 per person. I could do the rest of the trip on 60 dollars a day? That's like Thailand prices maybe.
Not for a dedicated shopping trip.
Or maybe you can buy some stuff while visiting on holidays?
You probably don't even realise how far you are from average Americans, who are currently struggling to pay for their groceries. Shelling out three grand for a two-week vacation is simply unattainable for the vast majority of the population.
> You probably don't even realise how far you are from average Americans
I think this is more you than me. The middle class in America is still strong. Is it weakening and eroding? That is also true.
> Shelling out three grand for a two-week vacation is simply unattainable for the vast majority of the population.
Would you quote me where I said it was the majority, let alone vast?
Well, actually, depending on the data and who you ask, 40-60% of Americans spend $3000 a year on travel. Is 60% the majority? I'm not good at math.
https://www.ngpf.org/blog/question-of-the-day/question-of-th...
https://www.nerdwallet.com/travel/studies/summer-travel-repo...
So really, you may be the one who's disconnected from reality. Not to say that things aren't getting better, I think they're getting worse. Just that you've got a bit of a doomer mindset.
No, 40-60% plan to travel, and the average amount of that travel is 3000. That is not at all the same thing as “40-60% of americans spend $3000 a year on travel”!
The data provided simply isn't sufficient to support the claim.
Families pay double that or more for a week at Disney.
> Families pay double that or more for a week at Disney.
Not anymore. Disney now targets high income earners, not the average American.
More people travel overseas than ever before. To the extent major tourist destinations are having to take measures to limit the number of tourists coming there.
Are you sure? I think "normies" would prefer to see and try on the clothes they buy.
People will order clothes they see on tiktok without ever having touched them. Having something where their users can basically say "order me that shirt" while they are tiking their tok or rolling their reels, and it works most of the time, is a company's wet dream.
Though, people "want" a lot of things that actually end up making them less happy. So responding to demand doesn't necessarily make it a good thing, but only time will tell.
I don't know why your being junked, few companies know more about people than Google. That's why this pos is marketed directly at them.
This was going to be my response, the biggest data miner in the world doesn’t know how users are buying online? That’s a big claim
> "Normie America" loves that shit.
Mate I'm in the EU and neighbor has got a statue of big gorilla on his balcony.
The EU is just as consumerist as the US. I can't tell you the number of young dudes who think they look cool because they're wearing a fake Hermes manpurse and who wear a cap as if a videoclip from the 90s from Vanilla Ice just called (don't get me wrong: I love Ice Ice Baby and I read Vanilla Ice is a good person. But it's 2026).
And there have been several EU companies getting funding to create an "AI personal shopper app" (all getting pwned by Google and other big players).
No really: the EU is incredibly consumerist too.
I don't really get why people have the audacity to presume what other people like and do.
You are not every other person. People are different from you.
While I 100% agree Ai is getting shoved down people's throats by tech giants, I would never presume to know how people are using it.
More people are discovering it, at least, as a better search box than Google. There's at least data behind that.
It isn't too far of a jump to then have it shop for you as well.
One thing that is interesting with stories like this: the wild, emotional responses Ai-related news gets out of people.
> I don't really get why people have the audacity to presume what other people like and do.
Part of this is that we are increasingly in self-selected communities of people just like us. Prior to the Internet and social media, you more often interacted with people that all you had in common with was spatial location and a dash of socio-economic status. It wasn't an unbiased slice of the populace, but it was at least less biased.
But today, it's much easier to have all of your social interactions limited to a social media bubble that reflects yourself.
That in turn makes it really easy to believe that whatever is true for you must be true for everyone because it seems to be largely true for all the people you see on a daily basis.
> This is why AI doesn't sell
My friend just bought a Pixel instead of an iPhone because it had better AI voice chat integration, he's non-technical and has been on iPhone as long as I remember
The Google voice chat integration in android auto is vile currently. You ask it to map something. The map spins up and adds the address quickly. Shortly thereafter, the Gemini agent asks you if you want it to plot the directions? And then it starts bothering you with extra questions like "want me to tell you the weather for your destination or figure out some fun activities?". No, leave me alone and do your job better, please.
Sometimes I feel like there's no huge tech companies left* that remember: you're supposed to convince me to give you my money. I'm not just going to do it because you used the right trendy buzzwords.
*except maybe Valve.
I thought similarly, until I actually tried using AI to shop for clothes, now I’m a total convert. It’s like the best possible men’s fashion concierge…
Enjoy it while it lasts.
The pressure to turn on the money faucet is very real, and as soon as they do, the AI shopping experiences are going to just mean “run an auction and steer the user to the highest bidder”. Like how Amazon, google, etc all have been doing it for ages. It’s way too profitable for them to ignore.
It's like Meta advertising their AR glasses with it annotating prices over fruit at the grocery store - like why are you trying to sell me on some made up use case that doesn't even exist?
How is it getting that pricing data? By reading the giant, three-inch-high price labels that are right next to the fruit?
Call me crazy but I don't think that "discovering how much oranges cost" is a big enough pain point for most people to spend hundreds of dollars on smart glasses to solve.
Only hackernews commenters know how to market AI, but they are too good to work for a trillion dollar corp
As for the fact that corps like Apple backing out of AI marketing, it is because AI itself becomes a negatively connotated term that is no more associated with something great and pleasant - but has become a negaive term people associate with fear of job loss, uncertain future, high computer + RAM prices, rising retail electricity prices, AI slop spam etc etc. We basically approaching AI fatigue to the point of AI hatred - and you do no want to raise those feeling and have them associated with your brand. Apple gets that, others will follow suit.
This has btw. nothing to do wheter or not AI does actually have positive impact on society or not - it is the feelings that matter, not objective facts.
I use claude to quickly find products nearly everyday. Mainly as a powerful web search.
yeah, any of the AI bots are bad at helping me find clothes b/c they don't even consider my size, gender, or anything when suggesting things after like 3 back and forth messages (this is both ChatGPT and Claude).
I went to the apple.com homepage, literally zero mentions of Apple Intelligence, just a dropdown option under iPhone's menu items.
> No one is doing that, these people don't exist.
Really? I must be hallucinating the multiple people I know who do this here in Portugal. Clothes, random parts for stuff they need. They just point a camera and ask for it, often iterating. They clearly prefer the chat interface that somewhat also limits their choice, instead of the plethora of ad-filled websites that are hard to navigate. I'm aware this poses several problems we will need to solve, but it's still happening.
Related: Bar some of my somewhat AI-resistant friends and some older relatives, almost everyone I know (including college students I teach to, my dad, friends, non-tech co-workers...) no longer uses google as their first choice (they do fallback to it if they need to). They all use ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini. Used to be just ChatGPT but now there's a relatively equal divide. And an ever-increasing number of them are clearly using AI for pretty much everything else (proof-reading, writing e-mails, building spreadsheets, tiny custom apps for themselves, creating music, images, jokes, memes, photo editing/touch-ups, student evaluation, school material preparation/creation, personal/intimate advice, and much, much more.)
It is especially fascinating to note that, with the exception of AI-assisted coding, there is clearly more AI usage among the non-tech folks, as so many tech people are immensely resistant to using AI for something other than work. It's clearly shifting, though, as I see more and more of those AI-resistant people slowly also using it in their daily lives, as opposed to "only for work".
Every single Apple product page for a product that supports it mentions Apple Intelligence. You’re wrong.
Yes, I checked the page for Macbook Neo and there's a section called Built for Apple Intelligence. Seems like it's still there.
Really? I extensively use AI for shopping recommendations now, down to 3d printer filament, I don't touch sites like Wirecutter.
I was even at a shoe store the other day and just took a pic of a whole shelf full of sneakers and asked claude to explain them for my use case (running vs tennis).
It combines research with a buying decision, which most eCommerce sites don't currently do (except for just listing hundreds of reviews)
I used AI to shop for shops of clothes. But I would probably use it directly if I trusted it to give me good results.
You are just misunderstanding the job that it is doing.
It is not "shopping for clothes with AI". It is recreating the dressing room experience from home, and it likely will be a table stakes for online shopping in the near future.
I asked an LLM to research some clothing options just yesterday and it's done a great job putting together a list of brands and models with the specific parameters I wanted, very quickly.
You know what they say: there are only two industries now, fraud and gambling.
HN is not the target market.
In fact, if HN hates it, there is a higher chance the product will be successful
Will Bookmark it so that it becomes one of those legendary HN quotes
I look forward to the results. If I’m wrong, I’m wrong.
I don't think you need to wait long. Most of your post is already proven wrong in this very thread.
You can’t scold them for being contrarian and wrong, and back up your point using…other comments in the thread.
Historically the Chromebook target market is students, where this AI will probably be disabled by the school.
Unless these things are much cheaper than a Macbook Neo, I don't see it succeeding.
Google's product managers live on another planet. Whole Google Stadia fiasco comes to mind. Imagine the claims - real time 4k 60fps gaming over Internet. Went through acquiring game studios. Designed their own controller. A year later - nothing.
Went through acquiring game studios. Closed them before they released a single game.
A big part of Stadia failing was it didn't get traction, and a big part of that reason was Google's history of just giving up on products out of nowhere, so very few people were willing to give Stadia money with the risk of everything they bought vanishing. Then, when Google did give up on Stadia out of nowhere, Google said they'd refund everyone everything they spent - the kind of pledge that might have encouraged more people to actually give it a try.
Then again I heard anecdotal stories from a lot of developers that Google was a pain in the ass to work with because they didn't understand anything about working with game studios; it was just "we'll give you X money to bring your game to Stadia" when that money didn't make it worth taking developers away from the platforms they were already publishing to.
Fwiw Amazon Fashion is a huge business.
> At this point I'm convinced that marketing has been completely taken over by shareholder shills, marketing to customers they wish they had instead of the real customers that exist.
A bit of a tangent here, but the tldr is that I think this has been the case for quite a while.
I don't have any stats to back this up, and maybe someone does and will prove me wrong, but marketing doesnt feel significantly more effective than it was, say, 50 years ago, and yet the main reason every scrap of data about our personal lives is harvested is supposedly for marketing. Maybe it turns out theres just not that much you can do with the data, I'd certainly hope so, but I think a lot of it is just down to the fact that marketing execs don't actually use the data in any meaningful way, like you say marketing to customers they wish they had to buy the idea they were gonna do either way.
Like I remember a decade or so ago, the promise/warning was that advertising and entertainment would seamlessly blend when it can be tailored to exactly you, to the point where people happily and willingly watch advertisements. We got the opposite, adblockers are extremely common, companies have to strong arm you into even looking at their ads, and people count down the seconds until they can press the skip button
I dont think you are right. In the near future every purchase and every offer request will go through AI. I imagine you request 1000 offers from similar companies for your product wish. No longer do I need to spend 1 week searching for a good priced painter for my house. My AI does it. Same for all other products. At the same time, companies at the other side need to adapt to this situation and have to use AI to handle the massive amount of requests. Requests can be a real offer. But also crawl results from AIs. The circle is complete. Google wins.
There’s no way this scenario doesn’t get wall gardened off in some sort of way - as the AI SEO market will decimate current AI results in the next 3 to 6 months for sure. The slop is already making organic product hunting impossible.
and why Apple has nearly wiped it off their site all together, seriously go check out apple.com, not a single mention of Apple Intelligence.
Which is weird because Apple Intelligence + Shortcuts is the most underhyped corporate use case for AI. For my money, it’s the quickest and easiest method a non-programmer can use to prompt-build a program that both works and that they can understand.
Reminds me of all those facebook portal ads (was that the name?) showing kids talking to their grandparents all excited, or those ads where people point their phone at a thing (I think it's for Gemini?) and it pulls up the item to buy. I've literally never seen someone do that, and I have some insufferably-obsessed-with-AI people in my life who try to use it for everything.
Yeah anecdotal, but it just doesn't strike me as how people shop.
"This is why AI doesn't sell."
There are several AI companies now with billions in yearly revenue that didn't even exist a few years ago. Many more with many millions in revenue. Saying AI doesn't sell is completely delusional. You're in an anti-AI bubble.
I have no stake in this race but you are clearly wrong and thinking your personal datapoint of one is correct at scale.
Litterally hundreds of millions shop with AI today.
What's funny is that these days if I see a Google product that I'm even remotely interested in, I just immediately write it off because I know it's something they will kill in a very short time frame.
It's just never worth the hassle of buying/using a Google product. Never.
Their hardware is usually fine when it comes to support. Google announces the support lifetime of their devices and sticks to it, with feature updates coming to things like phones even after the support period ended through things like app stores. Just check the support lifetime of the device before buying (early Pixels only had 2 years of support, as was announced at release).
Their cloud services are nothing but hot air but their hardware support has been excellent for the past few years. Easily beats other major manufacturers. I'm still annoyed that Apple won't tell you how long they will support their hardware. Other competitors manage to be even worse.
"support" meaning drivers and basic security updates, sure.
but if you buy this for the gemini integration, what are the odds that google actually sticks with that, or two years from now are you going to have a laptop that lags behind the feature set available in the gemini app for mac because they didn't sell enough of these to bother continuing development?
Hmmmmmmmm
Nest Secure Google Home Stadia Daydream Glass Nexus Pixel Slate Pixelbook Chromecast Audio OnHub Jamboard
The list of departed google products could be put to the music of the names of the countries of the world.
yeah, even on product lines that they kill (like Stadia) they usually do right by the user (eg they refunded everyone, both on hardware and software people bought on the platform).
I thought Apple does tell you how long they'll support hardware.
For example: https://support.apple.com/en-us/102772
That's not how long they will provide software support. It's how long you can get a hardware repair. Some "vintage" products will get current software support but not others. Some products have lost software support before even reaching "vintage" like the first Gen iPad.
My Pixel 3A stopped receiving security updates after less than 3 years. I remember Google did this to start using their own chips in their phones.
Two or three years is not even close to the support Apple provides. It sealed the deal for me and I switched to iPhone.
Yes, they've since more than doubled the support lifetimes to seven years.
My understanding is that, depending on the phone vendor, such support may only apply to security updates after ~3 years and not feature updates.
What about when that “support” is to brick your battery so your phone lasts hours because they know it is defective but don’t want to fix it?
Google’s hardware track record is a joke compared to Apple.
Not arguing with your point about Google, but isn't Apple very often accused of forced obsolescence through updates to their phones? Is there any truth to the accusations of "running slower and dying faster" after a new model releases?
It's only been 2.5 years since they said that. I'm sure they will walk back on their word before it has been 7 years.
The increased update timelines by Google, Samsung and others roughly coincided with EU legislation coming into effect that mandates 5 years of updates after end of sales. We'll see.
https://www.heise.de/en/news/From-June-20-EU-gives-smartphon...
Correction: if the manufacturer chooses to provide updates, and they don't have to, they must continue to make those updates available for five years after end of sales.
In other words, manufacturers aren't required to publish updates at all, but if they do provide updates they have to make them available to users for five years after they stop sales. This only stops the case where a manufacturer ships a device and publishes updates for the device, but then takes those updates offline after they stop selling the device (but before 5 years is up).
https://www.theandroidportal.com/motorola-android-update-loo...
Do you have any part examples of them committing to a specific support timeline on a product and reneging on it? I can't think of one.
Google promised their Nexus phones would get new versions of Android for X years then, after selling a bunch of them, just changed their mind.
I'm having a hard time googling it since every result that comes up is about Google cancelling Nexus phones entirely way back when, but I remember a lot of Nexus users were kind of PO'ed about it.
I mean I guess anything is possible, but the Pixel 6 and 7 also are receiving 5+ years of updates, and those sure seem real so far.
> early Pixels only had 2 years of support, as was announced at release
They also announced a promotion for unlimited cloud storage of photos and then shrank and JPEG massacred the photos. That part of my photo library is still visibly trashy to this very day. Every time I browse my photos, I am reminded that google did this.
Apple might not specify a time upfront but they do consistently support hardware for a good length of time. IPhones generally get OS updates for 5-6 years and security for at least a couple more.
I’ve never used anything they made long enough to get there.
What about Nest? It's great that they announced a lifetime and stuck with it I guess? Sucks for anyone who bought into the ecosystem. You'd have to pay me to try and adopt more google products at this point, otherwise it's almost certainly sooner or later going to be deemed a waste of money/time.
> Their hardware is usually fine when it comes to support. Google announces the support lifetime of their devices and sticks to it
If they announce a support lifetime they stick to it.
For other products they'll just decide they're done with it and give you a little warning period. Maybe some store credit or another bonus depending on the product.
My nest thermostat disagrees with your optimism.
I was interested but then just immediately wrote it off because of the AI-centric marketing.
Why anything AI make me want to buy a whole laptop? I can use AI from websites, apps, etc. already.
Googlebook dot Google.
Pixelbook.
Chromebook.
Google Pixel.
What's next? Nestbook? Drivepad? Geminiphone?
I argue this is both true and not true in stark ways with Google. Just look at Google Groups listserv, it's been running forever and arguably mosts used neighborhood listservs globally and has been very stable.. all largely for free. On the other hand, new experiments get chopped very quickly at Google. So, it's more like if the service can survive 2 years, then Google generally keeps it around*.
* unless it gets merged dozens of times into other similar projects.
It doesn’t matter to me that some of their products have longevity. I don’t know which they will keep and which they will discontinue and there are many vendors out there who have a better track record.
If they don't kill it, they might kill your account with no recourse, or some automatic process might lock you out of certain features, or some major bug might leave you staring at a forum post with a "I have the same question" numbering in the thousands.
Chromebook has been around for 15yrs
Pretty good run. Wonder how many of those devices will support Aluminium OS and how long they'll support ChromeOS after Aluminium launches.
If I buy one today, is it guaranteed to run the newest OS in 3 years?
Unless Google have magically solved the Android update process, getting updates are the biggest downgrade when it comes to switching from ChromeOS to Aluminium OS.
Back to a world where every device needs the OS specifically built for it.
They'll be killing off Android any day now.
The products that get killed are the ones that can't run ads or get run through the analytics wringer.
I'm sure they'll kill their TPU business any day now, too.
Like Coral? That one is already a zombie.
A laptop built entirely around AI, which is definitely a stable business that will be around in its current form indefinitely and whose cost definitely won't go up once Google needs to start making a profit on it.
This is just chromeos+Gemini
No, that's an Android desktop OS which ChromeOS is not
Chromecast has been great for years and years, maybe they just kill the crap that should have never existed just like everybody else
I've had great luck with their hardware (phones / tablets) and they get updates frequently and for quite a long time.
Same for a while. OTOH a Pixel 9 Pro screen of a close friend broke 7 times in a year.
Google will probably kill off and shut down Google Search at this rate.
They burned that bridge so hard with Stadia.
"Check out this unbelievably cool product. It's a walled garden though that only works as long as we maintain it."
That's cool, but we're not spending actual money on something you're gonna kill.
"No, we promise: this time, it's different. We're not going to kill Stadia."
Nice try, Google. We've read the Boy Who Cried Wolf. We're not buying it.
"No, really. We know we've fucked up repeatedly in the past, but we pinky-promise. This is for the long term."
Okay, we'll dip one toe in, but only one, because we still don't trust you.
"Well, they aren't buying enough games on our service. I guess we should kill it after all."
WE FUCKING TOLD YOU SO!
As much as Stadia was a gut punch, at least for consumers Google did pretty well at making us whole (Full refunds for all Stadia purchases across the board) [0]
Obviously that's not much recompense if you were a game developer lured into some exclusive publishing deal, or even just someone buying a Stadia Controller, but c'est la vie I suppose
[0] https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/11/google-refunding-thr...
> or even just someone buying a Stadia Controller
Getting the Stadia controller goes a long way, methinks. If you have one laying around, you can install the de-clouding firmware Google provided that converts it into a Bluetooth controller with excellent ergonomics and feel.
People who badmouth Stadia's shutdown expose themselves qw non-buyers. I'm yet to hear of a better product wind-down than Stadia: every single buyer got full refunds for games and hardware (i.e Chromecast). The firmware to convert Stadia controllers to plain ol' Bluetooth was a nice parting gift.
Google Fiber has been advertising a lot in my area. Despite the legacy ISP being as bad as most entrenched ISPs I can't see myself switching and adding another Google product into my life.
It might be cheaper and faster now, but will that still be true in a few years once Google has gotten bored with the project? Are they going to use this service to spam me with AI slop like they do everywhere else? What happens if a Google bot nukes my Google account, will that cut off my entire internet with no warning as well?
I'm not famous enough to raise a social media storm when they screw me over so it's a big risk doing business with the company.
GFiber isn't owned by Google anymore, which is why they changed the name. They're now part of Astound.
> What happens if a Google bot nukes my Google account, will that cut off my entire internet with no warning as well?
Yeah, the general approach to get support has been to be famous or to marry a Google employee, but the churn rate on Google employees is at the point that the latter is unsustainable.
Even if they don't kill it, this is certain to be even more privacy invading than their pre-AI offerings.
I feel the same way. Looks neat. But hard pass. I've been burned several times.
It will also vacuum up your user data and use it to train AI models and such.
I think if I wanted a cheap laptop I'd probably get the macbook neo, and if i wanted a non-gaming expensive one i'd get a macbook pro.
I really don't see the market fit for this, I guess the android integration. But my god, I'd die of cringe if someone asked me about my laptop and I had to say "googlebook". Believe it or not, these things matter a lot, particularly if you're trying to target a young audience.
Chromebook users.
I loved my Pixelbook, fantastic piece of hardware. When that ended, I went with an Acer Chromebook. Works fine, just not the same.
I would go for a Mac Air or Neo, but only if I could install ChromeOS.
I will most likely get a Googlebook, and would be more likely to do so if it was not named Googlebook and did not have Gemini built in.
> I would go for a Mac Air or Neo, but only if I could install ChromeOS.
To each their own, but this is absolute insanity.
I used DOS,then Windows, then Mac for a total of almost 40 years. I think using Windows and OSX are insanity, but to each their own.
I now have a machine that boots almost instantly and just works without maintenance, upgrades, or compatibility issues. I can throw it in the river, and for $300 get a machine that will be up and running in about one minute. I can use multiple machines (small/cheap to bring on a trip, laptop for casual working, larger machine for more serious work, even at the same time. I have full access to everything from my iPhone, or access to some computer anywhere. I use remote VSCode via Crostini to do development work (terminal, vi, Codex, Claude Code) on a bunch of beelink boxes and Hetzner servers.
I cannot run installed software and I am dependent on Google for email, files, photos. For the latter, I have backups of my email and files (photos are not as easy).
Life is simpler this way.
You can use Google services on a Macbook and have installed apps.
Not for $300, you don't.
I take more risks with my Chromebooks than I do with a MacBook, such as mountain-biking with it or leaning it in a car when visiting sketchy neighborhoods. Chromebooks offer a good-enough on-the-go, full-Unix experience, with an all-day battery. Sure, M-series Macs have higher performance and >20h batteries, but those nice-to-haves re well in excess of what most users need, most of the time.
I don't get how life is simpler.
We are way out of context window, occupied by OS chores.
Life was simpler when we were dumber, but now, no. Stop lying.
ChromeOS is a very competent, fast, and easy-to-use operating system. For my family, it's basically perfect. It's virtually unbreakable and anyone can pick it up quickly.
Windows is a hot mess and frankly I wouldn't recommend it to anyone outside of gamers. For the technically competent, there's nothing to gain on Windows, and it will just get in the way. For the those less technically inclined, Windows means complexity and viruses. Also most Windows laptops suck major ass.
MacOS is better, especially if you have an iPhone. But even MacOS is a bit too complex for the less technically inclined. If you have an android phone, then a chromebook is 100% the way to go for those people. Also, chromebooks get crazy software support these days, on par with macbooks.
> ChromeOS is a very competent, fast, and easy-to-use operating system.
It also locks you into the cloud services of an advertising company that loves harvesting your data to help find new ways to sell you things.
I see this too often. But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes. Most people just want get stuff done in a competent, fast and easy-to-use operating system.
>It also locks you into the cloud services of an advertising company
this is pretty much any company these days. microsoft is guilty of the same.
Until your google account gets locked for some unknown reason and you there is 0 support and recourse. And now you can't even log into your own computer.
Users absolutely care, what a terrible comment. Users have ZERO choice. Tech companies are not regulated, tech companies abuse their monopolies at their users detriment, and tech companies do not have consumer councils to help mitigate these issues.
What it actually appears to be is we have a market where undemocratic business leaders are deciding the direction of technology in a country that only seems to benefit them and not the population.
What a terrible mindset to have and I sincerely hope you never have any capacity to yield power in your life.
>But, realistically users do not care about the harvesting as it is unseen and behind the scenes.
Like them I think I am also surprised not because that isn't the case, but because it's wild to see that take on HN, which skews way more towards privacy/owning your compute.
So does Windows. macOS locks you into a company that hoovers up your data but pinky promises not to sell it and will fight tooth and nail to have prevent others from doing the exact same thing on their operating system.
If you care about privacy, Linux and BSDs are the only options, but actually good out-of-the-box Linux laptops are few and far between.
Except for Chromebooks, of course.
Big difference is that you can use macOS without a user account. Can't do that with Windows without some hidden terminal magic.
Though if you want to get rid of the persistent nag on your Dock to log in to your Apple account, that's a significantly higher level of magic than what it takes to use Windows without an MS account.
(I just installed Windows a week ago without an MS account, and it was a 30 second step during setup to skip an MS account. The steps to get rid of the macOS nag are daunting enough that I just live with it permanently.)
MacOS doesn't have to force it, users will gladly sign into their iCloud account. Virtually nobody uses the Windows Store, but the Mac App Store is a necessity given how restricted 3rd party apps are on macOS now.
Since when is the Mac App Store a necessity? It's still possible to download DMGs straight from the internet and install the .app by dragging it to /Applications
The only restriction to 3rd party apps are unsigned apps. Very rare these days, mainly small hobby projects. You can still activate them through the System Settings.
Apparently you can create a local account on a chrome device [1], although I can't vouch for the process; otherwise cloud auth is tied to Google, yes. You could use a guest account for everything, if your really want; but then you lose out on persistence.
But as long as you accept that everything you do is in a browser; which is reality for the vast majority of computer users, there's no real lock-in. You can just as easily use the browser version of Microsoft Office as the browser version of Google Docs.
You're certainly locked into Google for the browser and for updates, unless you do a lot of work. But it's been a while since it was common to get commercial OS updates from a 3rd party.
[1] https://www.xda-developers.com/how-use-chromebook-without-go...
That’s no better than Windows (without a lot of effort and a constant game of cat and mouse only achievable by technical users). At least Google’s cloud services tend to actually be good, if you made peace with the tracking and privacy concerns.
wild that we're talking about which OS locks you up more w.r.t an apple product.
I support a lot of old folk on laptops that are less technically inclined. All they want is Windows because familiarity, despite Microsoft making things unfamiliar every release.
I used to think so too, but when my extremely-non-techy mother's Chromebook died, she was able to switch from chrome OS to Ubuntu with minimal fuss. Chrome OS has some specific features, but if you just need a web browser Ubuntu works fine.
It's the only OS for my 93 year old mother. I can manage it remotely, too, and she can't mess it up.
My mother (80+) runs Fedora, and I believe she is incapable of messing it up, even if she did have the root password. Doubleclicking random exe files off the internet is almost uniquely a Windows problem. I dunno about Macs - its users are usually technically illiterate, but Apple has done a pretty good job of locking users out of their own machines.
> Doubleclicking random exe files off the internet is almost uniquely a Windows problem.
Tell that to my partner's grandfather, who managed to find and install malware chrome extensions on his chromebox.
A computer filled with great hardware that gets its hands held behind its back by shit software sounds like the soup de jeure for apple.
The HP Dragonfly Chromebook is pretty good. The Asus models are also very nice. The Acers are hit or miss; quality is iffy on those and there's a zillion models so it's impossible to find a specific one.
I wish Framework would keep supporting ChromeOS but alas. You could put ChromeOS Flex on one - it doesn't have Android apps, which is fine for me, and it does support the Linux environment, which is excellent.
Why would you want ChromeOS and not Linux?
With ChromeOS you get both.
I have used Linux for 20 years, but only for development, and I will only develop on Linux.
For everything else (email, files, photos), I want a browser. Used to be Mac/Osx, but got tired of being managed by it.
Just my preference. You can do everything on Linux, just never felt comfortable with it.
b/c you don't have to think about the operating system and updates. I posted about my experience here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48051902
...basically, I have "nerd cred" and run linux on my desktop, but for my laptop I wanted: disposable (no leaky hard drive), zero maintenance (no kernel modules for sound drivers), battery-portable.
90% of the time I'm wanting `vim` + `git` + `ssh`, and 20% of the time i'm wanting to run some random stuff locally. Chromebook is basically zero friction and 1/10th the price (and 1/10th the capabilities) of a "very nice mac laptop", plus you can pop into a very capable linux VM (w/ passthrough GUI support) without a lot of ceremony.
Windows laptops are out of the question, and pure linux laptops (until only very recently) were of marginal support and low battery capabilities (especially "close it and stuff it in a backpack for 3 days").
> (no kernel modules for sound drivers)
What century did you write this in?
https://github.com/pop-os/pop/issues/3961
"""last week: Pop!_OS 22.04: kernel 6.17.9-76061709 — module BTF validation cascade boots system to emergency mode #3961
Thanks for taking a look,
Quick update — I'd already recovered before seeing this comment. The path that worked: boot Pop_OS-oldkern, run sudo apt install --reinstall linux-image-6.17.9-76061709-generic linux-modules-6.17.9-76061709-generic && sudo kernelstub, reboot. 6.17.9 came up clean. The reinstall's postinst hooks ran update-initramfs automatically; /boot/initrd.img-6.17.{4,9}-* are both freshly dated 2026-05-06 (~11:44 / 11:46), and kernelstub copied them to the EFI partition. Verified: journalctl -k -b 0 | grep -iE 'btf|failed to validate' | wc -l → 0. """
In the year 2026, on my Linux laptop (T14, Linux 6.18.26) I ran the following:
And it responded: 53. Fifty three kernel modules are dedicated to sound. I, of course, never had to install any of them by hand, or take any other direct care.Those modules are all in tree. The distro chose to build them as modules. You could have built them into the kernel. I don't think that counts. When I hear about manually futzing with "kernel modules for sound card" I think you're running out of tree modules in 1997.
> Windows laptops are out of the question, and pure linux laptops (until only very recently) were of marginal support and low battery capabilities (especially "close it and stuff it in a backpack for 3 days").
Dell has sold laptops with first-party Linux support for nearly fifteen years, to say nothing of other smaller OEMS.
As for the battery issues during sleep: that actually has to do with a combination of the BIOS settings + downstream ramifications of secure boot (and how the old-fashioned "hibernate" used to work). Unfortunately, that isn't specific to Linux. My MBP has the same problem, and so do the same laptops running Windows.
ChromeOS is linux. It's a Linux distro that works correctly out of the box, setting it apart quite strongly from all other Linux distros.
"Works" is kind of generous. Try connecting a printer for example.
Having very recently (and unsuccessfully) tried to connect a printer to "real" Linux, that's not really a relevant point against ChromeOS.
In the end, after hours of frustration, my solution was to print the document from my (amusingly, Google Pixel Android) phone.
This is actually the perfect detail to discuss. ChromeOS printing is literally just CUPS, so it has the same functionality as any other Linux distro. If you have a modern IPP printer on a normal home Wi-Fi, you can expect it to just work. This covers most people's needs.
Where ChromeOS shines is that it has never been affected by severe and numerous CUPS security vulnerabilities like CVEs 2024-47175 through 2024-47177, which were unauthenticated remote vulnerabilities, while Ubuntu and Fedora (and all other major distros) were affected. Why? ChromeOS sandboxes the hell out of these kinds of subsystems. CUPS runs in a PID namespace, network namespace, mount namespace, on a read-only filesystem, with seccomp filters. It cannot use the network, ever. It can only communicate over a pipe with a network proxy. The proxy is only active if and when a user tries to print. The proxy is also in a seccomp jail that prevents it from doing anything except enumerated network traffic and the pipe. The proxy is written in a safer language than CUPS itself, and protects CUPS from malformed, malicious inputs by validating both PPDs and print requests.
Then why do people install Linux in Chrome books?
Chromebooks make a pretty nice, Linux friendly machine. They're usually cost optimized given the market they address, but that's fine if it fits your needs. Sometimes they have "weird" hardware, keyboard/mouse controllers and stuff at least wasn't always "pc standard", audio controllers seem to be commonly outside mainstream as well.
It's nice to run Linux on a machine that was built to run Linux. No silly windows key, no fighting with firmware that was built for windows first. I have a Chromebox that was a great mini desktop and the pricing was nice. My first Chromebook ran FreeBSD pretty well once it was no longer needed for ChromeOS, etc.
You have to shop carefully, you want something that's easy to put a MrChromebox firmware on and doesn't have any known issues with the OS you want to run. It's been a while since I purchased a ChromeOS device and the current state is different than it was then; I'm not sure how easy it is to find reasonable options now, but there were plenty of good options in the past. You also want to be sure that it has enough ram and storage for you needs or that those are expandable, but I think soldering ram and storage is pretty common across the range.
Crostini is kind of a joke, but I use it to remote into real Linux boxes. For me, best of both worlds.
The number of people who have "installed linux" other than ChromeOS on a Chromebook is probably in the low single digits, while the ChromeOS installed user base is in the hundreds of millions. For any given thing someone is going to try to put linux on that thing, but it is not a common use case for Chromebooks that we need to discuss.
FWIW I'm one of those people. I have an old rotting pixelbook that I installed Linux on back-in-the-day thanks to Mr. Chromebox. It was a huge improvement over chromeos but I'd never buy a chromebook to install Linux on it again because there was too many small annoyances like needing to fix the keymap every time I did a clean install (the caps lock key was bound to super and I vaguely recall some craziness around the higher function keys), and sound didn't work.
I was genuinely asking. In “my circles” a Chromebook is a cheap laptop that one can install Linux on. As in, “oh, I just picked up this used Lenovo Chromebook and installed Ubuntu on it”.
You'll get a more informative answer from them. I couldn't speak to their motivations. But I certainly wouldn't advise doing it. ChromeOS has better security and performance than Ubuntu, and it automatically updates things like peripheral firmware that Ubuntu isn't even aware of.
It feels like the wrong tool for the job in both directions. If you wanted a host platform for Ubuntu you'd choose something else, and if you wanted platform software for a Chromebook ChromeOS is the right choice.
In the real world, Chromebooks are excellent candidates to install Linux. They are highly compatible, low power, excellent size/weight, and run great. You don't sound like a person who has any real world experience with this topic despite the authoritative tone in your responses.
Just use Chromebook via Crostini to remote access a headless Linux box. For me, the Chromebook is the right tool in both directions.
> ChromeOS has better security and performance than Ubuntu [...]
I'm going to need a citation on that, especially performance. Doubly so if Crostini is put into the mix.
> [...] updates things like peripheral firmware that Ubuntu isn't even aware of.
Like what? WiFi cards, etc.? Isn't that generally in kernel already? What kind of updates do you think are not done by Ubuntu or another Linux distro?
Last I tried ChromeOS was on the Pixel Slate way back when. A buggy, unstable, clearly not properly tested, unperformed mess that I would not wish upon my enemies. Glad to see it has improved to usable now, but that it is better than any other Linux distros, I can't say how considering even being on par with e.g. Fedora would have been a miracle not to long ago.
Happy to admit that purely on the UI/UX, ChromeOS is very solid in my opinion, arguably and subjectively the most consistent and user friendly designed desktop environment I know. Far more consistent than anything MSFT or Apple have provided in quite some time, everything looks like it should, placement is easy to grasp and reliable with a clear identity. Consistency wise, only Gnome can hold a candle to the strictness with which the ChromeOS team execute their vision, though there is the clear divergence in the Gnome team pushing new UX innovations and concepts even if they are controversial and may need to time to learn, whilst the ChromeOS team seems purely focused on the most clearly easy to master approach one can take.
> I'm going to need a citation on that, especially performance
Multiple reasons. ChromeOS ships an optimized, platform-specific kernel, built using LLVM with LTO and AutoFDO. No other distro even attempts this. The only one that has even considered it is CachyOS that offers optional LTO, or Gentoo, where you can DIY LTO, but neither supports FDO.
Another reason is that Chrome GPU acceleration actually works on ChromeOS. IPU webcams work, too. On Fedora, Arch, and others you'll be patching and rebuilding kernels to get IPU.
> Like what? WiFi cards, etc.? Isn't that generally in kernel already?
This is another aspect where the ecosystem is the advantage, not the technical details. Chromebook makers are required to furnish firmware updates. ChromeOS will update (silently, without user intervention or notice) everything in a Chromebook: SSD controllers, battery management, radios, touchpad, USB PD controllers, the Titan security chip, the CPU, whatever. This is very different from the situation on random Linux+hardware combinations where the only source for many of these updates, if they are available at all, would be to reboot to Windows.
You can install ChromeOS on a Mac: https://chromeos.google/products/chromeos-flex/
It's a great stopgap OS for older hardware.
> I would go for a Mac Air or Neo, but only if I could install ChromeOS.
Similarly, but I would extend that to mac mini/studio, but I would like Linux on it. I like hardware, but I hate the OS there.
> I would go for a Mac Air or Neo, but only if I could install ChromeOS.
Is this satire?
We tried Chromebooks for our kids, and the instant I could buy Neos I did. It might just be that we're fully bought into the Apple ecosystem, but I had a hell of a time trying to get stuff like parental controls figured out on ChromeOS.
You don't need parental controls at all. Google will make sure they see exactly what they need to see...
/s
I'm a happy Apple ecosystem user. However, there are many more Windows and Android users worldwide.
I think that the appeal of this product is that the Wintel monopoly of years ago is dying. If the Googlebook is well executed (as the Apple M1 line was), it can be an option for Android users who wish to move away from Windows but are not knowledgeable enough to use Linux. I think the only problem here is Google's track record of abandoning product ideas. A new product like this requires multiple iterations to get it right, but if Google abandons it as soon as the results are not what was expected, it will not have the time to mature in areas like gaming or app support.
I think it's a successor to the Chromebook. In the vast majority of modern K-12 public schools, the school district owns the hardware, not the students.
Everything on this page suggests it's not for education.
Emphasis on AI and connecting to your phone. How many Iceland trips do students make?
Well Chromebooks are primarily EDU products yet still marketed and sold direct to consumers.
Presumably school districts are just going to see different marketing.
Now that I look closer at the Googlebook, I think you are right.
The target is definitely not the K12 education market. It looks more like a premium device which most Chromebooks are not.
On second thought, I think it's not for K12 after all.
I recently heard from couple of Technology Directors at schools that they are looking to procure Macbook Neos replacing their Chromebooks. This might be a strategy to defend their Chromebook market in schools.
Why would an organization want to move from a centrally managed fleet to an unmanaged fleet?
You can still centrally manage Macs? Look at every tech company.
Yeah, but can schools do what even tech companies struggle with/cobble together here?
Macs are very popular in schools today for teachers and staff. Switching to Macbook Neos for students would actually simplify their support burden. I'm not sure they'd be cost justified though.
Source: My wife works IT for our school district.
https://www.apple.com/education/k12/deploy-and-manage/
I don't think these are Chromebook successors. This is supposed to be a premium line according to the "Android Show" video. But I suspect future Chromebooks will use this OS eventually.
Pretty sure when they talked about "very high build quality" and such they're saying this is not a replacement to the cheap chromebooks (which I think the macbook neo is eating anyway) but a higher price point.
Yes, you are probably right.
Unless they're cheap, it's not going to sell well for K-12.
I used to work for an ed-tech company that was specifically focused on software for chromebooks and in talking with customers the biggest selling point of chromebooks for schools what their price. The school issued devices get absolutely beat to shit and they just expect a certain number to be decommissioned at the end of the year. Most schools are looking to buy the cheapest thing that does the job and the small group that have the money to actually buy premium devices are going to gravitate toward Apple products.
If Google is selling these for less then $500 then maybe there's a place for them, but like we saw it with the Pixelbook, there just isn't really demand for an $1000 chromebook
Is the value of the Chromebook in education that it is 1) cheap or 2) doesn't do anything except have a browser?
If it is both, then all the Neo needs to do is have a browser only mode and goodbye Chromebook market.
A Chromebook is far cheaper than a neo. It could be less then a third the price, and that makes a big difference when you're buying a thousand of them.
Got a cheap Acer Win11 machine for like $500 last year. I don’t think they even know what the low-end market is like, it is all about getting the most RAM/storage while everything else is reasonable and cheap enough. In which it is really hard to make a profit there because the price is the most important thing
Gembook or Geminote would've been cooler. But no one asked me unfortunately.
Google MegaPixel!
Googlebook Pixel? Or PixelBook running GooglebookOS?
You might be surprised how good cloud gaming has gotten. I play AAA games at max settings on my MacBook Pro through GeForce Now, and with fiber internet it's nearly indistinguishable from native.
I know people in general hated it, but I found Stadia to be quite good. I'm not too upset because Google paid me back full purchase price, but it's almost a shame that they managed to mess up cloud gaming that badly.
I don't know, I saw quite a few positive comments on Stadia, both as a service and the general approach. Most of the negativity was about it being a Google product and not wanting to get invested in a platform they would inevitably kill. Then of course there was the reaction when it was inevitably killed.
You have my attention. I assume this would also work well on a worse laptop (since the processing is done in the cloud)?
I use boosteroid, which is just steam on cloud. ~4k @ 120Hz for $12/month. No HDR though (they recently removed it). Such a stupid good deal compared to the price of a gaming PC, that I can't really complain. So many data centers with GPU sitting around...
Yes, it's just streaming a video to you. The main limit is your connection speed if you're not near a datacenter as you're limited by ping, so controls can be laggy. You can try it out for free though, which will give you an idea of how good your link is.
At this point, if you want a laptop, get a mac and be done with it.
Until other manufacturer step up their game, there will be years and years.
> I think if I wanted a cheap laptop I'd probably get the macbook neo
8GB of RAM for MacOS is a concern. ChromeOS is probably more RAM efficient..
> ChromeOS is probably more RAM efficient
Based on? Chrome tabs taking up gigs of RAM would make me think ChromeOS isn't going to be very light on memory.
You can control chrome tabs, e.g. autosuspend, close them, etc, you can't control MacOS RAM footprint.
Why anyone would view a non-upgradeable phone slapped into a laptop case with minimal computing capability for the price would ever consider a Neo is beyond me. At that point, get a damn tablet. It’s literally the same thing but, like, designed with intent rather than a bunch of scrap pieces.
Seriously, what’s the draw? The 8 gigs of ram? The 200 gigs of storage? The major lack of ports?
Have you ever touched a Neo? It does not feel like scrap pieces. That is the magic.
A phone has great battery life and standby power management. What’s the problem with running a different OS on it if it works just fine?
Different stuff for different folks I guess. At work all files are on the cloud, I have a NAS and a computer I can remote into for development. A Neo is just perfect to make all of that mobile.
As for tablets, I’d only recommend one if you need a stylus for drawing or a smaller form factor. I think that is the market where the Neo is competing, that is where you have a point.
You get 90% of the MacBook experience for half the price. Most users only need this 90%.
I thought Microsoft had the market cornered on terrible product naming but "Googlebook" is extremely awful.
My suggestion, if they really want to go this route, is to shorten it to "gBook".
I am old enough to remember that iPad was supposed to be a product-line-dooming bad name.
Everyone was expecting "iSlate", which would have been far better according to popular opinion at the time.
I was expecting the Apple Palette
And just a few years before then... Wii.
The first thing that came to mind is "What about all that gobbledygook in your Google-dee-book?"
I'm imagining poultry running around clucking: "gBook! gBook! gBAWK!"
MacBook neo is not expensive but it's not cheap.
Just the build quality on MacBooks compared to your random PC laptop piece of plastic that falls apart within a few years would make me very picky. I have a random “corporate” Lenovo and everything physical in it is way way worse than in my work MacBook
It's $600. In this market that's practically free.
Google Pixelbook from years ago was $999 IIRC. I wouldn't be surprised if Googlebook is more expensive than Neo.
I wanted to like the Pixelbook, but it had a lot of limitations, ChromeOS being the major one. I recall that people were able to run Linux on them, but no idea what that experience was like.
>but my god, I'd die of cringe if someone asked me about my laptop and I had to say "googlebook"
i'd hate for my computing choice to lack fashion forward qualities -- I wouldn't want to be embarrassed at Gate A-13 with my new Apple perched on my lap proudly while waiting for the next question from my adoring fans.
I hope they appreciate the new color!
real talk : my favorite excuse for using an Apple product throughout my life is the tried and true "my company stuck me with it and I hate this piece of shit.", so I find it kinda fascinating that they're such cult objects -- and to be fair I am sure i'd say exactly the same thing if I was ever stuck in a company stupid enough to try to make me be productive on a fancy chromebook, too.
Googlebook sounds funny now, but so did iPad when it was announced.
I still remember the Maxipad jokes.
There's an entire world outside of Silicon Valley and the Apple ecosystem. Apple has a ~9% PC market share. Who is buying the other 91% if there is no demand?
I can tell you they're not going to be buying "googlebooks" plus, Apple has never until this year offered an actual low-price machine.
Of course their market size is going to be smaller when you're leaving out the sub $1000 dollar market.
supposedly macbook pro's M-series are quite adept for gamers these days.
They’re surprisingly powerful for all three games that are available on the platform.
Jokes aside, there are some games with competent Mac ports and if you only have an M-series Mac, you can find some titles that play nice. But most of the stuff that you’d play on a PlayStation or on Windows is simply not available.
But the gaming software market is very heavily biased towards delivering for Windows on Intel. That said, I’m not a gamer so what do I know?
Linux gaming is getting a definite boost from Windows 11 being a shitshow.
And pracically _nobody_ does native Linux games, they're all just running Windows games through Proton, and faster. So fast actually that Proton is Microsoft's performance target :D
I encounter a few native Linux games from time to time on Steam, mostly indies and other smaller games. There was a time there was a medium-sized push for this, Steam was pushing it, lots of Humble and GOG stuff came out with Linux versions...
But yeah, Proton is so good now that I don't think there's much impetus to port. Test on Deck/Steam Machine/Proton, sure, but not so much port. Steam Play also handles runtime container stuff for native Linux games so that can be pretty good and stable itself, but I've definitely had situations where switching over to the Windows version via Proton is a better result than the native Linux one.
I'd like to meet the person that supposed this to you, and ask them what games they play.
The M1 Ultra got 70% of the frames of an RTX 3090 on Tomb Raider[0], so I suppose they're right. Performance-per-watt monsters.
And Apple GPUs have only gotten better.
[0]https://techjourneyman.com/img/blog/m1-ultra-vs-rtx-3090-ben...
That wasn't really my question. The M1 Ultra is a 5nm chip up against the 8nm RTX 3090 - for >$2000 and 220W+ you'd kinda hope the M1 Ultra outperforms the 8nm stuff.
My question is, what games are people playing on Mac? Tomb Raider is one of ~6 AAA titles that was ported to Mac in the last decade. All the other big-ticket games - GTA V, Arc Raiders, Elden Ring - are all hamstrung by Apple's terrible translation software and don't run much better with Crossover either.
Apple Silicon, strictly speaking, is the least adept hardware that you can own for gaming. If you are a gamer, almost every single other GPU on the market would perform better for your needs.
I have an RTX 5090 and am an avid gamer. When I travel I use my M1 MacBook Air and play indie games like Slay the Spire, Hades 2, Balatro, and Hollow Knight Silksong. Not cutting edge but definitely cutting edge fun. Those games run with no difficulties.
Slay the Spire 2 is in early access and has some major issues running but I suspect that’s some issues in the game engine because it’s not framerate but some sort of hitching that makes button presses not register.
YapYap which is an intentionally retro ugly 3D style runs barely in a playable state on the M1, but it got me through in a pinch when my kid wanted us to both play.
If I want to play AAA I fall back to my desktop, you can stream using Moonlight or Parsec but unless both sides are wired it isn’t great.
All of those games are simple enough to run in cheap phones, so not really a very informative data point, is it?
He asked what games are serious gamers playing on a Mac and I gave an answer.
You really had to squeeze those numbers through those filters to get that diction out, didn't you? :P
My 16" M1 Max is kinda crap at running games - I'd put it somewhere around cheaper laptops with 3050 series GPUs.
What, you mean you don’t want to sound like a turkey when describing your computer to others?
> I think if I wanted a cheap laptop I'd probably get the macbook neo
I would recommend the same. I absolutely love my Neo. It's such a nice machine for the price.
It's sad that the M5 Apple chips don't support Linux better. I'm in the market for a laptop, and I'd buy a MBP in a heartbeat if I could wipe it and put Debian on it.
My 2013 MBP was going strong with Debian until the battery started puffing up last year, and I finally had to recycle it.
I get it, I know I'm not their market, but it still pains me because it was a great laptop.
>I really don't see the market fit for this,
Why pay $500-700 for Mac Book Neo for the same low processing power experience that you can get on a Googlebook for half the price? Especially considering you can install linux on it natively.
Other then that, Gemini is the biggest advantage. Google can offer Gemini for free because its TPUs are orders of magnitude more efficient than Nvidia stuff. Even free tier Gemini is really good considering it can integrate with a bunch of your stuff like google docs, and the lower last gen models have pretty generous usage limits.
Overall, if you are in Android ecosystem, you don't really even need a cheap laptop anymore, considering things like Samsung Dex exist.
> Why pay $500-700 for Mac Book Neo for the same low processing power experience that you can get on a Googlebook for half the price?
What makes you think a googlebook will be half the price of a macbook neo?
Also, a used M1 macbook air is $300 on swappa/ebay and will be even better than the neo anyway. It's still more performant than every other non-Apple ARM based laptop/chromebook on the market and will have far superior build quality.
Kompanio Ultra Chromebooks are faster and have a touch screen for use as a tablet or developing mobile-friendly apps. No point in a MacBook Air.
> Kompanio Ultra Chromebooks are faster
Lol. There is zero chance the low end mobile phone SoC shipped in those is remotely as fast as a six year old M1. Even flagship SoCs from qualcomm and samsung still do not exceed it's performance yet.
> Google can offer Gemini for free because its TPUs are orders of magnitude more efficient than Nvidia stuff. Even free tier Gemini is really good considering it can integrate with a bunch of your stuff like google docs, and the lower last gen models have pretty generous usage limits
Good point, that could work. Buy this and you get so many years of Gemini for free and such. "Why pay Anthropic $200/month for Claude when you can buy this and get Gemini for free for a few years". OpenAI and Anthropic are not going to make their own devices most likely either to compete.
> Why pay $500-700 for Mac Book Neo for the same low processing power
I pre-ordered a Neo on a whim to use as a couch laptop alongside my work laptop and gaming computer. It's so fast. It blows everything out of the water when it comes to interactivity.
Plus the whole build quality, screen, touchpad and speakers are all so much better than the work Latitude. Linux support is lacking, but it's still a full usable Unix.
Having seen how people managed to run Cyberpunk 2077 on the Neo with okayish frame rates I don't think there's a single ARM laptop out there that could deliver that performance on Linux. Maybe I'm wrong though.
These things are $250?! Where did you find that info?
I would rather buy this shit than anything Apple.
Of course, there are more than 2 options for laptops. Thankfully those two shit companies didn't get to round up that market yet.
I imagine they're going to do the same thing with this as with Chromebooks: i.e. do enterprise deals with schools and so on? Google's iteration-style structure where they kill products is fine for SaaS type offerings that are free and that you don't build your world around, but buying a laptop they won't support soon enough isn't that useful. Ultimately, just like with Amazon and their phone, it's obvious even prior to release that this is not a priority for the company and the side gig type stuff doesn't work when you are selling hardware.
Might have been more interesting if it were under a separate company that Google owned a large portion of, rather than carrying the Google brand. Then again, maybe the Google brand isn't toxic to the wider ecosystem of buyers. I still think consumer-hardware-wise Google is the Safeway Essentials version of Apple but others might think Gmail or Google itself which consumers consider best in class.
Please not the schools. We don’t need privacy-invading closed systems with built-in slot machines. We need deterministic open systems where kids’ privacy is protected.
Please not schools…
Chromebooks that run on Google services are already the default 1:1 device in schools. They're cheap, they take a beating and have good battery life.
I don't know what the "default" is, but as a data point of one: my kids' public school is all Windows laptops.
I'd assume this opens up 'Googlebooks' to compete with the GPU/M Series Premium laptops so schools can provide them to teach things like Photoshop, Illustrator, CAD Design, anything that chromebooks couldn't do, right?
Same here. They’re subsidized by taking kids’ privacy.
And normalizing google's model of computing, surveillance, locked down platforms etc...
The performance of the machine offered at schools seems to get just a little worse every year too... like one of these days they won't have to worry about kids playing Krunker in class because they won't be able to.
My kids schools all use ipads
It would be so much better for the student's IT proficiencies if the were some ordinary Linux computers instead. Preferably with limited central managment.
The Chromebooks are probably cheaper than the hardware itself could be, but that's a good demonstration of the issue.
It wouldn’t. The central management of Chromebook is what makes the whole system usable. All you’d be doing is sentencing school IT folks to endless, endless support requests.
Funny. At my son's school in Germany, students may bring any device they want without central administration (just Wifi and web platforms). It works quite well without inundating IT staff with support requests. (To achieve at least some similarity of systems, you get a partial refund if you buy either iPads or convertible notebooks running Windows. My son's notebook technically runs Windows but he mostly uses plain Debian Linux with Xournal++.)
That sounds wonderful for tech literate families. Probably less so for ones that aren’t, how many are loaded down with crappy spyware, I wonder?
Who would run the cloud side, or at least the networked backup service?
Sorry, I love Linux, but could you imagine managing a fleet of the cheapest hardware possible and also teaching a bunch of 6th graders how to use Linux? School IT workers are already heroes. I don't like Google, but they're a necessary evil to keep those guys from tearing their hair out every day unless we dedicate significantly more resources to computing in schools.
> We need deterministic open systems where kids’ privacy is protected
I don't think we need any computers really. They'll be inundated with computers and technology their whole lives. They'll figure it out. Just keep this tech out of the classroom altogether.
We've had computers in the classroom for over a decade now, scores and learning has not gone up. It's a failed experiment.
Why are you opposed to using personal computers for education?
> Why are you opposed to using personal computers for education?
They'll have computers at home. And the evidence seems to point in one direction: the more exposure kids have to devices, the more stunted their development tends to be. Add to that the class division, where rich kids are increasingly raised with strictly-policed device exposure, while poor kids' classrooms are littered with iPads and Chrombooks, and I think we can start making blanket statements.
I don’t think we need math really. They’ll be inundated with math and arithmetic their whole lives. They’ll figure it out. Just keep math out of the classroom altogether.
More montessori-style please.
I could not agree more. We need less tech in classrooms, not more.
>deterministic open systems
FreeBSD?
NixOS?
I'd imagine they'll mimic the Chromebook ten year support guarantee, at minimum the eight year guarantee on phones and it'll probably extend to Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo models.
Shipping enterprise desktop hardware with AI integrated features will likely be a priority to improve the cloud footprint amongst fortune 500.
The EU Cyber Resilience Act already requires updates for at least five years (or the life expectancy of the product) after the last unit was sold. So if they sell them for 5 years, they're barely keeping up with the law. On top of that, there are already voices pushing for mandatory 15 years of support.
> Then again, maybe the Google brand isn't toxic to the wider ecosystem of buyers.
It's a "most loved" brand according to https://rankings.newsweek.com/americas-most-loved-brands-202...
I think it's the overexposure to the inside workings of tech that leads a dislike of these brands. As long as Amazon delivers to you the next day and accepts free returns, you're pretty happy.
It's possible (likely?) that if the concept takes off that they might license or give the software away to other hardware vendors, just like the Android ecosystem.
I was anticipating an "AI phone" from someone like Google, not an "AI laptop", although it seems to be Android compatible so maybe that is coming next.
What are they trying to gain with this product? Financial incentives obviously won't be the reason as this can only be a loss leader. They have zero chance competing against Apple in the entry market after Apple introduced the neo and obviously no chance in the lucrative premium market against the Apple.
This is not an Apple competitor, this looks to me like a rebranding of Chromebook with a bunch of AI sprinkled on top. (There's very little market overlap between the Chromebook and practically any Apple product.)
My guess is that they wanted to name this Geminibook but couldn't for some ultimately uninteresting reason.
Not sure if it matters that they compete with Apple blow-for-blow, it's probably just the threat of existential risk if they don't own any platform. They want to make sure they don't get Facebook'd by Apple if/when they decide to go fully vertical on AI.
I think you're underestimating Google's ability and willingness to launch and maintain multiple competing products that appear redundant. But you are overstating the lack of support for past ChromeOS devices, because for the enterprise and education markets the support timelines for Chromebooks have been the same as "forever".
> But you are overstating the lack of support for past ChromeOS devices, because for the enterprise and education markets the support timelines for Chromebooks have been the same as "forever".
ChromeOS devices fall out of support on a timeline. Google sometimes extends the timeline for some devices, and new devices have a longer timeline than in the past; maybe it's better for Education targeted devices, but the Chromebooks I've had for personal devices stopped getting updates and you're left with whatever state it is in; my first one stopped getting updates in the middle of the printing switch where cloud printing was discontinued and local printing didn't actually work.
My understanding is that Google has announced they will stop development for new ChromeOS devices and ten years after the last device is released (not purchased) support goes poof ... and I imagine support activity for the last 5 years of the last device's ten year support will be a lot less than the first 5 years.
I bought a Pixelbook during the middle of their product lifetime, and it was one of the best laptops I ever had. I genuinely don't know how broadly that sentiment was shared, but the cancellation of the product line suggests "not that broadly." Google has changed since that time and I am a bit skeptical this will meet that specific niche for me.
Yeah, I had the original Chromebook Pixel and the Pixelbook and they were both great. Somehow I'm still using the Pixelbook today and it chugs along.
That said, its hard to justify the prices for these premium Chromebooks. When I picked them up they were heavily discounted with some developer code or other.
I also agree with the shaky future as far as being able to actually opening these things up with developer tooling. It seems like they've simply been on a path to rollback all of that.
I don't know if these were related but I had a Pixel C tablet and I'm still upset they killed that off too. It was a nicer tablet than any Samsung I tried and felt like a genuine competitor to the iPad equivalent really excellent build quality, and then they abandoned it. I still have it but whatever they did to the software before giving up on it made it crash and blackscreen all the time while completely idle and I haven't had the energy to install something else on it, if something else even exists.
I think the big issue is it's still not a real full laptop, and that dramatically limits the audience. No matter how well it's made, they're never going to actually do what needs to be done to make it a mass market product. Google doesn't really have the dedication to be a real hardware company. Their hardware is more of a showcase to demonstrate things they want other people to do. And at this point they kill projects so often lots of folks are very hesitant to spend money on their things only for it to die, just like you experienced.
I always wanted a pixelbook as I loved the hardware design and the taller aspect ratio screen, it was just too expensive for me to spend on a chromebook only laptop. IMO it looked nicer than the Macbook Pro's of the time.
Likewise I bought the Chromebook Pixel LS and a Pixelbook during that dark period before M-series laptops and these laptops were awesome and IMO well ahead of their time. The ChromeOS with all its faults was a modern OS without legacy. For example the OS settings are closer to the Phone OS like settings vs MacOS settings that are still a mess these days.
They all suffered from severe hardware issues that got never fixed.
Chromebook Pixel 2013 had that atrocious function key row that didn't align with the rest of the keyboard and where made of different material and had terrible travel. The Pixelbook had some terrible PWDM issues with the display and iirc it also had severe ghosting issues. Not to forget the cut in performance of these mobile fanless Intel chips because of Meltdown & Spectre. I think the Pixelbook's WiFi/Bluetooth module made by Intel also suffered from hardware faults where using Bluetooth could degrade WiFi performance and vice versa.
Google seems to have made an official post on Reddit describing the feature set in detail:
https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb8xls/introducin...
[Edit]
And, the feature set references the 'AI mouse pointer' from this Deepmind blog..
https://deepmind.google/blog/ai-pointer/
Wiggling the mouse is what people do involuntarily when the computer isn’t working right. They are setting themselves up for Gemini to be the uninvited Clippy, except this will send everything you are working on to Google to harvest data from.
The video they show (which is probably exaggerated by cutting out LLM generation time) is pretty sci-fi. I don't know how it works in practice, but it looks fun to try out. If this could run locally, I'd love to have a feature like that.
Most people don't really seem to care about data collection when it comes to AI usage. A lot of people who will feed Gemini/ChatGPT/Bing/Claude/shady clusters across the internet for bargain bin prices/Mistral every detail of their lives will probably be fine with Gemini as long as it doesn't interfere unnecessarily.
> Most people don't really seem to care about data collection when it comes to AI usage.
That assumes you intended to use AI. People are going to accidentally upload random private content to google.
It probably works similar to how Gemini works in Android for a while now.
You can point or select anywhere on the screen and it understands and searches the context. If you select a text block, even text inside an image, it allows to copy or search the text online. Otherwise it can search the image.
I use it often. It's intuitive and fast even on non-flagship phones.
I'd wager their A/B tests went well enough to warrant a port from phones to their new "Chromebook".
It's the unofficial "where's my mouse pointer" macro
At least one DE I've used (MacOS? KDE?) even had it as an official macro that would make the pointer 10x bigger when you shook it
MacOS and KDE both do this. In KDE the pointer keeps getting larger the longer you shake it until it is truly absurdly huge.
KDE does that by default. Handy sometimes, funny sometimes.
If you keep on shaking the mouse, the pointer just keeps getting bigger and bigger. You can certainly find it when it is enormous.
It is deliberately designed for maximum accidental invocations so the managers and execs behind it can claim the large user numbers in their promo packets.
Oh my goodness, the use cases are so… badly conceived:
> If a friend sends you a picture on your phone and you need to email it from your laptop, the file is just there — no need to email it to yourself.
So are there really people who will email a photo to themselves from their phone to… send the photo in an email?
Interesting to note that there is no mention of processor or operating system in that post. I’m guessing that it’s Android in a laptop form factor which I suppose might be something that some people would want, but I’m not one of them.
Getting files on and off of a phone is shockingly hard. Shockingly. It's even worse on an iPhone, if you don't have a mac. To get my photos from my iPhone to my PC, I had to first upload them to iCloud and then download them again. My phone and computer are, like, a foot away from each other but I had to send the photos across the country to some server and back just to look at them.
Everyone emails themself stuff, that's normal. The weird part is how often will you ever need to email it specifically from your laptop, but it's already on your phone? If it's on your phone and you need to email it to someone, couldn't you just email from your phone?
KDE Connect may work for you. (You don't have to use KDE.)
LocalSend works really well across platforms in a LAN, no uploading to some server required.
Oh, I use use AirDrop to myself for this. Yes, given my photo library syncs to iCloud, just opening Photos seems like it makes sense on a fast WAN which I sort-of do have, but of course, iCloud syncs only happen when the device decides the mood is just right, and can't be triggered manually, because I guess that would just be 'clutter' in the UI.
That's mostly an iPhone problem. Plugging in an Android phone still works, and wireless exchange with QuickShare also works on most devices. With Google reverse engineering Airdrop, I hope they can get the Android <-> macOS experience to finally work correctly soon as well.
My only real use of Google Keep is as a cross-device clipboard.
I personally just have a discord with myself as the only member. With their webhooks API you can even automate the PC side.
I emailed myself many times to transfer some files between phone and computer. I would say at least once every week.
It is a solved problem https://f-droid.org/packages/com.ismartcoding.plain/
There is also localsend, but plainapp needs to run in only one device.
I'm super techy but I admit that I just use Signal to send me a "Note to self" whenever I need a file from my phone on my computer quickly. For images I just use immich, but texting myself is honestly the quickest way for files because the experience is indeed terrible.
Same here with the Telegram "Saved Messages" ( the same stuff as Signal's )
You can just use Dropbox or equivalent.
They should have just said "USE it on your laptop", not email it.
I all the time use my phone as a camera (esp. for coin photography) than e-mail the photos to myself as the most convenient way to get them on my desktop where I can edit them with GIMP etc.
I just open photos.google.com and grab them. No need to fiddle on my phone.
When on wifi, the photo backup upload starts immediately. If it doesn't (possibly due to your settings, this used to be my issue) you can manually open the photos app and tap the backup now button.
I'm not sure if that's an option for me, since I'm not using the regular camera app - I'm using Halide which is better suited to macro (coin) photography.
Google Drive would be another option to transfer, but would be more work (about same to "share" as email, but less convenient to access on desktop).
The e-mail way is actually quite convenient since on the desktop you can just download all the photos you sent in one go - they appear as a zip file that you can then just extract to your working directory, rather than having to save one at a time.
These are usually targeted at kids and newbies. My mom would 100% appreciate that feature for photos and pdfs. She still struggles with files on Windows and managing files are even less clear on chromebook.
Yeah I and i suspect a lot of others email myself little files all the time because surprisingly that's the most convenient way to get those files quickly from phone to laptop.
It’s a poor example. Recently, I did have to email myself photos taken with my phone to access them on my laptop. Would be nice if they were automatically synced. It’s work phone and laptop so I could have gone through OneDrive or Box but just as inconvenient as email.
I feel like very much not the target market for this. Tokyo Vintage Shopping Trip? LOL
I got mad when I bought a Chromebook thinking it was a cheap laptop I could install any OS on only to find it was boatloader locked and the model I bought hadnt been cracked yet. Say nothing of all of Google's recent practices with Android. This whole thing just sounds like the plague.
> For example, imagine pointing to an image of a building, and requesting “Show me directions”.
This is the biggest UI upgrade I've seen in a long time. I see why Google would build a whole device around it. Local LLM intelligence merged into the UI is all but inevitable.
The belittling comments on this story are deafening, but there is a real advance here that could diffuse fast, and more than incrementally democratize compute.
Looks like their Reddit post has a formatting error?
`[text](link)` is the syntax used to create a link. But since `TKTK` isn't a valid URI, it doesn't render a link. My guess is TKTK is placeholder and they were supposed to fill it in before posting on reddit... but forgot?edit: hah, maybe someone from Google saw my comment. This has now been fixed and TKTK replaced with https://www.reddit.com/r/Android/comments/1tb83gy/making_and...
TKTK is a common placeholder for something that should be filled in: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_come_(publishing)
I bet this is an LLM output mistake that escaped human proofreading.
I had an instance of it this morning: Claude proposed a shell command containing a URL and it used this format, which is broken in context.
Looks like the link got fixed.
I'm really enjoying reddit just completely roasting the entire concept in the comments.
Posting an official announcement of an AI-powered laptop on Reddit were the users there tend to have a hard Anti-AI stance is certainly something.
I haven't been around reddit much for a few years, but in the past at least, /r/android was one of the best tech communities on the internet. It was even better than the iPhone subs for iPhone discussion.
I mean if you think about it, the type of person to own an android phone and care enough about phones to join a community is pretty much guaranteed to only be a tech geek.
AI mouse pointer is definitely not something I wanted to think about today. A recent HN post implored vibe coders not to modify the mouse pointer and now we get this from Google.
"We’re working with Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to make the first Googlebooks."
A disaster from the first step.
Well, that AI mouse pointer idea is one of the most horrifying things I've seen in quite awhile. Hard pass, do not want, do not trust anyone involved.
“Hey google, do something with this. Huh, I guess that’s fine.”
> It's really easy to access your phone’s files right from your Googlebook's file browser.
Yeah but what about Windows Explorer? They've been passively blocking SMB access forever at this point (by disallowing ports below 1024).
I would not be surprised if Googlebook's file browser goes via the cloud.
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 restrictive use cases, but it's still at least a General Purpose OS. Android on laptop is very much not.
This is an overgrown phone with all the trash that comes with a phone, and the very finite use cases that come with a phone, only now it has a keyboard. It's solving none of the problems with Android as an operating system and doesn't seem to even be interested in doing that anyway. The marketing is demoing use cases that don't even exist.
So I repeat my question: Who is this for?
No idea. The people that have no need to run real software and want a high end device probably have an iPad with a keyboard case. Those that want a low end device have a chromebook.
This thing will be killed early 2028...
I mean you basically just described a chromebook, though I believe one of the selling points of chromebook is that it's dirt cheap.
Yeah, a Chromebook's killer 'feature' is that it's web browser attached to a keyboard and functional screen for cheap on a platform that you can't otherwise screw up.
If you price that up to $1,000 (which some Chromebooks definitely do), then I start to ask a variation of the same question: Why did you buy that?
Omg. All the worst of Google embedded in a single device.
I swear if I see it in real life I'm going to spray holy water on it.
A.I., data collecting at every level, horrible incoherent ui.
Hit me daddy !
[delayed]
I will never buy another google hardware product again after my most recent pixel experience. I was sent a phone with a defective modem that they refused to replace. This is despite having bought 5 other pixels and also using google fi and a bunch of other google products.
I will never trust them with a hardware purchase ever again.
>I was sent a phone with a defective modem that they refused to replace
To be fair, how would they even verify this? Unless it's outright broken (eg. no cell reception), someone with a "defective modem" is basically indistinguishable from the 99 other people with a perfectly fine phone, but nonetheless want their phone replaced for various nonspecific issues about cell reception.
Mine got a software update that rendered it useless. I bought an iPhone.
I bought a skagen with google watch os or whatever was it called. The experience was so so bad, I’m never going back to Google products.
As another n=1, I've been happy with my Pixel phones over the years and never had such an experience.
I was very happy with them until they sold me a defective phone, jerked me around for months, then refused to replace it.
That comment was criticizing Google's support. Did you also have an experience with them?
Yeah I've been exclusively on Pixels since the 2 and love them
I can't stand websites like this. I get there's no substance to my complaint, but it just seems pointless to do this. If you want a slow reveal, do a video or something (but I won't watch that either).
I legit thought it was just an image. The first panel fills my whole phone screen and there is no indication that there is anything to scroll. I don't like this new web.
Awful branding aside this will be dead within 3 years.
MacBook neo @ $499 and the ability to finance it leaves almost zero room in the US market for an Android laptop.
*edit
It looks like will be a ChromeOS successor and their demographic will be schools?
Branding is way off. Marketed as an AI laptop sounds like local inference to engineers, but no. The general public are weary of AI. The Neo is selling so well that Apple is running out of the A18 Pro chips. Rumors are that Apple may have 2 steps: mark as sold out, or upgrade to the latest iPhone SOC which comes with an upgrade to 12GB of RAM. I also suspect this is Ternus' first product launch as CEO (not officially until Sept 1).
Anyway, this will be fun to see price point, manufacturer differentiation (surprised that Google isn't building this themselves) and reviews. Hard to see how it competes with the Neo at $499 that can run a full Desktop OS and integrates well with the ecosystem.
> The general public are weary of AI.
Have you interacted with the 'general public' in the last year or so?
Every non-technical person I know uses AI for 'fact checking' now, as well as 'doing the math' before deciding something, despite these two literally being the well known blind spots of modern AI. People have adopted AI suspiciously cleanly into their habits and workflows.
The only person I have seen being weary of AI recently is a labor activist, for good reason.
Most folks use AI and hate it
I'm seeing a wary public where I'm at. Dunno what's up with your area.
A simple search for "neo" is now up to 32 results, up from 6 at the time of this comment :) Somewhere someone said why Neo when Googlebook would be 1/2 the cost, but I highly doubt its going to be $250. No official pricing has been released.
Between Crostini and Android, it's "full desktop os" that much of a differentiator? And as far as "works well with the ecosystem", the press release makes it sound like this will integrate well with an Android phone.
Not _just_ being able to finance; the 0% interest and 24-month period is amazing!
Yeah this is going the way of the Pixelbook.
All of society is heading towards an incredibly unpopular future. Nobody wants this. Tech was a mistake. I wish them all failure and shame. Feel bad and quit
For those wondering why this isn't using the Pixelbook brand, the Reddit post sheds more light.
A Googlebook is something "above" a Chromebook (maybe the AI featureset imposes hardware demands that Chromebooks can't service) but is still made by third parties. I suppose they're keeping Pixelbook for first-party devices.
The most interesting part to me is the "Create your own widget". I'm really interested to see bespoke UI become a first class citizen. Why _can't_ I just ask Gemini to build a widget that serves the data I want how I want it?
Building "small" UI is for the birds, just expose the API and the basics and let users tell the AI what UI they want.
They just show that for widgets but I think that will be a big thing in the future
Everyone and their mom will have their own hyperspecific custom apps prompted into existence
Something like Claude Code with stricter sandboxing built into the OS for consumers
Not just desktop either but also on phones
This just oozes design by committee. Googlebook is the most confusing name they good chooses, some asinine compromise...
Most people who haven't reddit would assume googlebooks are made by google
Indulge some pedantry with me... Why "Googlebook?" Pixel was meant for first-party computing devices, I thought. Nest for smart home and Fitbit for fitness trackers.
If you don't want to associate with past Pixelbooks and want to highlight Gemini, why not Geminibook or something like that? Does Google not have faith in the Gemini branding?
Random thoughts from a nerdy mind.
AI polls lower than "congress". People hate it - they hate it so much. They probably _wanted_ to call it that but someone who knows anything put their foot down.
CongressBook it is!
buth the very first two bits of copy are about "intelligence" and "gemini". If they wanted to stay away from AI as branding they didn't do a great job.
Googlebook sounds like a first party hardware product but apparently it's just the new name for Androidified ChromeOS? They should have just called it "Android". And if there's ever first party hardware it should be Pixelbook or Gbook.
If Samsung isn't a Googlebook partner then those laptop OEMs could be shipping the Google desktop environment while OEMs are free to ship a Googlebook or scale up their own desktop environments.
Just calling it a "Gbook" sounds infinitely cooler.
They are renaming fitbit to google health too lol
Just the app, hardware trackers like the Air are still Fitbit.
Which matches what they did with Nest, keeping the hardware name but having everything live in the Google Home app.
I attended Google I/O in 2013 and was given a Chromebook Pixel, their $1300 laptop. The hardware was very, very nice, and I quite enjoyed using it for a while. One day, I dropped it and damaged the screen well outside of its warranty period. "Oh no," I thought. "This is probably going to be pretty expensive to fix." So, bracing for the damage, I called up Google and told them what had happened. They replied that there was no fixing it. They would replace the laptops under the warranty, but there was no repairing to be done. I was welcome to call around and ask local repair shops if they could do it. That went nowhere, of course.
I've been pretty skeptical of Google laptops ever since.
Looks and feels premium, but ultimately fundamentally disposable.
This pattern extends to so many goods in modern life. Washing machines, microwaves, etc aren't worth the time of a local repairman. Repair is economically incompatible with its life cycle.
Clothes are replaced, not stitched. And after a few washes at that. Cars, phones, etc, consist of proprietary parts all sealed up.
> Looks and feels premium, but ultimately fundamentally disposable.
I'd add that experiences like GP help expose that the main difference in most products between 'premium' and 'disposable' is in the branding and the price tag. With few exceptions, most companies that used to make the respected brand of the thing (e.g. Sony, G.E., Craftsman) now churn out the same garbage as you used to find 30 years ago in a fleamarket with a brand you'd never heard of - and that's if they don't actually outsource the design and/or production to that low-bidder company and simply license their logo directly to them.
And that's because these are all public or PE-owned companies, and it's a shortcut to easy short-term quarterly growth if you can cut your costs while keeping your price high or almost as high (after all, you're a "Premium Brand" so you can leverage your past reputation to trick customers into continuing to pay that premium).
That’s a western perspective because we are spoiled and have no thought for sustainability.
Please take a look at poor countries of the world like Pakistan. They have a repair culture. They have vehicles from the 80’s out on the road doing daily driving work instead of being used as vintage show pieces. It’s a poor country, this is a necessity. But nevertheless seeing the repair culture there in contrast to the disposable culture in the western world makes me pause.
This... I wonder why isn't there a market in Tijuana, Juarez and other border towns for fixing broken electronics and similar appliances.
Here in Mexico there are plenty of "unofficial" laptops/mobile (Apple, Windows, Androids) repair shops that even receive your device by DHL/UPS, fix it and return it. Because the labor costs are low enough to make it worth. The only downside is that most of the spare parts are imported from the US.
In Western countries, the time of skilled repairmen is better spent repairing things which are much more important and expensive than consumer goods.
And a consumer usually has a much higher return from working in his specialized field to earn money and buy a new product, than spending time with difficult repairs of a broken product.
Yeah, this is entirely a function of labor costs. If you want your stuff repaired, ship it to a low-labor cost economy or hire someone to whom it’s worth the time.
Just to take one step further, labor costs are largely a function of local real estate costs.
> labor costs are largely a function of local real estate costs
Difficult to determine causality in that system. All we can say is places with expensive labour tend to have expensive real estate. (The confounding variable, I imagine, is immigration.)
To add to that; labour should be expensive. And lower repairability of consumer goods is a side effect that is worth dealing with for that benefit.
Good clothes can be definitely stitched. Some brands even offer free or reasonably priced repairs. Patagonia or Citizen Wolf are two examples that spring to mind, and it's even more common once you cross a certain price point. Same applies to good hardware, but you need to do some research before buying.
I am afraid Google's business model is incompatible with this approach as they have almost no customer service because it doesn't "scale". Actually, what they are doing is turning customer service costs into externalities, i.e. environmental waste.
Isn't that a feature not a bug? That means labor, a proxy for quality of life of the laborer, is more expensive than parts. That's abundance.
In fact, in "shithole countries" where everyone wants to emigrate from, it is exactly the opposite: i.e. you try to fix everything even if it takes sooo long.
Absolutely not when replacing costs 100% and repairing usually costs 0.1%.
And the reason people want to leave certain countries is for totally different reasons than not wanting to repair something. In fact, I would say with quite some certainty that emigrees who repaired first before leaving would still do it after emigrating.
The real reasons, in my opinion, are: 1) it takes skill and will to repair something yourself, 2) something new generally feels better than repaired/used, 3) logistics make replacing/repairing less cost efficient, 4) with every replace, companies have a new touchpoint to try to upsell their customers, 5) it takes less time to go to a shop and replace than repair, 6) it takes some giving a shit about the environment to prefer the more complicated route. And probably more.
If repairing usually cost 0.1% then everyone would do it.
The reason almost nobody in first-world countries is getting their microwave repaired is because it often costs more than buying a new one. This is because the new unit is manufactured overseas in a place with cheap labor, but the existing unit has to be repaired locally with expensive labor.
Of course people aren't emigrating because they don't want to repair things. But they are often emigrating because they want to live in a place with high labor costs (i.e. high salaries), or for other reasons that are very strongly correlated with high labor costs.
This is actually a thought-provoking perspective! I have to admit you're right in your conclusions, though the issues are:
1. The waste is still a tremendous shame, both in the materials that will realistically never be recovered in 'recycling', and in the toxicity that results from a lot of that trash created.
2. Jobs in repairing lots of things were arguably pretty good jobs, and we've traded these for, best case, more complete drudgery retailing/supply chain jobs as we get a new laptop every year or two instead of 5 years. Arguably a bigger failing of our economic system, which doesn't seem capable of adapting to global trade, or this shift we're discussing here, nor AI, but still a bummer regardless of fault.
You can value not pumping out disposable garbage even if the (current) economic regime appears to encourage and reward it.
Temu boots don't feel like "abundance" to me compared to some nice tailored $400 boots that you take to the cobbler when there's an issue.
I think in abundant society people would be able to have nice things and the time to take care of them.
In this interpretation, repair requires more labor than recreating the entire product, and 'parts' somehow doesn't represent any labor.
> repair requires more labor than recreating the entire product
It requires specialized and local labor. For products you can ship back to the assembly line, this can sometimes work. If you need a local technician, on the other hand, because the assembly line is in China or the product is heavy, yeah, it very well may be that there is no niche where repairs aren’t a material fraction of a new product.
Often it's not even labor.
Given the right guidance and difficulty level, I would enjoy fixing things in my washing machine.
this logic does not hold up if the reason that labor is more expensive than parts is that the labor involved in creating those parts has been outsourced to a "shithole country"
If anything the causality is exactly the opposite. The labor cost will go up (empirically provable) in such "shithole countries" once work is outsourced to them, improving their livelihood.
That means that the cost of (not) utilizing garbage is externalized
>the cost of (not) utilizing garbage is externalized
No, it's the exact opposite, because the consumer is on the hook for the purchase price as well as any repair costs.
Handling trash costs money. A lot of money. Right now, most Americans find it hard to even conceptualize the idea of paying to deal with their waste.
What are you talking about. Trash is inexpensive, but Americans absolutely pay for it (solid waste utility bill). I think people conceptualize that they have utility bills?
Where Americans are renters and garbage service is hidden in their monthly rent payment, sure, but for Americans who own a home, they have to pay their local jurisdiction a fee for taking away trash and recycling and compost (and batteries and light bulbs). Also sewage and water.
Wat. Almost all Americans either pay someone to deal with their waste or are dependents of someone who pays on their behalf. Do you think we're all burning our trash in barrels or dumping it in the local river or something?
But the consumer isn't on the hook for dealing with the garbage.
Horseshit. It means we're doing less with more and anyone with a brain should be able to figure out that's bad for Quality of Life on a long term. Wasting your resources is not how an economy grows strong.
>It means we're doing less with more
Labor is an input too. Fixing something in a way that saves some materials, but requires hours of skilled labor and specialized equipment doesn't straightforwardly mean you're saving overall.
I'll bet it does once you properly price in externalities.
There are various localities that add recycling fees to electronics. They're on the order of 1% of the purchase price, so it's unlikely to make a difference in the repair vs replace calculation.
I'm going to offer a counter narrative here based upon my experience. I have LG appliances and they have fairly reasonable "fix everything wrong" prices. It's not literally everything, your bells and whistles might not work, but if you want just a washing machine, just a dishwasher, or just a fridge/freezer, it will be less expensive than the cheapest new option out there.
When our fridge stopped fridging, we got it fixed for $300: this included replacing the compressor and the coils. When our dishwasher stopped washing, we paid $250 to have 3 or so things fixed at once. And so on.
I don't know if any appliance makers offer this, but if LG still offers it when we eventually replace, they're going to be on the top of my list.
> Repair is economically incompatible with its life cycle.
No, it's because repair involves labor and unless we ship it across the world to take advantage of people making a dollar a day it's just not worth it.
The cost of making and importing stuff from the third world is just so cheap now that it's simpler to get a new one then to have someone making a living wage in the west fix it.
My washing machine started making weird loud noises recently. Had a repair guy come by and he told me it's the plastic gears in the gearcase wearing down. I asked him what it would cost to repair and he said with parts and labor it would be cheaper to buy a new one. He told me to just keep using it and deal with the noise until it stops working, so that's what I'm doing. When the time comes I'm considering paying $150 for the new gearcase and trying to fix it myself, but it's so stupid to that it's come to this
Parts wear out. Things break. That's normal.
The rose-tinted era of things being made to last never really happened. For each of the old survivor washing mashines, refrigerators, vacuum cleaners, and Casiotron wrist watches that are still out there doing good work, countless thousands of others were recycled or landfilled because it was better to buy something different than to fix the old one.
It was never cheap to pay someone to work on stuff. The costs of hiring professional labor and the overhead associated with that labor (for service techs, that means things like vehicles, buildings, inventory, tools, training, insurance, book keeping, and covering next week's paycheck even if this week was slow) have always been expensive.
Parts have always been relatively expensive, too. Availability of parts has always been somewhat hit-or-miss.
It seems like an unpopular opinion, but I don't think it came to this. Instead, I think that it started off this way, and that it simply remains this way today.
So, sure: $150 for a new widget? Not so bad. Maybe a pro could get it done in a few hours (maybe they can even get two of them done in one workday!), while perhaps it will take you a day or two to work through R&Ring this thing on your own for the first time.
Whether the total investment (including time) is worth it to you is a personal decision, but that kind of decision-making is also not new. :)
Plastic gears in a washing machine just seems stupid, though. That's probably on me for buying a cheap one, but the repair guy said it's extremely common now, even in nicer models
It's the result of manufacturing at scale being so tremendously more efficient. It really does use less human effort, resources, energy, whatever metric you want to measure, to just produce a brand new one than to produce a more resource-intensive one and then try to fix in a one-off fashion.
"Planned obsolescence" is the engineering reason for this so it's well planned.
"Disposable" is fine! Things have a useful lifetime and uneconomic repairs are just that. Nothing needs to last forever.
"Disposable" is a tradeoff, and can absolutely be a net-negative if you take it too far.
>Clothes are replaced, not stitched
Unlike a lot of hardware and such in our homes, this mostly just boils down to people refusing to learn and is incredibly easy to remedy. Basic stitching is not super difficult. My partner has very light knowledge of stitching, learned it mostly as a kid and never used it much, but has repaired plenty of my clothes. I'm wearing stitched jeans as we speak (pocket got caught on a hook and tore nearly off). Typically gives my regularly worn clothes an extra year or two of life.
Welcome to modern life. It looks amazing — but its all a lie.
I used to have everything Google.
Strata Pixels, Nest Cameras Google Smart Speakers Nest Home Security system
but then I broke my Google Pixel 1 watch. I ended up chatting with service in India and they pretty much told me that there was no way to fix it. After that, I quit buying all things Google and switched to Apple. Now I only buy Google software products, no consumer devices.
They completely changed their watch design for the Pixel Watch 4 so that it is actually repairable: https://www.ifixit.com/News/113620/the-pixel-watch-4-is-the-...
How is Apple any different? IIRC Apple watches have an abysmal repairability score too.
If anything, Apple is in general the worst on this particular metric. Switching to Apple because you had a repairability problem with another brand is kinda funny.
I haven't had an issue with Apple, but it's only been 3.5 years.
Are there stories where Apple straight up said they wouldn't repair a watch? I thought they'd repair it even if the repairs were more the the replacement value.
I went all in on the Nest ecosystem when I bought my house eight years ago, and Google absolutely ruined it with the botched acquisition. Half the stuff is Google branded, half is Nest branded, a different half has Google branded software and a different half has Nest branded software. None of it really works reliably anymore. The lock to my front door is completely incompatible with modern "Google Home" and I'm unable to change its passcode.
It's a total disaster and I will never buy Google hardware again.
Love their SaaS offerings though!
Apple gets a 3/10 for repairability to Google's 9/10 on their latest Pixel Watch 4.
Google isn't making these (or having them – the devices themselves – made under a Google brand). Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo are making them.
Tying the browser version to the system version was a mistake too. Once it stopped getting system updates, it stopped being compatible with big corners of the web that expect Chrome to always be the newest version.
They had a fix for that in development! Sadly but not surprisingly, it was cancelled:
https://9to5google.com/2024/07/12/chromeos-lacros-ending/
Cancelled presumably because instead they will move new Chromebooks to this Android OS.
That's still the default state of Google Hardware. Just look at their out-of-warranty Pixel Watch repairs.
And if you're not in North America (or EU), chances are very high that any repair to Pixels is going to be either not possible or will cost you dearly. I personally had a terrible experience of this with Pixel 7 Pro that was in warranty and had a water-related damage, since then, I've stayed away from any device made by Google.
I really miss the Chromebook Pixel / Pixelbook / whatever it was called.
It was my travel laptop for at least 5 years.
It was expensive, but the quality, performance, and durability was top tier. And it lasted 5+ years.
The Pixelbook also had a "Google Assistant" button built in the keyboard. Should be easy enough to relaunch the hardware and swap in a gemini button...
I still think it’s amazing they manage to fit all that AI technology into something as small as a button.
Because they (Google) are so removed from manufacturing
Those original Chromebook Pixels were awesome machines.
I wish they'd had open bootloaders, but I seem to recall you had to keep it in developer mode which required a nag screen, or something along those lines, if you wanted to run your own OS on it.
You can easily remove the nag screen by opening the device and unscrewing a screw and running coreboot with SeaBIOS. Pretty neat security approach (not too hard to do, not too easy for a layman to fall for instructions to self-compromise). I have two that work just fine today.
When I was actively hacking my chromebook, there was tons of advice like this, and 90% of it didn't work on both arm and intel-based chromebooks, and the advice-givers never mentioned which category it worked on. Sometimes it was buried 5 paragraphs into the webpage you were sent to for downloads, sometimes not.
Has any of this changed?
Also, I tend to take with a grain of salt any comment that starts with "it's easy/simple/obvious", especially if it doesn't provide details or a link.
I was talking about a specific device on a specific dimension brought up by the GP, i.e., "freedom to tinker for the owner while preserving security for the masses." Whether that became a standardized process is a different story. By and large it has changed across models, but nevertheless it was a good balance of ownership/hackability without compromising security that can be emulated by other devices if they choose to.
There's no specific device under discussion. Where do you want the link to go? Google?
Oh awesome, I never knew that. I sadly do not own one these days.
Process documented here: https://www.chromium.org/chromium-os/developer-library/refer...
WTF, I got this announcement from HN. Uhhh channel anyone?
What CPU architecture does it have? No comment.
What operating system will it use? No comment.
Will I be able to play games on it? It has AI!
Off topic i know but, who goes from SF to Tokyo for a 6 day "vintage shopping trip" ? Who do they think their audience is here?
Another perspective from the posters saying "rich people"; in most advertising, it is aimed at aspiration and not reality - so "people who want to be rich leisure class people, or social media influencers", which tracks for a low-end laptop for a younger phone-native audience.
Advertising aimed at the actually rich is usually more about saving time, "elevated" experiences, or building legacy.
The ZipAir direct flight can get you a week long trip from SF to Tokyo for ~$750 outside of peak seasons, although I'm not sure what their rates for extra bags are if you were only going to shop.
the last time I went to Japan was I think 2015 and the exchange rate was about 120 yen to the dollar. I bought almost all of the clothing that I wore for the next year or two during a stretch of three days in Tokyo. The exchange rate right now is 155 yen to the dollar and prices on everything in the US have gone through the roof, so this doesn't seem all that ridiculous to me. I am more annoyed by the assumption that I live in SF than the idea that I might go from SF to Tokyo on a vintage shopping trip.
My wife and I actually went to Tokyo for a vintage shopping trip haha. I went to Shinjuku to buy vintage camera lenses and she went to Omotesando to buy a vintage bag. I mean, we did other stuff besides vintage shopping too, like eating good food, but still.
I'm not a big shopper, but vintage shopping in Japan was so much fun. I get it.
Like most things in tech, it's targeted at upper middle class or rich people since they have way way more disposable income. It's a "premium Chromebook" which, as much as I like Chromebooks, seems like you would need a lot of disposable income before considering since most actually resource intensive stuff (video games, video editing, etc) you wouldn't get a Chromebook for.
I think you're probably right, but "premium Chromebook" is such an oxymoron. People with money just buy Macs.
From past phone launch ads, its usually the people who were always looking for dinner reservations, concert booking, meeting at drinks. Basically leisure class people. So this vintage shopping trip seems to fit right in.
I think half of SF that works in tech has done a 1 week tokyo trip in the past year
If you watched the rest of the announcements, apparently social media influencers.
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 screen are somehow both still fantastic, speakers great, experience snappy. It is phenomenal hardware, and if this 'Googlebook' comes even remotely close (and I suspect it will), I'm buying one as soon as I can.
There are a lot of people here complaining about AI and Google and Android and Ads and clothes and marketing and whatever. I'm assuming a lot of that is HN anti-AI derkaderbs bias, with some Apple/Google tribalism for good measure. Yeah Gemini might be shite at writing code, but Gemini Web / Android is by far the best executed and most useful conversational/consumer AI assistant out there (at least in my experience, it's not even close).
I'm not a Google fan by any means, but credit where credit is due, I don't see a timeline where they don't end up completely owning genpop consumer AI. The more I think about that the more convinced I am, and the more I feel uncomfortable.
> "Intelligence is the new spec."
Oof.
Very upfront: "Don't pay attention to RAM, processor, battery, monitor, price, etc. We're not telling you that, because you'd laugh. We're selling access to web services. Lower your expectations, get excited for AI. Please clap".
Very rough. Moore's lesser-known cousin, Les, predicted transistor density-per-dollar would actually start to decrease over time. I guess Google's ready for that world?
And even the most virulently pro-AI people I know aren't using any of these services Google is trying to market as sexy. Who is this for? "Make a band poster for my kid", could they have chosen a sadder example?
It doesn't help that the first result on Google for "Google book" is Google Books. Even their "AI overview" is helpfully telling me about the specifications and pricetags of books on Google Books.
I thought that too, but it looks like this isn't a laptop but a new laptop class, and Lenovo, Dell and HP will all be producing Googlebooks. This does not appear to be a first-party laptop product.
I agree with "who is this for" but to be fair to Google's example, the most common use I see of AI for "normal people" besides chat/homework is creating event/business posters and small business promo graphics. The kind of stuff that used to be a Canva template, can now be created quicker/easier with an AI prompt. I agree it's a super-lame use for AI, but the average person's use-cases for AI as it exists now are still very limited (IMHO).
How can Apple's competition be so bad? It's not even that complex: just make something quality. The closest so far is latest Framework Pro.
"Designed for Gemini Intelligence" is the primary marketing tag on the splash page. It's so underwhelming I'm not even going to bother to look into the details. Are people pleading for a laptop that is even more highly integrated with AI, above all else?
Somehow all the Windows laptops are now "Copilot PCs" now. It's crazy...
Anyway, you didn't miss out on anything by not bothering to look into the details. There are no details. No specs, no nothing. Only "get notified" for when it comes in fall.
I immediately closed the page as soon as I saw that pop up at the very top.
It can make widgets though! Imagine being able to track a flight, which is so difficult currently!
If you're touting widgets in your marketing its a sure sign that you have nothing useful to sell.
Google have been terrible at copywriting (at least in their hardware line) for as long as I can remember. Here's an example from 2020: https://x.com/TheOisinMoran/status/1312560706965983234
It's a shame because I love the Pixel series and they're doing it a disservice by not marketing it better. Apple's copy on the other hand is generally excellent.
What is the product here? A chromebook with a different name, and some Gemini stuff thrown on top of the UI?
This really just feels like an incremental upgrade to ChromeOS, with a new name to distance it from a brand that's synonymous with "cheap crap schools give to kids."
Yeah especially the AI stuff is so... not a driving force for anyone to buy this?
For me, unless you can run LLM's and whatnot locally (which is not the case on this undisclosed low-end hardware), "AI" just means doing some API call to a web service and have it serve me some freshly made up tokens. You can do that on a potato. The fact that they happily announce something that can be done on any other cheap-ass laptop as the main selling point, means this product is nothing special at all.
Unfortunately, there is almost no point buying this when the MacBook Neo exists, and runs a full-fledged operating system rather than ChromeOS or Gemini or whatever it is they’re calling it.
It also doesn't activate an LLM when you do a pointer check jfc what are they thinking
It's the same thing as Docs asking Gemini to write for you when the text cursor idles.
> Intelligence is the new spec.
No, it isn't. If you're making hardware product, sell me hardware thats worth it. No spec sheet, just AI pushing. Chromebook 2.0 where the chromebook was a browser for an OS.
Not for me anyway.
As someone with a closet full of dead Google devices, I just can’t get excited about new hardware from them.
I think LLMs have the potential to make computers work how we’ve always envisioned them to (i.e. 60s sci-fi), but I’m also not convinced a dedicated laptop is the right form.
With that said, a 128GB RAM MacBook Pro is getting tantalizingly close to running useful local LLMs.
If the Googlebook was announced as a machine capable of running a small Gemini model locally, I’d probably enter back into the abusive relationship I have with Google hardware and preorder it…
I know people are kinda freaky on here with all the LLM love, but saying "tantalizing" here is a little on the nose, if not just plain weird. Get a room!
The second feature shown in this global launch is ... widgets. Like, Windows Vista widgets. And then, I could also open phone apps but not on my phone but on my computer (because I'd want to do that) and then the remaining feature is file sync.
I am just lost. I wanna watch a documentary on how this kind of thing gets thought out and made and approved by a lot of people and then comes to being annouced as an actual hardware product.
Wow. That has to be one of the worst announcements I have ever seen. A hardware launch that only talks about software and most of the software is AI. This announcement is nothing. This could have been a ChromeOS update.
A plastic macbook lookalike with no ports, a mobile phone OS, a 1366x768 display and probably the cheapest SoC they can scrounge from the parts bin.
This thing, like all other google/android products, will be DOA, and the ones actually duped into buying one will be left with a paperweight in a year or two when the cheap hardware inevitably breaks.
It is not very encouraging that most of the marketing materials on the website show the Googlebook having filleted (rounded) edges similar to Macbook Neo, but the video shows the laptop having a bevelled profile similar to framework 13. Seems like a hastily put together attempt at a response to the acclaimed Macbook Neo. Literally zero information on the page apart from the "fall" release window.
That page has logos of Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo. That makes me assume this won’t be a Google product, but a series of products that carry the “Googlebook” label.
If so, there likely will be some variation in the cases.
Yeah I saw that, looks like this is a new laptop class, perhaps an AI-infused evolution of the Chromebook Plus spec: https://www.google.com/chromebook/chromebookplus/
The product photos that reveal about as much as a monster in a JJ Abrams movie is because I don't think they have "Google" production hardware it sounds like they'll be farming this out to the ASUSes and HPs of the world.
Screams of "COME ON DO SOMETHING WE NEED THE STUDENTS TO NOT BUY MACs!"
Built for Gemini?? No thanks.
There was a time where Google could've been competitive in this space, specifically against Apples MacBook product line, but that has long since passed. The 3rd party manufacturer path means Google isn't committed to this and won't have competitive hardware. It'll just be another Chromebook and limited to the Google Play Store too, which just isn't good at this point.
> and limited to the Google Play Store too, which just isn't good at this point.
Care to elaborate? I have no ide a what you're talking about here.
The quality of apps in the Google Play Store has dropped massively. There are still some gems, but for better or worse, the ecosystem is simply not as strong as Apples and it's certainly not comparable to just having a device where you can install anything you'd like in a full desktop grade OS.
Magic Pointer requires the user to be 18+...
"1. Check responses. Internet connection required. 18+."
Taken out of context, an 18+ device called Magic Pointer coming from Google would be wild.
"Designed for Gemini Intelligence", so, not for human? Got it.
I sooooo want to buy it and have every single keyboard stroke, mouse and eye movement tracked.
I don't know about you but these AIs ran out of internet data to train and I volunteer all my blood, sweat, tears and movements to improve them.
I guess it will be running Google's new operating system (a "modern OS designed for Intelligence") that combines elements of Android and ChromeOS.
Edit: Probably Android at the core, and then a desktop-grade Chrome browser on top.
EDIT: removed URL as the content is completely hallucinated, sorry
Why does this entire page read like an LLM wrote it in response to "Imagine Google is making a new desktop operating system built on Android. It's focused on total app compatibility, parity with the Apple ecosystem, Linux development and power users, and deep AI integration. Write the promo page for this operating system."?
Also
> Intelligent Window Management The OS learns your workflow patterns and proactively arranges windows, prepares files, and opens apps before you ask.
Bleh.
Edit: Oh, it is that. A fan decided to make an LLM write a promo page assuming the role of Google marketing for an unreleased, unannounced project and make up all the details.
Weird - is that a fansite that registered a Google codename as a domain?
Yeah, this is the one. Android in a desktop form-factor.
That’s what I don’t get about this product.
I’ll be blunt and say this looks like a rebrand of ChromeOS with a normal keyboard and AI slapped in it.
Chromebooks are associated with low quality garbage that people only buy if they’re desperate.
I don’t think this product will be successful. Someone buying a laptop at all needs more compatibility than Google’s OSes offer. Even with Android apps, those are all really shoved in haphazardly.
Why am I buying this when I can get a MacBook for $499?
Wouldn't it be Fuchsia?
Fuchsia ended up in some Google products, such as Nest Hub, Nest Hub Max, and Google's smart speakers, thermostats and displays.
But Fuchsia won't be in the Googlebook because there's no Chrome browser for Fuchsia. (In early 2024, Google officially stopped trying to port the full, desktop version of Chrome to Fuchsia.)
The dream of Fuchsia is effectively dead, and aside from some older Nest devices, Google only remaining efforts with the OS is basically as a tiny runtime that they'll run in VMs on Android for some secure process needs.
It was just a speculative research project and a bunch of bloggers went wild declaring it the end of Android, Linux (Android of course sitting on Linux), ChromeOS, etc. That was never real.
45 commits landed in the repository so far today, it's mid way through the work day in the valley. https://fuchsia-review.googlesource.com/q/status:merged
Zircon is still under development with recent RFC's extending the memory synchronization and attribution model for processes.
There was also more extension added to one of the key disk formats in March which has an eye to more flexible long term evolution and adaptation to particular device form factors.
The publicly available evidence does nothing to support your claims, entirely the opposite.
I used to work on Fuchsia, I have not for many years now and have no idea what their current roadmap looks like, but I do know where to actually look up what's been done recently, which is all public and you could do as well.
Anyway I have no idea if this has any fuchsia code in it.
>45 commits landed in the repository so far today
Okay? Is this impressive? Do you think it shows something? Bizarrely whenever people point out how much of a flop Fuchsia is (relative to the hype a decade ago), there is always someone like you citing commit count. Weird.
The vast majority of the commits are tiny commits to change a version number or rename a test. Or to pass some lint tests. I know tiny two man shops that have much more substantial commits each day.
I didn't say it was dead, though did I? Not quite sure what kicked off your bizarre defensive, asshole-ish screed. I specifically said that it most likely will be a tiny runtime for VM processes in Android.
But Fuchsia, announced A DECADE AGO, remains utterly irrelevant, aside from a couple of poorly received, dogshit Nest devices. And we know that Google massively downsized the team and basically moved on, and from people I've talked to it is now basically a make work project.
Yeah, the chances that Fuchsia powers this device is 0.0000%. I hugely doubt it even appears on the device at all.
So the dream, as constantly restated on here, is pretty clearly absolutely dead.
Calling it "just a speculative research project" is severely underestimating how big of an effort Fuschia was. At its peak it had a couple hundred eng IIRC.
I don't think that description underestimates it at all. Google took a moonshot and threw a lot of resources at it, but they in no way put eggs in that basket so when it didn't yield something substantial they just scattered the team and now they keep trying to get something out of that investment.
maybe Fuchsia?
I don't have any comment except to say that I think this is the first non-mechanical/custom keyboard in ages to have an F13 key.
I'm curious what this means for ChromiumOS and downstreams like FydeOS.
If Google is now pushing this "intelligence‑first" desktop experience, how much of that work is likely to stay in the proprietary ChromeOS/Googlebook layer vs. land in upstream ChromiumOS?
IMO this makes the argument for ChromiumOS and downstreams stronger. Gemini wants to do everything in my browser and i can't turn it off please help
Chromebook, Pixelbook, Googlebook.
Google loves to just remake the same-ish thing again in hopes of adoption.
Chromebooks had a higher market share than Macs in 2021.
That bump in adoption was most likely due to remote-learning prompted by the pandemic, something that we're not likely to see again.
Regardless, Chromebooks are as adopted as anything is likely to get in the current Windows-Mac duopoly.
https://goomics.net/239
We started taking the phones out of schools, so I guess now we are building them back into education laptops instead?
I can't invest in Goolge products. I always feel like they're going to pull the plug or change the terms, pricing model etc.
This is how I feel. No matter what they do at this point it is moot as they cannot be trusted to maintain products into the future. So much so it is a meme at this point.
Mostly dismissive comments, it seems. Maybe justified. But I think a more interesting conversation is what happens if this or other devices like it become a hit? I wonder if the next generation of users will look at computers with no AI features the way we look at MS-DOS.
Normalizing compute rental + no privacy vs. actual ownership.
Typical of Big Tech spirit.
Copilot never gave Windows 11 a chance. Now Gemini will do the same to whatever this device is supposed to do.
Love the confidence of launching a teaser page with zero specs. I’m not emotionally prepared to be marketed to before I know how much RAM it has.
Google basically said “here’s a mysterious glowing rectangle” and expected us spec junkies not to immediately start clawing at the walls for a datasheet, and losing sleep for weeks on end until we get them.
No spec, no price, just fluff. Typical Google marketing.
Apple's best move was to steer away from AI lockdowns and focus on what consumers really need.
Coupling these with Gemini is so detached, especially when everyone screams Local LLM.
Most comments here are about Chromebook/Googlebook hardware. But IMO the more interesting part is AI-native OS features. Unfortunately it seems like not a ton, but I think the future is in custom software created from user prompts.
Ie the other day I wanted to track my clipboard history, and I preferred to trust a locally coded & executed AI-generated clipboard history mac app over a random github project.
Now obviously trusting AI has its own concerns vs trusting people, but interested in other ways companies will reimagine interfaces with AI
Original Pixelbook was amazing and my fam still uses it. Wish they just stuck to the lineup and kept iterating vs giving up and trying to rebrand every few years.
This will be killed off in 18 months. Just like every other Google project that doesnt involve ads or tracking.
It's just a slightly different chromebook optimized for AI? Am I missing something? What a nightmare.
So eventually this will have ads everywhere right? Because selling all your info won’t be enough for google.
I can’t wait for local llms to get more powerful
When I saw the name, Googlebook I had my fingers crossed that Google had finally built something that could compete with the Apple MacBook. If that ad is anything to go by, this will flop and there will be no shortage of consumers who will go along for the ride.
If it ends up having ML-centric hardware, like a version of their TPUs, the story could change, especially if they don't try to keep it locked within their ecosystem. Local AI is the future.
so Aluminum OS is finally here. it should be big enough of an announcement by itself but what we get is googlebook; hardware with an AI-tied value proposition. how do they think people would justify choosing a googlebook over everything else only to use gemini?
I wish it was framed around the OS and how it can run on a wide range of devices (similar to android and chrome os) and become something more in time (maybe with apps that can be developed outside the android ecosystem with a desktop experience in mind).
For a split second I thought this was a joke/commentary on Google and Facebook.
Finally, the laptop I've been waiting for, I can use Gemini to ask it the difference between hotdog or not hotdog.
High-end Chromebook done right could be a very good thing for computer security.
I bet you all share the same feeling looking at it: it will be pretty OK for 2 years and then become abandon-ware soon after, like it is with Google products typically. Or not, but you still have that scepticist gut feeling about it.
This is really cool (although they could've recycled the Pixelbook brand). I hope there'll be a way to dual boot Windows 11 on this.
Yeah the name is a little clumsy sounding. I think Pixelbook isn't as recognizable as Chromebook.
I guess they don't want the baggage from Chromebook because Chrome is a given Google wants people to think Google == AI the way they think Chrome == internet.
We may not like Copilot but the truth is Google's OS is already delivering what Apple Intelligence promised on laptops and phones. Google has a lot of customers, a good amount of Apple customers seem to want Apple Intelligence. I'm interested in seeing how Google does against Apple (and curious what GoogleBook will cost). It's important to remember that it was in the works long before MacBook Neo was announced and maybe even before it was rumored.
Or Chromebook? It’s the same with the messengers, they can’t settle on a single brand.
This runs Android, not ChromeOS, so the Chromebook name doesn't fit.
That said, Googlebook is a terrible name and reusing Pixelbook would have been way better.
Agreed, Pixelbook does sound better that Googlebook. But maybe it's just a matter of getting used to it
Google TechDeck Pro
After the Pixelbook, I don't think I'm giving their hardware another chance. When through all the choices, back on Mac for that sweet silicon and a solid desktop.
This is the dumbest branding Google has ever come up with and I am here for it. I can't wait for the memes. Is that your Chromebook? No, it's my Googlebook!
Edit: It lists five OEMs, so it's not a Pixel equivalent, not Google-made hardware. Which makes it funnier, actually. Like if Windows laptops from every OEM were called Microsoftbooks.
> Googlebook
My Gobbledygook works just fine
Droidbook
Please tell me you're being sarcastic here?
I have a hard time seeing how any Chromebook above $ 349,- could still survive in an post-MacBook Neo age.
Say what you want, a cheap Windows laptop at least has an edge on obscure software compatibility over MacOS and a notebook running any modern Linux distro gets the luxury of user control. ChromeOS meanwhile has neither. Paying more for worst in class software compatibility inferior build quality, design and restrictive lock-in sounds about as appealing as a chicken tartare from the value bin.
Prior to (again) getting a MacBook Pro, I wanted to make a high end Laptop (ASUS ProArt P16, about € 3500,- back then) work with Fedora, but purely on a basis of build quality and input feel, it was unusably poor. That trackpad deserves a place in hell and if that (or likely a worse one given cost cutting) is what the Asus and Acer models get, competing with the Neo is a cruel joke.
HP and especially Lenovo fare better, I can at least live with those though a Neos input is nicer if we compare their current devices at the same price, so unless Google is willing to heavily subsidise a brand that, let's be honest, is unlikely to garner any loyalty, I can't see them being overly competitive either, given the software limits of ChromeOS.
> ChromeOS meanwhile has the worst compatibility off all four
ChromeOS can run desktop Linux software and Android software, so it definitely isnt worse than Mac. Its probably even better than Windows. Of course, if you need Mac/Windows software, Web/Android/Linux alternatives might not exist or might be worse. But the devices are hardly lacking software compatibility.
No, ChromeOS cannot. You can only run Linux applications via Crostini. Heavily sandboxed and restricted to limited hardware access, that is not software compatible by any reasonable measure. If that counts, my MacBook is compatible with all software ever made via UTM. Also, lest we forget ISA. If these Googlebooks are arm64, that restricts software compatibility further still as Crostini doesn't translate between arm64 and x86_64, so we are going from poor, limited support, to worse.
For reference:
> Cameras aren't yet supported.
> Android devices are supported over USB, but other devices aren't yet supported.
> Android Emulators aren't yet supported.
> Hardware acceleration isn't yet supported, including GPU and video decode.
> ChromeVox is supported for the default Terminal app, but not yet for other Linux apps.
Source: https://support.google.com/chromebook/answer/9145439?hl=en
It’s amazing to scroll through this whole product page and leave feeling like I don’t know what it really does / who it’s for.
Why are these features compelling? I went through the whole page and still don’t know what OS runs on this laptop… the value prop for this is incredibly unclear.
Features like the magic cursor look cool: an infinitely flexible context menu. However, context menus make it clear what you can and cannot do. If the magic cursor can't "do everything reasonable", it'll be just as usable as Siri.
I'd be more likely to believe them if they had already implemented this feature on their Pixel phones, but they haven't so I expect it probably isn't "done".
This page crashes in my Google-based browser. I can't scroll down more than ~50 pixels.
One of the really nice things of the Macs (from Neo to Studio) is that they have a single UI (that might or might not be ideal for you, but it is unified,) yet underneath it has a Unix OS that lets you run standard compilers, docker containers, vms whatnot. The pixel and chromebooks were nice as a device to run a browser on, but not for development. Getting EMacs to run on them felt like a big achievement at the time.
> has a Unix OS that lets you run standard compilers, docker containers, vms whatnot
99% of users don't give a damn about that. This is a play for kids in schools, so they get used to their operating system.
I didn't say anything ab out that.
I am saying that, as a developer (is it really only 1% of laptop owners?), the pixel/chromebooks were not really that useful.
Who knows, maybe that's changing with whatever OS this is running.
I cannot think of a product I'd like to own less than a machine fully-integrated with Google. And I'm not some "never Google" guy—my company's entire email infrastructure lives on Google. It's a necessary evil for us.
But... Google owning my hardware? This feels so out of left field. I must not be the target audience.
I assume you don't use a google pixel phone?
This seems like their pixel experience but on a laptop.
I'm not sure I'm their target audience, but if it can be a macbook neo quality device with chromebook, I can see a market for it.
I can't view the page because... Firefox, apparently.
reminds me of the pixel c! that thing was pretty neat. this thing has the same "glowbar"... i bet it's old stock for them now since the pixel c didn't see many sales; that was from an era where google at least pretended to be a 'good guy.'
i have always liked netbooks more than chromebooks (but I really only ever had the samsung NC10, specifically for the keyboard). i really miss that thing. these days i am wary of the gewgly eyes on my digital person, so i'ma pass on this til someone less on the radar makes another platform pop.
where to next! linux on risc-v? steamOS on ARM? screenless lozenge wirelessly coupled to an EEG that makes me hallucinate images?
I’m not sure I understand the customer use case for this.
1- Chromebooks have made huge inroads in schools because they’re easy to maintain, share, upgrade, and they’re very cheap.
2- Obviously, running desktop software is a huge new piece of the ecosystem, but isn’t this customer already opting for Windows/Mac, who have extremely robust 30-year ecosystems and suites like Office, iLife, Adobe, etc that will obviously never build for this platform
There’s no way Google OS ever hits any kind of parity of exclusive software that is unavailable on Windows/Mac. Best they can do is run Android apps. This also introduces a high new threat vector to their existing customers who might not want it.
Lastly, what will this do to Chromebook buyers who are now wondering which OS will be actively developed in 5 years?
There's now a Photoshop web, and Google has their own office suite. Canva and Figma are websites. iLife is discontinued. Are there specific things in "etc" that you're thinking of? Davinci Resolve and Blender are available for Linux and thus Crostini on a Chromebook/Googlebook. ChromeOS came out in 2011, 15 years ago. So not 30, but it's been around a while now.
> Designed for Gemini Intelligence
They should design one for users.
Related: How is it possible for Google in 2026 to get away without a cookie banner that allows you to manage your tracking preferences? The cookie notification only links to a "Learn more" [0] page but provides no specifics on how cookies are used on this site? Is this some legal wizardry or plain ignorance of the GDRP?
[0] https://policies.google.com/technologies/cookies?hl=en
I have "Agree" and "No thanks" buttons on my cookie banner. Tested on FF and Chrome (Windows) and Safari (iOS). Maybe a UI bug for you?
They don't have to offer a version of the website without consent. As long as they inform you that the site will use cookies if you use it that should be GDPR-compliant.
What does Google gain from this? They already struggle in hardware, or am I missing something - has something changed?
The main thrust behind their foray into hardware was that they feared being cut off. Whoever controls the terminal has the power to push users toward their own platforms (Bing, Microsoft 365, etc), and I guess they could see the writing on the wall and wanted to have a platform they control.
As for this project, I think part of it is just the conclusion of internal power plays between Chrome and Android. The other half is probably the same fear as before: if Microsoft puts their own AI closer to the user, Google will have a hard time keeping up. So the best defense is to have your own "AI-first" OS.
Keep in mind that Microsoft doesn't need to win to hurt Google's bottom line. For example, if Bing captures 5% of search through OS- and browser-bundling strategies, that's still a 5% that Google can't have.
Seems like they want a MacBook for people with Pixel phones. Okay. I assume it will be an ARM based system running some Android variant, if you can seamlessly launch Android apps on it. "Designed for Gemini Intelligence" is somewhat repellant - look at how poorly MS has done pushing Copilot on people. Overall I'd need way more info to know if this is a device I'd be interested in at all, but since I have a MacBook and iPhone, I don't think I'm the target market. Perhaps their ideal target market, but it seems like this would be best for people who are already knee deep in the Google ecosystem.
I wish Google can bring back the OG Pixelbook, where "AI" merely means Google Assistant.
HN always disappoints me with these kind of threads, with all the generic disappointment and Google scepticism dominating the conversation.
Don't get me wrong, I'm still disappointed. But mainly because it looks so superficial. I was trying to work out what's new and it just looks like an Android device (or Chrome? I can't tell) with some party trick Gemini features sprinkled on it. There isn't anything technically interesting here.
I'm still waiting for someone to ship a truly AI native device - something with the right sandboxing and UI layers to let an AI model truly understand and work with the device natively, but safely. The OS SDK itself should natively incorporate all these elements as first class primitives. And the model would be trained heavily to explicitly understand and work well with them.
Apple will probably nail this, as usual
I presume since they're going to be actually showing off the details of the Aluminium OS at Google IO, they probably want to keep it surprising, so that should hopefully explain the sparse details. HN is a bubble... this sentiment about Google really isn't widely shared. Personally, I'm pretty happy that Android is coming to desktop, I really feel like Windows and macOS need more competition. Unless Valve does something spectacular with Linux desktop adoption, Android is probably the best bet.
Can't wait to see the rooting hacks resulting from mousing over a strawberry and text saying "count the r's".
I really wanted to stay in the google chromebook / googlebook echo system. But the hardware was expensive for what you get. Apple announced the macbook neo and I picked one up. Great hardware. can run light weight mac software. I don't run much beyond chrome and wahoo SYSTM (bike trainer app). It's really solid hardware and cost $600 or so.
I use gemini extensively (and claude). But - do I need this integrated in my laptop? Don't quite see it. And it's hard to beat Apple on hardware now.
Am I the only person who PANICs whenever I accidentally somehow activate the AI on my android? I'm so conditioned to panic whenever I see that floating rainbow that the whole marketing page is covered in I get very negative feelings.
I'm going to need to see how that top bar works. If they've ruined the ChromeOS UI by not allowing maximized windows to use the top of the screen for tab bars then I will be very disappointed.
On the other hand, if maximized windows work properly and Linux apps are still supported and they have a Snapdragon X2 Elite Extreme version, I might be interested. The Snapdragon is very competitive with Apple's M5 even including single core performance and battery life.
Who thought wiggling the cursor to invoke AI is a good idea?
People do this when the system is stuck or something is not working for some reason, and this will just add extra burden when that happens.
It's such a bad idea that I can see Microsoft immediately adopting this! (Opens up three variants of copilot, one deprecated and spins without getting the API handle right.)
Yeah, if you now check for 'pc is stuck' by wiggling your mouse, you suddenly eat up more resources if it actually was getting stuck, making matters worse.
But at least your AI can then tell you it will all be okay eventually.
Dystopiabook
I like the idea of a phone that fully inserts into a laptop bay to get its functionality in a different form factor. Not sure the laptop needs a powerful CPU, if any. Or it could have a really powerful one while adding storage and memory.
I personally would want to also be able to switch off the telco signal.
Perhaps the bay would be in the laptop screen itself and the two screens could operate side-by-side - or in the main body and the phone would go dormant.
What in the Microsoft Surface is this? Are they trying to frame a life-long dependency on Google's LLMs as a feature?
Also, I find it funny that they have burned through the "chromebook" and "pixelbook" branding already, leaving them with the less snappy "googlebook." Not sure if the third time's the charm here.
A new high watermark in absolutely content-free marketing webpages.
- Annoying startup animation (at least it's skippable)
- Minimalist copy that is that is also very hard to parse for meaning.
- Elements jarringly appear and disappear as you scroll.
- Only has examples of tasks that are easier to do on your phone.
I am not anti-AI, but if I am going to use AI I far prefer to have control over how I engage with it. Having a piece of hardware to focused on Google's own AI flavor being built in is a big negative to me. Not that I would totally write off this new Googlebook (despite disliking the name), but I can't really see a situation where I'd ever prefer this over an Apple Neo for example.
Judging by the poor hardware quality of some Google Pixel generations, I'm not putting my money anywhere near this thing.
Edit: spelling
GBook or GoBook. They may have biffed this launch no matter how good. Googlebook is too long. Looks cool though.
First thing they show is shopping with Gemini AI. Everything is around advertising and shopping with Google. Not the platform for me.
In practice I find the Gemini models to be the worst for coding and design.
Waiting for this to be discontinued in around 3-9 months
This is an attempt to flood the desktop interface market of laptops, and likely eventually desktops, with their hardware running their OS so they can enforce attestation at the hardware level across all classes of devices and lock you out of their attested Web if you’re not using one of the big three companies hardware and operating systems.
This is Google reacting to:
- laptop manufacturers and customers preferring Linux over Googles os shenanigans
- Apple Unified Business Platform, that is going to take an enormous piece of the enterprise pie
Had a pixelbook and it was hands down one of the best laptops I ever had. Sure, ChromeOS is fairly boxed in but the Linux VM was reasonably good and the built quality was just something else.
I wish they'd just make ~ pixelbook with ubuntu... it'd be such a powermove, and they if anyone could pull it off
I was excited at first by this, but the "designed for gemini intelligence"... like what does that even mean
I just want a good working Desktop Mode (Dex etc) for my Android phone, my phone is already powerful enough, I don't need another computer.
Competition is always good. I got a Mac Neo recently to supplement my larger 16” MBP and they really nailed it. It’s the perfect laptop for kids and travel. Most importantly it feels like it’ll last for a decade like my MBP. I hope it’s the same for googlebooks but even pixels have issues with surviving beyond 5 years.
The very first thing I thought when I read this is "Hmm, wonder how long this one will last before Google kills it."
Well, I am still waiting for the price. If it is $450 or higher, I'd just get a MacBook Neo at that point.
Can this project run for 30 years at loss? Google investors don't like that.
One day an exec will say lets reduce wasteful projects and cut this.
> powered by premium hardware
It's hard to treat this part seriously while seeing HP logo on the page.
Impressive feat of confused branding that Google has marketed Chromebooks, Pixelbooks, and Googlebooks.
Upcoming launches: Mapsbook, Waymobook, Walletbook, Authenticatorbook, ...
If it's not a new thing you can't be promoted for it. Rest assured theres still a Chromebook, Pixelbook and Googlebook team each.
No thanks. Google is heading for a similar closed ecosystem setup as Apple.
Except given their recent behaviour I have very little trust that they won't execute that in the most user hostile fashion they can come up with.
I’m waiting on these to be 70% off. Assuming an open boot loader or anyway to run Linux on it, looks like a clean computer.
I don’t know what normal person wants this though. The Neo is enough for most, and if I need more I’m probably going to want a real os. Not ChromeOS++
The interesting thing to me is that this is Android based if I understand correctly. The Google TV Android based experience is very good, I've been wanting a good Android based desktop OS since forever.
DOA right? Since they don't have any good will that they won't just drop support next year?
To me, everything about this seems AI-generated. What else but a LLM could have come up with these features and the name?
Hey Google, take the cue from Microslops debacle with the "agentic" Windows : Nobody asked for this!
Interesting product, horrible name.
Does it use ChromeOS or Android? I read an unreliable comment in Reddit that Google may be forced to sell ChromeOS to satisfy antitrust lawsuit. The comment provided zero evidence for the conjecture.
Just a little too late for school. The product probably doesn't even exist. They're screaming bc of the Nep.
> Designed for Gemini Intelligence
Zero chance in hell this surveillance device comes into my home.
Is this the end of Linux powered Chromebooks?
Put a TPU in this and I’ll buy it!
When I first started scrolling down I thought that's what they were going to tout: Contains TPUs so you can run Gemma 4 models fast, or some such.
Looks like they rushed the release or didn't let the LLM proofread: "Öffne Apps von deinem Android-Smartphone auf deinem Latop – ohne Installation"
Such a nice Latop!
Google Engineers don't even the other *books much for work, if they don't exclusively dogfood their own products, you know they don't have much faith to keep it going. Likewise their own phones.
A fun name... (I wonder how many non-native English speakers realize that the two occurrences of 'oo' in 'googlebook' are not pronounced the same.)
This link crashes my phone browser :-)
So this is replacing the "Chromebook Plus" line of AI-certified laptops, and also adding new Google hardware replacing the abandoned Google Pixel Slate/Chromebook Pixel?
How long will this be supported until it is in the google graveyard though?
4 years and 1 month! https://gcemetery.co/google-product-lifespan/
It's like genetic recombination: take the worst of Apple and the worst of Microsoft and you get... this!
no specs given. COOL.
Their history of committment in supporting their hardware is too far from pleasing. I wouldn't touch Google hardware again (other than Pixels) with the tip of my toe.
Who is this for? This is why I like Apple, when they release hardware you see exactly who it is made for in the marketing copy
They are so bad at product
All the shots at the name apart I think this is a very good strategic move. The other frontier labs would die to have this level of surface available for their models as a testing ground, with the current state of things on Apple side the ChatGPT on MacOS integration is probably the best everyone will get for a good time on how a full integration of LLM model with OS could really looks like.
Agents will need a different level of understanding of your activities across different surfaces to act effectively, IMHO the OS is the perfect place to offer it.
What pricepoint is this targeting? Is this an Android MacBook Neo? It looks like it's a tablet (phone OS) with a keyboard.
man, even google product videos show a "watch this video on youtube". can't link anything anymore
Screenshots say Sporify. Probably a human made typo in the mockups - refreshing!
Might be a good laptop, but we're trying to use less and less Google. I feel like the name isn't working in it's advantage.
The fact the team behind this came up with the name "Googlebook" doesn't give me a great confidence in the rest of the product.
So...it's a Chromebook. With "ai".
Running Android, not Gentoo.
Not quite Android: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48112299
We should start betting how long it's going to take Google to kill it.
Is this ... an Android laptop? I can't recall if Files icon on ChromeOS matches the Android version.
a little O/T, but i suspect these screenshots might be some of the first look at the upcoming aluminiumOS.
oops, disregard. i just saw that the machine was also previewed on "the android show". i'd missed that until i saw it on YT a few minutes ago.
Can we replace the splash page with this blog post? https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android...
I don’t think any portable laptop can beat the MacBook Neo on price and value this year.
So its the same you can do with using any AI app, but they make you buy an inferior notebook (compared to macbooks)
The AI device thing reeks of 2024.
Nobody wants AI embedded into the OS spying on you every move.
It looks great. If the price is good, I think it will sell well. The only thing holding it back is Google’s own reputation of canceling things so rapidly.
where did you see the price in the landing page?
"Intelligence is the new spec" then proceeds to show shopping ads and duolingo
WTF is a Googlebook? "Hey buddy, you got a little googlebook hanging out of your nose, a little nasty looking googlebook. Don't eat it, that's so gross!"
Hey Google: please control my computer.
It's just a bunch of gobbledygook.
Is this going to be running Android?
DOA
I'd buy it, but for me, Google lost it's credibility when they made Chromebook on an a Linux kernel but kept the specs too low, and even made sure to hijack the market by providing for free to schools
This is just depressing to me. I don't really know why.
I used to use Chromebooks as a souped-up iPad with Linux terminal support.
They missed a great opportunity to create a special user interface experience supporting multiple tasks (e.g. Gemini-CLI, anti gravity, Gemini-chat, browser) while sharing the same context . It could have been an awesome developer device . Imagine virtual desktops all sharing the same context with various tools : Gemini-CLI working on infra and artifacts, Antigravity running development , Gemini chat generating graphics assets. Hardware enabled with special shared memory / NPU.
Instead, I see a Chromebook with the nagging MS Edge “right click for copilot”.
Something I appreciate about ChromeOS is that updates are basically invisible. I'm worried they're gonna fuck up and overcomplicate something simple by having it run full-blown Android.
Just think of all the times that you're happily using a browser and now these sites are going to demand you install an app after they detected you can because of the user agent. Ugh.
Meh stuff this, no left most fn key, don't even know if there's half height inverted-t arrangement, bleh.
before clicking I thought this was gonna be some sort of a hardware innovation, TPU in a laptop for local AI type of product but oh well.
This was my thought too, but I didn't see anything to rule that out, did you? It says "built for Gemini Intelligence" so probably has some hardware requirement like that
Yeah- but that would be a terrible miss on marketing. "built for Gemini Intelligence" - this could also just mean a bunch of new api integration.
Good lord please do not use a Tensor processor.
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 Squarespace. Why even spend the money?
Can't imagine this'll help the RAM shortage.
Why? Are you thinking this will be a 128GB behemoth running models locally? That'd be pretty cool but it almost certainly isn't. I bet it's a very lightweight device that just calls a remote Gemini model.
My understanding is that the shortage has more to do with DRAM manufacturer capacity, rather than specifically making chips with high RAM amounts.
From TrendForce's analysis:
"The laptop market's 2026 shipments have been revised down from the previously expected annual growth of 1.7% to -2.8%, and further adjusted to -5.4%. Brands with highly integrated supply chains and more flexible pricing, such as Apple and Lenovo, have more flexibility to handle rising memory prices. However, low-end and consumer laptop brands face difficulty passing on costs and are constrained by processor and operating system requirements, making further spec reductions difficult."
Google can obviously just make this machine more expensive, but to launch a completely new brand of consumer laptops in a year where production is already very constrained is only going to exacerbate the core issue.
> 1. Check responses. Internet connection required.
The site crashes on my 2020 iPhone SE.
The product is for Android users.
So it's just an even more enshittified chromebook?
Are Google PMs really just saying "let's take existing product and shove AI into it"?
RIP Apple.
I can’t wait to get one! Growing up with the star trek series, it all seems to be coming together now.
Is this the new Centrino?
pretty cool design!
Horrible computer
Price will make or break this. Nothing else.
Let me elaborate if it isn't obvious. If it is higher, people will just use their regular laptops ie. there will be no use case. If it is low, it will find it's use. Like when I am travelling, this would be amazing.
Shoulda called it the Bookgle
Google is so lost
Will it have a bootloader unlocked???
TrojanBook
That's a lotta Os!
SpyBook was taken?
Third time’s a charm I guess
If it runs vim. I can take it.
For those wondering about the OS:
"We’re bringing together the best of Android, which comes with powerful apps on Google Play and a modern OS that’s designed for Intelligence, and ChromeOS, which comes with the world’s most popular browser."
https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android...
Many have tried desk/laptop and phone integration before, but it never seems to work smoothly, which surprises me because it doesn't seem that hard, at least to run phone apps on the larger screen (with some icon modification, etc.); and it doesn't stick as a feature, which surprises me because I'd think almost anyone would want to easily integrate the two.
I wonder why this time will be different? Is there demand now? Does Google have some trick up their sleeve? Do they have a universal development platform that makes it easy to write apps for both platforms?
This isn’t constructive at all but I can’t stop laughing
Looks like another E-waste
This looks like a better announcement page: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android...
Is this a rebranding of Chromebook Plus? For those who haven't been following the laptop form factor recently, Chromebook Pluses with Mediatek Kompanio Ultra SoCs are the best deals in laptops today. If this is just a Chromebook Plus with a fashion light bar, I'm not interested.
> 8GB RAM.
Oh god, it's a curse. In 2026 we should be getting laptops with 128 GB of RAM. Instead we get some "new model" over and over, with 8GB.
If you haven't checked the market for RAM lately, you're in for a shock.
The current cost spike is very recent. The average computer's RAM size has roughly quadrupled every four years since around 1988:
1988: 1MB
1992: 4MB
1996: 16MB
2000: 64MB
2004: 256MB
2008: 1GB
2012: 4GB
And then, from around 2014 or so, for the last 12 years, we've been kind of stuck on 8GB for some reason. There wasn't a ram shortage in 2016, so why didn't the average computer come with 16GB? The trend continuing would mean we'd have 64GB average machines by 2020. So what happened?
I'm sure you're right. I don't know why the trend didn't continue. But, still, given the current conditions I don't think it's realistic to expect a budget laptop with 128 GB of RAM rolling off the line right now.
Slopbook
> We’re working with Acer, ASUS, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to make the first Googlebooks.
I'm sorry but these Taiwanese brands Acer and Asus are the bottom of the barrel. Bad build quality, clunky keyboard, bad speakers, everything plastic etc I never had a "premium" experience ever having the luck using one. They just can't make something simple as a Macbook Air/Neo
Im more interested if we'll be able to load this OS on old Windows laptops or if it's hardware locked via software checks.
They accidentally started selling these early! You can pick one up right now, here: https://www.google.com/chromebook/
Why would anyone trust Google to support these devices long-term, even ignoring all the privacy concerns that come with using Google products and services? The KilledByGoogle website should be enough of a warning sign against this company, and with rising hardware costs... this just seems dead on-arrival to me.
I don’t even know who this is marketed towards.
If their intention is to target the general public, then I think they're out of touch with reality, and it doesn’t seem targeted at AI enthusiasts either.
See you soon... https://killedbygoogle.com
Google never sold through their first production run of Chromebook Pixels. Will prediction markets take bets on when will end up at https://killedbygoogle.com?
Hah! I was just about to post 'Can I bet on the deprecation date in Polymarket?'
Googlebook. I wonder how much some marketroid was paid for that name. Wow.
It could just be me, but the usecases they're trying to solve for always seem... out of touch from reality.
Either they live in their own bubbles where their lives revolve around constant shopping, traveling, throwing parties, and doing creative work...
Or they're not bothering to do basic observational research around how normal people live.
You mean the average person's problems aren't solved by a custom widget to track their flight to Iceland?
The irony is that most of these things would be better solved by a bot you can text. Create a thread for a trip or whatever, have it text you when flights are delayed or cancelled, reminders, let you ask it question, etc. So just...a chatbot.
"Gemini, design a widget to tell me if I can afford to stop for coffee before work"
"Gemini, design a widget to tell me if I can afford to eat this week"
I like the footnote:
> 1. Check responses.
Eh sure. Everyone will totally check the vibe coded "widget". Is this really all that's necessary to discount all responsibility when that widget deletes your disk and kills your grandmother?
"Googlebook, because lets face it, your parents are only watching YouTube anyway"
A data-harvesting software product delivered as hardware. Why would anyone actually want to purchase this?
Google just give up making hardware ffs. I'm still annoyed that my Fitbit no longer works with my Google workspace account.
I clicked on the link hoping to find out the price first thing so I could compare it to Apple Neo's price. Didn't find price anywhere. Also, is an AI subscription required for this?
> Intelligence is the new spec.
I'm shocked, SHOCKED how bad google is at copywriting, and it clearly not mattering.
With the over-reliance on AI, this looks like a veritable slop-machine, designed to create and consume slop as a primary activity. Good job Google.
How much?
No thanks!
I can’t really tell who this is for, no specs even listed that I can find, at first I thought it was going to be for running local models based on the copy but after a moment of sobriety and knowing Google clearly this is just a consumer device that they will fail to support in a couple years.
https://killedbygoogle.com
I don't want to give them more of my data. I would like dignity, please. #datawithdignity
They list Acer, Asus, Dell, HP and Lenovo on this site.
Any one would be a slightly bad sign for quality, all five are awful.
Yet another product range with lots of options, but not a single good one.
lmao can’t render on safari, get “this page was reloaded because a problem repeatedly occurred.”
Maybe someone could invent a format for presenting text and images over the internet that didn’t each require each text presenter to write custom (buggy) shader code?
slopbook
"Yes, I bought a special laptop from my advertisement pusher."
lame
So... they built a right-click-slop-generator and that's the default experience you get as the context menu?
Gross. I thought the Windows 11 miscreation was bad enough.
also, second question in re sideloading:
do the Googlebooks get the 24 hour fuckoff window for enabling sideloading or can I just walk granny through loading an .apk direct on the laptop
You can say whatever, but I'll be calling this a 'slop-down menu' from now on.
what’s the OS on this?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48112299
Slopbook
You are the product.
Hard pass.
What a terrible name.
Plus the fact that they’ve clearly just ripped off the exact shape of a MacBook, but thicker and shitter.
so.. a chromebook with extra ai slop?
So, these will just be dumped into schools and the already deteriorating education system will just collapse because kids won't know anything and Gemini will just be doing everything for them.
I hate AI.
reddit? nope
Launch blog post up top perhaps: https://blog.google/products-and-platforms/platforms/android... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48111082)
literal ai slop machine
"Cast My Apps" - did they, uh, use AI to make that actually work? Because it's very flaky on my Chromebook, which I am otherwise very, very pleased with (especially given the price)
This will end up on the killedbygoogle website probably 7 years from now. Probably right next to Chromebook at this rate -_-.
No, they will promise 7 years of update but kill it in 2.
this deff going to feed all your shit to feed a hidden model running in the background
No thanks, I’m sick of companies with their super connected bullshit. MS , Google, Apple etc. We need more isolation between hardware and these conglomerates
There must be such a disconnection between the general people and more technical oriented people. I would never ever buy such a laptop. The reasons are very simple:
- it's owned by Google. Google is the worst tech company out there to trust your data
- it has AI all over the place. Overuse of AI depresses me. And a laptop is something very personal to me. I don't want to be depressed every time i open my laptop
- the "files" functionality is cloud-based. That's insane. I don't want my files in the "cloud". I want a file system
I run linux, and still own Macs (because their hardware is great on laptops). Of course I'm not the target audience. But still.
I came here to make essentially the same comment though I use Lenovos instead of Macs.