Google’s Android-powered laptops are called Googlebooks, and they’re coming this year
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lmao, c'mon.
Translation: Chromebooks aren't going away [...] until our vendor partner's stocks are on clearance.
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Why anyone would buy one of these is beyond me. Google will drop all support for this device without warning at some point reducing the hardware to e-waste or they'll cripple it just as they've done with the latest release of Wear OS, or both.
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Honestly very interested in seeing how this goes. Android is a very capable OS at this point, a lot of its jank has been ironed out with successive layers of polish, it has a global distribution infrastructure, local adoption by countless third party developers, every major app or program is available on it... for the average user, an Android powered laptop for cheap would presumably be a significantly better option than anything running the garbage that is Windows 11.
Now the only fly in the ointment in this case is the MacBook Neo, but Apple's distribution and market penetration outside of the more affluent North American/western European/Anglosphere markets is fairly low, which I think could give something like this a very strong foothold.
I'm all in on the Apple ecosystem, but I hope this does well!
Now the only fly in the ointment in this case is the MacBook Neo, but Apple's distribution and market penetration outside of the more affluent North American/western European/Anglosphere markets is fairly low, which I think could give something like this a very strong foothold.
I'm all in on the Apple ecosystem, but I hope this does well!
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ubercurmudgeon
Ars Praefectus
And they're presumably going to leverage their connections to push these Googlebooks into schools too, as if teachers' jobs weren't being made difficult enough by AI cheating on assignments, soon it'll be baked into every machine every child is required to use? A bubble or not, we're not being given any choice about having this shit crammed into every facet of our lives, from the cradle to the workplace to the grave (somehow, eventually, even that.)
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Ok so it’s an AI laptop for AI usage, so I can really max my AI while AI-ing all my AI related AI workflows. AI.
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I am surprised this got the green light, but maybe all you need to do over at Google to get funding is say AI many times loud in a pitch meeting.
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I'm still to find any compelling reason not to use Windows, MacOS or Linux with Chrome to get the same stuff and a lot more options and capabilities afforded by those OSs.
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It seems like everyone is using the machine, less and less via the open web or even a browser. Moving Google's desktop experience past Chrome is necessary. Swinging towards AI might be the right move, but if not, I think staying in the an HTML-loading, URL-fetching, web search-driving application will continue to decline.
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Great, that 15 seconds to make a calendar appointment can now be 5, at the low, low cost of the world (assuming it works and doesn't trigger all the times I wouldn't want it to).
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Is there a commtiment to X years of support ? That was the main thing in favor of Chromebooks...
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Before I retired from public education, the last school district I worked in have every student a Chromebook. Tech Support hated them because they were not up to the job of handling student usage habits. There were piles of broken Chromebooks sitting in the fixit shops on all campuses. Of course all this happened while the district was ransomwared twice in the year of COVID. As one of the few Mac users (Graphics classes and Broadcast Media), I had no issues. The students learned their laptops were useless at school. As for these new Googlebooks, who knows until we see the quality of what is being sold. The Apple Neo, will get the job done and hold up better than any Chromebook/Googlebook, but will cash-strapped school districts be able to afford anything? As I live in Texas, most school districts are already being screwed since the state "miscalculated" how much money they are giving out becasue they "miscalculated" all these new property tax exemptions that were passed and how they would affect local districts, and this doesn't even account for all the "re-directed" money going to private schools as part of the voucher program where the majority of the money is going to wealthy families that can afford private education, but prefer to spend other people's money.
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Agreed. I’ve got a dual-monitor setup with two large screens, so I often take advantage of the macOS feature where if you jiggle the mouse, the cursor temporarily enlarges so you can see where it is. I’d continue to use that feature a lot more than wanting to ask AI how to misleadingly answer my next question…
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I'm typing this on a Neo and it's no competition for Chromebooks in any sense. People buy the Google product for the ecosystem, the grab-and-go provisioning that any user in the organization can log into with zero setup, zero configuration, no action needed by the administrators. MacOS simply does not offer that level of no-touch operation, and the enterprise junk that is available for macOS, like Jamf, is hot garbage with a fraction of the features and a multiple of the defects.
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Dark Pumpkin
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I can't imagine they picked the "I can't find the cursor" gesture on accident.
I hope I'm just being cynical, but that is the perfect gesture to make sure people accidentally activate Gemini as much as possible, so that Google can have plausible deniability about collecting more information being caused by the user.
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But does it run Doom? /s
Seriously, one of the big questions with hardware and OS lately, is will it run Steam?
Seriously, one of the big questions with hardware and OS lately, is will it run Steam?
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Descartes walks into a bar.
The bartender asks, "Wine, sir?"
Descartes replied, "I think not." Upon which he ceased to exist.
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Considering the combined installed user base (~5 billion users), the fact that users demanded (and received) Android apps in ChromeOS, and the fact that people demanded (and received) desktop mode for Android, and the persistent calls for a successor to the Pixelbook, this question seems off the mark. I think users clearly want the unification of these things.
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So seriously, what is the support life for one of these? I know chromebooks, at least in the beginning was like 3 years or something short like that.
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fellow human
Ars Praefectus
Yep. I opted for a 2020 MBA for my tween a few months ago and she's so happy to be off the Chromebook. Air or Neo are just so much better in every way and I'm certain throwing Android on them isn't going to change that.
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I wonder what SoC(s) they're going to use?
If any of them are using Tensor or Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen5, then GrapheneOS might be an option. Get rid of Google's spying and the AI cruft and have the security of the Android app sandbox and a hardened OS (unlike Windows and most Linux distros, where every app can access all of your files). Could be interesting as a more secure laptop.
If any of them are using Tensor or Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen5, then GrapheneOS might be an option. Get rid of Google's spying and the AI cruft and have the security of the Android app sandbox and a hardened OS (unlike Windows and most Linux distros, where every app can access all of your files). Could be interesting as a more secure laptop.
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targetnovember
Ars Scholae Palatinae
I gave my father a Chromebox as a computer, and it worked for years without any questions or problems until it got old enough the built-in certificates didn't recognize newer TLS connections, and then he got a new one. It even supported his scanner and printer combo device. All he needed was a browser and something he couldn't break. I no longer find CCleaner or other weird programs, at least. They aren't supported forever, but while supported they are head-ache free.
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Ugh. First off, what an awful name. Why not call it a GBook or something? Googlebook sounds so much worse than Chromebook for some reason.
Second, well there goes the entire rationale behind ChromeOS, namely it's simplicity, which was supposed to enable performance on cheap devices by putting everything into web services in the browser. We're basically back to the Android tablet as a laptop that was attempted in the early 2010s by things like the Asus Transformer series. I'm sure the UX will be better this time since it's first party, but it's replacing what was intentionally a limited simplified product (for better and for worse) in Chromebooks with just another now desktop OS but worse since it will be completely wed to Google in a way that neither Windows nor macOS are
Second, well there goes the entire rationale behind ChromeOS, namely it's simplicity, which was supposed to enable performance on cheap devices by putting everything into web services in the browser. We're basically back to the Android tablet as a laptop that was attempted in the early 2010s by things like the Asus Transformer series. I'm sure the UX will be better this time since it's first party, but it's replacing what was intentionally a limited simplified product (for better and for worse) in Chromebooks with just another now desktop OS but worse since it will be completely wed to Google in a way that neither Windows nor macOS are
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Android does have a Linux kernel.
I haven't had a root phone in a while as I found I rarely cared for that on a phone - but I could see doing that on a laptop (if it's possible) and essentially having a cheap Linux PC with some Android flavoured UI and app ecosystem.
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There has never been a Chomebook that was supported for less than 5 years from launch, and they have all been assured 10 years of updates for a long time. For example the 2017 Pixelbook is still under support even though it came out in 2017.
Considering that people are reviving PCs that Microsoft dropped, using ChromeOS Flex, the complaint that Google doesn't support old hardware seems hard to take seriously.
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Well, Windows is pretty much as bad as Android these days in termes of tracking, advertsing, and forced defaults.
Apple is worse on iOS (last I checked they didn't allow true 3rd-party browsers or keyboards, apperently they've started to allow some limited sideloading ?) , don't know what the status is on MacOS.
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A few years ago I would have been interested, but these days I'd rather a cheap-ish laptop and Linux, or a Macbook Neo.
Which is unfortunate, because I actually really liked my Chromebook Plus. I didn't mind the price tag, because it had the features I wanted for a portable meetings, websurfing, and light work device.
But Google--IMO--screwed the pooch completely on ChromeOS in general. It's relatively bloated; and while I don't mind the option to install AI, I don't want it baked in.
Which is unfortunate, because I actually really liked my Chromebook Plus. I didn't mind the price tag, because it had the features I wanted for a portable meetings, websurfing, and light work device.
But Google--IMO--screwed the pooch completely on ChromeOS in general. It's relatively bloated; and while I don't mind the option to install AI, I don't want it baked in.
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I'll betcha a signed dollar bill that whatever SOC they choose, it will be so locked down that you'll have absolutely no choice but to run Google's slop.
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Rumor is that light thing is coming to the next Pixel phones. That's probably why they were deflecting questions about what it does.
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Completely open. You can install any program you want on MacOS. For unsigned programs, you have to approve it using Gatekeeper.
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More attention deficit disorder from Google. They were almost getting ChromeOS to be productive. Then they trashed arc++ with arcvm. Now Android apps run the CPU at least 200% sometimes 600% at all times wether or not you are using any. If I only knew a senior tech writer to blow that scandal open. Hint, hint.
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One of the major features of GoogleBook is
" Perfect partner for your Android Phone ... Cast you phone apps to your laptop ..."
https://googlebook.google/
Schools are just now largely instituting. bans on phones. ( a bit late. ). This laptops major feature is accessing the phone. That is a major conflict if bring a new vector to download all the distracting phone apps trying to get rid of with new system.
If "take away" the Android phone integration features and the excessive AI do all my thinking and work features.... how is this going to be substantially different than a Chromebook?
Everything that Google is super heavily leaning on marketing wise here for these systems is almost exactly not what schools ( at least K-5/6 ) need.
All the extra specs to run local AI models is quite likely going to drive the price higher than Chromebook also. These probably start at the Chromebook Plus minimum price threshold and go substantially higher.
I suspect Google is going to run a multiple year 'strategy' where continue the Chromebook path ( the mid-upper end Chromebook Plus goes away. ) and perhaps over time try to merge the managed access mode aspect of this over time. However, out of the gate I suspect they are going to emphasize trying to loop in as many 'Android desktop' apps as possible rom anybody ( including the folks who want to sucks students into off topic media and AI-slop sinkholes. )
This laptop looks to be skewed toward trying to lift. for pay Gemini service sales and Android phone sales. That is mainly it. That gives it little synergy with what education contexts should be focused on at the moment.
I would expect Google to phase out ChromeOS over a while , but what they'd need is a. "Android Desktop SE or 'Managed and Focused' " edition of the OS to truly replace ChromeOS. However, they need a real, healthy OS ecosystem before put caps on it. AI 'FOMO' as the sizzle sell coupled with Android device synergy ... that isn't really all that healthy, well-rounded an ecosystem. (full laptop screen Andriod apps isn't all proven either. Android tablet market is relatively weak. )
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