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Google confirms its Pixelbook group has new laptops and tablets inbound
Last month, Business Insider reported that Google might be shifting employees out of the laptop and tablet division that brought us the premium, pricey Pixelbook and Pixel Slate, citing "roadmap cutbacks." But though Google originally declined to comment, the company now tells The Verge that its hardware division actually does have new laptops and tablets on the way.
While Google wouldn't talk details or timing, it did drop a big hint earlier today — as 9to5Google reports, the company led a session at its Cloud Next 2019 conference dubbed "Introducing Google Hardware for Business," where it suggested that a new device might help on-the-go employees in ways that the Pixelbook and Pixel Slate couldn't quite accomplish.
#g rumors death
Previously: Google Hardware Makes Cuts to Laptop and Tablet Development, Cancels Products
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 11 2019, @02:06PM (5 children)
even old 8 bit computers had more local user functionality
a kid could learn to program on old kit. a kid cant on google's stuff without voiding the warranty.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday April 11 2019, @02:13PM (1 child)
You can easily put Linux on Google's ChromeOS products, which use coreboot. Not as easy with UEFI Windows boxes, IIRC.
So you're wrong.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by bryan on Thursday April 11 2019, @05:43PM
Ever try it? When you bootup the device, you get a fullscreen (bios/uefi/coreboot?) warning that says "OS verification is off, press SPACE to re-enable". If you accidentally follow the directions and hit the space key, then *poof*, the device helpfully wipes itself along with all of your files and performs a factory reset. Instead of the spacebar, you need to press the special key combination to allow developer mode (Ctrl + D) to continue. Of course, this information isn't shown on the screen so you just have to remember it, and also remember to never let anyone else reboot your device.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Thursday April 11 2019, @02:20PM
I got a Pixelbook almost exactly a year ago. The first thing I did is put it into developer mode. Install Crouton. Then several crouton containers with different flavors of Linux. These are cheap even with a decent amount of software -- about 5 GB each.
In the Chrome OS Downloads folder, I create a Linux folder. Then put all important files in there. Java runtimes. Eclipse. Node.js. Gimp 2.10 AppImage executable. And other stuff. Each Cronton container replaces it's distribution's Downloads folder with the Chrome OS Downloads folder -- so file sharing amongst the various containers is easy. On all my other non-pixelbook machines, I put all my development everything under a ~/Dev folder. So on each Crouton container, it takes only one symlink: ln -s /home/danny/Downloads/Linux/Dev /home/danny/Dev. Then all my containers have all of my development tools.
My warranty is not void. I have all kinds of programming tools. Multiple languages. Java. JavaScript. Python, and anything else is just an 'apt install' away.
The pixelbook is extremely thin. Beautiful. Nice build. Reasonably powerful (mine 8GB / 128 SSD, core i5).
Maybe it's not for everyone, but I'm having a great time with mine.
Oh, and it runs Android apps. So I could run Termux, etc. But why when I have multiple croutons. And am dabbling with Crostini. So I enjoy a number of favorite Android apps on the device as well. I have gobs of videos and mp3s, and some offline texts to read, so my pixelbook is great offline on a plane for example. And with all that, I've still got about 36 GB free space.
To each their own. But I think a Pixelbook is pretty sweet. There are few things I could do on a "real" laptop that I cannot do on my Pixelbook with multiple croutons set up. I can run multiple full Linux desktops at the same time, and cheaply.
Stupid people exist because nothing in the food chain eats them anymore.
(Score: 2) by richtopia on Thursday April 11 2019, @08:05PM (1 child)
No love lost for the Chromebook from me, but I will say the principle is solid. If you rate your ability to learn to program as the computer's utility, then you can easily program in a web based environment. Beyond that you can buy a VPS for further development.
Last year I bought a cheap Win10 laptop and put Lubuntu on within hours. With only 32GB of storage, it fills the same niche as a Chromebook. Surf the web, check email, youtube videos, and ssh into my web server. It is also cheap enough that I treat it poorly; when wrenching on my car it will be in the engine bay with me providing whatever reference material I need.
(Score: 2) by Teckla on Friday April 12 2019, @09:31PM
For kids interested in programming, booting directly into BASIC is a lot easier than the steep learning curve of setting up your own VPS.
Source 1: Was a kid that booted into BASIC and taught myself how to program with that plus the documentation that came with the machine.
Source 2: Have a VPS.