9 ms·
Google’s Supposed Chromebook Pixel (And Its Touch Display) Stars In Leaked Video
- nextparadigms 14y agoIt looks like Google is the first company to have listened to Linus - 2560x1700 resolution laptop! They might want to use that resolution for tablets, too, as it would make them a little better for using them vertically. Although 2560x1800 would probably be even better. I also hope it's another ARM Chromebook, as I don't want it to be very expensive and with poor battery life. In fact their goal for Chromebooks should be 10h battery life, not 6h.
- glasshead969 14y agoGoogle is the second company. 13 inch Macbook Pro with 2560 x 1600 resolution was released last October.
- Jabbles 14y agoSame time Linus made the comment. https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/ByVPmsSeSEG https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/ByVPmsSeSEG
- glasshead969 14y agoYup. Apple announced Retina 13 inch on Oct 23 so even before Linus made that comment. And Retina 15 inch Macbook Pro (2880x1800) last June. It wouldn't matter to Linus anyway if he doesn't care about apple gear. Edit : As comments below me point out Linus uses a Mac in his work flow.
- barredo 14y agoThis is a bit offtopic I think he uses Mac/s
- prezjordan 14y agoHe uses a MacBook Air [0] for the hardware. [0]: http://www.businessinsider.com/linus-torvalds-loves-his-macbook-air-2012-4 http://www.businessinsider.com/linus-torvalds-loves-his-macb...
- damien 14y agoLinus actually uses a MacBook Air: http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-interview-with-millenium-technology-prize-finalist-linus-torvalds/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-interview-with-millenium...
- Jacqued 14y agoI believe the point was that this would not be 16/9 ratio, not even 16/10, but 128/85. Which would seem to be better because, frankly, 16/9 looks good on TVs but is really quite terrible on a computer. I even find 16/10 barely acceptable.
- wmf 14y agoOf course, in retina mode that's an effective resolution of 1280x850. If this is real, it's not clear how Chrome OS would use it.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- ok_craig 14y agoIsn't being ARM-based something that actually helps keep the hardware price down? I thought it was generally cheaper to go with chips like Snapdragon / Tegra / Exynos than, say, any Intel. And I also thought it actually helped with battery life. Do I have a completely wrong idea of ARM? FWIW, I'm pretty sure the original Samsung Chromebook was ARM-based and the battery lasted forever. It wasn't the quickest device, though. Edit: Nope, first Samsung Chromebook was Intel.
- nextparadigms 14y agoIsn't that what I said? If it's a quad core Cortex A15, it should have decent performance, while keeping the cost very low, and high battery life. However, knowing Google's track record with "new" products, they usually start out making them very expensive, because of stupid decisions they make (like using Intel chips). They did it with the first Chromebook, they did it with the first Google TV, with the first "real" android tablet, the Motorola Xoom, and the Nexus Q last year. For some reason they don't seem to "get" the right price for a very new type of product, from the first time they launch it. They need like another iteration or two, before they get it, like with the ARM Samsung Chromebook, which hit the sweet spot for a low-end Chromebook at $250. What "makes sense" to me is to do the same Chromebook now, but with a quad core A15 CPU, a bigger battery, a bigger screen and much bigger resolution, and a touchscreen. And with all of that the sweet spot should be $500. Definitely no more than that. But again Google's track record is not great here, and I really fear they will build this with some dual core or quad core IVB chip, and make it like $800, which would be way too much for a Chromebook. I do hope I'm wrong and they get it right though.
- ok_craig 14y agoOh snap, sorry about that. For some reason I read that line in your original comment as "I also hope it's not another ARM Chromebook".
- clicks 14y agoThat is some pretty excellent marketing. Also, I love the 'logo' of this Chromebook -- just a line with four colors, instead of .. well, an actual logo. I like the trend of there being no meta-information stickers on devices I buy.
- largehotcoffee 14y agoI for one don't like the colors, for some reason it makes it feel "cheap" to me. But other than that small complaint it looks awesome, I'll definitely be getting one (assuming it's real).
- schraeds 14y agoYou know who's been doing the no stickers thing since forever right? (Apple).
- sjwright 14y agoThough there's an internal inconsistency having a four colour logo while showing pixels as having three colours.
- macbony 14y agoThat's where this one comes in?
- emehrkay 14y agoFeels familiar http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmnlTUE8yQI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GmnlTUE8yQI
- ricardobeat 14y agoWhen Apple invents and touts their "Retina" displays: that's bullshit, I can see up to 9000 dpi. Don't waste your money When google does exactly the same a year later, on a machine using experimental software and full of limitations, it's excellent :)
- clicks 14y ago
- nsoun 14y agoFunny, it looks like the Nexus logo here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=d2dhMKSKGBg#t=70s http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...
- bitwize 14y agoLook, an MBP Retina.
- UnoriginalGuy 14y agoWhen I "leak" a video it is always a professionally produced marketing advert. Seems like every "leak" these days is anything but. Call me cynical or paranoid if you want...
- wmf 14y ago"Leak" just means the video was released before it was supposed to be. It doesn't necessarily mean it's internal-only information.
- nextparadigms 14y agoYou're not paranoid, but all companies release "leaks" like this these days, without an "official" announcement, months earlier.
- ShawnBird 14y agoIt makes sense why they would do it. It let's them get response from the community and use that feedback to address concerns and hype the positives for the official announcement. It is just like the open betas that video games have been doing recently.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- fluidcruft 14y agoGoogle recently installed a chrome'd Android statue http://mashable.com/2013/01/31/android-statue-chrome-update/ http://mashable.com/2013/01/31/android-statue-chrome-update/
- MatthewPhillips 14y agoWhat do you mean by "integrating it with Android"? This keeps coming up surrounding Chrome OS but I've seen few explanations of what that would entail.
- jfoster 14y agoI think it has mostly been prompted by this: http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10402653-265.html http://news.cnet.com/8301-30684_3-10402653-265.html (convergence is different from integration, but I think convergence is what is meant in this context)
- nextparadigms 14y agoI don't really see the value in that either. So until they can figure it out themselves what ChromeOS integrated with Android offers mores than just the Chrome browser for Android, then they should probably keep them separated.
- wmf 14y agoIt would entail throwing away Chrome OS and just using Android. After all, Android has a superset of the functionality.
- MatthewPhillips 14y agoThat's not entirely true, but yes, that does seem to be the only sort of "integration" that makes any sense.
- Shooti 14y ago
- isaacwaller 14y agoI am very, very skeptical of the authenticity of this video. Anybody skilled in 3D rendering could have created this video, it's happened before: http://anatomyofahoax.tumblr.com/ http://anatomyofahoax.tumblr.com/
- jiggy2011 14y agoMaybe, seems a lot of trouble to go to for basically no payoff (apart from trolling HN) though.
- mwilcox 14y agoNot really. A student wanting to build out their portfolio looking for work in advertising/media production would get quite a bit of value out of this. Especially with the perception of most people seeing this as being a real ad, that shows a lot of potential for a prospective employer. It could also be the work of a freelance or independent studio using free time between projects, and may plan on later capitalising on it through a blog post or follow up video.
- clicks 14y agoApart from being skilled in 3D rendering -- the creator of this video seems to have enlisted a superb voice actor; audio + video fit together well. This is the work of a highly paid advertising agency, working for and paid by Google. The 'anatomyofahoax' centers around an old phone picture... this video had a lot more stuff. To conclude: it's the real deal.
- ricardobeat 14y agoIf your standards are low. It's perfectly reasonable that this video could be done by a couple guys over the weekend. To conclude: it's impossible to tell.
- duaneb 14y agoAll commercials can potentially be faked, and sometimes leaked commercials are real. This is an intractable argument.
- jiggy2011 14y agoWill be interesting to see what price this comes in at. If they can get this significantly below $1000 it could be an absolute killer.
- jbigelow76 14y agoIt's anything even remotely close to $1000 I wouldn't go near it if it's running Chrome OS. I'm not paying a grand for a fancy browser case. Edit: to expand on my comment a little. I thought the premise of Chrome OS was that except for specialized cases almost a "typical" user things could be moved to the cloud, eliminating the need for high powered machines and complex OSes that can fulfill various use cases, consequently the price drops dramatically. If Chrome OS is still limited to essentially web/cloud driven functionality what is the justification for the high price point?
- bodyfour 14y agoAll of the chromebooks so far have been able to run non-chromeos linux distros just fine. (The ARM-based ones require a little effort, but it's possible. I've got fedora/arm on a Samsung chromebook that I play around with) Hopefully that will be the case with this device as well. The 13" Retina MacBook Pro starts at $1700. We'll have to see what the final specs and pricing are for the Pixel but it could be very compelling. A high-DPI display is really a killer feature.
- dntrkv 14y agoSure, the default OS on this laptop may be limited, but that doesn't change the fact that the hardware is still that of a $1000+ laptop. Especially with that hi-res screen. And I'm sure if you really wanted to, you could install Ubuntu on it.
- millstone 14y agoThese devices are only sensible if the UI of the OS knows how to scale; otherwise everything is tiny. From a brief Google search, Ubuntu does not know how to scale (http://askubuntu.com/questions/231646/is-ubuntu-12-10-optimized-for-retina-displays http://askubuntu.com/questions/231646/is-ubuntu-12-10-optimi...) so I don't think you would want to run Ubuntu on this.
- DIVx0 14y agoI really have zero desire to touch my laptop screen. Maybe it's years of conditioning to not smudge my screen or it could be that lifting my hands off the keyboard to pinch and swipe at my screen would be more irritating then using a mouse. With that being said. I'm all for high density screens in laptops!
- zmmmmm 14y agoI'm kind of opposite. All these years now of using touch tablets makes me frustrated that I can't touch the screen to do simple things that would be much easier with touch than with a mouse (dragging stuff around, for example, which requires holding a mouse button down and moving the mouse at the same time).
- rorrr 14y agoGorilla arm https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen#.22Gorilla_arm.22 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Touchscreen#.22Gorilla_arm.22
- dntrkv 14y agoI think the more common use case for a touchscreen laptop would be when it is sitting on your lap, which feels a lot more natural than sitting a desk and trying to swipe your 20+ inch monitor that is 2 feet away from you.
- rlu 14y agoGorilla arm really only applies if you have your arm extended the entire time (or simply "a lot"). With a touch screen laptop you'd a) still have mouse/kb input so you wouldn't always be using touch and more importantly b) when you're not interacting with touch, your arm will be resting - i.e. you only extend your arm for a few seconds at a time and don't hold it there for long. I haven't experienced gorilla arm at all on my Surface (which I use in "laptop mode" often - for what it's worth I no longer use a laptop.)
- bjustin 14y agoI can see uses for a touchscreen, for example I think some of Apple's trackpad gestures would be better. Think three finger swipe to switch virtual desktops on a 15" screen instead of a 4" trackpad. I do hope they work out a good solution to smudges.
- melling 14y agoIs Google planning on adding Android to the Chromebook at some point? It seems like Android would allow for much richer apps.
- jfoster 14y agoIt increasingly feels as though Chrome OS functionality is a subset of Android functionality.
- micro_cam 14y agoI kind of expect the oposite to happen. Android has more features and apps for now but I wouldn't be surprised to see PNaCl become the preferred way to write android/chrome apps once it reaches feature parity and is enabled on android.
- pseudometa 14y agoGoogle is now making Macbook Pro retina laptops?
- ricardobeat 14y agoThe body design cloning the mbp makes it look dated already.
- duaneb 14y agoThe problem with the chromebooks is definitely not the hardware, it's that you can't skype or play a dvd. If they sold one of these with just android I would buy it in a heartbeat. Perfect linux box.
- nextparadigms 14y agoHangouts and WebRTC should be good alternatives for that. But you also can use Skype in the browser last I checked (for video-calls): https://imo.im https://imo.im
- gman99 14y agoUsing imo for skype is far from "ideal" -- you give your skype password to a third party, and I don't think you can call landlines with it. You might say "just use google voice", but you're out of luck if you're not in the US. I've toyed with giving my parents a chromebook, but the lack of skype is always the sticking point.
- hayksaakian 14y agoDVDs? Do people complain about DVD drives when discussing tablets? Why should this be any different.
- d0m 14y agoI really like the laptop's design.. clean and functional.
- radley 14y agoWish it was Android OS.
- jtchang 14y agoI WANT ONE! (Or two if supplies last). Seriously though it is about time we saw some more change in the laptop market. I love macbooks as much as the next guy but they aren't perfect. Higher vertical resolutions rock.
- salmanapk 14y agoEven if it only runs Chrome OS?
- steevdave 14y agoI'd be interested in it, developer mode gives access to vim and ssh, which is all I need to do my job (embedded kernel development). ChromeOS is quite decent on its own, and since it's ChromeOS it would have flash and their PDF reader on it. The only real complaint there is that their PDF reader doesn't support indexes and I usually have PDFs that are 2-5k pages so scrolling is a pain.
- DavidBradbury 14y agoYou want to buy it and don't even know what it is? I mean, we know absolutely zero information about it (excluding that it is made by Google and has a touch interface). You don't know the OS, the graphics card(s), the processor, the size, or what it might be able to offer you besides what you can already get on a regular machine you already own. Doesn't that seem silly and quite overtly technophilic?
- habosa 14y agoCan someone make an educated guess on min price on something like this? I guess it could basically be a Nexus 10 but with a keyboard and a different OS, putting it in the $500 range. I just bought the $249 Chromebook and I love it but now I am having some buyer's remorse. However if this thing is likely to cost $500 I wouldn't feel so bad about my purchase since I just want it for a second computer to take to class.
- isaacwaller 14y agoThis is most likely fake and if it is not fake it will be at least as expensive as a Nexus 10 ($400.)
- dysoco 14y agoI still use a 1280x800 18" laptop, I really need a new one. Now the thing is: This Chromebook will probably run... Chrome, and I can't work just with Chrome. I wish Google had developed a Linux Distro instead of ChromeOS, would be much more useful.
- asdfs 14y agoHopefully it'll be like the other Google-branded devices, and it'll allow you to install what you want on it easily.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- mikehotel 14y agoSeveral comments refer to the limited functionality of Chrome OS. This issue has apparently already been "fixed" with ChrUbuntu[1]. Ars published an article[2] on this two months ago. 1. http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/ http://chromeos-cr48.blogspot.com/ 2. http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/how-to-install-ubuntu-on-acers-199-c7-chromebook/ http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/how-to-install-ubuntu...
- samstave 14y agoCouple thoughts: * there was an earlier thread on touch screens in laptops, the surface thread, and I stated I have the Lenovo tablet laptop with touchscreen and it is horrible and I don't like it. I work with lots of visual docs, from visio, PDF acad plans, acad itself and revit. Not once have I wanted to interact with any of these documents via touch. We have a few plan-grid users in the office and that works kinda ok - but not on a laptop. * I bought a chromebook for my mom, and I lamented here on HN about how it lacked features and the UX was very clunky. This thing is going to likely wind up in the iPad price range, and I am suspicious it's experience will be some weird limbo between a full OS laptop and a fully purpose built tablet. I want this to succeed, but I feel that the chromebook, with almost zero functionality without access to the Internet is shortsighted in the depth and sophistication (savvy) users need from their devices. While "we" (my wife and I) have an iPad, "I" do not have one; I find the iPad too one dimensional for the majority of what I need to do. Using robust and nimble applications for work, light gaming and heavy web content consumption. I typically have multiple browser containers open with upto 20 tabs in each. For light browsing, I use my phone - as I am now to type this. This video showed a person clicking a CGI jellyfish to change its color. Ok, zero utility and the spark of coolness lasted about a nanosecond. The only thing semi-inspirational said in the video was also very scary: 4 million of these pixels create a new world. This statement leads me to believe this is a hardware wrapper to G+, is a google encased physical portal into their total information awareness about your individual, and the pixels overall communal, online use. This makes it sound liberating - but this is actually a digital prison. Finally, it's a me too ad in response to Apple trying to tout "completely designed by google". Don't get me wrong, I love lots of things about google, most things actually - but what I will never trust about google or any other company is that they are working in my interest. So, people will find this useful, and interesting - but this ad showed me very little to convince me that my computing experience is about to evolve into anything other than a benefit for googles information indexing leviathan, let alone become something completely better.
- jjcm 14y agoYou're right in that Google isn't working in your best interest, they're working towards the interest of all of their users. While touch isn't ideal for your use cases, it may be for some. Touch is a pretty bad modality for content creation, but it's very good for casual use/content consumption. You seem to be heavily putting down this laptop because it's touch enabled. It's simply another feature, at the end of the day this is still a laptop. It's not a negative to have it be there - it barely increases the cost of materials/construction. Was it a pretty boring/generic ad? Sure. Does it present anything that we haven't seen before? No, not really. But at the end of the day, it's cool to see Google pursuing new hardware ventures. The nexus line is absolutely fantastic, I would love to see that level of quality in a laptop, even if the laptop is only a netbook.
- robotresearcher 14y ago"Completely designed by Google". hmm. more like "Case and keyboard almost entirely designed by Apple, to the extent of appearing to be a 2009 MBP unless you look very carefully". I hope it's a fake so that doesn't bug me.
- ender7 14y agoThis video seems fake (despite its high production value) for a variety of reasons. 1. Google's ads are usually made by Creative Lab and this is not at all their style. Or the style of any other Google ad. It bears more resemblance to an Apple ad than a Google one. 2. A laptop "completely designed by Google" might be something that its fans want, but I doubt Google would ever say something like this in an ad and risk antagonizing its hardware partners. 3. Speaking of hardware partners -- who made this? Even when Google makes Nexus devices the manufacturer's logo is quite prominently displayed. Again, I doubt Google wishes to finance a non-partnered piece of hardware. 4. Also, yes, touchscreens are on laptops are stupid. This is a stupid idea. My bet is that this is the final project of some kind or a demo video from some upstart ad company that wants to show what it can do.
- confluence 14y ago> 4. Also, yes, touchscreens are on laptops are stupid. This is a stupid idea. Not so sure about that. Often times, with other people's laptops, when I wish to illustrate, or do something, I'll reach for the screen and not for the keyboard (I've got way to many touch screens in my life). Maybe not enough of a usecase - but I can see it working.
- ebf 14y agoYou had me nodding until >4. Also, yes, touchscreens are on laptops are stupid. This is a stupid idea. Sure, touchscreens aren't going to be your main form of input in a laptop, but I wouldn't say they are stupid. Once you start playing with a touchscreen laptop, you'll begin to use the touchscreen occasionally, and in these moments it's really nice. For example, when I'm browsing the web in my bed, it's awkward to use the touchpad to scroll, so I'll just reach out and scroll like I would on a tablet.
- coob 14y agoSeems like that problem would be better solved by a superior touchpad.
- deleted 14y ago
- pocorall 14y agoHmm is this really leaked?
- DiabloD3 14y agoI know people from Google read HN. All I want is a Retina screen in an ARM Chromebook. Thats it. It doesn't have to look nice, it doesn't have to have good speakers (or any speakers, really), it doesn't need USB 3, or a touch screen, or more than 4 hours of battery life (although more is always better), and it doesn't need any real storage space because I won't be storing large files on it. The Samsung Exynos5 Chromebook is lacking exactly one thing: a Retina screen. Otherwise, I would have bought it by now.
- mdasen 14y agoApple has introduced a MacBook Pro with a similar resolution to this Chromebook Pixel. It has a Core i5 with 8GB of RAM. However, as AnandTech would point out, such a resolution is certainly a strain on the processor (http://www.anandtech.com/show/6409/13inch-retina-macbook-pro-review/5 http://www.anandtech.com/show/6409/13inch-retina-macbook-pro...). Google's Chromebooks have been picking up the low-end. If this laptop is real, it will almost certainly need to match a Retina MacBook Pro in specs. It seems unreasonable to believe that this could be an ARM powered machine (as I'm sure some hope) since the resolution proves burdensome even to a Core i5. I think that's a compelling reason to believe this to be a fake. The amount of hardware needed to run such a resolution is substantial and I don't think people would want to pay that kind of money for a Chromebook right now. Personally, I would have to be assured that I could run a fuller operating system on it if I were going to spend that kind of money. However, even if it is real, it seems like it would be much closer to a Retina MacBook Pro than any current Chromebook. It seems unreasonable to think that Google would be able to put out such a device with such a display that is like the current Chromebooks in hardware or price. I know that a lot of us would love someone to unseat Intel, but we've seen how demanding Retina resolutions are and how even processors many times more powerful can struggle to meet the task.
- xairon 14y agoActually, the Nexus 10 has the same resolution as the MBP 13 inch (2560x1600) - although the Nexus 10 does run Android 4.2. So it seems to me that to the ability to drive a 2560x1600 screen is also largely dependent on the operating system. Whether Chrome OS is capable of driving 2560x1600 with the same (or better) hardware than Nexus 10 remains to be seen.
- steveridout 14y agoThe retina iPad manages to pull off a resolution close to that with only an ARM CPU. If applications deal with half the vertical and horizontal resolution in logical pixels and leave the X2 image and font rendering to a highly optimized engine using a good GPU it sounds do-able. Then again I agree it would bump up costs considerably, which negates one of the main reasons for buying a chromebook at the moment.
- owencm 14y ago43 seconds in shows a Thunderbolt port (aka, Apple proprietary). Clearly a fake.
- rcknr 14y agoYou mean Mini DisplayPort? Many vendors use it nowadays.
- gcr 14y agoAs ads go, fake or not, this one didn't captivate me. What's so special about this laptop? The only thing going for it is that it's "designed entirely by Google," which isn't an advantage to some.