
Google’s Supposed Chromebook Pixel (And Its Touch Display) Stars In Leaked Video - derpenxyne
http://techcrunch.com/2013/02/06/googles-supposed-chromebook-pixel-and-its-touch-display-stars-in-leaked-video/
======
ender7
This 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.

~~~
ebf
You 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
Seems like that problem would be better solved by a superior touchpad.

~~~
lotso
If by better touchpad, you mean better placement for the touchpad, then yes I
agree. And in this scenario, the best placement is on the screen.

------
clicks
That 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.

~~~
sjwright
Though there's an internal inconsistency having a four colour logo while
showing pixels as having three colours.

~~~
macbony
That's where this one comes in?

------
nextparadigms
It 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
Google is the second company. 13 inch Macbook Pro with 2560 x 1600 resolution
was released last October.

~~~
Jabbles
Same time Linus made the comment.

<https://plus.google.com/+LinusTorvalds/posts/ByVPmsSeSEG>

~~~
glasshead969
Yup. 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.

~~~
damien
Linus actually uses a MacBook Air: [http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-
interview-with-millenium...](http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-interview-
with-millenium-technology-prize-finalist-linus-torvalds/)

------
DIVx0
I 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!

~~~
rlu
You know, I thought the same thing but it's surprising how often I touch my
Surface when I'm using it as a laptop. I don't think about it, it sort of just
happens sometimes...like to tap a button or go back in IE by swiping
backwards, or even just scrolling in a webpage I sometimes use the arrow keys
and sometimes use my thumb. It's odd.

Equally surprising was how I would have to restrain myself from touching my
non-touchscreen desktop monitor sometimes that I've had for much longer (i.e.
years). Happens a lot as I'm sitting down and want to launch a few initial
apps.

I think if you ever get a touch screen laptop you'll be as surprised as I was
to see how much you do end up using the touch screen, even if it is
"unintentional".

~~~
DeepDuh
Isn't that just because their touchpads are so tiny? If you sit at a larger
laptop with good touchpad, do you still feel that need?

~~~
rlu
Unsure since I don't have a larger laptop. Though I'll say that I don't find
the Surface's trackpad lacking for what I would use it for - and yet I don't
always use it. It's mostly unconscious like one of the other people said.

------
UnoriginalGuy
When 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...

~~~
nextparadigms
You're not paranoid, but all companies release "leaks" like this these days,
without an "official" announcement, months earlier.

~~~
ShawnBird
It 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.

------
isaacwaller
I 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/>

~~~
clicks
Apart 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
If 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
All commercials can potentially be faked, and sometimes leaked commercials are
real. This is an intractable argument.

------
jiggy2011
Will 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
It'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?

~~~
dntrkv
Sure, 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
These 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-optimi...](http://askubuntu.com/questions/231646/is-
ubuntu-12-10-optimized-for-retina-displays)) so I don't think you would want
to run Ubuntu on this.

------
dysoco
I 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
Hopefully it'll be like the other Google-branded devices, and it'll allow you
to install what you want on it easily.

------
samstave
Couple 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
You'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.

~~~
Narkov
'You're right in that Google isn't working in your best interest, they're
working towards the interest of all of their users.'

..where of course "their users" are actually their advertisers and not mom and
pop.

~~~
fpgeek
This oversimplification isn't useful and is getting old. If mom and pop don't
use the new products Google comes up with, the advertisers will spend less
money and/or eventually leave. The incentives are not so nearly misaligned as
you suggest.

~~~
Narkov
Nope - everything comes back to advertisers (well, actually, money). If Google
could make more money by not offering services do you think they would? Of
course they would.

~~~
niels_olson
I have friends who have not taken jobs at google. I'm pretty sure their issue
is allocating scarce engineers, not servers.

------
mdasen
Apple 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...](http://www.anandtech.com/show/6409/13inch-retina-macbook-pro-
review/5)). 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.

~~~
steveridout
The 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.

------
jtchang
I 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
Even if it only runs Chrome OS?

~~~
steevdave
I'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.

------
mikehotel
Several 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/> 2\.
[http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/how-to-install-
ubuntu...](http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/12/how-to-install-ubuntu-on-
acers-199-c7-chromebook/)

------
DiabloD3
I 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.

------
ricardobeat
The body design cloning the mbp makes it look dated already.

------
habosa
Can 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
This is most likely fake and if it is not fake it will be at least as
expensive as a Nexus 10 ($400.)

------
bitwize
Look, an MBP Retina.

------
pseudometa
Google is now making Macbook Pro retina laptops?

------
robotresearcher
"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.

------
duaneb
The 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
Hangouts 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>

~~~
gman99
Using 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.

------
gcr
As 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.

------
nsoun
Funny, it looks like the Nexus logo here:

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=d2dhMKSKGBg#t=70s)

------
melling
Is Google planning on adding Android to the Chromebook at some point? It seems
like Android would allow for much richer apps.

~~~
jfoster
It increasingly feels as though Chrome OS functionality is a subset of Android
functionality.

------
owencm
43 seconds in shows a Thunderbolt port (aka, Apple proprietary). Clearly a
fake.

~~~
rcknr
You mean Mini DisplayPort? Many vendors use it nowadays.

------
d0m
I really like the laptop's design.. clean and functional.

------
pocorall
Hmm is this really leaked?

------
radley
Wish it was Android OS.

