Linked by Thom Holwerda on Thu 21st Feb 2013 20:48 UTC
It's turning out to be a bit of a crazy week for cool new products, isn't it? We already got Ubuntu Touch Preview for phones and tablets, then we got the new PlayStation 4 yesterday, and today Google surprised us all by launching the Chromebook Pixel. Google's first laptop appears to be a stunning machine - just don't ask who the hell it's for.
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Member since:2006-01-26
Google is so inconsistent when it comes to their consumer electronics product offerings, it's amusing.
I'm not sure they have to be consistent - they don't necessarily rely on hardware sales to survive.
I'm guessing they're throwing this out there to see what the reception is like - I wouldn't even be surprised if they have artificially inflated the price simply to target wealthy people with disposable income looking for a new toy to play with.
I suspect they'll use it to gauge interest in the various technologies it comes with and use that information to generate some further products with those features.
Member since:2009-03-17
Yeah, there seems to be an attitude of "throwing a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks" as an MO of sorts for google. And why not, they have the pockets deep enough for it.
The introductory marketing video, with some design team members talking about the product, had a weird "applesque" vibe. A disappointing lack of originality, considering google is kind of a gigantic ad agency...
Member since:2007-04-25
I'm curious - in what universe does a "nettop" (I suspect you mean "netbook") come with a 12.85” 2560x1700 touchscreen?
Rather, this appears to me to be Google's assertion that Chrome is a full-featured desktop OS ready for the mainstream, in much the same way that the original Nexus smartphone was Google's assertion that skin-free Android was ready for the mainstream.
It certainly worked well for the Nexus.
Member since:2009-03-17
In the universe where google is trying to convince me to buy a device that can only perform a fraction of what a fully fledged "traditional" stand alone device can.
This device is at the same price level as a retina macbook, so right off the bat it becomes an almost impossible sell.
Member since:2011-08-13
ChromeOS is based on Gentoo Linux, and you can get a terminal emulator by hitting Ctrl-Alt-T. Hopefully they'll add a GUI way of accessing it soon, as a gentle introduction for all the nublets. I'm seriously contemplating getting a Chromebook and seeing how much work it takes to bootstrap pkgsrc on it, because it's already GNU/Linux, it just needs a package manager that stays out of /.
Member since:2012-06-22
Member since:2006-07-14
News
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 21:06 UTC
"At the end of a week in which Electronic Arts confirmed it wasn't developing a thing for the Wii U, one of the software engineers in EA Sports' Canada studio, in a series of since-deleted tweets, disparaged the console as 'crap' and suggested Nintendo should give up on hardware altogether. 'The Wii U is crap. Less powerful than an Xbox 360. Poor online/store. Weird tablet', tweeted Bob Summerwill, listed as a senior software engineer at EA Canada, in a reply to a tweet posting a link about EA's no-Wii U news. 'Nintendo are walking dead at this point'." The Wii U is turning into the 21st century's Virtual Boy.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/18/13 7:37 UTC
"In NixOS, the entire operating system - the kernel, applications, system packages, configuration files, and so on - is built by the Nix package manager from a description in a purely functional build language. The fact that it's purely functional essentially means that building a new configuration cannot overwrite previous configurations. Most of the other features follow from this." Interesting approach. A Linux distribution, sure, but with some very refreshing ideas about system configuration.
Linked by fran on 05/18/13 1:38 UTC
Appfour added, among other features, C/C++ support to its new version of AIDE. From Android-IDE, "Now you can write parts of your app or your whole app in C/C++ on your device. AIDE supports the Standard Android NDK toolchain (GCC 4.6 + Bionic, STL, ...). No changes are necessary if you want to build an app developed on a PC with Eclipse. C/C++ development is fully integrated: Build errors appear in the error list and files can easily be navigated to with Go to file. The editor supports C/C++ syntax highlighting."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 23:35 UTC, submitted by kragil
Ars nails it: "The answer is that Google did announce what amounts to a fairly substantial Android update yesterday. They simply did it without adding to the update fragmentation problems that continue to plague the platform. By focusing on these changes and not the apparently-waiting-in-the-wings update to the core software, Google is showing us one of the ways in which it's trying to fix the update problem."
Linked by MOS6510 on 05/17/13 22:22 UTC
"It is good for programmers to understand what goes on inside a processor. The CPU is at the heart of our career. What goes on inside the CPU? How long does it take for one instruction to run? What does it mean when a new CPU has a 12-stage pipeline, or 18-stage pipeline, or even a 'deep' 31-stage pipeline? Programs generally treat the CPU as a black box. Instructions go into the box in order, instructions come out of the box in order, and some processing magic happens inside. As a programmer, it is useful to learn what happens inside the box. This is especially true if you will be working on tasks like program optimization. If you don't know what is going on inside the CPU, how can you optimize for it? This article is about what goes on inside the x86 processor's deep pipeline."
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/17/13 22:15 UTC, submitted by Tom
"It was the only moment I heard regret slip into Otellini's voice during the several hours of conversations I had with him. 'The lesson I took away from that was, while we like to speak with data around here, so many times in my career I've ended up making decisions with my gut, and I should have followed my gut,' he said. 'My gut told me to say yes.'" The world would've been a much different place - Apple would have been less dependant on Samsung for its chips, which probably would've meant less money for Samsung to develop its Galaxy business.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 21:41 UTC
Glass is getting some love at Google I/O as well. New applications have been released - Facebook, Twitter, Evernote, Elle, Tumblr, and CNN. Perhaps more interesting: the newly announced Google Glass Developer Kit will allow offline applications and direct hardware access - great for hacking and expanding Glass' potential. This kit will really allow hackers to put Glass through its paces.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 17:04 UTC
"But Beck and Merrill decided that simply banning toxic players wasn't an acceptable solution for their game. Riot Games began experimenting with more constructive modes of player management through a formal player behavior initiative that actually conducts controlled experiments on its player base to see what helps reduce bad behavior. The results of that initiative have been shared at a lecture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and on panels at the Penny Arcade Expo East and the Game Developers Conference." Absolutely fascinating stuff. I'm a League of Legends player, and to be honest, the community isn't nearly as bad as some make it out to be. I'm happy Riot games has the guts to employ science to address the issue.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 13:17 UTC
"Android and iOS, the number one and number two ranked smartphone operating systems worldwide, combined for 92.3% of all smartphone shipments during the first quarter of 2013 as Windows Phone crept past BlackBerry for 3rd place. According to the International Data Corporation Worldwide Quarterly Mobile Phone Tracker, Android smartphone vendors and Apple shipped a total of 199.5 million units worldwide during 1Q13, up 59.1% from the 125.4 million units shipped during 1Q12." Windows Phone doubles from a few to twice few, iOS loser market share as its growth is slower than that of the overall market. BlackBerry continues slide into irrelevance.
Linked by Thom Holwerda on 05/16/13 12:06 UTC
"According to the latest research from our Wireless Smartphone Strategies service, global Android smartphone profits reached US$5 billion in total during the first quarter of 2013. Samsung dominated and captured an impressive 95 percent share of all Android smartphone profits." Wow.More News »
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Member since:
2009-03-17
Google is so inconsistent when it comes to their consumer electronics product offerings, it's amusing.
The main value proposition of a nettop is price, this thing missed any attractive price range for a device of this type by a mile. This does not look good on google's management part, they have had a couple of duds in a row. Unless of course, they expect this thing to suck and they simply want to eat some of the loses creating a market.
Edited 2013-02-21 22:16 UTC