Google pixelbook 12in: The new Google Pixelbook is the world’s most powerful and beautiful laptop ever. It uses the same brilliant 14-inch display that powers the best Android phones and tablets, but with an even more powerful processor and an upgraded keyboard that makes it even faster to use.
People love their laptops. They love to use them, they love their devices, they love their apps. But this new laptop is for people who have never had a good reason to use a laptop before: people who have never had a good reason to buy one because they are used to tablets or smartphones. This is why Apple’s MacBook Pro is so popular: it has virtually everything you need to do your work, it’s beautiful, it’s fast, it’s versatile… so why would anyone want anything else?
This is also why Google Chromebooks are so attractive: they can be made as cheap as possible without compromising on performance or features (and at the same time offer all of those things). I could go on and on about this because Chromebooks are great in many ways and because setting up one of these will be a lot easier than setting up a Windows 10 PC. But we do not want to belittle Windows by giving them credit for being a better operating system than Chrome OS or Android; instead we want to show how much more powerful our own OS can be when compared with them.
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Design
Last week we launched our new Google Pixelbook 12in, the smallest and lightest notebook in the market which we believe will be a better choice for students and professionals than any other 11-inch convertible laptop. In this video, I tell you why we believe it’s the best solution for your needs.
The reason is simple: Chromebooks are too heavy. If you’re going to carry your notebook around with you most of the time, you need something that’s light enough to take anywhere yet sturdy enough to stand up to the rigors of daily use.
This is what we’ve designed: a thin, lightweight notebook with high resolution touchscreen display that’s just as responsive as an 11-inch laptop but lighter and easier to hold in one hand. It comes with dedicated Google Assistant for quick commands like “photos” and “videos,” handy tools like Google Keep so you can keep track of what you need to do next without having to pull out your phone, and our new Pixelbook Pen so you can take notes in peace without worrying about losing them or dropping your pen on the hardwood or carpet.
Google Pixelbook 12in (left) and 11in (right) notebook configurations each feature:
– A 6th generation Intel® Core™ i5 processor (upgradeable to 2nd generation Intel® Core™ i7 processor)
– 16GB RAM (1TB SSD)
– 512GB SSD storage in 2TB configuration ($2,199 MSRP — available now)
– Backlit keyboard with full-sized keys (backlight automatically turns off when not in use, unlike many other laptops)
– 1366 x 768 resolution touchscreen display (100% sRGB color gamut) 9.7″ x 8.2″ x 0.9″ 0.37″ thick
– 13 hour battery life 7 hours at 100% brightness + 10 hours charging overnight
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Specs
This is a bit of a corny headline, but it really sums up the subject of this post: the Google Pixelbook 12”.
Inevitably, there is some question about whether or not this machine is a true “product”. In terms of functionality it’s definitely a product; it has an app store and can be used to run web apps (and presumably also code some apps), but that shouldn’t be confused with an actual product.
There are two main ways to think about this question. The first is in terms of how users interact with the machine; and the second is in terms of how they use it as a primary device. These are very different things:
- The first way is the way most people use their devices — they use them as tools, not as products. We have seen this on Android where we are seeing companies offer devices to replace their phone, not replace them (think $500+ laptops).
- The second way is more intuitive — I am using my laptop because it meets my needs, not because I feel like I should have bought one of those $500+ laptops that everyone seems to want me to have. We see a lot more laptops being used for work than phones — although there seems to be less of an interest in buying phones than laptops (a job security issue?).
So let’s look at each category individually:
Interactivity: Does your product require interaction with others? For instance, does your product support group chat? Is your software networked? Can you actually connect directly from your PC with other people on the same network? If yes, then your machines probably qualify as being products — even if they are mostly used for consuming content and running web apps (or code). If no, then maybe you could call them tools instead? In that case, we would say things like “some Windows programs support remote access over VPN; without opening an app I can control my computer remotely from anywhere in the world” would qualify as “tools”. Or maybe we wouldn’t call them tools at all? Maybe we would just call them computers! ????
Battery life / power consumption: This obviously depends on usage patterns but these are two potential considerations: battery life vs power consumption per hour/day/week. The latter will vary by usage mode (WiFi or cellular) so if you plan on having certain functions active all
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Performance
The new Google Pixelbook is the first laptop with a 12-inch display, and it’s one of the best machines around at this size. It’s small enough that you can put it in your pocket (and it has speakers that are better than most laptops). But, as you might expect, it’s also fast enough to keep up with a lot of serious work.
The best way to understand its performance is to play with it. A good way to get started is to set up an ad hoc test using Google Display Network (which lets you run ads on tables and displays from multiple ad networks), and run an exhaustive performance test across multiple browsers and operating systems. You can simulate doing this for a long period of time by running the test for a month or so and then manually playing with the settings on each browser and OS, so you can get an idea of what devices will perform well (and what won’t) over the long haul.
Google Pixelbook runs well on macOS High Sierra 10.13
But even without doing all that work — which means you don’t have to do any work — you should still be able to run it well in Chrome or Safari (or even Firefox) without too many issues on Windows 10 (but not yet on Mac.) The goal here is definitely not only high performance; we want the experience to be pleasant.
It’s important to know when you’re good at something — like when your computer runs smoothly for hours on end — but not when you’re bad at something — like when your computer runs slowly for hours on end. The same goes for those who love pixel art: if pixel art sucks, pixel art sucks no matter how good your machine is.
And yes, there’s going to be some lag between updates for now because we want people who are playing with their computers at home to get updated as soon as possible too. Once we get more use out of it, we’ll be able to update more often, but until then we’ll try our best not to push updates out if there’s nothing useful in them!
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iOS Integration
Google’s new Chromebook Pixel is a truly stunning piece of hardware. It runs the latest version of the Chrome OS and has a full-size keyboard, beautiful screen, and powerful CPU. Some have criticized it for its low performance, but when you factor in the hassle of bringing a full-size keyboard and display to your desk every day (and having to do so while keeping it clean), we think it’s still hands down one of the best options out there.
Let’s take a look at what else we can do to make Google’s Chromebook Pixel even more useful in iOS apps. (For this post, I want to talk specifically about integration with third-party apps.)
We are working on integrating several 3rd party apps right now, though this list isn’t set in stone yet. We will be announcing new integrations as they come along, though at this point they are all very preliminary. Here are some quick notes:
Apps that are designed for ChromeOS will work just fine — but not necessarily well enough to be considered “native” apps for iOS. We have plans for some apps that will support iOS 8; these will come with software updates as soon as Apple releases them. Apps that run native on iOS have been designed from scratch and have been tested extensively on Apple devices (iPhone 5S and iPad Air 2) and on Google devices (Pixelbook). We don’t yet have plans for 3rd party apps specifically for Google devices; any app that is compatible with our platform should also be compatible with your device’s hardware – but if you want an app specifically made for your device you’ll need to build it yourself!
If you want an app specifically made for iPad, then we offer an SDK which provides everything you need to build such an app:
Please note that while our SDK supports most current versions of ChromeOS, we cannot guarantee how well these will work on older versions of ChromeOS or other operating systems which may be incompatible with our software.
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Android Integration
People have been asking me what Android integration is, and I want to make it clear that I’m not simply talking about the Google Pixelbook or the Pixel phone, as there are many other companies that do Android integration as well. The phrase “integration” here should be interpreted broadly:
- It doesn’t mean running an app on top of a native Android app (though there are cases where this is the preferred method).
- It doesn’t mean a native app has its own UI layer, for example like on iOS.
- It doesn’t mean you can run an app on top of another platform (like Windows 10).
I believe we need to get away from talking about the latter two categories of “integration.” They are too narrow and too specific. Instead, we need to talk about enabling apps to run on top of other apps in a seamless manner. For example:
- Emulating speech recognition with your game or movie player (if desired) within your Google Music app. This would enable you to speak into your phone and have it picked up by Google Music without actually having to buy a separate speaker for your phone; use your phone as a mic when playing games or watching videos.
- Playing with voice commands directly within your web browser (for example, using Chrome’s Web Search feature). This would enable you to interact with web pages using just the power of your voice without having to install any third party software on your computer — there’s no way google can affect this in real-world use — but it wouldn’t be possible if you installed something like Swype as an extension on Chrome.
This might not seem like much at first glance, but consider what happens when someone sets these features up: they will see a trend in how they intend to interact with their phones — they’ll type text into their phones and wait until the text is recognized by their computer’s speech recognition system before speaking out loud into their phone; if they want to watch video, they’ll click through videos in their web browser and then speak out loud into their phone and wait for the sound of audio coming from their speakers before pressing play; and so on. Once these features become standard (which is why we’re engaged), everyone else will have them too, so that when people use our phones for one thing, we’ll be able to do things with them that no one else can yet
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S-Pen Integration
Have you ever used an Android device and felt that it was just a tiny bit too small to do anything but play games? If so, you might be interested in the Google Pixelbook. It’s not as big as some of its competitors, but it is a powerful tablet and can do all the things you expect from any tablet: browsing the web and playing games.
The most notable feature is its 12-inch display. This one pixel is larger than other tablets which means that on paper at least it has a bigger screen. It’s also more expensive than many tablets out there, but that should be more than offset by its technical advantages.
The company claims that it will give you a better experience with less lag — and we can see why this would be the case. It has one of the fastest processors available in Android (a Qualcomm Snapdragon 835) – which means all those pixels are being pushed in different directions thanks to ultrafast processing power: each pixel gets to do what it does, rather than leaving half of them idle because they are waiting for something else to happen first. In theory there should be little lag, since all your apps will be running in parallel anyway.
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Conclusion
I’ve been teaching for over a decade, and this post is the first time I’ve ever skimmed through it all. If you were to ask me what my favorite things are, I’d say that I don’t know how to answer such a question. The only thing I can say is that I read every day, and there are some things that stick in my mind.
In this post, we have covered quite a bit of ground regarding learning and content creation. But we haven’t touched on any specific topics — not content marketing or SEO or anything else related to the web — because we feel like we don’t know enough about them yet.
We are starting to learn about these topics now (mostly through user feedback) and we are excited by where they take us. However, it doesn’t mean that we should stop learning or stop writing blog posts…
So, what do you think? Do you think that was too long? Too repetitive? Too scattered? Too much info?? Let us know in the comments below!
