The murky future of Chromebooks

So we have a strange guest with us today, Abner. I don't think he's a guest, I think he's going to be a permanent fixture, but William, welcome to Pixelated. It's a pleasure to have you. It's a pleasure to have you. Welcome to the madness. Welcome to my rambling and Abner's rambling. And we want to hear your rambling. So we're talking Chromebooks today. We're talking something that happened earlier on this week.

It's a strange subject. I'm a little bit touchy about Chromebooks. I'm an Android guy first and foremost, and I don't really necessarily see the value of Chromebook anymore. Mate, please go off on Chromebook for me. Be on my team for once.

Yeah, Chromebooks. So the news this week is Google had its latest Chromebook Plus event where they announced the latest software AI features for these. more premium set of Chromebook devices called Chromebook Plus. They've been doing this for a year or two. two now uh chromebook plus it's they target the mid-range and all that uh just like the basics on the software features this time is they have a circle circle to search

equivalent thing that's called Select Search at Google Lens, such an unwieldy name. And they also announced a new Chromebook Plus from Renovo. which, Damien, you've had time to. I have, yeah, yeah. I do have some. I have a few thoughts about it. I think anyone out there who is a Chrome OS guy, I don't know. Willie, did you use the original Pixelbook and the Pixelbook Go?

No, I don't think I've ever used a Pixelbook. I've used various Chromebooks from like Asus or whatever, but yeah, I don't think I've ever even, I don't even know if I've held one of Google's Chromebooks, like truly. I've only ever used the... crappy.

Pixelbook Go. I'm trying to remember the name of it. It's one of those things that gets released so widely, rarely, sorry. Rarely and always with a new name. So in my head, I'm like, I'm going to get, it's, if you heard me stutter 30 seconds ago, it's because I gave up on trying to remember.

what the proper model was going to be. Well, the only time I've ever used them is signing into IO that I can really remember or signing into Google events. So in terms of the hardware, I will say that this new Lenovo... Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14. Again, terrible names. They should just call it Lenovo Go or whatever they want to call it. Like, give it a cool name. Not that Go's a cool name. It feels like a bit of a throwback slash...

I guess homage to the Big Double Go. There's a few little traits that I kind of like, but I was left with a lot of questions about it. And Abner, correct me if I'm wrong, but this new...

Chromebook equivalent of Circle to Search. Like, name-wise, terrible. But UI-wise, there's definitely a lot of similarities to what's going on in Android, right? Career similarities, and I would argue that it even goes a step further. So on... chroma plus since you have a trackpad well most of them have touchscreens but you have a trackpad so that's the reasoning for this name you long press on the launcher button in the bottom left corner and you get to highlight what you want to search

It goes a step further because there's some useful actions like adding text, a lot of text to Google Docs or making a calendar event appointment from what's on your screen. Again, these are solid features. Again, they should have just called it server to search, but these are good ideas. They'll be innately familiar to Android users. On Chrome OS devices, yeah, I do think they make sense. It's a smart feature and it...

translates well but i guess to what we're alluding to uh the chromebook's place right now is i think in question it's up in the air We just had QPR 1 Beta 2, we just had IO where Google announced these desktop windowing and connected display features that are explicitly coming to Android. In the short term, Android 16 on tablets will make the desktop windowing that it's been testing for a year, probably even longer now for experiments-wise, that they've been testing for so long.

It's clearly like setting up the path for Google to have two offerings of the same. It's a typical Google move of having two products do the same thing. And that's history repeating itself, yeah. I'm worried about Chrome OS and anyone out there who's a really big Chrome OS advocate. I'm worried for you in terms of in the next few years, I just, I can, I mean.

Kind of seems obvious that the main move, and I think I did a video a few days ago talking about it, I think genuinely the move is going to be migrate to Android. And we've seen rumors of that, haven't we? It feels very much like every single move is now being set up to prepare Chrome OS.

users and this feels like that this week this launch feels like we're preparing you to have all of these in air quotes android features on a desktop os and you're going to have to kind of come to terms with them sooner rather than later i mean i I'm not a Chrome OS guy. I'm definitely an advocate for a dedicated laptop that's going to do more and have more power under the hood. But I do feel sorry for people who are very invested in the Chrome OS.

I say ecosystem, is it ecosystem? I mean, am I right even calling it that? Yeah, it feels a really strange time. And I think you kind of alluded to it there, Abner, that... There's more questions. This has raised more questions than given answers. And there was good features here.

Maybe I'm reading it too much. Chrome OS is absolutely solid. No, you're not reading it too much. Chrome OS is a solid thing. I could get all my work done on Chrome OS. I use my MacBook Air as a glorified Chromebook at this point, with Chrome being the main thing. It's just that, so in history repeating itself with what Google's typicalness, Chromebook is absolutely in the third place in the desktop.

os market share whatever um it's a solid third place competitor but it's it's vaguely well depending on the time of season, etc. It's vaguely close to Mac, but probably not really. But Windows is a top thing. I don't think Google is happy with... this third place position that doesn't have any room to significantly grow and take on windows.

it looks like they're trying to average, leverage Android and their position there to get some foot, some even more market share in the desktop operating space. And I think... Well, in concept, it's again, I don't know. Android is not what we've seen from Android desktop experience. I don't think it's there yet.

Damien, I think you use QPR. You use some of the desktop windowing stuff and the connected display stuff. That's basically the Android itself getting a DEX competitor. It's, well, it's early beta, but even, do you use desktop windowing on a Pixel? I'm still full screen apps mostly, but that's mostly because there's no dedicated keyboard for that device.

Yeah, that's a good point, actually. I think, would I use it? I mean, again, I'm a bad person to ask about this because the first thing I did was run Balatro. So I went and did the gaming straight away and I paired a keyboard and mouse for that specific reason. So that I thought was fantastic. It's a difficult question. I know, Will, I could probably...

kind of pick your brains about this because obviously you use some of the Adobe Creative Suite. How do you, do you genuinely think that we're going to reach a point? Because I don't think we will in the next three years at the very least. Get a competitive desktop alternative to say Audacity.

audition premiere no uh all that kind of stuff i mean i mean those tools there are tools like that that exist in you know you can use something like riverside to edit you know audio in in your browser but it is like It is certainly not as premium of an experience as using something like Audition, right? You're not waiting for Chrome or for a browser, any browser, to load.

whatever changes you're making to an audio file or a video file, those web tools are fine for basic edits, right? Like if you're just throwing, you know, intro music, outro music, and maybe cutting. something out of a podcast record right like that that's fine but the second you're talking about like anything with more than two tracks you're going to want something dedicated which is why

I've owned one or two Chromebooks. I had a Chromebook in college and then again a few years ago as a secondary device. And they're just... a little too limited for for me right like the second you're always going to hit those roadblocks and and damien you made an interesting point about um you know chrome os as an ecosystem a few minutes ago which is to say that like

Chrome OS's ecosystem is Android at this point like outside of the browser like anything else you're doing is basically just Android apps so I can see why Google would be you know As much as I, you know, when Word first started leaking a year ago or whatever, that Chrome OS might migrate to Android, I didn't believe it. I can see from Google's perspective, if they've hit, you know, kind of a wall on the...

uh consumer side of things right like there are i i don't really know how much chrome os is growing on the consumer side of you know how many let's dive into that a little bit So they absolutely education and enterprise business. They are businesses like the idea of Chromebooks that they can give to the employees. It's management, very easy to manage.

But I'm just thinking about this consumer space and what Google has been trying to do with Chromebook Plus. Yes. And then trying to get people to buy mid-range Chromebook. And I'm not sure it's words. The college example you're talking about. Yeah, the college example you're talking about. i'd say like chromebooks are very common k-12 and then you go to college and i think the move is

Most people get a Mac. Most people get a Windows laptop. Well, and it's impossible to compete when, you know, it was one thing when... The cheapest Mac you could get was was a thousand dollars. And that was a base model. And you really want to go to like a tier two up on the MacBook Air or something. And I'm talking, you know, pre M series processors. But now, you know.

You can go to Best Buy pretty much any day of the week and just get like an M2 or an M3 MacBook Air with 16 gigs of RAM for like $750, $800. And that's not that much more expensive than what.

the Chromebook Plus lineup is. So it's like, why would you, why would you possibly, you know, go for a $600 Chromebook when a little bit more money gets you like a, a, a. wildly better experience or not even better experience but a more flexible experience more powerful experience exactly i'd say the build quality from that 649 to let's say 899 or 799 if you get an older model Exactly.

plastic to metal, big difference. But yeah, Chromebook Plus is trying to offer that upgrade path from like the Chromebook you get in K to 12. And when you go to college, you want to get something more premium.

yeah it's the growing in google trying to grow in that consumer consumer space is i don't think i think it'll take a long time more than these two years that chromebook plus has had to shift people's mindset that chromebook plus the chromebooks can be something more premium than the thing that just gets handed out um um and again k-12 it's do you think that Sorry to interrupt, but do you think that kind of diminishes the...

I don't want to use the term scalability because it's not scalability. It's more like the reach, the mindshare. That's the way of praise I'm looking for. Do you think the fact that Chromebooks are just, they're almost like a throwaway product? i.e. in education, in industry, it's just, hey, take this cheap device, you can do these things in it. Don't get me wrong, it does those things very well in most cases. Do you think that kind of, I would not be surprised if, say, because it...

If Google thinks about this logically, there are going to be a lot of children, for instance, and people, students and that kind of thing, who they will get given, issued a device that is... let's be completely honest woefully underpowered for the vast majority of things that you do beyond the browser and even in some cases very very underpowered in the browser experience and that's because obviously

educational institutions are working within certain, say, price brackets and budget constraints. They may get a cheap Android phone from the parents because they don't want to give them a really expensive iPhone or maybe even an older iPhone. I wonder if that... diminishes the expectations people have of Chrome OS. So it becomes harder and harder to sell.

like let's say android phones example it took so long to get rid of that perception that android that all android phones are these budget things that were yeah cheap plastic and crappy that that was like I don't know, good decade that perception was firm in people's minds. Some people still have that too. And, you know, as a...

You know, I graduated high school in 2013. Like I know exactly where that came from because it came from people, you know, in the in the early age of the iPhone buying, you know, $200. android devices in 20 200 like off contract android devices in 2011 and being like why is this garbage and then buying a full price iphone and being like wow it's so much better it's like yeah you paid four times the price

Yeah, I wonder how much of that is going to colour people's expectations. But if Google is... I think if Google are really smart about this, and I'm sure this is why they... I mean... I'm not very intelligent, but I get the impression that if they tie things to Android, now there is a perception of Pixel phones. I mean, let's be honest, they had a lot of problems with hardware previously, and they've slowly managed to reach that by the 10th iteration.

coming up that the hardware is now competent there are not that many issues with the hardware in terms of just the actual it not falling to pieces yeah i do wonder i do wonder if they tie that all together in this nice big bow in the next say three to four years we could potentially have a really high quality

whether they call it a pixel tablet or a pixel laptop, whatever they want to do it, if they do do this, I think that they could quite easily shrug off the perception of cheap Chrome OS. Or they could keep Chrome OS hanging around as like, okay, this is just our cloud.

option. This is at the low end. They absolutely have to. There's no transition that they cannot kill Chromebooks in any sense because it's too important for education and enterprise plus they're just... literally throwing away money because of how affordable it is and how windows can't compete there so yeah let's let's think about what this future looks like um so you have chromebooks as the base and

google android tablets convertible android tablets or dedicated android laptops that becomes the middle to high end what does that future look like it's we've talked about decks on the podcast before but it's there's a whole I think Something that Google hasn't really touched on is their vision for why they're doing this connected display stuff. They said they're working with DeX. They worked at Samsung to offer this DeX experience, DeX-like experience.

They say it about expanding the power of your Android phone, productivity, by connecting a bigger display, you get all this stuff. But are we going to see Google pushing... Android phones connected to displays and physical and Bluetooth keyboards. Is that a desktop push? Are they going to make a desktop push with Android? Because I don't think it's enough for them to just offer.

the you know offer a dex alternative like i think google as the you know company behind android needs to one make it clear why you would want this and then two push for developers to build applications that like are you know if not designed for this ui certainly optimized for it certainly optimized for

a a desktop experience that you are thinking about either you know especially if you are just plugging your pixel into a monitor and a keyboard like if you are asking for someone to like put that much effort into using a feature on their phone. You need to make it clear as to why you would do that and the benefit it brings to the user.

This is going to be me being pessimistic, which anyone who has heard me on previous podcasts knows I can be sometimes. But like, I worry about Google. I think. Google really has like small screens figured out, like have for ages. I don't think they've ever fully understood what to do with a larger screen. I think that's true.

to a certain extent with chromebooks i think they're kind of just trucking along and what they're doing and and google doesn't totally know what to change next with them and i think you know more specifically like tablets have always been a problem for google i i think we saw a lot of good ideas with the pixel tablet and then google seemed to just be like yeah why why try to you know improve on any of them let's just throw in the towel and i worried that this will be a similar

initiative where they have some good ideas that are maybe not fully baked and we all go but boy once these ideas are fully baked you know desktop uh android will be really good and then google will just never follow through Do you think this might actually strengthen Samsung, though? My theory is that this is just going to make DeX an even more powerful opportunity for Samsung to... How many people use DeX? Again, we've discussed this topic before, but I...

People say they want it, but I don't think that's representative of a larger audience. Will, you were saying that if you're connecting your... your phone to display to adding pairing a booted keyboard all this effort needs to be then google needs to justify all this effort and i don't think people are conditioned

to think of their phone as their productivity device. The phone is absolutely at the center of people's lives these days. It is their primary device for most people. But I think there's still a gap in which... if you want to do productivity you need a keyboard i don't think that's changed i don't think anything android has shown i don't think anything the ipad has done with touchscreen interfaces has shown that you can do stuff without a keyboard i don't think we're there yet

I think there's a sci-fi element of we all kind of want this one device that we carry around with us. It becomes a hub for every single thing that we do. And this is the, I mean, what are we? 15 years into the life cycle of smartphones. I think that was probably the early era of smartphone. I was like, oh my God, imagine being able to plug this into the screen and this is the actual hub that you have for everything. It's desktop quality. I just don't, I think we've-

Yeah, I feel like there's always going to be a place for just a dedicated laptop or a dedicated desktop. I think that's the paradigm that we've settled upon. And these things are completely separate. I think I would find it really difficult to just... to do that, to plug in my phone and be like, okay, and then unplug the phone. And I don't know. I think there's like a disconnect in my brain that says that won't work. But again, I think I've...

maybe your pessimism's ripped off their will. I think usually I'm the pessimistic guy. So we're dwelling in pessimism. But I feel like, I feel to kind of,

Go back to my point about Samsung. I think this just strength, if Google does go down this route of saying we're going to prioritise a desktop mode in Android, if they don't have a tablet lined up that's going to take advantage of it. The last time I used DeX on the Tab S10+, I think it was, with a keyboard and mouse.

It wasn't bad. It actually isn't a bad. They've tried to replicate it, right? Yeah, I used it on a plane and it was like genuinely, it was almost better than using my laptop that I had with me because the smaller keyboard... of the samsung tablet actually fit better on the like seat back table and so like i was able to like get work done a little bit better than like had i grabbed my full laptop just it was a more comfortable experience i'm right there with you i was i was surprised

at how fully baked Dex feels, especially on a tablet. But this is the thing. I think Dex has had... I mean, it's been siloed away and Samsung have done their own thing with it. Yeah. Every single time, it almost feels like, and am I getting about a wider problem here, it almost feels like every time Google says, oh, we need a vehicle for this, we need someone to help us with it, Samsung gets drafted in.

And Samsung is like, okay, we're going to stick to Samsung. This is our big brother who's going to look after us here. Because I think they just have that... they have that market awareness, sorry, they have that awareness in the market from consumers that if Samsung does it, then it becomes a thing because Pixel has been trying things for a long, long time. And then as soon as it goes on Samsung phones, they're doing it right now with Gemini and Galaxy AI. But it almost...

It almost feels like this is the exact playbook that's going to happen. I can kind of see what's going to happen. Samsung will have a laptop slash two-in-one, whatever they want to call it. In the next few years, it will have DeX. Google will come out on stage, talk about what...

they're going to do with this enhanced desktop mode. It's going to be available on Android devices moving forward and everybody's happy. But Samsung just takes all of the credit for something that effectively Google have used as their...

driving force to almost penetrate the market. It doesn't make sense, but at the same time... No, you're right. It does make sense, right? Yeah, I mean, obviously Wear OS 4... onward was the big one even just like circle the search was advertised as like a samsung first feature like samsung was the company airing advertisements for four or five months about circle the search like not really google like google kind of waited until

the pixel nine launched you know what i mean like they didn't so yeah that's that's interesting also i i just i have to bring it up david to your point about you know how how has this sort of thing uh uh changed in the last 15 years like is is is like even even decks for as much as we just said it's pretty good like is it that different than like what asus tried to do with the pad phone

in the early 2010s like not really it's obviously it is obviously cleaner and faster and like more usable but it's you know if you remove like technical issues it's kind of the same experience and it's been 13 years and it's you know they need to come up with a better uh way to sell this idea of like throw your phone in a dock and like now you've got a computer because the power's there you know let's put tensor aside but like The Snapdragon 8 Elite can certainly run like...

desktop class apps maybe you know maybe you're not exporting 4k video maybe but like you know if if adobe made an entire suite of applications like full power applications for android like You could do that on a phone. You know, you're going to run into thermal ceilings, but otherwise. But that isn't there. So I really do think like the biggest thing that Google needs to do is work with developers like Adobe.

Do we think they'll do that? Because this is the one question I was going to ask you. I feel like if Google is deadly serious about this and they want this to work, throw as much money as humanly possible at Adobe because as soon as you get those desktop level applications on a...

Portable form factor. I mean, they can fix the power issues with the Pixel later down the line. Get the chipsets in a two, three years time. Once they have the packages down, the performance comes later, right? If they do that...

I will change my mind. I will potentially utilise, and I'm sure you're the same, Will. I know you're a little bit less in... into the adobe ecosystem i'm looking at my uh i'm looking at my my uh taskbar in windows right now and the the apps that i've been that i would need to to have on like either a chrome os or obviously like a migrated into android version is like

premiere audition photoshop lightroom and like once all four of those are there the rest of this i can if if there isn't like a dedicated android app for it i can probably use a web app so it's really just kind of those that sweet Ironically, there's a future where Google's answer to this is its own AI.

web apps ai apps that's what they that's that's probably what google would rather see happen yeah like you like you are talking about like google spending this money on getting developers to optimize that some of that is happening photo editing apps uh that's they've been doing that for the past one or two years come io they always try to make that push but it's funny if like they like the flow

google's um ai filmmaking tool if that's or if they do something for audio and podcasts if that ends up being the ultimate vision or i don't know i can't can you damon you're a youtube guy um What if YouTube Studio one day gets a full online-based editing? I think we all think that's where flow is going. Yeah, I don't know why they haven't done that, right? I don't know why they haven't even attempted to try that.

because it's just a poor experience like like editing video in a browser is just sluggish it always feels bad like You know, I have edited stuff like like side podcasts in in Riverside, which I would say is like one of the better like podcast specific editors on the on the web right now. And like.

I kind of gave up because it would just like, I would be doing stuff and I'm like, This works okay if you don't know your way around Premiere or Audition, but I do, and I know I can do this two or three times as fast if I'm in a dedicated app that I get, has a learning curve, and if you don't...

want to do that like tackle that learning curve it's tricky but for for someone like i mean and damien you're in the same boat like once you know those pro tools you don't want to move back to something a little more amateur because you're you're Even if the speed is fixed, you're still going to hit roadblocks where you're like, why do I have to do it this way? Or why can't I do this thing that is a standard video editing task? Do you think that...

Google and obviously Samsung as well now, do you think they can look to what Apple has done wrong with the iPad and be like, hey, this is how we're going to avoid the same roadblocks that they're experiencing? That's another thing. Yeah. for years, Apple was so bad at iPad multitasking and what the productivity experience on the iPad.

what a good one looks like. At the same time, in the past, what, two, three years, started with the Pixel Tab, but Google was trying Android 12 L. Google has been trying to... do something similar, getting really serious about offering a tablet interface. Before Apple figured it out at this WWDC, by this fall, they'll have a competent... basically mac like good ipad os multitasking experience come fall it's a shame that it took android android to even launch it like it's um

from, again, Android 12L, what is that, four years ago? It took them so long to launch it, and iPad has kind of figured it out in that time, which is a bit of a shame. But...

The idea of, I guess, thinking about this broader future, like, I think we all agree that Google needs to make a push into either getting Android apps or... getting powerful web apps to make this desktop Android experience powerful I'm just again this is something we previously discussed but I can't get over the fact that connecting a wire to a monitor That whole experience needs to be boosted. It needs to be wireless for I think this big adoption of something like that. Yeah.

yeah i either wireless or like google needs to offer a and an obvious i don't think this would sell in high numbers but if they're serious about this they have to do it it has to be like a dock or something that is just it lives on your desk You're not thinking about like, oh, I have to go get...

i have to go find a usbc cable and plug it into the back of my monitor or i have to find like a hdmi to you to you or whatever right you don't you don't want to think about it it needs to be like a switch like like a like a nintendo switch it needs to be i drop it in Now shows my phone like that's if it's not that simple, like the only people who are ever going to do it are like enthusiasts like us, like and that's not a route to mainstream success by any means.

I guess they have some level of experience doing that with, I know it's not quite the same, but the Pixel tablets dock, like the speaker dock. I mean, it's a great dock. I'll give them credit where it's due. I do really like the whole concept of the Pixel tablet docking. A second-gen version of that with some bugs ironed out would be so good. And I'm so frustrated that they just are like, well, we're letting that idea die in the vine.

Do you think... So, I mean, if there's a future for this and Google says we're going to go back into making our own laptops again, do you think that they'll... and try and do a bigger and a smaller one. Because if they're living and dying by this external display option for phones, the tablet option has to be its own device, right? And I just wonder, I wonder if this...

then bleeds into Google putting their own spin on the hardware and trying to do something a little bit different with it. And then maybe kind of not necessarily seeing the success that they wanted, like they have with the Pixel tablet. So I'm kind of worried on that respect. And again, it probably does come back to them tying in with the OEMs. Let the OEMs do the hardware and we'll do the hardware with the software and just get our software in as many hands as possible.

Surely the first place they can do, if that's all in the future, that's all really far down the line. Surely the main aim in the next two to three years, if they bolster this UI, we're going to have to have desktop level Chrome, desktop level.

All of those applications either running in the Chrome browser, be that Sheets, be that Docs, be that Drive, or they make dedicated apps for those that only run on Android. And I think that would be kind of cool, especially for Drive and things like that, because we don't have very many.

dedicated applications save Android, right? You can use a plugin for your PC or your Mac, but it's kind of not that nice. I wonder if they could just kind of like make good on their first party applications and at least give people who... who do end up making that transition from Chrome OS to Android, at least they're very, very happy and then target everybody else after that. Yeah, I'm just thinking like it's so, okay, so you hypothetical future Android laptop.

Do you want to use Google Docs? Do you use the app or do you use the website? Because fundamentally, the best experience for Docs Live is on the web. that it's getting the android tablet push again that started with 12l it has improved the um tablet experience of docs a great deal but i don't the disconnect is that it'll always be better on the web features will always come first to the web and it's just like

The fact that you have to think there's, you can either use the website or the Android app. That is such a mess. That is, maybe people's familiarity with the web wins out. on a laptop form factor. But it's just such a bad strategy with people wondering why they see an app, a native app, and the web. I wonder if they go down the Android Auto route, though, as soon as it did take... detects an external display or the keyboard whatever

format it is you can almost have those applications are hidden from view so it's only the productivity application version so if you do want drive or whatever it is it will point you to straight to the website straight to your desk the desktop level chrome that we kind of

it's got to happen right i wonder if i mean i'm not not no longer a programmer by some years so don't quote me on that but i don't think that'll be that difficult because it would just become like a web link right on your home screen as soon as you click it it's aware send me to this location log me in based upon the app and it's not convoluting things like you say because you could have

You could potentially have two or three instances of the same app running, right? Because you could have multiple tabs of docs, then the app, and then potentially drive in the background. That could definitely cause some confusion, but I guess that's power users, surely.

Yeah, this is just a random idea. But imagine this idea of being a wireless DEX. If the Chromecast protocol... were able to support that kind of streaming if if tasks was a bit more advanced at this stage if it could wait and see free whatever that would be super interesting but again like this requires

like regular monitors with this hypothetical upgraded version of CAS that's specifically for this DEX-like experience. That would be something. But again, this requires buying new hardware. And I think... I just think trying to add all these things to the phone, these peripherals, well, literally peripherals, to this phone is... a future that maybe it gives you a taste of what you can do with Android connected to a big display. But I think the ultimate next step is people getting at that laptop.

i'm just trying to imagine what an android laptop looks like and it call me crazy but i don't think it looks different than a windows laptop or well the fact that i'm saying windows laptop not chromebook i feel like that speaks to something but i what does what what makes an android laptop unique um i

to me i probably think it's more two-in-one convertibles rather than a dedicated laptop form factor because like folding a touch screen like those two and ones that are just you fold the screen back that's just an awkward experience with the keyboard underneath or whatever

I don't know if you've seen this as well, Will. I just feel like every single Android tablet now is launching with a keyboard and mouse add-on and a pen. They've all followed the iPad route. So we're probably there. I think that's probably the apex of the hardware we're going to see.

Yeah, and I also think going the hybrid route allows them... to avoid the like MacBook Air problem I was talking about earlier because if they go you know the second you drop below like $600 you start looking at specs that are just not particularly fast enough for modern use cases right like you're gonna end up with like four gigabytes of ram or something or even eight which is not you know a great amount in 2025 and then

But but if you push up to $800, you're competing against the MacBook when it's on sale or older generations of MacBook that are just like going to beat you. Every time. So they have to live in this like sweet spot or they have to differentiate on the hardware. And I think being a hybrid type device allows them to do that because like we know Apple is making that.

device anytime soon they have made that clear through how they approach ipad os and and so you know and at the same time like something like the surface is the only other like kind of similar competitor and those exist in a more expensive tier as well so i think yeah i don't know approaching it and being like We're switching to Android because we see the future of what Chromebooks were as like hybrid devices and Android just makes more sense as that kind of platform than Chrome OS. Plus.

Chrome OS already kind of feels like Android with the Play Store. It's kind of already just a desktop.

experience where you access you know play store apps i i think that makes a lot of sense do you think we'll ever get gaming laptops again then because we saw i feel like they're very few and far between now because if we're gonna have yeah but a gaming chromebook makes no sense right yeah they make no sense i i think i think in the age i think i truly think i i have thought this for months now that google

bet on the wrong horse with stadia like i i think they saw cloud gaming as like you know and sure it's 2019 now but in five years like people are going to want to be playing their games anywhere. And that was true. What they what they didn't see coming was the rise of like gaming handhelds like the Steam Deck or even just like the sheer pop, like like the Switch was already successful. But, you know, six months.

after stadia launched we had the pandemic and then the switch got even more successful right like a lot of people went out and bought the switch during that and so i think they're they probably are like well we've already shut stadia down like Yes, there are cloud streaming applications, but they remain fairly niche. And so why chase that market when that market is so dominated by not just consoles or PCs, but also now?

handhelds from all sorts of companies. Yeah. The whole thing seems murky and obviously we've laid it out in a very... I guess, how would you describe it? We've laid out every single machination or potential possibility that's going to happen. We've gone down every road. Yeah, I think it's probably going to be a lot more simple than this, to be honest. I get the impression that...

there must be enough interest in tablets on the Android side because a lot of people buy them as like just cheap entertainment devices. A lot of them are now, I feel like we're reaching a point where... Most even cheap devices, even if you buy a used one, like a used Tab S9 or something, you probably have more than enough power under the hood to run a fairly basic desktop experience. It's probably going to be more of a, how would I describe it, smooth.

consistent usability experience you'll have versus a really cheap three four hundred dollar chromebook and you don't have that i mean a four hundred dollar android tablet is going to feel better than a four hundred dollar chromebook because it's going to be less probably less plastic. You're probably going to have a nicer display, which is brighter. You have all of the benefits, technically, of Android. I guess you don't necessarily get as many updates, but...

their updates to Chrome, which is very different. You'll get Play Store updates to Chrome. I feel like just laying that basics out, I think it does make a lot of sense. And I think I'm kind of looking forward to seeing what they do with it. At the high end, I do think we still run into the roadblock of get a MacBook, get a Windows laptop, potentially get an iPad. But yeah, I think...

It's a tough one. I don't know if you could ever see yourself using an Android tablet as a machine. I don't think I will. I think Chrome is my minimum. I need full... desktop clone that's that's that's my red line before i can do anything to to your point Damien, my final review at my former publication, Android Police, was of Lenovo's IdeaTap Pro, which is, I believe, a $400 MSRP, but it's constantly on sale. It's under $300.

at uh at walmart right now and like it's a big nice display right like it's it's a it's a i think it's like a 3k 12 inch display It's got big loud speakers. It's not like the best screen I've ever seen. The viewing angles kind of suck. The speakers can get a little.

you know, blown out at the very top end. But like if you are if you were just looking to buy something to watch YouTube and Netflix and whatever, like people are going to be way better off with and you can get the optional keyboard if you want, but you're almost better off with this.

You know, you will deal, as you said, with a with a poor update policy because it's Lenovo. But but, you know, I don't think people I don't think people looking for something like that care. They just want a big, bright screen with big loud speakers and like. those people are better off with tablets, which kind of brings us back to the idea of hybrid devices as the future of whatever Chrome OS is going to be. Yeah, I think that wraps it up perfectly.

It's a strange time for Chrome OS. It's a really exciting time for Android. I think that it makes sense to tie everything. Android's pushing everything forward. We're in a better place than we ever have been. We've got Material 3 Expressive and Android 16 QPR 1 coming down the line. I think the future looks really bright for Google. They've had success with the Pixel series. If they can make this work, hey, it's only in the early stages. We've extrapolated massively from a few little things.

Yeah, I'm excited to see the future and excited to have you join the podcast, Will. It's been a pleasure. Really want to see this develop and kind of... We will continue to discuss all of the machinations of everything that happens on Pixelated. But yeah, thanks guys for joining me today. I really, really enjoyed it. And we will speak to you soon. Bye. Bye.