By Jason Perlow for Tech Broiler
Google has released a phalanx of new hardware devices, including new smart speakers, new smartphones, and yes, an updated version of its super premium Pixel laptop, which is now called the Pixelbook.
The hardware itself seems much like Microsoft's Surface Laptop, which is a good thing. The price point is also very similar, at $999. If it was a fully functional Windows 10 or even Linux desktop device, I'd say that was a compelling buy. The problem is it runs Chrome OS.
Look, I like Chrome OS. I've bought several of the devices for family members, because I think it is a good solution for users that have almost entirely web-driven application workloads, and it is highly resistant to malware and misconfiguration.
The zero-config nature of Chrome OS makes it ideal for use-case scenarios where the environment the device is used in is hostile or the end-user has a limited set of apps and services that they use.
However, I could never use Chrome OS as-is as my primary device work device let alone primary recreational device, which Windows 10 and the 12.9-inch iPad Pro serve as today.
There are definitely ways to work around Chrome OS limitations, such as with Citrix and cloud-based apps. But I don't have a service provider for legacy Windows application hosting, and for my purposes, that would be overkill.
Chrome OS does have some limited Android application functionality with the built-in Google Play Store, but you do not have access to the complete library of Android apps, because Chrome OS does not support all the API levels of Android and the legacy applications written for Android aren't necessarily updated to API levels the runtime environment in Chrome OS can use.
So, it's kind of a chicken-and-the-egg issue. Do you fix the apps to support the runtime, or do you fix the runtime environment to support the apps?
The easy answer to this question is to incorporate the subset of zero configuration functionality present in Chrome OS into the next generation of Android and decide that, going forward, the Pixelbook and devices like it will run Android and Chrome OS dies off.
After all, they are both Linux-based and can share libraries and ultimately subsystems. But that's a highly simplistic way of looking at the problem, because a lot of rationalization has to occur to converge the two systems.
Not all the problems are Chrome OS related -- some of this has to do with the way Android itself evolved, starting out as a smartphone OS. It was never designed to run on tablets or work as a desktop OS with a mouse pointer and application windowing. Chrome OS is also not touchscreen-optimized, at least not yet.
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