Pixelated - Googlebook Begins

Episode Date: September 25, 2026

Welcome to Pixelated episode 118. This week, Damien and Abner share their hands-on impressions of Google's new laptop lineup with Will. What's it like to use an Android-powered laptop? How different is the Googlebook platform from ChromeOS? And what steps does Google need to take post-launch to give it as strong of a chance at succeeding as possible? All those questions and more and more as the Android ecosystem grows even larger. Enjoy the show? You can listen to our weekly members-only Pixelated Pro bonus episode by signing up for 9to5Google Pro for just $5 per month, or about $1 per episode. Sponsored by Proton Unlimited: Pixelated listeners can save 30% on an annual subscription to the company’s suite of privacy-friendly services by signing up using our link. Thanks to Proton Unlimited for sponsoring the podcast. Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Amazon Music Apple Podcasts Overcast Hosts Abner Li Damien Wilde Will Sattelberg Listen to more 9to5 Podcasts The Sideload 9to5Mac Happy Hour Electrek Space Explored Feedback? Drop us a line at [e-mail], leave a comment on the post, or reach out to our producer. And for even more Android discussion, dive into the official 9to5Google forums!

Welcome to Pixelated Episode 118. I'm your host, Will Saddlebird. This week, with some hands-on experiences under their belts, Damien and Abner walk us through the Google Book experience, answering as many questions as you might have along the way. What exactly is a Google book? What's it like to use an Android-powered laptop? How different is this platform from ChromeOS and what steps does Google need to take post-launch to give it as strong of a chance at succeeding as possible? There's a lot riding on these machines, and we have plenty of thoughts, both positive and negative. It all starts right after this message from our sponsor, Proton. Grab your phone and take a look at your app drawer right now.

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So that's why I wasn't there. How did it get to Boise, Idaho? Yeah, how did you get that? Yeah, so basically, I went down to a real sketchy route of trying to find one. I don't trust eBay for obvious reasons, so I had to go down through Reddit. And honestly, I failed. Then it didn't work out. It was slightly open.

So I said no. Well, that is such an absolute thing. So you were trying to track something down so difficult, and then you want to, it's marginally damaged packaging, yeah. I agree with you. That's the best way to go. I guess something big happened this week. I know that me and you will

will probably be arguing about this all pod but I think some differences of opinion I think it's quite funny because myself and Abner have had some I guess I guess we're going to get into it but I think I've had a little bit I'm not a full U-turn

but I've definitely had my mind change slightly I know in last week's podcast we kind of talked about with Google Books that there are some things to be optimistic about and I'm trying to balance that with with blind optimism and trying a new shiny thing and not being overly excited about it.

But like, I mean, Abner, I've read your piece about the Google Book OS. I did, I focused him a bit more on the hardware. Like, there is definitely, I mean, this is what's really hard to convey with. And I hope it kind of came across in what we were saying on website and in video as well. That there is something here or it feels something here. Does that make sense? Yeah. It does.

Yeah. Go ahead, Ebner. Okay, well, actually, really quickly, here's all I want to say. You guys have seen these. I haven't. I have a fairly negative view that I can talk about later, but I've been thinking about this all week, and I've been thinking about how to make good radio. And I do not think me coming in and just arguing at every point of what you guys are going to say, but your time with the laptop is good radio. So I'm going to kind of seed the floor for a little bit, and I'll chime in when I feel appropriate.

But I'm going to, my goal is to have a conversation and not, perhaps the arguments that have been occurring in our Slack channels. Hey, I've been prepping for a radial argument. So I don't know what you're doing. We'll see how the tone goes. But I'm going to try to keep it. I'll try to keep it like light and fun. I was waiting for you to keep me both barrels straight away.

So like my first thing, okay, so let me answer a couple of questions straight away that I think you probably want to know. And this is one of those things. It's really, really hard to quantify something to sort or like kind of impart. something. This is, I guess, if you are not a pro subscriber, become a pro subscriber, we've done a little bit of a look behind the curtain of why it is so difficult sometimes to imbue these thoughts. And we're always trying to improve the process to tell somebody what it's like to try something or a feeling that you can convey that maybe you've had prior to trying something out and then afterwards you can

have your opinion changed. Like I said about a moment ago, my opinion is not fully changed. I'm 100% in agreement with you, Will, that we've had, my concerns are definitely there. But at the same time, I feel like there is an opportunity here that probably affects the wider Android space, probably more so than this individual product. And I'm kind of looking at it from a top-down approach of, hey, when I used the Google Book for the first time, I was like, huh, this isn't as bad as I'd potentially expected. For the first, let's just talk about hardware to begin with. The hardware is genuinely very, very good. Like, I am no, there I have no, I have no doubts that the hardware is very, very good.

It's about time that we've had high-quality hardware from a launch product. Yes, that comes with its own caveats. I don't know what, which was your favorite of the, was it five? Adno, was it five or six? Yes, there's more of a tactical reason. I am very interested in the XPS Chrome book.

Sorry, I keep doing that. The XPS Google Book. It is 13 inches. It is... Basically, if you've seen the Windows version at Best Buy or you own it or whatever, that is the Google Book version. But I'm interested in that because it's the most compact of the bunch. And for the foreseeable future, I imagine myself dual wielding that and my MacBooker to a team. So that is a strategic reason.

Yeah, see, that's where I'm like, I mean, as of late, I've been less inclined to take a Mac book with me places. And because obviously I don't do as much editing as I used to do at trade shows, that kind of thing. It tends to be a case of like we pick and choose where we're going to cover certain things and we maybe potentially have time to pass the information that we're given at these things. Camera is a completely different story. But it definitely feels to me as though I could work, do genuine work from it. Because I think the biggest thing was the full desktop Chrome that we were kind of questioning for ages.

It is a full version of desktop Chrome as far as I can see. I was installing extensions on it. I have a cashback extension. I managed to get it to kind of track me moving to a website and stuff. So that was very good because, I mean, I don't know about you guys. I'm an online purchase fiend, so I need those cashback deals. That was definitely something that concerned me straight away, and that wasn't like was working.

But yeah, I think the ACA and obviously the XPS is the one that stands up. the most. It is, I think it's kind of a bold move for Dell to put their XPS name on the line a little bit. And I was actually incorrect in my post. I had to make a correction to it. I completely forgot that the DellXPS line has been outside of Windows, but it was part of their developer program in partnership with Canonical. And they had a Linux version, Ubuntu version. It wasn't as easy to come by. It's been around since 2012. If it's not on the Best Buy shelves, I think you're still like correct. Yeah, I mean, it is. In my part,

It is incorrect. I mean, I'm supposed to be the Linux guy, but I'm fairly new to Linux. But there's a big difference between like this is like an enterprise solution that happens to have the XPS branding,

but it's like developers and enterprise customers versus like walking into Best Buy during Black Friday sales and seeing the XPS Google box. Yeah, exactly. I mean, I probably would now. I probably would now. Maybe.

This is times change. I probably would pick up a Ubuntu powered or a Linux powered XPS. But yeah, it's completely far and away. the standout. But I think straight away, there is an assuredness with the hardware. This feels like, it doesn't feel like a Chromebook launch. I don't know if you guys can think of Chromebook launches recently. I think Chromebook Plus was the first time I was like, huh, the hardware's quite good, but there's always like a, eh, in the back of your mind. Like, it's still a Chrome. I mean,

it's still, it's still Android, but we'll get into that in a little bit. But I definitely think there is going to be something for everyone. And the only one that I would kind of had question Mark's over was because of the weird little forehead camera on. I think it's the Lenovo Chromebook 15, the white one. Yes. The screen was incredible, but the visual, I'm not 100% certain on that. It was one that kind of was a bit weird. Yeah.

Let's talk about some other hardware. Let's talk about the keyboard on the trap bag because I think a lot of laptops live and died by this. What were your initial impressions? Because I have some very positive thoughts about those. It very much should not feel any different from. a MacBook, which large grass trackpad.

That's probably what they aimed for. The keyboards felt comfortable. It's, there is, I do think, in the back of their minds, they had the MacBook as, like,

a hardware design goal. And I think they got there. And I think the way credit is new is that they got five different OEM partners to reach that same angle with their, mandated specs.

But that is quite good. I think that's a good point actually because like when you get these 5-OEM partners to build laptops, you would expect one, like you would expect one to kind of cheap out. They would definitely kind of diminish the experience potentially for everyone. Like at the same time, that doesn't seem to be the case. Like I think that there's definitely like there is only one where I'm critiquing it for a minor design decision. Like it still is a fairly solid nice piece of equipment,

which I don't know. I think maybe with Chromebooks, I feel like this may have been something that was never really thought about in the same way or if it was. Someone was letting them down. Someone was letting Google down on that side of things. At a high level, I think we need more time with the hardware once it watches next month.

But I think a high level takeaway is that in starting at, a premium 899 and a price point I think what Google ends up having is hardware all hardware that feels high quality

like you're rooted with Chromebook problems most people's experience with that is cheap hardware in schools or in enterprise large freets of devices I think

what they got by mandating hard by mandating these top-line specs and design is that whenever people are introduced to Google Book be it that that's Best Buy, it's honestly just Best Buy, that they will experience something premium,

something MacBook-like. Of course, that trade-off there is the increased price that we will, I'm sure, we'll discuss right now actually, but yeah, I think that is is a balance that they had to strike,

but I think they did need a hardware reset from people's expectations of Chromebooks. I mean, I know, you don't even, I can anticipate literally what you're going to say, and I 100% know that there is one huge roadblock in the middle of the way. There is no doubt in my mind that most people are going to say, why would I get this when I can get a MacBrick Neo in terms of the price structure?

I wonder if there is an element of delaying, because we've potentially heard about the Android and laptops for a long period of time. It's something that feels like it's been worked on for like three or four years. When do we get the first rumination of like our all like kind of leaks on aluminium OS? Was it like two years ago, two, three years ago, maybe longer? I feel like a big sign, a big sign of how long this has been in development is that, they're using the Snapdragon and actually read the base chip versus while everything right now is on the X2 generation.

So I think that provides an idea of how long this base hardware is in development. And it's one of those things it's like, I think that does hold it back a little bit in that we know the price has probably not helped. Like obviously everything is increasing price storage because I think most of them start at 256 gigabytes, 16 gigabytes of RAM as the base, which I think is a good compromise for a fairly, affordable notebook, but at the same time, that's not helping the price point, is it? I think,

could, I mean, we're getting mobile phones with 12 gigabytes of RAM. I do wonder, like, because the Snapdragon X Elite is not, I mean, I guess it's in a lot of ways is a very, very high-end mobile chip. Could they have done, could they have thought about it and, and, and maybe done, gone with, okay, we're going to give these devices potentially 12 gigabytes of RAM, reduce the price by, I feel like even $150 would have made a huge difference because it's £999 here in the UK versus $899 in the US for the... And that's just one model.

I think that's important. Google has got a lot of mileage out of having a one model at that price, but it's just... Realistically, you're looking at a four-figure laptop like no matter what you buy here. Yeah. Yeah, and I don't know. I can...

This is the biggest... This is going to be the biggest stumbling block. And it is no doubt, with every device because it's always going to be compared against the MacBrick

Neo which has also had a price increase of its own and it is running Apple Silicon so yeah I think I went in with that kind of

we didn't hear the pricing until we saw them hands on at my session so it was kind of a case of it did colour my opinions after the fact

when I got to try them out I kind of was like maybe thinking if this had been a year ago it could have been different, we could have seen a different reaction to this. Obviously, not software, notwithstanding,

but we'll get into that into a second. But like, I am really, really intrigued to see how the partners have been involved with the price structure. Like, did everybody, did Google potentially want everything to be the same across the board and there was pushed back or, I guess we'll never know at this stage. But it definitely, it definitely doesn't necessarily bode well for the initial launch devices, being at 899 for that first. I think it's a, The ACER, isn't it? Is the ACA, I'm saying Chromebook as well. Acer, Google Book 14, is it?

Actually, I do have an update on that because the DellXPS, it was announced that you have a 99, but it's now 999. Best Buy offered it at 999 and the Google stores, you have a 99. But as of now, Google store has also moved to 99. So that is the starting price. Again, it's only $100 more, and it enters the four figure price category, but $200 off is better than nothing. Hmm.

And I don't think anybody's even mentioned this. I can't even remember mentioning it in my hands on, actually, even though I discussed the touchscreen. I do wonder how much that has made a difference to the price points, because obviously a touchscreens are definitely going to cost more, and these are all, I believe they're all OLEDs. Am I right? One is an OLED, isn't it, or LED?

HDR, LED, the Lenovo, Google, I'm going to say Chromebook, Google Book 15, these aren't bad displays. And then when you add in touch as well, I do wonder how that has affected the cost. Like, it isn't going to be negligible. And at the same time, if that is a requirement for these launch devices, I don't know, is it added cost that was necessary at the time? I guess in a lot of respects, this is the key differentiates. For me, one of the biggest key differentiators and one way else,

quite impressed with straightaway is, I mean, it's Android for all intents of purposes. So you have that phenomenal touchscreen experience that you're just not going to get with Windows. It doesn't exist on MacOS unless you try some hacky method. Like that made one of the biggest impressions on me straight away, just from a pure, this form factor I'm not used to having a good touchscreen experience with and also having a good screen on top. It was like two things that my brain was trying to fight with. I'm like, no, this shouldn't be as smooth and as nice as it as it.

it is, but at the end of the day it's Android. So of course it is, like 120 hertz as well. I don't know if there's one at 144. I can't remember there might be one, but I'm not 100% certain. They're all clocked at 120 straight out the box as well. So there's a really, there's a fluidity there that you're probably not going to get with any other touchscreen device where the potentially Windows has been shoehorned onto it. Yeah, that definitely felt quite refreshing to begin with. I don't know if you spent much time playing around with the touchscreen app.

I try to do a little bit of just general stuff, but you just kind of feel yourself gravitating towards using the trackpad and the keyboard, which is, I guess, what laptop's for. What laptop is for? But let's get into, though, the, I guess the elephant in the room,

which is Google Brue OS, Android OS, limitations, and I know Will is desperate to get into this. I know he's desperate to get into it. And I get, and I am desperate to get into it as well. What were your first impression straight away than after when you, when you, when you,

when you fired it up, opened up the laptops, started playing around with, with Android in this, I guess, new form factor or kind of form factor that we're not used to seeing it in? So I, going in, I very much thought that I was expecting this to feel a lot like ChromeOS

because like the home screen, the bottom dock is exactly, it's a lot like ChromeOS. but once I actually used it, it's what struck me was that this was just Android. This is specifically the pixel version of Android. I was really surprised by how it felt like a natural expansion and extension of what I was on my phone.

Specifically the phone, not the tablet, because using the pixel tablet, but it does not feel optimized whatsoever. It feels like a larger, a phone OS made larger for a tablet-sized screen. But this Google book felt more like, it felt like a proper two desktop OS rather than just something expanded. And to me, that familiarity is something that will, I think, will surprise people. Well, no, let me rephrase that.

I think people, they won't necessarily surprise, but I think how quickly they can get up and running from just using that from experiencing Android and other phones, experiencing Android and laptops, I think that is their biggest advantage, that familiarity, like from identical settings, identical quick settings specifically, notifications, all of that.

I think there is something really valuable from the UI, from the US experience that will, that I think cannot be quantified until people actually use it. I think that straight away, because there was a touchscreen side of things, that's why I mentioned it, I was zipping around at a rate which ordinarily I would be comfortable with my macOS or Windows or Linux or whatever. to be. Like I was kind of using a cursor to go to one place, touching, touchscreen in a certain section, because I know I'm used to it and then typing away. Like,

it definitely felt really, like you could zip around. Obviously, it helps at the hardware is pretty down good as well. There was some elements where I was like, huh, I didn't think that I would do that. I just automatically went into that mode.

I just knew. So, like you said, the familiarity was really, really kind of where I was a little, I guess a little bit taking a backpack. I expected myself to just gravitate again, like you say, towards the keyboard and trackpad. But I was like, oh, I'll touch this section here, drag that there, use the mouse to go into this particular section, go to scroll through the app, the applications. And yeah, it felt, it felt second nature in a weird way.

Whereas I don't think that when you, and I think a lot of people will be questioning, why would you do this when you can plug it? your phone to a monitor. Obviously, depending on the solution, it's very, very difficult. I think it's hard to make that elegant. And I think maybe there is an elegance to a laptop is why Google have done it this way. They've kind of merged the two and said, we would love to have,

and I'm intrigued to see what happens with the desktop mode on pixel, but I just don't think the desktop mode on pixel feels this. Nope. I guess polished? No way. Yeah, like there's something missing. There's a step in between that's clearly missing. it's almost like, and it isn't even just a power available to you.

There is something there that feels, it computes when you use it for the first time. I know that's a bit of a terrible pun, but it just kind of works in a weird way. I mean, I've looked back through some of my footage of me playing around with it. And I was like, why did I think to do it like that? I was just doing it. It wasn't like having to think about, oh, where is this particular thing? Where is that particular thing? Why does this work this way?

but there are still some, there are definitely some confusing things. I know that a lot of people will be questioning the magic cursor inclusion. So magic cursor, I believe, is disabled by default. Because magic pointer, magic pointer.

It, as a feature, I'm not a hundred percent sold in it. There was a few times where I saw demos and I was like, oh, that kind of could be useful. But I think, I know a lot of people do this anyway

you know when you lose the cursor on the screen and you kind of wiggle it and you're trying to find it a lot of people if they do enable it will end up enabling this feature all the time but I'm kind of glad that it was disabled by default because I straight away was doing that like where is the cursor on the screen because someone may have tested it beforehand

yeah I wonder I wonder if there's going to be some ability to adjust it, adjust the functionality yes there is this ability to adjust sensitivity but yeah yeah what's a surprise me about we need to use it more to see how actual useful it is. I think Damon you put it best when he said it's like circle to search for desktop

and I think there's some utility there. But I guess my first impression's takeaway is that you won't forget this feature exists either from accent or activations teaching you that it's there to in reality it felt more practical than I was expecting. it felt oh this felt natural like shaking to activate so i think the credit i'd give there is that at least it's easy to activate yeah i mean i think one of the demos that i was given was turning a document into a calendar event so running some sort i may have had the same demo it was like oh i'm training for a marathon here is my training program that i've been sent by my

can you put this into my calendar so I know when to go for my short runs and my long runs I'm like yeah that's kind of cool that would save a bit of time

I mean I don't know how you would do that on a regular desktop computer I don't know how you did that on macOS or anything like that or Windows

so I guess there's one USP there if you're someone who's proactive but are you going to be using this in the same way there's still a lot question marks about

magic pointer most namely is am I using it in place of circle to search? If that is all it becomes, I could see a utility for me. I'm not 100% certain if everybody else is the same. I use circle to search all the time because I'm kind of always searching for little things, doing text selection, that kind of stuff. But I guess on a desktop, if you're in a web browser, you can kind of drag and drop things, take screenshots anyway.

So yeah, I definitely want to spend a lot more time with. to understand if there is any utility for me on a day-to-day basis. But I was more impressed than the original demo. I do feel like it kind of goes back to the way that it was presented at the Android show. It definitely felt like there wasn't enough information. It was almost like, here is this thing. We're going to AI everything up. And I was like, but what's the real utility?

You haven't given us any utility there that makes sense. It still feels a little bit like that at times. But I'm going to save my full judgment until I get to test it for a few weeks, hopefully when we get hardware in the, I guess, next 10 days or so. But for the rest of the thing, for the rest of the functionality that has been added, there is nothing here, I think, that is too shocking. I guess the biggest thing is Android applications. How are we going to bridge the gap?

I know that Will is itching to say, what were you most disappointed about on the launch day in terms of like application or missing applications, it definitely feels as though we're missing a few. Yeah, application support is by and large my biggest concern with this platform and we can talk more about other concerns as well as my priors

and looking at a new laptop platform if we want. But just from an application perspective, because I do think that's worth hitting into first. You know, we'll see how Linux support comes and goes, obviously I don't want to completely write that off. I want to kind of establish up front that like that does exist and should and will help in certain cases, you know, depending on what, what, um, you know, very, very early in my career. I, I remember some of the first writing I did was was on, was through the freelance platform upwork. and that included like a essentially activity tracker that was like the equivalent of clocking in to a job that you could turn on and off at any time.

And that was only like a desktop application. So at the time my laptop was a Chromebook and I couldn't write on it, right? And this is 10 years, almost 10 years ago now. But I essentially couldn't do that work on it unless I was either remotely. sinking to my Windows desktop at the time, right? Or what I ended up doing was installing, like, I forget whatever Linux distro was easy to install in ChromeOS at the time, but you could get into Linux,

and I could do my work there in the Linux, you know, by booting into Linux, essentially. So I don't want to write off the fact that Linux support is here because it's notable and it has helped me in the past. But it's that same level of, oh, I have this thing, and I have this laptop that I thought worked for me that suddenly no longer works for me. It worked for me yesterday, but the thing I'm doing that, right?

I mean, this was four months after I graduated college. So the Chromebook worked great in college. It did not work great once I started needing to do more work outside of education. And so when Google is getting in here and being like, well, we have Photoshop and Lightroom, asterix, the Android version, And we have, you know, think about all the games you can stream over G-Force now. It's like, I start to be like, okay, I was really hoping.

And to the point of like, do you want an application, if you're not willing to jump through the Linux hoops, and that's assuming there's a Linux version, right? Like Adobe apps, Adobe has straight up said we were not making a Linux version of these apps. Maybe that changes eventually. I know they have a new CEO coming, but. you're really locked into what's on the play store and or what you can get through the web and I've lived that life. I've done that journey and and and again as much as you might think today like that's all I need man I need the web and I need Android apps and they'll just keep making better Android apps you know like I'm looking through the the Google book website like googlebook.com. Sorry I actually had not noticed that was the you're that's so funny. It's fallible.

It's not good. In fact, and this is not a real criticism, but I don't like the name. It's neither here nor there, but if you were to ask me my opinion, I don't love the name. That said, you know, I'm looking at this, oh, God, I already forgot what the name of the app is. What's this audio editor app that I had truly BanLab? I know nothing about BanLab. And it's, it's, you know, good to see that there is some kind of audition and, you know, Esk, audacity-esque.

It seems more focused on music than podcasting. But like it does seem like I could maybe grab this and do like light podcast edits if I was working exclusively on a Google book. I'm sure, you know, that Premiere app just came to Android in a pinch. Again, it's not real premiere, but in a pinch, you could probably do it. But yeah, I mean, my big concern here is apps. And again, I know that not everybody needs a workhorse. But sometimes you don't know that. you're going to need a workhorse.

And when I shop for computers, largely speaking, in the last decade, kind of since this Chromebook lesson, again, 2017 is when I'm talking about, I shop for a laptop that not only can do the stuff I need it to do today, but that I think we'll be able to do the stuff that I need to do tomorrow. And that would be my main concern here. If you're enjoying fix-related, don't forget to sign up for 9-5 Google Pro for ad-free episodes and to gain access to our weekly bonus show, Pixelated Pro. This week, it's a bit of a grab bag as we discussed the big

switch to game discounts Damien scored, Abner's reaction to Activision taking over the Halo franchise, and the difference between U.S. and UK Cadbury products. But really, the best discussion of the episode is our efforts to assign a different chocolate brand to every Android OEM. Come join in on The Fun and sign up today for just $5.5.com slash pro. I think, I mean, I'm 100% in agreement. My big, my big kind of thinking at the moment is, I wonder how much Google has thought about, okay, and I know we discussed it briefly on the pod last week is,

and I couldn't get a definitive answer from anyone, is I wonder how many people Google is aiming at in terms of Gen Z, Gen Z, whatever, who have been mobile native their entire life and there were people of even my generation who have mobile native don't have a laptop basically only use tablets and laptops sorry basically only use phones and tablets

to do 95% what they need to do day to day and then when they go to work it's a I don't know a crappy old Windows machine that can run Excel and that's where they do the predominant like in air quotes productive work everything else is done on a mobile I've done it myself when I've gone on vacation that kind of stuff.

You use a phone to pay for everything, you do all your research on the phone. I wonder how many, if that has ever factored into Google's thought process for Google Books, as mobile native people, we don't have an OS in that form factor for those people. Because obviously the MacBook Neo is used as a,

a little bit of a battering ram in that respect, and I completely agree because of the price point and that kind of stuff. But there are still people who will stick to an iPad over a more expensive iPad over a MacBook Neo, because they're so used to using those tools, i.e. LumaFusion, which is available for Android, and was on ChromeOS, oddly. So I wonder what's going to happen with that.

So, yeah, like I say, we tested some desktop application, desktop versions of Android apps. They seem to scale pretty nicely. I don't know in the back. I still couldn't work it out because I missed the component and the conversation that was needed to understand how it works. But there is some sort of trigger that tells the application or the application goes from,

because it comes from Play Store and then runs on Google Book OS at how it knows that it's a desktop version because I'm guessing at some point you could potentially just run, you can run native Android apps in Android kind of scaling. Did you get to see any of that, Abner?

Because I was kind of like confused as how it works and I'm really intrigued to see how this works because if we can maybe understand how Google is, or whatever the developers are doing to trigger this, it can't just be DPI, surely, it must be something else. There must be some other components there that tell it, this is the desktop version of this mobile application.

Because that could be, it could be huge. Because the amount of work up front, if you're working on one particular application, you don't have to convert it to a desktop. Well, you do one time, and then you do all your work there and just make sure it works at this new form factor, I guess. I think that could be huge for buying.

That is very much the intention of how they want to see it. They don't want to see developers make separate desktop. versions. It is a natural, it's supposed to be a natural extension of the Android app on phones. So the interesting thing, zooming out a bit on the app story, so it is both the web and Android apps and the whatever VINIC stuff. Again, going in, I was, let's say, surprised that the web were still playing such a prominent role on Google Books. I thought that this was a

Google's big opportunity to push to push desktop apps, desktop mobile Android apps to get everybody to do that. But no, their point of view is that it should be up to the developer, to the app developer

on whether they want to build a native Android app experience or whether they want to build a native Android app experience or whether they want to rely on the web. The anecdote I got was when the Google Book OS team talked to the Gmail account, the workspace team internally, they asked what Gmail,

do you want the web version of Gmail or do you want the Android app in the dark to be the default, basically? And the workspace team picked the web version because that is where the most full featured experience is, same account. But I think the, not the work, or the compromise, so to speak, the workaround is that when you launch a Gmail app, you are using a progressive, a PWA,

but it's not exactly PWA. It's called something a TWA, trusted web activity. So basically what you're using in the browser, you're using the browser version, but this Rapper as format still has access to widgets. So you're using the web version of Gmail, but you have that with the Android app widgets that you're familiar with across Gmail,

calendar, and I see other apps. So it is this hybrid thing. You're using all of the web, but you have the widgets that you can pin on your home screen. So that is Google's approach. And we can discuss whether their take-off. It's up to developer to pick whether the web or Android is best for them and what the downsides are.

But that is from a developer-buying perspective to get them to make the Google book. It makes sense, just whatever's easiest. You don't have to spend all this time. We architecting. That's, I think that makes sense for third-party developers, but I do wish from a first-party standpoint that Google mandated all their teams to, like, make super powerful Android apps,

to have Gmail for Android be completely comparable with the web version. I wish there was an internal mandate for that. We didn't see that, but that's where we are. I feel like it definitely is one of those things though that while now, I think the picture now is confusing. And it would have been, I think it would have made so much of a big difference if Google courted these big developers. If Adobe have just released Adobe Premiere for Android, I don't know, is it free? If it's free, then that's great. If it's behind Adobe Cloud subscription, I do think it would have been difficult anyway for people to, to,

to potentially go and say, I'm going to use a Google book for my editing needs, whilst paying a subscription that is, I mean, it's nearly in the hundreds of dollars a month, isn't it? So it's kind of like, I think maybe that might be lost in translation a little bit, but it still would have made a huge difference and a huge dent in the kind of the, the perception that I can't do professional work on this. I think creatives do, are the taste makers usually in these professional tools, and it's why probably MacBooks stuck in the market for such a long time,

that yes, they didn't have the user base for a long, long period. And you were, it does remind me a little bit of the early days of the MacBook, actually, because there were always workarounds for certain pieces of software. And it's why Apple came and made final cut, and then Adobe eventually brought things over, and you did have to get work around, sorry, Windows, Microsoft Word and Excel were made available as well. It was kind of like they had to court them to do that in the early days of Mac. So I do wonder if there's going to, if there's lots of conversations going on behind the scenes.

Like, it felt weird maybe that they've released the hardware first. I thought that it would have been a case of let's get the software down and then get these partners on board and then release the hardware. But as you say, if it's a slightly older chip and this has potentially been something that's been in the works for a long time, as I said earlier, I do wonder if it's like the perfect, almost a worst perfect storm to release the product when maybe there is software bubbling under the surface that might come to these. devices. I mean, they showed us the desktop version of Capcut and it just looks like the desktop version of Capcut that people are used to. And there is around about, I don't know if there's nearly a billion people using that monthly. So maybe Google thinks that we have a comparable, and it is quite competent. Capcut's okay as a mobile video editor, but it isn't, I'm not going

to make the switch. If I need to do a basic edit, I might, but everything else I can probably get away within the browser and that was the same with Chromebooks but the downside is that Chromebooks always had issues that Android apps didn't run nicely, they run really really nice on Google Book the linking to the phone which we'll get on to a moment I didn't actually see much of this

but I do wonder if there's more at play here that we probably haven't been told yet and I'd love to see one of the big partners to get on board I feel like it's very much a case of once one of the biggest dominoes falls it may start to fall into place and yeah it is it is the biggest complaint that I have I agree with you wholeheartedly

will when we were talking about last week that once they get one of the biggest brands on board I think Adobe is a brand that have to really start kind of pressuring there is enough users out there who will benefit from this across tablets phones and foldables and now laptops with Google book

it's the brand I've seen mentioned the most the most by by commenters and redditors Yeah, yeah. And in the comments on your YouTube video, Damien, like, it's, yeah, yeah, or YouTube videos in general. Like, it's, it's, it's certainly the company and the products I've seen mentioned the most. And it makes sense. Like, I'm not, again, I can't remember if it was the free or the bonus episode last week where I was like, I don't even like Adobe.

I don't like them as a company. But like, I have, like, at the end of the day, they're the tools I'm using at the moment for various reasons. And it's difficult for me to see switching to a platform. that doesn't have them. But that's not even really my biggest source of negativity. And I do want to get into the phone stuff because obviously it's interesting, but if I can kind of talk about the like, oh, is there something bubbling under the surface thought? Like, part of my problem with this launch, I think, is that it feels both, it feels too late.

It feels like a window was missed, as I've been saying for a while now. I think there was a pretty big window of opportunity to strike with a new OS platform, one where they're pushing this sort of phone sync. Like, this is, you know, we're taking what you love about your phone and bringing it to this new form factor. Like, I think there was a moment to strike there with people being really, really frustrated with Windows and with Microsoft as a whole. I don't think that frustration's gone away, but Microsoft has started making moves to, repair that foundation and that's obvious that means that window is is closed because you you're now striking after Microsoft already said they would start implementing some of the some of the changes

that it's its user base wanted to see um that it's more enthusiast focused base wanted to see but also you're kind of you're launching too early at the same time as you're saying Damien like if if these deals are bubbling under the surface if there is more to come and look like I um you know I want to draw attention to Samir told, sat down with, with Enafried at Axios and was like, look, this is for, this is an early launch. This is a multi-year effort. And this is focused on the Android community specifically. Like that, this is not this first set of laptops is for the Android community, Android enthusiasts, and not necessarily for everybody to buy into. But I don't know what that market is, frankly.

I'm not sure Google knows what that market is anymore. I don't know what that means. I don't know if people, I don't know if the bulk of Android users at the very least in the United States, which is obviously where I'm going to have my point of view focused on, care that much. Like, I think a lot of Android users

are not Android enthusiasts and do not think about ecosystem plays in that way. They think about the fact that they bought a Galaxy A-35 for $300 and it works fine. but at the same time you have to come out of the gate and make your first impression strong and if this is sort of a laptop that is

a series of five laptops kind of meant for the hardcore dedicated community at the same time it's like okay but what if those people are probably workhorse you know developers or gamers or

whatever right? If you're a if you're a hardcore Android fan and if you're listening to this, you probably are. Like, you have expectations out of your computer that are higher than the average user. But I see this as a computer trying to meet the average user. So I don't know.

I just, that's sort of, you know, if we're talking about big picture app support, like, is this too soon or too late or whatever? Like, it feels in a very weird position. It's a bad, in my opinion, a bad place to

start. But that's kind of where I'm at. But we should talk about the phone stuff because that's obviously Google's big pitch is how much this works with your phone. Yeah, I mean, just before we get into that, I do think there is one, and I did mention it in my hands-on, is that there is potentially a parallel that Google can emulate here. Valve have basically done more for Linux in the past three years than anyone else has done for the space. They've made, and I know that they've focused on gaming, I know that Google probably has the second biggest gaming market on the planet after Steam because there are more people playing mobile games than any any other type of game. So they have this program.

I can't remember what it's called. It's basically a portion of the you'll get dedicated mouse and keyboard support on the Play Store, which is phenomenal. You're going to need to get that to begin with. It's also worth noting that this is one of the few laptops outside of Windows that will be able to run Fortnite on day one. So that's kind of nice as well. You can't run that on a steam machine. But yeah, I think that there is an opportunity to do what Valve have done with Proton for Android.

So, Google have the resources to build a compatibility layer for Windows applications on Android. There is no two ways about it. They can do it. They have the resources. Whether or not they're willing to do it is another thing entirely. But I do think that that should be a priority. I think it has to be. Like you said, this is definitely my Linux fanboyness coming through here.

and Valve fan bonus coming through is that they have made this compatibility layer that is so good that you can get games running better than their Windows counterpart through a compatibility layer. There is no two ways about it that Google, so I don't know why I'm saying Apple,

Google can do this. Google has the resources at their behest to be like, okay, we can make some of these Windows applications run superbly on this Android-powered laptop. And whether or not, like I say, they're willing to do that because it may look, they may see it it doesn't look good on us because this is our premier platform or we're utilizing someone

else's premier platform and making it run on this. I think it's by the buy. If you want the user base and people are willing to make the switch away from Windows, Linux is proving that we want a, I guess this is classed as the fourth. This is the fourth desktop OS now. It is a desktop OS and Google wants to sell Google Books and they want people using Android no matter what the form factor. They do need to do something whether or not it's throwing money at some of the developers to make the changes and get the full desktop version of Lightroom, the full desktop version of these pieces of software people need to use every single day. Something needs to be done about it.

But I'm kind of cautiously optimistic that that might happen. We do obviously have Linux terminal. You can potentially, I don't know. Am I right in thinking, I didn't hear any mention of that you could run a Linux distros natively on this hardware? Is that something that you can do? You can put it in a VM or is it running natively? Not sure about that.

Yeah, this is something I'm not sure about. So we'll kind of have to come back. I'll look into it and we'll get an update in a future episode. But if you can run Linux applications, that goes halfway there. There is less Linux applications than there is Windows and Mac. So yeah, that's something to kind of deal with. But I think they were definitely talking a lot about anti-gravity

and kind of Claude CLI and people being able to develop native Android applications on the hardware, which I think is one of the first to do it to be able to do so. There is no emulator required. you can run it natively. Maybe that helps, if they can get these out to people at these companies, say here, here is a Google book,

just develop for this right now. We could see a really rapid prototyping of these applications. I'm not going to be willing to sit and vibe code my own app and sit and do levels of software engineering that somebody else can do for me because I need these tools to work straight out the box. But yeah, the picture is not as rosy as I hoped it would have been on day one.

But I do think there is probably going to be a lot of investment there from someone. Someone potentially can fall into the gap. I hope so. If I can push back on the valve comparison, it's just such a different company. It's such a different like corporate culture between the two, right? Like Valve is a private company that like infamously has like, you would be surprised how small the staff at Valve is. Do you know what I mean? It's not as big of a company

as you would imagine the haven of PC gaming is. And they can do what they want and they can take their time and they can focus on whatever they want because they have essentially a blank check coming in from the fact that they own the most popular

like gaming marketplace in the world, basically. And I don't see, unless Valve is sole, or goes public and has shareholders or whatever, I don't really see Steam ever doing enough damage to change that, right? Like I, you know, I've been a PC game. I've been gaming on PC for over a decade now. And like, I have not, I've never really felt dissatisfied with Steam as a,

as an experience. On the other hand, Google is one of the biggest companies in the world. They are publicly traded. They have a board and shareholders and they have a billion projects going at any given time. they are a company that has not proven themselves to be able to stay focused on projects for particularly long or else

this thing would be launching and the gaming section would be all about stadia but it's not it's all about G-Force now and and and and so you know to a certain extent part of my problem with with this launch is that I don't think Google has

has the track record necessary for me to want to buy into this early. And to go back to what they're publicly saying about who this is for, the Android community is the community that's going to know that. The Android enthusiasts are the ones who are familiar with the Google Graveyard. Like, they're the ones who have been burned

again and again and again, myself included. I think all three of us to some extent have been, all three of us at least once have been burned by really enjoying a Google service that eventually died. at least once, if not multiple times. Like, shout out inbox, right? Like, rest at peace. And, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, and, I say all of this without even addressing AI,

which is Google's biggest focus here, right? This is, this is, like, Gemini is core to this product. And so, I, I just have a, like, the, the proton, you know, style emulation or whatever, like, all of that stuff. Like, I agree with you. They could absolutely do it, but, like, I, I, I, I, I, I just, I just, I, sort of feel like if they were going to do it, they would have launched with it. That's the kind of feature you launch with in the same way that the Steam Deck launched with that.

Like that's what makes the Steam Deck work, right? Google clearly doesn't see it as a thing that needs to be there for the Google Book to quote-unquote work as a laptop. And I agree. It's not necessarily, but like you again, you start to in-ship closer and closer back to a Chromebook comparison, which I don't think they want. Even though this is, you know, again, I have not used it, but the UI is very ChromeOS. And I think, by the way, that that's a problem, no matter how much better it feels in actual use, but it is a problem if you have essentially given people a decade of bad feelings about Chromebooks to launch a new platform with a UI, with a U.S.

that looks a lot like the platform they didn't like, that they have bad memories of. Again, it's just, I sort of sit here and I think part of this is that like, nobody working on this should have should have been from the Chrome OS team or like as few people like nobody in leadership for sure like I I think it was just a bad like I don't know I I don't want to predict too much where this is going because it is very early days and I would love to I don't want to be down on this necessarily I would love to see it succeed I don't like Windows I don't like Mac OS I have very different complaints about both of them but I have complaints about both of them and and yet I use both of them I'm recording on a Windows desktop right now

My main laptop these days is a MacBook Air. I think the other part of my thing is that I'm so... I love Android, but I have... Like, I think all of us, like, I have devices that run basically every operating system, right? Like, as a tech enthusiast, not just an Android enthusiast. Like, I'm all over the map. And so, so as much as the ecosystem play draws me in, I'm also just like, okay, but, like, you know, ecosystems will only get you so far.

Like I don't want to think about the fact that this is just an extension of the one phone I'm using right now. Not that I'm like rushing over to iOS, but it's just like it's another one of those things where if you're really, you're telling me that this is this is a play to get me locked in in the same way that iPhone and people are locked into macOS for a lot of stuff. As an Android as someone who came to Android for that sense of openness, it kind of turns me off. And I think it will for a lot of people. I know it's a lot. I dropped a lot on there. I'm sure you guys have disagreed. I apologize for monologue.

And clearly I'm sitting here and I'm just coming up with like thoughts as you guys are talking. Not necessarily to say you guys are wrong. I'm honestly relieved that the presentation both of you had individually from different like, you know,

not even in the same city, right? Regardless, we're positive, that you both walked away feeling more positive than you thought you would. Like that's, that is relieving to me. it doesn't fully chase my concerns away about the platform. Yeah, no, rightfully so. We should always be skeptical of things

until we try it for ourselves or until the promises are made on. But yeah, the one thing I wish I saw a little bit more of was the integration with your phone. Like you mentioned it there, I think, obviously I'm the kind of person who I'm using a Mac right now. I only use a Mac to work from everything else is my gaming PC or my Android phone, on my multiple Android phones.

Like for me sometimes, the idea of even little things, like being able to use Airdrop to Airdrop my photos from my iPhone, sorry, my pixel, not having to have an iPhone to transfer them to the Mac without having wires.

Like Quick share functionality, that's great. The, I know that there's iPhone mirroring on, on Mac OS. I've never tried it. I don't know what it's like. I don't know if that's any good. this felt a little bit different in the implementation. I've used it.

It's fine. It's like, I think part of my problem is that I have tried it on a Mac and been like, oh, I don't know why I would use this. And never, like, and again,

maybe that's the iPhone of it all. But I was like, oh, it works fine, like on a technical level, but it's not, when I'm on my laptop, I don't,

I don't typically feel like I need to grab my phone. Or that I need my phone right there too. And if I do, it is usually right next to me. That's part of the, yeah. I think I'd love to see the flow for this for things like verifying payments on my phone while in a shopping car or whatever it happens to be.

I don't know if you got to see a little bit more of this and me, Abner. I was interested, but I didn't get to see any demos. All the demos were kind of like finishing when I was turning up to see them because there was obviously a lot of people really wanting to see what the situation was. did this feel any different to any other experiences you've had with like paired phones or like interacting with them?

You can cast your apps which was also already an existing Google book, so an existing Chromebook feature. That is straightforward but what is more interesting is what an Android 7 feature called continue on which is

instead of the app is so you're using an app on your phone. The app is also installed on your Google book and it just transfers the current state so you're running the app on your Google book so yeah

so that's that as an Android 17 pattern feature that requires dev adoption but I don't know it's yeah it's something we have to use and I've even on iOS cast

the fact I've mirroring. It's not something I use on the Mac either. Yeah, it's it works fine. It's just one of those things that it's like, like what apps do I need to get here that I, I don't know.

I struggle to figure out like the use case of like this app is only on my phone. There's no web version. There's no, there's nothing. I can only get to it there. But also I need it right now and I need it next to what I'm doing on this laptop. It can't just be. Because like when I think about

this stuff. It's like, okay, like, I don't, I don't think my calorie tracker has a, has a, like, a web version that I'm aware of, but also do I ever, am I in such dire need to do it right now that I can't just grab my phone or what, like, do you know what I mean? Like, it becomes,

especially because typically you have to authenticate your phone to start, at least on, I don't know how it's going to work on Google book, but I assume it's very similar. On Mac, you have to, like, unlock your iPhone to start it. so like it's raised right there like you already picked up your iPhone to do it

so for me it's like okay I assume this will be similar because of security like properly for security but then I arrive at the same question the continuing stuff is a little more interesting but that'll need time to to grow and I'll also need to try it

yeah see I could there's only thinking of the continue on kind of thing I can potentially see benefits of, I mean, I wish they should have shown this with Capcut. You could start a mobile edit because I know there's a lot of creators who use Capcut on their phone. They edit a short or a TikTok, just open up the laptop. They maybe respond to emails. They want to finish. They may be signing some documents.

I don't know why they don't get craved unless I could have given this idea. They maybe signed an agreement with someone for sponsorship stuff. they continue and finalize the edit on the laptop, upload it to YouTube, and it's there on the phone. It's all one device. I guess the walls are kind of like diminished. You're just opening a door to another thing and you go in there.

Like, I guess that's a really bad analogy. But I do, I kind of see some value in it. I can see some potential utility in it. But it's very much going to be on an application by application basis. I could see this for me being for purchases, approving them on my phone, rather than approving them on my phone, it's approved on the desktop.

It seemed to be that you could get Chrome tabs straight there, but you can kind of do that with history, but this felt a bit more fluid. My thought process is, I wonder how this ties, or if this is a play, for people to use magic pointer a little bit more. So you would potentially,

you might want to get something off your phone onto your desktop quickly. I don't know what it is. Might be text message. Might be something as simple as that. you might want to be able to use Magic Pointer to potentially add that T calendar there. You might have an Android phone that doesn't have proactive assistance on it because the flexibility of Android as a phone operating system

is going to work across the board potentially. I do wonder if there's, I don't, sorry, I do wonder why that wasn't mentioned as much. There may be some play for Magic Pointer to do more with the information that's on your phone and getting it onto an air quotes professional device, aka a laptop, is something that was thought. about but yeah I have I have left with some questions about how certain things are going to work

so hopefully when we get these in our hands we're going to be able to really really put them throughout their paces but yeah I don't know if you guys had any final thoughts on Google book I'm I guess I'm more cautiously optimistic which is really really surprising I was a little bit worried in some respects my big thought process is that I just hope that this is better for Android the platform it may lead to, if this potentially leads to better foldable applications that work better, have desktop modes for them, floating windows, all that kind of stuff, I am more excited for that in the long term than actually am for laptops and running Android apps on laptops. I think that is something that's why I wish Google would have a firmer hand on pushing devs.

And I've said this for so long. Like you can look at, I said this about dynamic icons, Right, like the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the material you icons that launched with Android 12, right? And, and, and how slow companies were, or even just, like, completely opposed to adopting that, that tech. And then Apple comes out three years later, whatever, and is like, we're, we're just going to force your app. Like, if you don't do it and you can see developers, you know, fall in line. And part of that is also that, like, Apple just has a better, like, reputation of kind of pushing developers to do it. And so they're just more used to jumping, to jumping when, or, you know, saying how high when Apple says jump.

And this is another example. You know, Google eventually kind of sort of forced devs hands on the dynamic, uh, theming stuff. But it took, it took so long. And I feel it here too where it's like, okay, it's, it's, it's very nice and polite for the Google book team to give developers a choice between dedicated and web apps. but you gotta push people here, guys. Like, no, like, the apps need to be there first. This is not a chicken or the egg situation. Like, you need to have the software,

that you need to have answers for every, you know, not maybe not every conceivable workflow somebody could have, but certainly the bulk of the most popular ones, right? And like something like video editing is not on a, on a $1,300 laptop is not exactly like niche. Like that should be there and ready to go and just saying, well, just install Capcut from the Play Store is iffy.

So my big takeaway here, my big question. And I know, I'm sorry, this is another Will's Too negative episode. I get it. I understand. It's fine.

Damien's laughing right now. I don't think it's going to get picked up by the mic, but I'm watching them laugh. Look, yell at me in the comments. It's whatever. I get it. I'm not trying,

like it's not like I'm making, I'm waking up every morning and being like, how can I be negative towards Google today? So my question is not so much like, what is this, who is this, what are you doing, you know, name one person this is for.

It's more so that if Google is going to say that this is a laptop designed for Android users, right? Like we built this Android laptop for people using Android. I do not think they have done a particularly good job demonstrating how the laptop is that much better. than any random Windows laptop in terms of pairing with your phone yet. That can come, but I don't think what they have laid out here so far is enough to

pull anybody who isn't like a big Android enthusiast in, someone who really loves the platform. But like, compare that to iPhone and to MacOS, and there are very obvious, like, benefits. and Apple like delivers them right away. I mean, you know, scroll through the MacBook Neo product page and they're laying out not just how, not just workflow, not just specific workflows for what people might be using the MacBook Neo for.

Here's how it works for education. Here's how it works for gaming or whatever. I don't have the page for me, so I don't remember what photos are in the slideshow, but I know they've laid them out. But they also go through and they're like, this is for iPhone users. Here's why.

Here are all the things that you're... And, you know, again, this is sort of Google's lack of focus on one goal is that they have to be in there and be like, well, it's a Gemini laptop. But also, it's an Android laptop. But also, and like, focus in. Like, like make a pitch to customers. And I don't totally feel like a straightforward... Here's why you should buy this on Black Friday pitch yet.

Here's why this is better than the MacBook. Neo because you're an Android user. Here's why it's better than the MacBook Air. Here's why it's better than a Windows-based Dell XboxPS13. They got to do that. And they have it. And I'm waiting for them to do it. I think my takeaway would be that the design, the user experience,

how much it is like the Android phone, people are already familiar with. I think that goes a long way once you start using it, at familiarity. And I think that is a good foundation for them to build on. I'm also... Can I ask you a question real quick? Because it's so pixel-y, is that a problem?

By which I mean, like, if people, if a lot of people, especially, I mean, Samsung is to a lot of people Android. Is it a problem that it feels like Google's version of Android and not Samsung's? Genuine question, I don't know. I think people, let's say, if it's a Samsung user jumping onto this Google book,

I think what they would appreciate is that it's, the fundamentals are there, but I think they would appreciate how much simpler and less, how much less cloft there is around it. So you're saying that you, right, so basically, and again,

I'm just, I'm, this is not me being like, I have a gotcha, I'm going to lay up. Like, I'm genuinely asking, like,

essentially, the pitch could be, this still feels like Android to a one UI user, but then they're like, oh, this is much cleaner and easier to navigate than what, okay, yep, I got you. Yep. I mean, my takeaway is that I'm excited to see what happens at the mid-range of the market, what we're going to see from $500, $600, $500, $600, $600, $600,000, $600,000, a bit closer to what MacBinio was doing. Yeah, there is a lot of questions.

There is a lot more questions than answers at this stage. Obviously, we haven't spent it. enough time with the hardware to really understand the true benefits day today. But yeah, we'll definitely be diving into it. I don't know. I think it may be a bit more than just a big phone than I think I was initially anticipating. There might be a little bit more substance there. Just how much we'll have to find out. Stick around for that. We will be discussing Google book, I think, for a long time to come. I'm intrigued to see how updates are handled. Are we going to see QPR updates for Google Books now? Is that kind of part and parcel of this? It's going to be

really difficult, maybe a really difficult time to cover the changes in Google Book hardware. We may see, like, things rapidly develop, I can guess, and it's going to prototype and change massively. Genuinely, I would like to, can I, okay, to get out of the negative thing, prove me wrong, please, I would love to be everything I said, you, Google can, like, in the next 12 months, prove me wrong. Launch cheaper devices that are still, like, you know, meeting the performance and the design and the hardware standards that they've laid out, bring more application developers and, you know, come up with like a cleaner way than just like Linux command lines to install Linux apps, like maybe a more user-friendly thing that

allows it to not feel so locked to the Play Store. There are a lot of ways that you can, you can prove me wrong over the next 12 months and I want them to do it. I'm, I guess I'm, I'm tempering my expectations, but I'm still excited. It's more Android. That's the main thing you know will be kind of going in depth, whether it's positive, negative, or anything in between.

Come join us over on the pro tier. We're going to go talk some, I'm going to talk about a really good deal I got recently. Maybe the Google Books aren't the deal that people anticipate, but I managed to get a fantastic deal recently that I want to share with everyone. So come join us on the pro team.

It's really good fun. We're going to go shoot the shit and have a good time after a really intense kind of deep dive into something we've anticipated for a while. Laptops, yeah, funny old game. We're going to see them a lot.

lot more on Android. So yeah, stay tuned and I'll speak to you guys soon. Bye. Right. Thanks for listening to Pixelated, a 9 to 5 Google podcast. If you enjoyed the show, we ask that you rate and review it on the podcast platform of your choice and help spread the word by sharing the show with friends or on social media.