Pixelated - The murky future of Chromebooks

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

Welcome to episode 59 of Pixelated, a podcast by 9to5Google. This week, we talk all about Google's latest Chromebook updates, Lenovo's new $650 Chromebook Plus 14, and what the future holds as rumors swirl around ChromeOS's potential pivot to Android. Plus, Abner and Damien are joined by an all-new host. Subscribe YouTube Podcasts Pocket Casts Spotify Apple Podcasts Overcast Hosts Abner Li Damien Wilde Will Sattelberg Read more Chromebooks are better than ever, but is that enough for Google? Lenovo Chromebook Plus 14 launches with MediaTek Kompanio Ultra, $649 price Chromebook Plus getting its own Circle to Search with more actions Listen to more 9to5 Podcasts 9to5Mac Happy Hour Electrek The Buzz Podcast Space Explored Rapid Unscheduled Discussions Feedback? Drop us a line at [e-mail], leave a comment on the post, or reach out to our producer.

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 few, well, a year or two now. Chromebook Plus, they target the mid-range and all that. Just like the basics on the software features this time is they have a circle to search

equivalent thing that's called select to search at Google Lens, such an unwieldy name. And they also announced a new Chromebook Plus from Lenovo, which Damien, you've had time to. I have, yeah, yeah. I do 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 pixel book and the Pixel Book Go? No, I don't think I've ever used a pixel book. I've used various crumb books 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 crumb books, like truly. I've only ever used the pixel book Go. I was trying to remember the name of it. It's one of those things, like a release so rarely. 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 I-O 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 goes a cool name. It feels like a bit of a throwback slash, I guess homage to the Pixar book 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 that was going on on Android, right? Career similarities, and I'd argue they'd even go a step further. So on Chromebook Plus, since you have a track pad, well, most of them have touch screens, but you have a track pad. So that's the net 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, Google Docs, or making a calendar event appointment from what's on your screen. Again, these are solid features. And again, they should have just called it server to search, but these are good ideas. It will 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 are rooting to, the Chromebooks 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, it'll 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. and it's it's query is 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 i'm worried about chromeOS 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 it kind of seems obvious that the main move and i think i did a video of a few days 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 ChromeOS 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'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 OSCE 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, Avna, that every, there's questions, more questions. This has raised more questions and given answers. And there was good features here. And maybe I'm reading into it too much. Absolutely solid. No, you're not reading it too much. ChromeOS 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. It's a solid third place competitor, but it's vaguely, well, depending on... the time of season, et cetera. It's vaguely close to Mac, but probably not really. But Windows is the 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, 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 Rumballatro. 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. I, 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. 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, all that kind of stuff. 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 your browser, but it is like, it is certainly not as premium of an experience as using something like audition, right? Where it's, you can, it just, you're not waiting for Chrome or for a browser, any browser to load, you know, 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'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 me, right? Like the second, you're always going to hit those roadblocks. And Damien, you made an interesting point about, you know, ChromeOS as an ecosystem a few minutes ago, which is to say that like ChromeOS'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, 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 consumer side of things, right? Like there are, I don't really know how much Chrome OS is growing on the consumer side of, you know, how many. Yeah, what'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, you know, Google's been trying to do with Chromebook Plus. Yes. And then trying to get people to buy mid-range Chrome. And I'm not sure it's work. The college example you're talking about. Yeah, the college example you're talking about.

I say Chromebooks are very common in K to 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 $1,000 and that was a base model.

And you really want to go to like a tier or 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 a, you know, an M2 or an M3 MacBook error with 16 gigs of RAM for like $750, $800. And that's not that much more expensive than what the Chromebook plus lineup is. Yeah. 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 wildly better experience, or not even better experience, but a more flexible experience. More powerful experience. Exactly. And 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, a 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 growing in Google trying to grow in that. firmly 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, that Chromebooks can be something more premium than the thing that just gets handed out. And again, K to 12. Do you think that, sorry to interrupt, do you think that kind of diminishes the, I don't know what, I don't want to use a term scale.

because it's not scalability. It's more like the reach, the market, the mind share. 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, I would not be surprised if, say, because 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 really, maybe even an older iPhone. I wonder if that diminishes, the kind of the expectations people have of Chrome OS. So it becomes harder and harder to sell upsell. On the Android phones example, it took so long to get rid of that perception that Android phones are these budget things that were cheap, plastic and crappy.

That was like, I don't know, a 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 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 of being like, wow, it's so much better. It's like, yeah, you paid four times the price.

Yeah. Yeah, I wonder how much of that is going to color 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, and 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 us like, okay, this is just our cloud option. They have. They absolutely have to. There's no transition that works. they cannot kill Chromebooks in any sense because it's too important for education and enterprise plus they're just withdrawing way money because of how affordable it is and how Windows can't compete there. So yeah, let's think about what this future looks like. So you have Chromebooks as the base

and Google Android tablets, convertible Android tablets or dedicated Android laptops, that becomes the 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 decks. They worked at Samsung to offer this Dex experience, Dexelike experience. and they say it about expanding the power of your Android phone, the 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 booth with 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 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 into using a feature on their phone, you need to like make it clear as to why you would do that. And like the benefit it brings to the user and 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 four 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 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 think we saw a lot of good ideas with the pixel tablet. And then Google seemed to just be like, yeah, 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 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 decks an even more powerful opportunity for Samsung to people use decks.

Again, we've discussed this topic before, but people say they want it, but I don't think that's representative of a larger audience. I, Will, you were saying that if you're connecting your phone to a 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 that 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 said, 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. Yeah. I just don't, I think we've, yeah, I feel like there's always going to be 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. Like, I think I would find it really 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 it's like a disconnect in my brain that says that won't work. But I'm again, I think maybe your pessimism's rubbed off there. Well, 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

strength, if Google does go down this route of saying we're going to prioritize 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 decks on the tab S10 plus, I think it was, with a keyboard and mouse, it wasn't bad. It actually isn't about it. They've tried to replicate it, right? Yeah. I've tried to replicate a desk on a plane. And it was like genuinely, it was almost better than using my like 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. It was a more comfortable experience. I'm right there with you. I was surprised at how like fully baked Dex feels, especially on a, on a tablet. But this is the thing. I think Dex has had, I mean, it's been siloed away and Samsung have done the wrong 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 use, we're going to stick, we're stick to Samsung, like this is our big brother who's going to look after us here, because I think they just have that, 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 feels like this is the exact playbook that's going to happen. I can kind of see what's going to happen. Yeah.

Google is going to go, Samsung will have a laptop, a laptop, a laptop, slash. two in one, whatever they want to call it. In the next few years, it will have decks. Google will come out on stage, talk about what they're going to do with this enhanced decks 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, it does make sense, right? Yeah, I mean, they obviously, obviously wearOS for 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 9 launched. You know what I mean? Like they didn't.

So yeah, that's that's interesting. Also, I just have to bring it up, Davy, to your point about, you know, how has this sort of. of thing 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 Asouz tried to do with the pad phone? Yeah. And that's a good point. It's 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 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 can certainly run like desktop class apps. Maybe, you know, maybe you're not exporting 4K video maybe.

But like, you know, 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'm 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 performance, sorry, the packages down, the performance comes later, right? If they do that, I will change my mind. I will potentially utilize, and I'm sure you're the same will. I know you're a little bit less into the Adobe ecosystem. I'm looking at my task bar in Windows right now.

and the apps that I would need to have on like either a ChromeOS or obviously like a migrated into Android version is like Premier audition Photoshop Lightroom. And like once all four of those are there, the rest of this I can, 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. Yeah. There's a future where like Google's answer to this is. its own AI web apps, AI apps. That's probably what Google would rather see happen. Yeah, like you were talking about like Google spending this money on getting

developers to optimize. Some of that is happening, photo editing apps. They've been doing that for the past one or two years. Come I.O, they always try to make that push. But it's funny if like the flow Google's AI filmmaking tool, if that's, or they do something for audio and podcasts, if that ends up being their ultimate vision. I don't know.

Can you, Damon, you're a YouTube guy. YouTube studio. What if YouTube studio one day gets a full online-based editing? I think we all think that's what flow is going. Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why they haven't even attempted to try that. Because it's just a poor experience. Like editing video in a browser, is just sluggish. It always feels bad. Like, I, you know, I've, I have edited stuff, uh,

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, and I know I can do this, you know, two or three times as fast if I'm in a dedicated app that I get has a learning curve. And like 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 it, 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 I, I, you know, is a standard video editing, uh, uh, 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 this same roadblocks at their experience in that's that's that's that's another thing um yeah highly topical for years apple was so bad at iPad multitasking and what a productivity experience on the iPad, what the good one looks like. At the same time, in the past, what, two, three years started at the pixel tab, but Google was trying Android 12L. Google has been trying to do something

similar, getting really serious about offering a tabit interface. Before Apple, 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 to even launch it. Like it's, 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. They need to 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. either wireless or like Google needs to offer a and obviously 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 need you don't want to think about it it needs to be like a switch like a like a Nintendo switch it needs to be I drop it in screen now shows my phone. Like that's, if it's not that simple,

like, it, 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 a some level of experience doing that with, I know it's, I know it's not quite the same, but the pixel tablets dock, like the speaker dock. Like, I mean,

that looks, it's a great doc. I'll give them credit where it's due. I do really like the, the whole concept of the pixel tablet do things 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 on the fine.

Do you think, do you think, so, I mean, if there's a future for this and Google says, we're gonna go back into making our own laptops again, do you think that they'll diverge 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. 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. Like 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't 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 are making that, who do end up making that transition from Chrome and West 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, you want to use Google Docs.

Do you use the app or do you use the website? Because fundamentally, the best experience for Docs Drive is on the web. It's getting the Android Tabit Push, again, that's started at 12L. It has improved the tablet experience of Docs a great deal, but the disconnect is that it'll always be better on the web, features. always come first to the web. And it's just like, the fact that you have to think is 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, but on this, on a laptop form factor. But it's just such a bad strategy of people wondering why they see an app, native app and the web. I wonder if they go down the Android auto route though as soon as it 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 wherever it is

it will point you straight to the website straight to 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 would 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 on 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 docks, then the app and then potentially drive in the background. Like that could definitely cause some confusion. But I guess that's power users, surely. Yeah, this is just a random idea, but imagine like this idea of being a wireless decks. If the Chromecast protocol were able to support that kind of streaming, if casts was a bit more advanced at this stage, if it could latency free or whatever, that would be super interesting.

But again, like this requires like regular monitors, with this upgrade and hypothetical upgraded version of CASS, that's specifically for this text-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 these 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. And I'm just trying to imagine what an Android laptop looks like. And it's called me crazy,

but I don't think it looks different than a Windows laptop. The fact that I'm saying Windows laptop, not Chromebook, I feel like that speaks to something. But what does, what makes an Android laptop? unique.

To me, I probably think it's more two-and-one convertibles rather than a dedicated laptop form factor because like folding a touchscreen, 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 and add-on and a pen. But 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 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 going to 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, 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 iPadOS. 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 ChromeOS. Plus, ChromeOS 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 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 going to have, we're going to have science. Yeah, but a gaming Chromebook makes no sense, right? Yeah. They make no sense. I think in the age, I think, I truly think, I, I, I, I, truly think, I, I, have thought this for months now, that Google bet on the wrong horse with Stadia. Like, 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 in the, in the which got even more successful, right? Like a lot of people went out and bought the switch during that. And so I think 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, you know, not just consoles or PCs, but also now, you know, 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 at every single machination of 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, 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. Yeah. A lot of them are now, I feel like, we're. 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 going to, it's probably going to be more of a, how it describes smooth, consistent usability experience you'll have versus a really cheap $400 Chromebook. And you don't have that, I mean, a $400 Android tablet is going to feel better than a $400,

Chromebook, because it's going to be probably less plastic. Yeah. You're probably going to have a nicest display, which is brighter. You have all the benefits technically of Android. I guess you don't necessarily get as many updates, but they're 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 kind of looking forward to seeing what they do with it. Yeah. At the high end, I do think we still run into the roadblock of get a MacBook, get a Windows laptop. Yeah. Pretend to 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... Desktop Chrome is my minimum. I need full desktop Chrome. That's my red line before I can do anything. To your point, Damien, my final review at my former publication Android please was of Lenovo's IdeaTap Pro, which is I believe a $400 MSRP, but is constantly on sale. It's under $300 at Walmart right now. And like it's a big nice display, right? Like 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 a novo. But, um, 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 loudspeople. speakers and like those people are better off with tablets, which kind of brings us back to the idea of hybrid devices is 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 strange time. It's a really exciting time for Android. I think that makes sense to tie everything. Andro's pushing everything forward. We're in a better place than wherever have been. We've got material 3 Expressive and Android 16 QPR 1 coming down the line. I think the future looks really right 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. But 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.