Google Announces Its Chromebook Successor: the Googlebook (theverge.com)
- Reference: 0183199713
- News link: https://tech.slashdot.org/story/26/05/12/1955249/google-announces-its-chromebook-successor-the-googlebook
- Source link: https://www.theverge.com/tech/928479/google-googlebook-laptops-android-tease-aluminium-chromebook
> "We'll have more to share on the exact OS branding later this year," Peter Du of Google's global communications team tells The Verge. [...] Googlebooks will have a Magic Pointer feature that offers contextual suggestions whenever you shake your cursor and point it at something on the screen. Google's examples include setting up a meeting by pointing at a date in an email or selecting images of furniture and a living space to visualize them together. Beyond your mouse pointer, Googlebooks will also feature the custom AI-created widgets that Google is also debuting today for Android phones and Wear OS smartwatches. I don't know what kind of horrors people will be able to make into widgets, but Google gives the example of making one to organize your flights, hotel information, restaurant reservations, and another for creating a countdown timer for an upcoming family reunion. (It's always flights, hotels, and restaurants, isn't it?)
>
> While there are many outstanding questions to be answered about Googlebooks, the biggest and most obvious ones are what will these laptops look like, what chips will be in them, and what will they cost? We've got none of that so far. Google only has some initial renders of a mysterious Googlebook and the promise that it's working with Acer, Asus, Dell, HP, and Lenovo to make the first models. There are no model names. No specs. Nada. Google isn't even saying if the laptop in its renders is made by a partner or a tease of some first-party Pixel-like Googlebook to come or is just a cool mockup. The one distinct hardware feature shown, the bar of glowing Google-colored light, will be a signature of all Googlebooks. (Sure, bring on the RGB. Why not?)
[1] https://googlebook.google/
[2] https://www.theverge.com/tech/928479/google-googlebook-laptops-android-tease-aluminium-chromebook
Worst UX ever? (Score:4, Interesting)
"Googlebooks will have a Magic Pointer feature that offers contextual suggestions whenever you shake your cursor and point it at something on the screen. "
Seriously, that sounds awful right? In no way is shaking better than clicking, people will do it accidentally all the time to activate AI they likely don't even want.
It could be a three finger press, or clicking both buttons, or a right button double click. Literally anything would be better than that . . . right? It sounds like a joke or an ill conceived movie computer.
Re: (Score:3)
If you don't want AI, why would you but a GoogleBook?
Re: (Score:2)
Tech lust. Some of us can't help ourselves and buy shiny new tech products even though they're not particularly useful to us or even generally kind of crap. All our vices are devices. I've got a long list of tech products that I've bought over the years that seemed nifty or interesting even if they weren't worth the money. It's not really any more expensive than many other hobbies or typical money sinks for people with more money than sense.
Re: (Score:2)
They are (replacing?) Chromebooks. Just one example, the next time my seventy-three-year-old mother destroys her Chromebook, she'll probably wind up getting a Googlebook.
And she'll be utterly baffled and probably angry thinking she "got hacked" every time she accidentally shakes the mouse.
Lots of people buy tech like this. They just need a cheap laptop. They're just using what they're school/job provides. Lots of people who use Chromebooks didn't buy them at all.
Re: (Score:2)
It could have been worse. They could have decided to use a camera to track your eye movement to move the mouse / focus, so when you want to activate the AI feature you look like you're having a seizure.
Re:Worst UX ever? (Score:4, Insightful)
Rest assured, if I ever attempt to activate an AI feature, I am currently having, or have already had, a severe stroke.
Re: (Score:3)
> In no way is shaking better than clicking, people will do it accidentally all the time to activate AI they likely don't even want.
The AI will have to look at your screen to see what you are pointing at. So pretty much user-triggered Microsoft Recall that is automatically shipped off your machine to Google.
Re: Worst UX ever? (Score:1)
I suspect they wanted a universal gesture for the entire product line, but it has to be one which can be implemented on the cheapest dogshit hardware imaginable, which rules out chording (because there will be an "emerging markets edition" gooboo with a resistive touchpad to save a few cents).
Re: (Score:2)
> "Googlebooks will have a Magic Pointer feature that offers contextual suggestions whenever you shake your cursor and point it at something on the screen. "
1997 called. They want their Clippy back.
Re: (Score:2)
No. Just... Hell no.
I hate this kind of "intuitive UI" shit. It constantly activates when you are trying to use the device and gets it the way of normal operation.
I don't want to do the "special new thing"... get off my screen!
[shakes fist at clouds] ...dammit! Now why is there a contextual pop-up menu in the sky?
smgh (Score:3)
According to the GIF of the proposed interface in the linked article, you can shake the mouse cursor back and forth to activate a mode where clicking anything "asks Gemini about it". If ever there was a false mapping between gesture and function, this is it.
Linux Desktop (Score:2)
"Year of Linux on the Desktop"
"NO, NOT LIKE THAT"
yeah, awful name (Score:1)
"Chromebook" sounded kind of cool.
"GoogleBook" just sounds odd.
Far cry from the CR-48 (Score:2)
I was one of the lucky ones to get a Google CR-48 prototype back in 2015, and at the time, it was simply amazing. Yes, it had its shortcomings, but damn, it was impressive. While today's Chromebooks/Googlebooks sometimes feel like a marketing team collectively threw up on them, they have come a long way. My hope is that there will be enough settings on the new devices to tweak it to my liking.
Yay! Prevasive tracking, now with AI. (Score:1)
I know people that still expose their lives to Google, but I am not one of them. Especially now, at the start of the age of AI where all information is used to profile you and used against you, from salary negotiation to loan applications, it is absolutely crazy to want any product at any price, including free, from Google.
"deeply integrated" Gemini features? (Score:2)
That's a hard No from me.
So... (Score:2)
Google has announced a product they already make, now with more AI shoved up its butt.
New ad copy (Score:2)
GoogleBook never sleeps! It is always watching...
Uh, out for you! Yeah, that's it. It is always watching out for you.
Terrible name (Score:3)
Let's call them "Gooboo"
Re: (Score:2)
It'll devolve down to Goobs or–
Yeah, Googlebooks is a bad name.
Re:Terrible name (Score:4, Funny)
... and we can call the users "Goobers".
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Unless these are a significant step up from Chromebooks, they can go into the catch-all "craptop" product category. This already sounds like a Chromebook only with AI features. I think I'll pass on this.
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe should have called it "Alphabook."
I saw the headline and thought "why not Metabook?" and then realized: wrong company.
Re: (Score:2)
And the name has already been [1]taken [google.com]. By Google.
[1] https://books.google.com/