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ikir

macrumors 68020
Sep 26, 2007
2,134
2,288
Incredible, the video seems an apple ones, they copied music, style, animation...
 

tigress666

macrumors 68040
Apr 14, 2010
3,288
17
Washington State
and this aspect ratio ... disgusting. i thought this went extinct years ago

What, is it 4:3? I'd actually say that's the one thing it has for it. That's a far better aspect ratio for a computer. The only reason we see 16:9 these days is itis cheaper to use the same aspect ratio as the popular TVs these days.
 

Analog Kid

macrumors G3
Mar 4, 2003
8,901
11,462
Whatever happened to the idea of "core competence"? It used to be that companies did a lot of deep soul searching to identify what it was they were truly good at and then leveraged the bejezus out of that advantage.

In that world, Google would dominate big data, Amazon would dominate retail, and Apple would make great personal computing products.

In this world, everybody needs to make a tablet. It's not that there shouldn't be other competitors in each of these areas, but I don't understand why there is this apparent need for these other giants to compete directly with Apple. Samsung should compete with Apple, not Amazon.

And where the heck did Google get it into their head that laptops are a new growth market? Are they competing with their own customers again or have Samsung and Asus decided to get out of Chrome OS leaving this fertile ground open for new products?

I can't blame Google for a lack of innovation, but I can certainly fault them for a lack of focus. This was an enormous waste of resources... I don't care what it looks like, or what its specs are, this was a disaster.

If I were a GOOG shareholder, I'd be pretty pissed right now.
 

Lightey

macrumors regular
Jul 10, 2010
185
2
Okay is it just me or do all the new laptops just basically try and look like the MacBook Pro? Large trackpads, same basic design, etc.

Only, google messed up and made it uglier somehow. And they're changing $1300 for it? This would have worked for an Google's April Fools jokes but maybe they actually think this is a good product.

Seriously who is actually going to buy this thing? Because it certainly cannot fill the roles of a development, graphic design or a gaming machine. And if you just want to browse the Internet with a high resolution display, what's wrong with the iPad?

Hell, what's wrong with the Nexus 10 or 7? I'd buy those over this.
 

APlotdevice

macrumors 68040
Sep 3, 2011
3,145
3,861
I don't agree with that necessarily, but I do think the industry should be shooting more towards 16:10 monitors rather than 16:9.

They won't unfortunately, for you see the whole reason 16:9 monitors exist is so the manufacturers could merge part of the assembly lines with their TVs.
 

carmenodie

macrumors 6502a
Apr 25, 2008
775
0
What a goddamn joke.
They have read Apple's playbook down to the Bob Mansfield-esque style speak: "you open the display and it just "pops" at you". Screw them!
 

JoeBob HenryBob

macrumors newbie
Feb 21, 2013
4
0
Secondly, HOW does Google invade your privacy?

Google tracks every search term you enter, every autocomplete suggestion you use, and then every result you click on in a search. This history is kept indefinitely. Any page on any OTHER site you visit that contains a banner ad served from their servers uses a stored session cookie to correlate that other site with your Google ID. In other words, you could be browse well outside Google's own site and services, and they'll still be able to learn exactly where you went, and they'll know it's you.

They track absolutely everything you do in Google+, including the timing of those events, including links you click on in other people's sites - but that's a no-brainer. Like Facebook, the product is you. (Cue "in Soviet Russia" jokes!) Via this they compute a rough network of who your family and friends are (or you could just tell them, as a fair number of people do, for "convenience"). This is easily correlated with your search history, including your use of google maps, and of course, your gMail archive.

About that email:

Google keeps a copy of every email you send or receive, regardless of size or content, regardless of whether you move it to the trash. (They are not hurting for storage.) They spider these emails for information, and this can - and does - go way beyond dumb keyword scanning.

Have you purchased a flight and had the receipt sent to your gmail address? Google has templates that recognize those receipts. The fact that you flew is now part of your history. Do you have your receipts from Amazon sent to your email address? Google templates those, so, if you do, their history contains a log of every item you bought, what you paid, where you had it shipped. This is not just via Amazon but via most large and mid-size suppliers. iTunes receipts sent to your gmail account? It's trivial for Google to accumulate a list of every app on your iPhone, every movie you rent, every song you buy. Apple would rather they didn't have that information, but Google's response, behind closed doors, is "nyeah nyeah!!"

Do you have your gas bill, your water bill, your ISP invoice, sent to you via email? Unless you're with a company smart enough to lock all that behind their own login and just mail you a link, Google can spider that too. It's a matter of simple statistics to narrow down everything that looks like an address that passes through your gmail account such that Google knows where you live, with high confidence.

Do you have your bank statements emailed this way? God help you. Google templates that, and it goes into the feed. Do you own an Android phone? Have you ever tried to find out what Android feeds back to the Google data centers, of what you do with it?

A while ago Apple caught flak from congress for not appearing to delete your obfuscated list of nearby wireless access points in a timely fashion. That data was internal-use only and leveraged to provide faster location resolving for all iPhones that could see similar networks. Meanwhile, did anyone think to ask what Google was doing with user location data in Android? The same thing. Except their location data is collected on a regular basis, whether or not you ask for it, and is folded in to your history once it reaches their data centers. Yes, they give you a UI to "opt-in" and boldly claim that it's anonymized. They do not reveal exactly when that anonymization happens, and where it applies, in the long lifetime of Google's data within their own walls.

To follow the letter of the law and "protect your privacy", they split all this data apart in multiple ways, or aggregate and then anonymize it, before they hand it off to third parties (for a price) or to other departments within Google. But make no mistake that, spread across their data centers, depending on how much of their services you use, they have a picture of you that is bizarrely, scarily, accurate.

The point here is not just to target you with a better banner ad. The point is, all your actions and history are used to give advertisers (and other agencies) very detailed pictures of a target demographic. Google makes a whole lot of its money with paid search rankings and advertising - a pretty lurid source of income that does their hip progressive "open source" image no favors - but beyond that, they are also in a position to supply a lot of answers to unique questions.

It's easy enough to come up with an innocuous question that some consulting firm might ask. "Dear Google: Among teenagers in the East Bay, what's the breakdown of political affiliations? How does that correlate with income level? Do they travel much? If so, where to? How many own cars?" Given enough scale, and a proper decoupling of the relevant data from uniquely identifying criteria, there's nothing wrong with asking, or answering that question.

What's interesting is that they are also perfectly able to answer - though legally disallowed from answering - questions like, "I just met a woman at a bar and she gave me her email address. Here it is. Where does she live? When is she home? Does she have any housemates? What do her finances look like? Did she mention me to anyone via email or gChat since yesterday?"

The data is all there, behind Google's doors. Just the fact that it's there, providing agencies and organizations with a potential tool to bend - or horribly break - the law, is a problem in itself. Hooray for the cloud indeed.
 

carmenodie

macrumors 6502a
Apr 25, 2008
775
0
This is a complete joke and the joke is on us. Google made that crap just to ingratiate Wall Street and make that overprices stock look reasonable. LOL!
Google IMHO has hit a brick wall in terms of growth. So, this pixel is just a farce to give their stale, yet profitable, game some POP.
 

Renzatic

Suspended
You guys are Good.:)

:takes a bow:

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They won't unfortunately, for you see the whole reason 16:9 monitors exist is so the manufacturers could merge part of the assembly lines with their TVs.

That's true of standard desktop monitors, but any tablet/laptop manufacturer could request a certain sized screen at any aspect ration to use in their products.

...though at a inflated price, I'm guessing. Hence why we only see a handful of 16:10 devices these days.
 

Fatalbert

macrumors 6502
Feb 6, 2013
398
0

Most similar sites do that and worse, and your ISP knows every URL you have ever visited. The whole search tracking is meant to improve your own searches in the future and to improve Google search, which I find very helpful. The information is completely anonymous. Check their privacy statement.
 

turtlez

macrumors 6502a
Jun 17, 2012
977
0
I feel like I can finally join in on the bashing at this site. This is THE STUPIDEST computer Ive seen released in my life I think. I have to think they have something coming for it to have it make even a little sense.

$1300
5 hours battery
No real OS
No USB 3
32GB storage
Web isnt made for high density displays
Knockoff design
Knockoff marketing
No way to put the Core i5 power to use
Poor touch performance

Google - They copied Apple with android, with design, with marketing and a push in the high pixel displays. Why can't they copy the price!?
 

JoeBob HenryBob

macrumors newbie
Feb 21, 2013
4
0
Most similar sites do that and worse, and your ISP knows every URL you have ever visited. The whole search tracking is meant to improve your own searches in the future and to improve Google search, which I find very helpful. The information is completely anonymous. Check their privacy statement.

"Similar sites" attempt to do a fraction of that, yes. "And worse", though, is pretty much false. Not even Microsoft has the position and the connections to do what Google does.

Yes, search tracking improves your own searches. That does not in any way contraindicate any of the other uses to which they put that history. It is also datamined, as I described.

Their privacy statement does not outright lie, though it does use some very interesting definitions to avoid doing so.
 

Fatalbert

macrumors 6502
Feb 6, 2013
398
0
"Similar sites" attempt to do a fraction of that, yes. "And worse", though, is pretty much false. Not even Microsoft has the position and the connections to do what Google does.

Yes, search tracking improves your own searches. That does not in any way contraindicate any of the other uses to which they put that history. It is also datamined, as I described.

Their privacy statement does not outright lie, though it does use some very interesting definitions to avoid doing so.

Microsoft is not similar to Google. Yahoo is. The cookie banner thing is false, and that only used to happen until they were found out. It doesn't matter anyway. How exactly is datamining a violation of privacy if the data is kept anonymous? Why would anyone care if their visit to some site was logged in with a bunch of other visits and sold to advertisers so that they can say "Look, this many people in California visited this site"?

Forget Google. If you're this paranoid, you should be worried about your ISP. They know every URL you have ever visited and relay all of your traffic. They know where you live, and they know your credit card number. They know that you are the same person no matter how many times your IP address changes, which Google does not.

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Last edited by a moderator:

Renzatic

Suspended
Most similar sites do that and worse, and your ISP knows every URL you have ever visited. The whole search tracking is meant to improve your own searches in the future and to improve Google search, which I find very helpful. The information is completely anonymous. Check their privacy statement.

He's wrong on a bunch of levels, but the major one being that they sell your information.

What Google does is tracks anonymous data, and then...

...no, they don't sell it...

...they offer to take their client's product, and advertise it themselves to the right demographic.

See, if they sold your information, it'd be a one time transaction. They now have Google's data, and can do whatever they want to with it. Beyond that one sell, Google makes no more money. Now if Google did the advertising themselves, they can charge, say, a yearly fee to place their products for them. They make more money.

So no. They don't come anywhere close to selling your data. They're selling billboard space, and they know the best places to put the ads.

Plus most of everything else he said? Highly illegal. Remember when Google and Apple both had to grovel before congress because they could potentially track your physical location using your smartphone ID? Yeah. What he stated above isn't much better. The only thing they can do is scan your email for keywords. They can't keep track of your bills, receipts, and other miscellaneous items and pack it in a folder labeled "fatalbert". They'd get their asses nailed to the wall quicker than a single blink were they to do that.

And saving the words you type into Google? There's about a dozen reasons they do that. Mostly to see what's trending, so they can prelink you to popular search topics. Once again, they don't directly know what you're typing. Only that X number of people typed "blah", then hit enter.

It's always a good idea to be vigilant about this kind of stuff just to make sure Google doesn't take that extra step. But being overly paranoid isn't going to help anybody.
 

runeapple

macrumors 6502a
Mar 5, 2010
663
123
True. Wow, it's rare that you'd find something that sucks so much and costs as much as Apple devices. I didn't even consider that.

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Apple market share also started at 0%. I was that guy in swimming class who go the most improvement awards...

Well it's becoming increasing popular :p - You know Android would have been more useful on this laptop..
 

1Azhar

macrumors newbie
Sep 17, 2012
25
0
Useless piece of junk. It's laughable. Do they really think that this will 'scare' Apple, or ANY other brand for that matter?
 
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