I wonder if the name "Pixel C" for the new tablet presaged this.
But Pixel C is a pricey device. Chromebooks can be made very inexpensively. And Android would be suckey in an inexpensive laptop non-touch form-factor. I assume they have thought of this.
This will also be an interesting trajectory for getting tablet devices into business settings. It's not the response I expected to iPad Pro. I'd really like an Android-based direct competitor, which Pixel C isn't. Close, but not really.
If they do it right, it could be what Windows could have been: One browser runtime, one managed language runtime, one implementation language (or a family of them that compile to the same bytecode), across all form factors. But that "across all form factors" has eluded a solution so far. I don't blame Apple for not trying to get there first.
If you search the Chromium commit logs, you can see they are still actively working on features for the Ryu (Pixel C).
Part of this story hasn't been told yet. They announced it with Android, yet there is still hardware management work going on for the same device in ChromeOS. Now, WSJ is gossiping that ChromeOS and Android are merging, which would make continuing to do Ryu-specific work in ChromeOS even weirder.
> Now, WSJ is gossiping that ChromeOS and Android are merging, which would make continuing to do Ryu-specific work in ChromeOS even weirder.
Actually, it makes perfect sense, if, when ChromeOS merges into Android, Ryu (or its similar successor platform, by 2017) is going to be one of the targets for the merged OS, and some of the features of the merged OS that are important are based on the ChromeOS side of the fence.
Merging ChromeOS into Android is not the same thing as abandoning ChromeOS in favor of Android.
I hadn't heard of the continuing work before - it would make sense, however, for them to develop a tablet for ChromeOS and then switch later on in the design cycle.
I doubt they'll release a convergent OS anytime soon, that'll probably be a part of Android 7.0, which'll probably be announced next June.
Except they announced it with Android. That's what's weird.
The commit logs make me think it will run Android OR ChromeOS, user's choice. Maybe eventually the dual boot mode gets deprecated in favor of the converged OS. But if they are planning to converge, building and releasing two software stacks for the same device feels weird.
The more I write this, the more I wonder if they are somehow trying to get both running on one device to make sure that the converged experience is at least as good as both of the separate iterations its replacing. Still, that's an inordinate amount of work when they already have both ChromeOS and Android devices they could reference.
I agree, I also can't work out what they were thinking when they announced it like that. They've been completely silent about the Pixel-C since that day despite saying it would ship before the end of the year. Even if they do ship it, the OS is not ready without any multiwindow capability active yet. It seems to me they decided to announce it very early for some reason and with nothing else scheduled until I/O next year, the Android announcement was where they could do that. Of course, they could hardly announce all the rest of the story without tipping their hand, so they just said it would ship with Android.
My only good theory is that they are actually quite worried about the converged laptop / tablet space and pulled the Pixel-C forward as PR to somehow counter Microsoft's announcements in that space which happened shortly after. I still don't quite see what they achieved but I can imagine them doing it just to make a statement.
Well sure. Android will need to be a good car, TV, and whatnot os. Why not desktops? But that's what Microsoft broke their pick on. Windows 8 Was suckey on all form factors. Easy to get this wrong.
But Pixel C is a pricey device. Chromebooks can be made very inexpensively. And Android would be suckey in an inexpensive laptop non-touch form-factor. I assume they have thought of this.
This will also be an interesting trajectory for getting tablet devices into business settings. It's not the response I expected to iPad Pro. I'd really like an Android-based direct competitor, which Pixel C isn't. Close, but not really.
If they do it right, it could be what Windows could have been: One browser runtime, one managed language runtime, one implementation language (or a family of them that compile to the same bytecode), across all form factors. But that "across all form factors" has eluded a solution so far. I don't blame Apple for not trying to get there first.