Pixel Event: A Recap
It started with avocado toasts in the waiting area. The music building up to the start of the event was a bit vampire-ish. So right of the bat, this event was purely dedicated to hardware and the announcement of the Pixel. Well, Sundar Pichai had other things in mind, he started off with his rant on how Google is focused on machine learning and AI. There was a huge build-up to the new Google home devices, even though leaks had already told us almost everything about them. Then there was the PixelBook, the highlight of the event, according to me, it was simply put, a high-end Chromebook. The first Chromebook, according to me, that looks absolutely stunning. It has got this great finish, head over to TheVerge and BusinessInsider to find more about it and get the first look. It was a stunning Chromebook with top of the line specs and the Google assistant built right in. Personally I’ve never understood Chromebooks, they are so out of place with the chromeOS. Another unusual step was to offer a 512 GB model, the whole point of Chromebooks is to store data in the cloud, not locally. The data should be accessible from anywhere. Again Google could have given equivalent space in the cloud but, Oh No, an SSD is fine. This whole fiasco of a $1000 Chromebook with 512 GB storage space and i7 defeats the purpose for which Chromebooks were made. They were supposed to be cheap devices used mainly for school work and streaming, basically a middle schooler’s cheap piece of hardware. Why would anyone not buy a Mac instead of PixelBook is a mystery which Google needs to solve quickly. Nonetheless, the PixelBook is a beautiful piece of hardware. Next were the Pixels, the leaks already had told us everything so no surprises there, although there is portrait mode on both the new Pixels now and the camera is currently the best one yet on any smartphone. The coolest thing about the Pixel was the squeeze effect. According to Google, just give the phones a light squeeze and voila the google assistant gets activated. Pretty cool. The most interesting thing, for me, was Google moving into the audio market with its own Bluetooth earbuds. They look fabulous, much like everything else in this event. Google gave special emphasis to the looks of all these devices and this was a welcome break from the obsession of windows and android device manufacturers of black and dark themes(see the images down below). So the earphones borrowed quite a few things from, you guessed it, the apple airpods. Still pretty cool. Did I mention the headphone jack is now removed from the pixel? Google gave Apple a pretty hard time about this last year but itself removed it this year. This definitely shows that what Apple does others follow….. this needs to change. The event ended with the release of a camera which I don’t believe anyone will buy but the tech used in the making of it, is fabulous. The Pixel event ended with quite a few surprises in form of a camera and ear buds. Throughout the event, Google gave special emphasis to its machine learning capabilities and to ML as a whole. It showed that good hardware needs equally good if not better software to run it and the need to emphasize on software too not only hardware. Apple should watch out Google is trying to bite into the multi-billion dollar market Apple has consolidated so far.
The following are some interesting reads if you are interested in gaining more information on the event-
