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Monday, January 01, 2018

Pixelbook Vs. MacBook Pro 13 (Review): Google Closes The Gap

MacBook Pro 13 (mid-2017) on left and PixelBook (late 2017).



"...Overall Winner: Pixelbook (with a qualifier). A great convertible design, good performance, good battery life, and a beautiful display.



Qualifier: The Chrome OS won’t run some popular applications that users demand. As I said above, though it now runs Microsoft Office and Microsoft OneDrive, Office is not the full-blown version you get on the macOS or Windows. And while you can run things like Photoshop Express and Adobe Photoshop Lightroom CC (and more Photoshop apps are available on the web), the full PhotoShop application isn’t available. Of course, applications like iTunes aren’t available, though there are workarounds, as Google spells out here.



But I’m not going to go through a litany of apps not available on Chrome because that’s not the case anymore. Chrome is moving rapidly in the other direction: more and more popular apps are available and you can also run Android apps. So, it’s approaching parity with the Mac and Windows.



I really like the ChromeBook platform now because it’s secure, stable, easy to use, and self-maintains. And Chrome OS is more like mobile operating systems such as Android and iOS — a refreshingly clean break from the old, creaky DOS/Windows/Mac platforms.



Note that the MacBook Pro 13 (mid-2017) is well designed and has top-notch quality and I would recommend it highly. And you can find one these days — as stated above — discounted for about $1,150 with a 128GB SSD, 8GB RAM, and Intel 7th gen processor. That’s a good deal..."



Pixelbook Vs. MacBook Pro 13 (Review): Google Closes The Gap