Month: October 2019

Enlarge (credit: Valentina Palladino)

Google's relationship with its own Chrome OS hardware has been a peculiar one. While other OEMs regularly push out new Chromebooks for users with various budgets, Google continues to refresh its hardware just once a year. Until now, those updates have produced luxury Chromebooks with varying degrees of popularity: 2017's Pixelbook won many hearts with its unique design, versatility as a convertible, and solid performance, while 2018's Pixel Slate tablet was a decided flop.

For 2019, Google is again trying something a little different: the $649 Pixelbook Go, a more modest Chromebook with a starting price that many will find easier to stomach than the Pixelbook's $999 price tag. While the Pixelbook Go may not be a luxury device, it's not a dirt-cheap Chromebook either. It sits in a category of higher-end Chromebooks that's getting more populated as companies including Acer, Asus, HP, and others make more capable devices.

The biggest draw of the Pixelbook Go is that it's made by Google, and since we saw the company bring so much to the table with the Pixelbook, it's fair to assume that the Pixelbook Go would offer something inherently Google-y that other OEMs can't match. The company is hoping that X factor (along with a more affordable starting price) will bring Chrome OS lovers flocking to the Pixelbook Go. But after using the Pixelbook Go for almost a week, I found that, like most things in the consumer tech world, the reality is not that simple.

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  This is the Jaguar Vision Gran Turismo Coupé, a futuristic electric sports car that Jaguar has just designed for Gran Turismo Sport. [credit: Jaguar ]

The Vision GT project, where real car companies design futuristic concept cars just for Gran Turismo, started in 2013 with Gran Turismo 6. The fact that, six years later, real car companies are still taking time to work on these one-offs is a testament to the impact of the PlayStation driving game. Jaguar is the latest to join the fray; it kindly sent out a bunch of images of a car it's calling the Jaguar Vision Gran Turismo Coupé.

"This was the dream project for a car designer, creating a futuristic sports car for Gran Turismo means our designs and ideas could be truly limitless. It has to excite future generations and most importantly, look and feel unmistakably Jaguar," said Oliver Cattell-Ford, Exterior Designer at Jaguar Advanced Design. The Vision GT Coupé draws inspiration from some of its legendary racers of old: there's some Le Mans-winning C-Type in the front fenders, while the profile harks back to the the long-nose D-Type. Meanwhile, the lightweight E-Type was on the mood board for the Vision GT Coupé's pared-back cockpit.

Chris Shaw, who led the interior design team, had this to say: