In March 2026, I wrote that the MacBook Neo was going to eat Chromebooks for breakfast and followed that with an (admittedly cheeky) “So what now?”
It turns out the answer to that question is likely the Googlebook.
It’s probably not entirely fair to say the Googlebook riffs hard off the MacBook series when it comes to design.
Apple’s been the aesthetic benchmark for personal electronics for decades at this point. Whenever it makes a phone, computer, or anything, you can be sure other manufacturers will take what we’ll euphemistically call “cues” from those products.
But as the first school district switches from Chromebook to MacBook Neo, a closer look at what this new class of premium laptops offers reveals it might not be competition for the MacBook after all.
I want the Googlebook to succeed, but Google’s track record says otherwise
I don’t doubt Googlebook, I doubt Google
People don’t (only) buy Macs because they’re pretty
Let’s have a closer look at the Googlebook design language
There’s no question that it looks just as nice as a typical MacBook just by eyeballing it. What was Steve Jobs’ favorite quote again? “Great artists steal” was the one, if I recall correctly.
But people love MacBooks for the same type of reason the ThinkPad has such a hardcore following. Not the same reason, mind you, but the type of reason. It’s because both devices fulfill a set of needs that go along with a particular lifestyle.
Mac users like the reliability, software quality, and performance of these machines within the confines of that form factor.
The reason I switched from Windows to macOS in 2019 was that Windows updates kept breaking my computer, costing me thousands of dollars in lost productivity over the course of a year.
In contrast, none of my Macs have had a single minute of downtime in the seven years I’ve used them.
In other words, it’s the whole being more than the sum of its parts. You can ape the exterior design of a MacBook as many laptop OEMs have, but the similarity is only skin-deep if you don’t have that level of integration.
The real Mac advantage is integration
We love it when a plan comes together
I want to be completely fair to Google and give it the benefit of the doubt.
Google is clearly trying to create an Apple-like integrated hardware ecosystem. We have Google Pixel phones, Pixel Buds, Pixel watches, and so forth.
Yet Google doesn’t quite have the sort of seamless integration you get with Apple, where each device can become much more valuable when you combine it with another.
I have real, tangible reasons to own both an iPad and a MacBook, for example. When you combine them into a single workflow, you can do more than with either device by itself.
Google is clearly trying to bring its own hardware and all Android devices in general to a similar level of integration.
However, it’s a much bigger challenge when you don’t have full control over everything the way Apple does.
Google’s Aluminium OS (probably) still doesn’t offer what macOS does
Google has clarified that the Googlebook won’t replace Chromebooks. Instead of running ChromeOS, it uses Aluminium OS, which is a fusion of Android and ChromeOS.
It’s too early to say anything definitive about this OS and what advantages it may have over ChromeOS. Still, it’s unlikely to be comparable to a mature OS like macOS for the foreseeable future.
Its big advantage is that it runs Android apps natively, but macOS comes with strong first-party and third-party developer support on top of being able to run iOS and iPadOS apps natively.
Ultimately, it’s the applications that make a computer useful.
It was one thing when ChromeOS, in its original form, was just a barebones OS to support browser-based apps.
But history has now shown that this is not enough for even the most casual users, as ChromeOS has steadily blown up in size and complexity to become something that’s not dependent on the internet to work.
In the first half of May, a 16-minute video of AluminiumOS hit the internet, which you can see below.
My first impression, based on admittedly limited information, is that this really seems like a desktop mode for Android in the vein of Samsung DeX or, indeed, the official desktop mode coming to all Android devices.
Only time will tell if developers will bring the software. Which is ultimately all that matters.
If AI is the point, Google has an Nvidia problem, too
A little spark can become an inferno
The big brouhaha about the Googlebook is how it’s built around Google Gemini and is an AI-first laptop series right out of the gate.
Setting aside whether any real users of these machines care about AI applications, it can’t help that NVIDIA just announced its RTX Spark computers.
These promise to be potent local AI systems, and on paper, RTX Spark will run any Windows software, despite being Arm-based.
At the same time, MacBooks and other Apple devices will have AI powered by Gemini. So it’s not even as if the Googlebook will have a true Gemini advantage over the Mac.
So, for me, it begs the question of who the Googlebook is for? Chromebooks are going nowhere, MacBooks still have a unique selling point, and Windows laptops are getting the hardware and software support to compete in this space.
I guess there’s always a freshly-dug spot in the infamous Google Graveyard.
