Googlebooks are coming for your Mac

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1:18Visit apple.com slash applewatchseries12. Welcome to The Vergecast, the flagship podcast of Google's new, new operating system. I'm David Amell. Today we're talking to Verge laptop reviewer Antonio DiBenedetto about Google's new Google Book project. This is a new initiative from Google to develop a premium laptop experience that takes the best of your smartphone and integrates it deeply with a high-end laptop. Antonio recently went hands-on with some of these laptops, so I'm gonna ask him about what's new, who this is for, and if he thinks Google can seriously compete with Apple this time. But first, here's what's happening on The Verge today.

1:57This is 90 Seconds on The Verge for Monday, September 21st, 2026. Apple intelligence claims have officially opened. If you live in the US and purchased an iPhone 15, 15 Pro Max, or iPhone 16 model between June 10th, 2024 and March 29th, 2025, you can now file a claim to receive between$25 and$95 in compensation. This comes after a class action lawsuit alleged that Apple created a clear and reasonable consumer expectation that the new AI features previewed at WWDC 2024 would launch on the iPhone 16, which instead launched with a more limited set of features. If you fit that description, you can submit a claim for compensation until December 21st, 2026.

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5:50That's 15 % off at masterclass.com slash verge. Head to masterclass.com slash verge to see the latest offer. Antonio DiBenedetto, welcome to the Vergecast. Hello, thanks for having me again. So we're talking about Google Books today. You recently did a hands-on of all these Google Books. I believe there are three or four of them. There's maybe five. How many are there? There are five. Okay. Yeah. So there's ones from Dell, Lenovo, HP, Acer, and Asus. Okay. So this is more of a OS experience, right? This is not the Chromebook that we have all known and loved, these cheap laptops that are basically Chrome in a computer.

6:32Can you explain what is a Google Book and why is Google doing this whole project? Yeah, it's definitely interesting. And it's something that I came to like months ago when they first teased it. I was like, why does this exist? What is the point of this? And now having seen them in person a little bit and experienced them poked and prodded a little bit, it's like, OK, I'm maybe starting to get this and maybe this could be kind of cool. But basically, in a nutshell, this is like a new swing at Chromebooks kind of. But it's essentially kind of a blending of Chrome OS and Android. but I mean really at its core is Android.

7:07So these laptops run Android. They feel a bit like Chromebooks and you know they run multiple chips. You've got options from Intel with Intel Panther like chips. You've got Qualcomm Snapdragon X Elite chips and there's supposed to be MediaTek chips coming at some point later. Five different OEMs. So it's very much like a partnership thing and it's all united by the software. And the software experience may feel kind of Chromebook-ish but But what's actually the most appealing thing is that the way it interacts with an Android phone, right? You have certain features that if you have an Android phone and you need to have an Android phone, that you can kind of pair them together and interact with them in a way that really no one else is really doing to this level yet.

7:54Okay. So can you still use these computers without an Android phone? You're being very specific there. Yeah, you can, but I don't think there'd be much point. At least you wouldn't gain much from it like you would if you have an Android phone. Like if you have an iPhone and I ask this question, like, what do you do? And there is essentially just like a link to iOS app and it helps you with some like message relaying. But it's nothing like what you can do when you have an Android phone paired, which I guess I should cut to the chase on like the things that this can do. Yeah, what exactly does it do with your phone?

8:28All right. So it's nothing completely crazy, but it's like, it's just, it's just better integrated than what we normally see, even on like macOS and iOS. So there's a few like hallmark features, the files, you open the files app and your, your phone files are just there. Like it's loaded up on the sidebar, just like another, you know, drive. And you can click there and all your phone files are there. So it's like someone sent you something and you downloaded or you downloaded something on your phone. you don't have to like email it to yourself or find some other way to like get it over to your laptop it's just there and you can pluck it and paste it and share it do you know exactly how that is working is it some sort of mirroring is it transferring the files because if you're not on wi-fi is that going to go up into the cloud and you take a lot of data like how does it do that that they didn't specify um so it'll be something we definitely explore um and when we review these um i should also say at any point but i should say now i guess we don't have review units and And it's definitely like, not to get too inside baseball-y, but it's whenever a company doesn't have review units early and there's like, oh, we're going to launch it on October 4th.

9:33And after that is when review units will come. And it's like, hmm, that doesn't always instill confidence. But, you know, I digress. This is something I find a little interesting. Google is taking pre-orders for Google Books. Is that correct? Yeah, they're taking pre-orders now. And they ship on the 4th or they arrive at Shores on the 4th. and we'll get review units sometimes on the 4th or later. The 4th is a Sunday, so it's like, right? I think it's a Sunday. So it's like the 5th really or later. Okay, so when you go on the website to pre-order a Google book, do you get to pick the laptop that you're pre-ordering?

10:07How do you, do people really know about how these computers work? I mean, I've been on their site. I've seen what they're showing it as, but just like a scrollable page that kind of gives the highlights of what a Google book is doesn't seem like it's really informing customers of what the experience they should expect is. How do you think Google's angling this? It's hard to say. I think these, again, just like from what I've observed in the briefing and everything like that, this seems like it may be coming in a little hot. I mean, frankly, even like OEM reps that I was talking to on the side, like we're kind of at the event, we're like, oh, we just got the hardware like today or yesterday.

10:42And it's like, so I think this is all kind of coming together. It seems like maybe late or maybe whatever, but I can't speculate too much. Um, point is though, like this does some cool stuff and we will know, we'll need to know a lot more later. I mean, especially when we test them. Um, and, uh, the reason I think like this is actually maybe kind of cool, even though like this is like Google, we, we can't always trust Google with like sticking through with things and like, you know, or, or whatever the direction they may take things and Chrome books already exist. and we don't know a lot about, you know, where Chromebooks will go when now Google Books are in the fold, aside from they've promised 10 years of service.

11:25But here's what, like, the other features that are actually seem pretty cool about this. Like, again, going back to you have an Android phone paired to a Google Book, you have the file structure, but then also, like, probably the bigger things are like, you know, you have this feature called Continue On, where if you're using an app on your phone, it just kind of like hangs out in the bottom bar on a Google book and you can just click it and it'll just hand over to the laptop, right? You know, like whether it's from like the native app to a native app on the Google book that's installed or native app to a web app, you can just take over from where you left off.

12:01And that's a really cool feature that you can kind of interact with, you know, like start a task on your phone and be like, no, I need a bigger screen. There's a laptop job as we know. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. And like, you know, it's like, that's, that's pretty cool. You don't normally get that kind of thing. Um, and then, uh, but generally any, any app you have on your phone is kind of also available on your laptop because since all Android based you, whether if you have an app installed on your phone, it actually will live on the Google book in like a second app drawer, right? There's like the main app drawer, which has all the stuff you've installed.

12:36And then there's a second app drawer for your phone. And if you click on any of those, it'll just cast the app to your Google book. And it's kind of like, you know, like we have a little bit of experience with this, like, you know, iPhone mirroring on iOS or iOS and macOS, but you know, that's like mirroring your whole phone screen. This is like going on like a per app basis. Right. So it's, again, it's, it's all interesting and intriguing. Um, but I mean, we talked about like, who is it for? I, I was still Like the only answer I have so far is like someone who has like most likely a high end Android phone because these are not cheap devices.

13:14But they what I guess they don't want Windows. They don't want a Mac. So they're looking for an alternative. That's mostly all I can think of. Yeah, I think that there was always a little bit of a tension with Chromebooks, right? Because Google sold Chromebooks in this way where there were ultra cheap Chromebooks and those were probably the ones that moved the most. They sold them to schools. They sold them to people that just wanted a laptop for things that they did online. But then there was sort of a move towards really high quality Chromebooks that were over$1 ,000, very expensive. But at the end of the day, we're still kind of just running Chrome.

13:47And they did evolve Chrome OS over time to be able to run Android apps natively. But at the same time, you still have to download those Android apps from the Play Store onto your Chromebook. It was a separate instance. So I can see the appeal of just like casting your phone to your laptop if you're the type of person that uses your phone for almost everything. But sometimes you want laptop tasks. My question to you here is like it seems that Google is trying to have some sort of a barometer for quality with these laptops, right? They're all around$1 ,000 or over$1 ,000. Can you break down the different models and what are the standards that Google has for the manufacturers that want to make these laptops?

14:23Yeah. So there don't seem to be like standards, but like there's a whole lot of like vibes-y elements to what Google's doing here. And like, and it even goes like, is there a base minimum spec? There is no base minimum spec for these laptops. Like they said, like, you know, like they have touchscreens, but there's no guarantee that they're always going to have touchscreens. They have 16 gigs of RAM. There's no guarantee that, you know, they're always going to have 16 gigs of RAM or more. Like I wouldn't be surprised if eight gigabyte models come later when, you know, they need to have some lower cost options.

14:51You don't think it's something that they're mandating? It doesn't seem to be, at least. And they haven't told us when we asked. They didn't say there was any kind of baseline spec. So I don't, there's a lot of questions, but all the names sound exactly the same. Of the laptops? Yeah, like the lowest cost one is the Acer Google Book 14, which is very much like an Acer spin kind of, you know, Chromebook. Tablet. Yeah, it's the only convertible two-in-one. It starts at$900. Acer reps have told us that's like a limited time offer. And we don't exactly know what even that means. Like, how long will it be$900 for?

15:28I don't know. But, you know, Google says these Google Books start at$899. Then there's a Dell XPS Google Book, which is basically a rehoused XPS 13 in a different color. And it's got a Qualcomm Snapdragon chip instead of Intel Wildcat Lake. That's a little more. It's like$1 ,199 starting at. Again, these are all starting at prices. you can configure these with more and get more expensive of course uh there's an hp uh i think it's just called google book 14 um another snapdragon chip again like 12.99 i believe that one is uh there's lenovo's 12 also 12.99 google book 15 so it's a little bit larger um and that one has like a little if i recall correctly that was a little more ports a bunch of these have OLEDs.

16:15Some of them have like haptic trackpads, but not all. So again, nothing is really, there's no threading the needle like, oh, this is, it's got to have this, this, this. Like Chromebook Plus did have some minimum spec requirements. Yeah. And some things you expected on it. These are all nice. They're all nice laptops. There's all, the last one is the Asus Googlebook 14. Again, I think it's just his name. You know, I don't know why they, I don't know why Google insists on all the names being the same, but again, an OLED screen, very lightweight. at least that one like some of them have some little standouts like their haptic trackpads or more ports or or the convertible for the acer the the asus is like very lightweight it's like only weighs like like 2.2 pounds one kilo or something like that um but they're all the hardware is like it all feels familiar because they're all pretty much based on like existing i think the asus for example is like an expert book right and it's just now with cookbook os one thing that i find kind of strange here is that they're only working with ODMs to make these computers.

17:16There's no Google made Google book. Do you know why that is? That seems a little bit weird when they pivoted a lot of Android to be sort of centered around the Pixel phone. Yeah, I don't know why. I am kind of of two minds where I would, I would, I kind of wanted to see that like Halo device, that flagship device kind of lead the charge. But I am also kind of like looking at it across this and it's like five somewhat even-ish laptops, give or take little bits here and there. And it's like, maybe that's fine. Um, you know, uh, Google has made their own, Google has made its own Chromebooks in the past, obviously, even like a pixel ones, pixel book, the pixel book go, they had the Google made laptops and now they just are not doing that anymore.

18:02Yeah. Uh, who knows if that may just be, this may just be the precursor to them making one of those at some point. Or I don't know, maybe they're just feeling things out and see how it goes. But, you know, it's obviously easier for these OEMs to make, just kind of remix an existing laptop versus Google spinning up an entire new model. Yeah, it almost reminds me of like the HTC One M8 Google Play edition, right? Oh man, that's deep cut and I used to own that phone that's awesome that's yeah yeah all right i miss those days so yeah maybe maybe this can i mean again maybe this will be like that like just find this niche and enthusiasts and like you know people who really like the idea of just not being on windows or mac and having something that works really well with their android phone specifically but who knows we'll see but it that's it's an interesting premise that yeah google just it's just bowing out of the hardware this side we'll see if that holds.

19:02Okay. Well, much like Google redesigned Android to be based around Gemini, it seems that they are also sort of redesigning Chrome OS to be around Gemini with this Google OS. Can you talk to me about this new magic cursor feature that I keep saying? They have this banner on their site that says, intelligence is the new spec, clearly pointing to Gemini. And then they have a little cursor with a rainbow around it that they shake. What exactly is happening here? What is this feature? so you wiggle the cursor and you can pull up Gemini on pretty much anything you know you can just like have it like look at stuff on your screen you can just prompt it via the cursor right you just wiggle it and then start typing something away at it to ask a question so it's baked further into the OS and yeah you I mean we can't avoid Gemini right if it's good if it's a Google thing just like kind of how it is on Android well now the same on Google Books and yeah so you wiggle it, pull it up and then type away.

19:56But it's not exactly clear when things are happening on device and when things are going up to the cloud. You know, obviously all the chips that they're using have NPUs, so they can do some on device AI, but you know, there's got to be stuff happening, going to the cloud almost all the time. Yeah. Okay. So you wiggled the cursor around. Is that on images you see? Is that on text you see? Is this like anything on your screen you can practically interact with Gemini with. Is that the idea? Basically, yeah. The part that was kind of cool is you can have multiple images loaded right into it to do a prompt based on what you're feeding it.

20:35So you can do multiple documents, multiple images. I guess that could be cool and helpful. Or you could just be straight up text. Okay. So it seems to me that Google is sort of trying to get you to interact with Gemini by putting things you see on the web into a context window and either chat about those things or generate images about those things. Would you consider that their motive here? Basically, I mean, and like just give you faster, quicker access to Gemini. And they also are putting in a couple of recent Android features like Rambler, where it'll do speech transcription with like, you know, you could just go at it and just like speak your mind, like stream of consciousness and it'll remove all the ums and us and it does a very good job um that's in google books as well and as well as the uh create my widget where you can kind of vibe code your own little personal home screen widget uh on google book at t-mobile the new iphone 18 pro is here with a big leap in battery life and you can get it on us with so many reasons to choose t-mo you'll want to talk about it at t-mobile you can Get iPhone 18 Pro on them.

21:44Pass it on. My friend said you can get it on T-Mobile. Pass it on. They got the best network with the fastest speeds. Hey, Mickey, pass it on. iPhone 18 Pro has the most advanced iPhone camera ever. Pass it on. I heard it, T-Mobile. You can get it on them. Pass it on. For a limited time at T-Mobile, get the amazing iPhone 18 Pro on us. With up to 36 monthly bill credits, can you trade in an eligible device? Example, iPhone 16 on a qualifying plan. Example,$100 plus a month plan with auto pay plus taxes and fees. For well-qualified customers, plus tax and$35 device connection charge. Credits and imbalance due if you pay off earlier.

22:20Cancel. Finance agreement,$1 ,9999. iPhone 18 Pro, 256 gigabyte to acquire. Best and fastest mobile network in the U.S. Based on analysis by Ooclip Speedtest Intelligence, data 1H2026. Visit T-Mobile.com. Support for the show comes from Amazon Prime. Some of us are blessed with a natural ability to do gift-giving right. You probably have a few in your life. People who can make a mental ledger of what their loved ones like and buy things here and there throughout the year. My mom has always been the best gift giver in my life. She could even make the smallest gift feel incredibly special because you knew that she had really thought about that person receiving it.

22:55It doesn't have to be the biggest or the most expensive gift. It just has to show someone you were thinking about them. Well, for the rest of us, here's a tip. Prime Big Deal Days is coming October 6th and 7th. That means that for two straight days, you can get deals on those kitchen gadgets for your dad, electronics for your brother, fitness equipment for your bestie, toys for the cousins, and so much more. There's new deals dropping every day so you can become one of those expert gift givers that we all know. And it's all happening with plenty of lead time into the holidays. So no more scrambling to come up with something last minute.

23:32The hardest part will be finding a good hiding place for it all. Mark your calendars. Shop new deals every day this prime big deal days, October 6th and 7th.

23:46A lot of these features to me feel kind of tailored for business users. You know, like I see people show up to the coffee shop all the time with their HP laptops or their Lenovo laptops. And they have all this business software on them. They're writing emails all day. They're doing presentations and stuff like that. many of the Gemini features, including Rambler, including, you know, putting things in Gemini, making images and graphics feel tailored to business users. Would you say that this kind of feels like a business play or does this seem like they're really going after consumers here? I think they are going after consumers.

24:22It's hard to say because like a lot of like as we hear about on the broadcast and talk on the broadcast a lot, it's like a lot of AI stuff is kind of enterprise focus or it It seems like it can't escape the appeal of the enterprise. So I could see maybe there is some kind of play here for that too. But I think they're looking at consumers. But it's hard to say. I mean, they're talking about wanting to reinvent the laptop. And it's like big words, big claims. And they've got some interesting and some cool stuff here. But a lot of questions are open questions. Would you say this is like a true play at trying to create their version of the Apple ecosystem?

25:07Because it seems to me that they are trying to say you can still do most of these things, right? If you buy a Google book, it comes with a year of NVIDIA GeForce Now, so you can still stream high quality games on it. That's not a limitation. Most of the stuff that you're doing online is going to be through Google services anyway. If you buy the Google book, if you can stream your Android directly to your laptop, and they do have an edge on Apple here, right? Like Apple has limited capabilities between moving things from your phone to your computer. Like they have AirDrop. They have like iPhone mirroring, things like that.

25:38But it's not as integrated as the Android to Google Book integration. Do you think that they're going for Apple's throat here? I think that's what they want to do. And at the very least, they want to make, I think, just how, like, I'm sure they see how iPhone and Mac, like someone who owns an iPhone and a Mac. is has some levels of integration and many reasons for staying within that ecosystem, within those walled gardens, because things talk to each other. And, you know, Google, it's like, they don't, they're, they're blocked on that front. They can't interact with a Mac quite like an iPhone does.

26:14And then they don't have it fully on windows either. So it's like, this is their way to make this more integrated ecosystem. And ideally I would imagine then keeping more people on Android, keeping people on Android, and people using Android apps. You know, again, I think like just thinking about how like, oh, you know, one of my hurdles with not using macOS or not using Windows is like, I need, I want to, no, I don't want, I need to use Lightroom Classic. Like I just, just because I'm ingrained in it. Right. Right. And this doesn't have Lightroom Classic, but it's like, oh, it has Lightroom, the mobile version, but it's like, It's a little bit better on a desktop, on a Google book, should be at least.