What do you think is a secure alternative?
I don’t think there is a great option on desktop. GrapheneOS in desktop mode or an iPad are going to be your most secure options I think. There’s also the new Googlebooks that are more Android-like desktops.
What? How would the new Googlebooks be any better?
Is GrapheneOS on the desktop any good yet?
Why would you pick an iPad over a Mac?
Googlebooks by default have verified boot and they use the Titan C security chip. All apps are sandboxed like on Android. Also this is pretty cool:
It also features a first for the laptop category: a Level 5 security-certified pKVM hypervisor. This hypervisor powers an isolated Linux environment with a full terminal access, so you can safely run any Linux developer tools, pull code repositories, or execute autonomous agents.
On Macs, the hardware is very secure. You pretty much have verified boot as well and MTE and the Secure Enclave is the same as on iPhones, but macOS doesn’t sandbox all apps by default and there’s a lot more attack surface than Googlebooks.
An iPad works fairly well as a desktop, you can get cases that turn them into laptops. All apps are sandboxed and it doesn’t have the same attack surface as macOS. But it’s more limited. Googlebooks feature the secure Linux VM that you can use to do dev stuff if you really need to.
Is the Google part of a Googlebook not a bigger issue as far as privacy is concerned?
They were asking what the most secure desktop is which I interpret to mean against malware etc. If you’re worried about Google itself probably best not to use Googlebooks, I don’t know if it’s possible to use them without an account but I know Chromebooks wouldn’t let you use it properly without an account, you could only use a neutered “guest mode.”
Ah fair sorry I lost sight of the context. Yes they sound very secure that way
Oh! Now I know.
In light of what you said, I’m wondering if GrapheneOS or if anyone else will take advantage of Google’s hardware.
Is the Titan C equivalent to the new Titan M3 found on the Pixel 11?
Since Googlebooks uses both x86 and ARM SoCs, is the Titan C going to be present and supported on both platforms?
That’s my concern as well, and hopefully we’ll be able to confirm if a Google account is required or not.
Is it use able yet?
I appreciate your replies!
But what about the hardware that the OS is running on? What’s the point of having a super secure and locked down OS if the hardware has the ability to transmit user data back to someone online?
Any reason you didn’t buy the M5? It’s supposed to have new security features
I bought it last year and hadn’t invented time travel 
Doesn’t make the M4 suddenly weak though!
Hardware doesn’t collect and send telemetry on its own. A manufacturer would need to include a second system on their PC for the purpose of bypassing the OS just to send telemetry which is unheard of to me, at least not with any of the manufacturers I mentioned.
Any hardware that isn’t fully open and secure by design is at risk of having backdoors or avoidable exploits but there isn’t a single computer on earth that is even close to meeting that criteria. If you’re extremely worried about backdoors you’ll have to avoid comptuers entirely or at least use an air-gapped machine with the NIC removed.
I agree with the comment another user made here.
Unless you NEED to use Windows for a software that only runs on it, or gaming, there’s no point using Windows anymore. It’s just bloated, shitty spyware on a flimsy plastic laptop. For the same price you can get something with vastly better performance, user interface and battery life. And of course as you mentioned the security is so, so much better.
Back when Mac was on Intel, it was a different story. They were more expensive machines, with equal performance. So apart from Apple integration and status symbol there wasn’t really much of a benefit. That’s far from the truth today. What’s really crazy is now, Macs actually represent the best value for money. What a world we’re living in.
I genuinely can’t think of a single reason to use Windows over Mac now.
I found it didn’t work well on 9a, but I’m not sure if it’s due to 9a’s limited RAM. Mouse takes some getting used to as well - you have to pretend you’re still using a touch screen where the cursor is a finger, rather than using it like a traditional mouse.
It was very close to being good though. If the display issues / crashes were taken care of then I could see using it as the main, even for programming or something like that.
Yeah even the “what’s your cheapest…” normie crowd who don’t care about privacy are better off with a Chromebook. Fingers crossed that SteamOS keeps chipping away at the Windows gaming market as well (if the EU doesn’t kill it off completely). There’s no reason for Windows to be anything but a corporate OS these days
Is it like a laptop integrated touchpad?
If you wan the EU to push Linux based OS’s, we need more antagonism between the EU and big Tech so that they are incentivized to become independent from them
I believe it’s different. Mainly right clicking seemed unpredictable and could result in strange behavior on screens, whereas holding down a left click would function like right clicking. It is difficult to navigate menus in something like the progressive web application of VS Code. Generally text editing is weird. Keyboard usage feels relatively more natural and similar to using a bluetooth keyboard on android with no desktop mode, but keyboard shortcuts are not natural feeling yet.
Some of it is likely lack of experience versus having used desktop keyboard/mouse for decades. Still, you can’t expect it to behave the same as a desktop even when you have nice looking windows and a cursor. Also, I think this was a few months ago that I tried it, but it was post-beta already at that point.