Google engineers who built the company’s new Pixel C tablet did an “Ask Me Anything” chat on Reddit Thursday, and, well … oy.
The engineers were faced with an onslaught of questions about why their tablet stinks. The vast majority of questions and comments were negative, and the Google team didn’t exactly face those critiques head-on.
Google is marketing the Pixel C as a high-end tablet (starting at $500) with a beautiful design, frequent software updates and a separate, $149 Bluetooth keyboard/kickstand combo.
But reviews have been less than extraordinary, praising Google for its hardware and largely trashing the company for buggy, incomplete software.
“Why was pixel hardware released before the software was ready?” asked Redditor connectwithraj.
“They keep mentioning ‘productivity’ in this thread, but with a max of 64GB storage, how will anyone be productive?” Phreakhead asked.
“The touch screen doesn’t always work (which is unforgivable) and the keyboard often acts like it isn’t attached when it is,” said HeroFromTheFuture, referencing ArsTechnica’s negative review.
Despite hundreds of comments and questions from Redditors, the Google team answered just 11 questions in the span of an hour. They largely ignored critiques about the Pixel C’s software issues, saying broadly, “We’re working hard on a range of enhancements for Android.”
It did address one common criticism, however: the lack of apps built for Android tablets.
“We’re spending a lot of time working with developers to get better and more awesome tablet apps, but it is definitely a chicken-egg problem, and we think a key driver is awesome hardware (like the Pixel-C :),” replied Glen Murphy, Google’s director of user experience for Android and Chrome.
A spokesman for Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.