I/O NOOOOO!!! We sat through Google's bum numbing 3-hour keynote so you didn't have to Google has kicked off its annual developer conference with a three-hour keynote in which the search kingpin explained where it's taking Android next: namely, your wrist, your car, your living room, and beyond. It was long enough to trouble your correspondent's laptop battery. Sundar Pichai, Google's head of Android division, …
The photocopiers and lawyers in Cupertino have stirred again - after all, "copy then sue" is their official company policy.
Well, because of the Patent madness in the USA who knows for sure that Google have not infringed on a patent that has been granted to Apple, IBM, Microsoft or any one of a thousand other companies?
We (as laymen/women) don't and simply can't know.
Patents aside, there are more than a few devices hitting the market in anticipation of what (if anything) Apple might start selling. Some are clearly rushed out simply to say, 'We were first'. That might be the case but I suspect that as has been proven before, if apple release a wearable device then they will probably implement it in a better way than the competition.
Then the Lawyers of the competition will be busy filing lawsuits against Apple.
Nothing is clearcut in the Tech World these days. There is always a huge amount of FUD and Lies and underhand dealings.
"Patents aside, there are more than a few devices hitting the market in anticipation of what (if anything) Apple might start selling. Some are clearly rushed out simply to say, 'We were first'. That might be the case but I suspect..."
...Apple let the rumours start so they could see how to do it by letting others do the hardest bit first.
Yes, and no. You can certainly see both aspects of Metro and IOS 7 in the new Google stuff and this is as it should be. MS rushed Metro into all versions of Windows 8 and didn't think it through properly: tiles are an excellent approach as is large type and bold colours but they become a problem when you have a lot of them on large screen. MS also didn't invent the "stack and tile" approach.
The paired back icons and areas are definitely a nod to IOS 8 but seem less slavishly puritanical: I particularly like the thought given to (coordinated) transitions. Luke Wroblewski, as ever, wrote a great article on designing for IOS 7 which highlight that good design essentially iterative. This is as true for individual works as it is for frameworks.
The article isn't very clear here, but after watching the keynote, here is what I think happens:
The phone doesn't "auto-unlock" in the sense of becoming active, but it suppress any PIN-code or pattern-unlock requirements that may otherwise be enabled on the phone, allowing the user to just to slide to unlock (in the same way that you can if there are no security settings enforced)
I suppose it's an OK idea. The phone is auto-unlocked at home and work for those who want it. Although I believe that Apple's research said something silly like 75% of iPhones had no PIN code set anyway. That may have been high, in order to plug their fingerprint scanner, but I'm prepared to believe that millions of smartphones aren't locked.
However, leaving your phone at the mercy of your work colleagues might be a very bad idea. You might end up with the thing set to Arabic, or with your ringtone as 'The Crazy Frog'. As well as access to your personal email and Facebook.
As for unlock at home, the PIN is the last line of defence between your shiny tech gadgets and children.
I totally agree with you - my colleagues are a threat to any unlocked phone in the vicinity. It is lots of fun though ;-)
And I think you're right about that statistic, I'm sure I caught the guy in the keynote say something along the lines of "if you're one of the 12-15% percent of people who enforce security then..." so the stat might be even worse than that!
I totally agree with you - my colleagues are a threat to any unlocked phone in the vicinity. It is lots of fun though ;-)
bigphil,
I didn't lock my first smartphone. A Sony Ericsson P800, in about 2003. I can remember coming back to find a very disappointed (so-called) friend of mine playing with it.
He was sad, because he was on the change language screen and the only option was English. In order to save limited memory, you could uninstall various options, which I think you could then re-install from CD. So I'd taken all the language support away.
Oddly, when I lived in Belgium my contract phone was already set-up in English. Which seemed rather unhelpful for the locals. The manual was a rather neat affair, with flemish and french versions bound back-to-back and SIM card in a case between. This I guess being a way to avoid either going first, and pissing off the other lot. But making it hard for everyone seemed a tad annoying...
Then again I regularly ate in one restaurant where the staff only communicated in english. Because the french-speakers had forgotten all the flemish they were taught at school, and the flemish-speakers therefore refused to speak french to anyone but customers.
"a revved up user interface with shadowing for icons to make them appear to hover over the page; brighter colors; 3D viewing support; and 60 FPS animations onscreen."
They're going to improve battery life by adding a bunch of pointless battery-draining bullshit to the UI?
The design changes will easily be handled the GPU and shouldn't really affect battery use that much. The main power drain will continue to be the illumination of the screen and any decoding of image or video formats.
Better battery use can be achieved with a runtime that uses less memory and compiles more efficiently. Better compilers are now possible on the newer chips. With the right combination, more apps can be moved in and out of RAM, which requires power, faster.
But based on my devices I'd expect to see better management of the radios. On all my devices, disabling wifi is the single best method of range extension.
Quote: "The new build will also include new security settings that can remotely wipe stolen Android handsets"
Erm, current stock Android already has a remote lock and wipe option, so what is this new setting actually adding here?
Just go to https://www.google.com/android/devicemanager
Log in and select your device, and click Lock or Wipe, simples...
Shows up for both my Nexus 5, and my first gen Nexus 7, and has done for a long time.
"Pichai claimed, and users send 20 billion texts every day using the operating system and 93 million selfies, including a lot of duckfaces, he joked"
Well now, it seems that Google now has your face on it's database, even if you aren't on G+. Posted anonymously of course.
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