Blog posts tagged with 'developers'

Since the grand unveiling of the Android code in 2007, the mobile/tablet operating system has seen its usage and popularity soar. From its comparatively humble beginnings as an open-source, multi-channel OS, Android has gone from strength to strength, adopted as the standard by enormous mobile companies as far afield as Samsung, HTC and Sony. They became the world’s leading Smartphone platform at the back end of 2010, overtaking fierce competition, and now hold a nearly 60% market share in all Smartphones, worldwide. But for Google, the company looking to diversify into every area imaginable – whether it be software, hardware, manufacturing, design, search, mail or social networking - Android’s current dominance over the Smartphone market is only the beginning. Google want their OS to be ubiquitous across both the Smartphone and tablet markets, and even beyond – and their most recent step in the quest for dominance has led them to an unlikely source, the Raspberry Pi. For those unaware, the Raspberry Pi is a system-on-a-chip computer sold at the ultra-competitive price of $35 (or around £27). It’s not designed for the casual user: it’s only a computer in the most basic sense of the word, consisting of a circuit board with all of the basics (256MB of SDRAM, a 700 MHz ARM-brand CPU and a Broadcom VideoCore GPU). You must hook the Raspberry Pi up to a TV and keyboard in order to use it, and upon boot-up it defaults to a DOS-style command system, requiring Linux commands in order to function. But it also provides an unparalleled degree of customization, allowing you to tinker with its settings and tailor the user experience to your own exacting specifications. For the dedicated user, the Raspberry Pi is really a dream come true, and given all the software and firmware updates it’s received recently (including an increasingly polished Debian-based OS dubbed “Raspbian”), the day could come when the more casual user could also jump aboard. So it’s a real feather in the Pi’s cap that its developers are working on a full version of Android 4.0, the Ice Cream Sandwich OS, to utilize on the device. And it’s also a real boon to Google, to have their open-source OS available on what is, for all intents and purposes, a miniature desktop computer. Sadly, there’s no set release date for the OS just yet – but based on the progress videos eked out by the Raspberry Pi development team, it’s not unreasonable to expect the ICS compatibility update to roll out within the next month or so. In fact, at this junction it’s unclear why the Pi development team didn’t opt for a release of Jelly Bean, Google’s upcoming Android 4.1 OS, considering that it was released to developers in July to pave the way for third party development (such as HTC’s Sense UI). But it’s possible that the Raspberry Pi development team was already hard at work on an Ice Cream Sandwich port prior to the announcement of Jelly Bean, and opted to roll out a release before working on the later version. Nevertheless, we here at Mobile Madhouse confidently expect ICS to make its desktop debut on the Raspberry Pi very shortly – and in a case of mutual symbiosis, it will help boost both parties’ reputations.

Day one of the Input/Output Conference has been and gone, and with typical aplomb, Google has unveiled a plethora of new products for us to pore over! Its announcements proceeded largely as we anticipated (courtesy of several security leaks prior to the I/O), but Google managed to throw a curveball or two our way - we’ll overview all the ups and downs of day one of I/O in this blog post. First up, the tablet we all knew was on the way, the Nexus 7. The specifications were exactly the same as were leaked in a training document earlier this week: a 7” screen, which gives the device its name; a front-facing 1.2MP camera, but no dedicated back-facing one; a 1280x800 IPS display; 1GB of RAM; Wi-Fi and Bluetooth availability; and a Nvidia Tegra 3 chip, enabling the quad-core processor which is, increasingly, becoming standard in top-end tablet and Smartphones. As you might expect from the size, the Nexus 7 is intended to counterpoint Amazon and their Kindle / Kindle Fire devices, which currently dominate the cheaper end of the tablet market – a clever marketing decision by Google, as it doesn’t tread on Apple’s feet by challenging the high-end tablet supremacy of the iPad. Nexus 7 is reportedly going to ship with Android 4.1, Jelly Bean, pre-installed: which brings us neatly to Google’s next announcement! The Jelly Bean OS was officially announced as an incremental improvement to Android’s current OS, Ice Cream Sandwich. The largest new feature introduced is codenamed ‘Project Butter’, and is essentially software intended to improve Android hardware performance. Project Butter produces smoother animations, and improves touchscreen input recognition, as well as cutting down the speed on load times significantly. Google also managed to streamline their proprietary search interface by introducing a new search interface, which they call ‘cards’. Cards are intended to split up information into digestible and attractive snippets; for example, if you entered a number of appointments for July 25^th and then searched for July 25^th on your Smartphone, all of your appointments might be segregated by time. Or if you searched for a weather forecast, the display could be segregated into multiple cards displaying temperature, whether or not it is raining, barometric pressure, etc. Google have introduced this card featured alongside a polished-up version of their voice interface software, Google Assistant. Though it doesn't yet have the sheen of Siri, Google Assistant is fast approaching the time when it will be competitive with Apple software – and the combination of clean card interface/vocal interaction offers an intuitive user interface light-years ahead of anything possible with Ice Cream Sandwich. The remainder of Jelly Bean’s innovations were largely incremental; changes like a polished-up home-screen, a superior camera application, Google Beam software to Bluetooth photographs and other media back and forth, and several other interesting utilities. Finally, the Nexus Q. Though the Nexus Q was unveiled as Project Tungsten at I/O 2011 - and preliminarily linked to Android@Home, Google’s controversial plan to interconnect home appliances like cars, TVs and lights and have your Android Smartphone act as a ‘universal remote’ controlling them all – it was largely forgotten in the wake of other Google successes, or overshadowed completely by rumours of the Nexus 7. It was a real surprise for the Mobile Madhouse team when this spherical device was pulled out on stage. Essentially, the Nexus Q is a home media device: a black sphere with a built-in amplifier, which can wirelessly access music and play both music and video when hooked up to different devices. It’s intended to act as a gateway to Google Play, their online content distribution service, and streams music direct from the Cloud. When we predicted Cloud storage potential in Google’s future, we didn't quite have this in mind! Streaming hubs have existed before, however. The main innovation of the Nexus Q lies in its manufacture – it is officially the first piece of hardware to be manufactured in-house by Google’s own design team. Though Google have always excelled at creating software (their open-source Android is adopted by companies as disparate as Motorola, Samsung and HTC), their true test has always been matching competitors like Microsoft, Amazon and Apple in the hardware stakes. But if the sleek and stylish sheik of the Nexus Q sphere is anything to go by, Google have nothing to worry about – they’ve passed the design test with flying colours, creating a product that Apple themselves would be proud to call their own. Though, with a price tag of $300 ($200 more than Apple TV, Apple’s version of a media streaming hub), it remains to be seen how many consumers will adopt the Nexus Q in the long-run. So that’s Google’s I/O Conference in a nutshell – for now, at least. Its unlikely Google will be revealing any new hardware or software over the next two days, but it’s eminently possible that they’ll lay out their plans for the future, or spend their available time convincing developers of the boons of creating applications for the Android OS. We here at Mobile Madhouse can’t wait to see what they come up with next!

It seems like a very long time since Apple’s last Worldwide Developers Conference. Since the 2011 summit, the company has seen a seismic shift in its operations; chief among the upheavals was the stepping down of CEO Steve Jobs (who later died as a result of long-term pancreatic cancer), and his subsequent replacement by Tim Cook - the man Jobs had previously appointed as day-to-day manager of Apple, during his periodic absences. Though many thought that Apple might flounder and fail without its iconic leader at the helm, the brief dip in stock that marked Jobs’ death turned out to be a blip on the radar of their fortunes: their profits have went from strength to strength since, with the iPhone 4S (released on October 14^th in the US and UK) their most profitable Smartphone to date. In terms of expanding their market, though, the 2012 WWDC is expected to mark an even greater upswing in Apple’s fortunes. There are a number of announcements that industry insiders expect Cook to debut at the annual keynote (the central event, and the one which always garners the most media attention). Virtually the entire range of Macs are expected to receive upgrades: the MacBook Air, Pro, and iMac are all slated for update. In addition, we can virtually guarantee the debut of the iOS 6; and a grand unveiling of the most recent OS X upgrade, named Mountain Lion, is practically guaranteed, if you look at the plethora of advertisements that have arisen in the interim. Speculated features are largely expected to counterpoint similar ones in Google Android, including “Mail VIPs” (counterpart to Gmail’s “priority inbox”, which marks e-mails from specifically determined ‘important’ people) and “iCloud Tabs”, which will show which Safari tabs you have simultaneously opened across multiple devices, like your MacBook and iPad. However, despite the customary buzz, there’s no guarantee that WWDC 2012 will mark the grand unveiling of Apple’s most highly-anticipated device, the new iPhone. While it would fall into line with Apple’s ordinary market release cycle, the iPhone 4S bucked the trend when it was released in autumn – it wouldn’t surprise us if that marked Apple’s new release schedule, meaning we could be waiting months for an announcement in that area. Besides, Apple certainly has enough on its plate with the new iOS and OS X announcements: it would be packing in an awful lot of information (even by Apple standards) to reveal the speculated iPhone 5, too. Keep in mind, though, that all of this information is pure speculation, based on Apple’s customary track record at events of this calibre, and our observations of their market expansion – we could be entirely off-base. Like you, we’ll just have to wait and see what Tim Cook pulls out of the bag today!

The yearly Apple Worldwide Developers Conference is always an event than engenders excitement, but this year things are set to be shook up harder than ever before, courtesy of a little device called the iPhone 5 – or, if Apple’s recent naming scheme holds true, “The New iPhone”. But despite Apple releasing their schedule for the event yesterday (with a couple of conspicuous, eyebrow-raising gaps…), there’s been no mention whatsoever of the elusive iPhone 5. They’re remaining extremely tight-lipped about the latest device; in fact, Apple representatives have thus far claimed the chief draws of the 2012 WWDC to be the unveiling of the iOS 6 and their new OS X, christened (or maybe just codenamed) “Mountain Lion”. With that said, the annual centrepiece of the event is the keynote speech, which was traditionally the domain of their late CEO, Steve Jobs – the image of him nonchalantly unveiling new hardware on-stage in his ubiquitous turtleneck sweater is practically synonymous with Apple as a whole. Despite his death late last year, new CEO Tim Cook is expected to take up his mantle on stage during the keynote, scheduled at 10am PDT on Monday the 11^th of June.   With more than 100 sessions to attend, it’s certainly going to be a busy event - which is why Apple has cleverly released a free application for the purpose of tracking session and lab attendance, provide dynamic feedback, and see where the disparate sessions are occurring, ensuring that attendees are able to manage their time at the event more efficiently. Given the power of Apple’s marketing, many of the attendees are guaranteed to possess iPhones, iPads, or even iPod devices with internet capability: they have effectively parlayed their marketing brand into a tool to aid their consumer base. Smart marketing has always been Apple’s real stock-in-trade, though. Whether dominating the online music business with their wildly successful iTunes software, or effortlessly cracking open the Smartphone market with the ubiquitous, omnipresent iPhone, Apple’s global brand is now of the strongest in the world – they trade on their image of minimalism and professionalism, but more than that, they trade on the image of the Apple lifestyle; iLife, if you will. (Or perhaps “LiFE”?) We can speculate on the many things that may be unveiled at the WWDC, but one thing’s for sure – the true centrepiece, keynote speech or no keynote speech, is going to be the way in which Apple unveils their products, not the products themselves.