Google's Growing Love For the Mac

An anonymous reader writes "While browsing the 2007 Macworld speaker bios, I found an interesting Google+Mac piece of news. Looks like Google has appointed the famous Amit Singh in charge of their Mac Engineering (also confirmed on Singh's website). While Google generally seems to lag behind in Safari compatibility they have been offering some native Mac software. We earlier heard Google CEO Eric Schmidt's joining Apple's board of directors. Then following Microsoft MacBU's lead, Google started their own Mac Blog a few weeks earlier. Google's jobs website also lists several Mac openings. If Singh's technical expertise and history of OS X wizardry any indication, we can hope for some cool Mac software from Google. Also wondering if all this is just Google's response to Apple's market growth or maybe a more serious partnership is coming? ;-)"

Comments

Sounds like a good thing to me.

[Zarniwoop_Editor]

Anytime we get wider acceptance of platforms other than Microsoft it is a good thing. It's not that I'm anti-microsoft so much as I prefer to have choices when it comes to computing platforms. Any effort made by companies to support more than just microsoft properly is a good thing in my books.

Re:Sounds like a good thing to me.

[jellomizer]

Indeed it is. But I think Google will do more to help this by making more tools Web Based then making Applicataions that run on different OS's While it is good that they are doing that. Making more Platform Independant Web Application Will do much more making all OS irelevlant and people can choose what platform and OS based on their personal needs and less of well this App only run on windows so I need windows.

Re:Sounds like a good thing to me.

[b0s0z0ku]

Web apps are a great thing - if you have reliable, very fast, Internet access 24/7. I suspect the killer app is some hybrid of web and client apps. The data would get still stored locally. Not everyone is comfortable with losing access to data whenever the net goes down, plus the privacy implications and the fact that local storage is faster. As far as the applications themselves, they'll be in Java or some other platform-independent language, but they'll be cached locally for the most part. Again, you wouldn't want to be stuck with a brick when the your net access breaks. Perhaps updates and seldom-used features would download on demand from the net, but things like MS Office more or less do that already.

Going to all web apps would be going back to the mainframe/dumb terminal days of the 1970s. It would negate most of the advantages of owning a PC.

-b.

Re:Sounds like a good thing to me.

[b0s0z0ku]

I think for the average user, web based applications are an ideal solution. Most of the "advantages" of the personal computer have been a disaster for the average joe - it puts them in the pilot's seat when the best place for him is really back in the passenger area. Here's how I see it, with Gmail as the example:

I'm still advocating local caching of applications and data, at least for frequently used stuff. It's grossly inefficient to keep downloading the same data over and over again. There's also stuff (like financial records) that should not be stored anywhere but under the control of the owner. I don't trust never-delete-anything Google that much with my personal data. The problem of hard drive failure can be dealt with via smaller (1.5?") drives running on a Raid 1 scheme. Yes, even on a laptop. Or perhaps automated software that does backups to flash disk...

Also, fast wireless Internet access for laptops isn't that ubiquitous just yet. In urban and suburban areas, yes, but elsewhere you often revert to a slower mode or have no access at all. Even many tunnels for trains and buses still don't have cell service.

For enterprises, it makes a lot more sense to use a bunch of dumb terminals and keeping all the application logic and data where it can be centrally managed.

Agreed for within a business, depending on how critical it is to have some ability to do work 24/7. Intranets are very reliable and fast these days. Not so the internet, IMHO. HOWEVER, with dumb terminals you're introducing a single point of failure (the network and the server room) that will render multiple machines incapable of use if it fails. Not so with apps running or at least cached locally.

-b.

Re:Sounds like a good thing to me.

[Saint Fnordius]

Reliability isn't the issue as much as exposure: after all, bank vaults offer better security, but some documents you'd rather entrust to your private safe instead of having to contact the bank every time, no matter how secure.

I think the biggest problem/complaint people have against net storage versus local storage is the ability of others to access the data. There are some things you trust to store outside of your home like money, since the bank guarantees better security with tight access controls. They have a history of less risk than a more personal solution. It makes sense to trust them rather than your mattress.

Online info storage, though, more resembles a train station locker. Sure, you may be the only one with the safe combination, but it's stored in a public place and you really don't know how easy it is to pick the lock. And since the location experiences a lot of traffic passing through, you don't know who could be eavesdropping/reading over your shoulder.

I think that web-based tools will migrate more to personal/intranet versions for this reason. I can run my LAMP tools on my PowerBook and access them locally, and in fact I already do this. Companies would love to use (for example) Google's office tools on their own servers, and not have to trust Google all the time. It's all about controlling who has a copy of the data, about maintaining privacy/secrecy.

Re:Sounds like a good thing to me.

[IAmTheDave]

For me, a single redundant app is better than iPhoto's incessant copying of my photos into it's own directory structure. Talk about redundancy.

Re:Come on, what about Linux

[jellomizer]

Linux is so Early Decade come on it is the End of the Decade get with the times OS X is the new champion.

makes sense

[not already in use]

Mac's don't enjoy a huge portion of the market share when looking at the overall picture, but when you look at some key professional markets -- music, video, and web design and programming, Mac's are actually pretty popular. Only makes sense that Google, who has catered unconditionally to developers would do such a thing. Not to mention, it just makes sense to support a platform that is in direct competition with Google's own competition, that being Microsoft.

Re:makes sense

[pivo]

anywho, Macs don't have any advantage in the field of programming, seeing as C# is fairly popular today, which is written with Microsoft's Visual Studio.

Hey, that's the stupidest comment I've seen in days. Congratulations!

Re:Yes, but where's Google Desktop?

[saha]

That would seem really redundant. One could argue Apple's Spotlight is better than Google Desktop because it is more extensible to multiple file formats (allows developers to write plug-ins). Spotlight was indexing more file formats before Google Desktop first version. Spotlight will index a document up to 10MB, Google indexes only the first 5,000 words in a file, while MSN indexes one megabyte. Also Dominic Giampaolo who created BFS for BeOS, shortly worked in Google and now Apple developing Spotlight to work on top of HFS+. I like Picasa on Windows, because it is light weight and fast, but Google probably realizes that iPhoto does a decent job. There are features on both sides that I like, but iPhoto on the Mac is good enough and probably why Google won't have Picasa until iPhoto becomes a slow and lumber behemoth program.

it's all about TV ads and Google PC

[boxlight]

The way I see it, Google wants to own the multi-billion dollar TV ad revenue market. And Apple is on the verve of owning the way TV is distributed from the internet to the living room.

Google + Apple is natch.

Additionally, Google has been long-rumored to want a "Google PC" -- if I was google I would OEM Mac hardware and ship it with "mom friendly" software that just does email, photos&tv, and web browsing software clients that only run full screen.

boxlight

Re:it's all about TV ads and Google PC

[nine-times]

Additionally, Google has been long-rumored to want a "Google PC" -- if I was google I would OEM Mac hardware and ship it with "mom friendly" software that just does email, photos&tv, and web browsing software clients that only run full screen.

If that were the case, if they just wanted the hardware, wouldn't it make more sense for Google to go to Asus or whoever it is (I forget) who actually manufactures the Apple hardware? The only reason to go to Apple is if they don't want a "Google PC" but want OSX running Google software.

Re:Google Loves Apple

[0racle]

Have you thought that they always show Macs when they take cameras in because the Macs look better and the 'image' of the Mac fits closer to the image they would like to project of the work environment?

Re:Come on, what about Linux

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Google isn't a charity it is a business. How would this help Google make one cent of income?

Companies regularly make strategic moves that make them money in the long term, via an indirect route. Google throwing their support and development behind a desktop Linux distro could do a number of things. It could provide a stable target for other developers. It could promote a commoditization of the OS, and thus remove MS's largest weapon against them. It could save Google money internally by providing a cheaper platform for their employees internally.

I'm not saying it is a good idea, or the best option available to them, but there are lots of reasons it might be.

Re:Sensible

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Do you mind elaborating how exactly Microsoft is leveraging its monopoly to defeat Google?

Bundling IE is the major method, and then what they include and do not include in IE.

The only concrete example I see here is that they do not implement standards in IE - but pray, I ask you, does Firefox fully implement all the standards?

Well, Firefox does implement standards in general. Every time I've followed the W3C spec it has worked in Firefox (and Safari and Opera, etc.) but it has not worked in IE. IE implements about 50% of the standards while other browsers are close to 90% I'd guess. No one is perfect, but IE versus the industry shows a huge difference.

All of this, however, is academic. Firefox is not bundled with a monopoly and what works and what is included and what is broken does not help the Firefox team take over some other market. Unless you have a monopoly, you can't use that monopoly as leverage. If Firefox does not implement some feature, it is just as easy to use Opera. If IE fails to implement something, because it is bundled in Windows, most people will not switch because everything else is harder. It requires education, knowledge, and technical expertise to download, install, and run any browser but IE.

Last time I checked, Firefox 2 did not pass the ACID2 test (if that's any measure of standards).

The ACID2 test is edge cases for the most part, not a test of how comprehensively a given browser adheres to standards. It is like shining a laser on a mirror to see how reflective it is. Firefox and Opera and Safari are all consumer grade mirrors and the ACID2 test is useful for determining which is best. IE is like a piece of aluminum and using the ACID2 test on it is a waste of time.

IE7 is a great improvement over IE6 and an indication that Microsoft is listening, and doing something to change themselves.

I auto-generate some pages. I wrote the code based upon the spec. When I wrote it, I tested it. It worked fine in every single browser I could find, except IE, which completely failed because they did not implement most of CSS2 and any of XHTML that was not coincidentally HTML. When IE7 came out I tested it too. It completely failed to render as well, and added an additional random bug. From reading the IE dev teams comments it seems they're up to implementing about 50% of CSS2 and still haven't implemented any XHTML. They fixed some bugs, but are nowhere near implementing the standards the rest of the industry has had for many, many years.

My point is that with so many eyes watching Microsoft at any given moment and at their every move (DOJ, EU, *every* software company affected by Microsoft), this monopoly thing is getting old.

I agree, MS should stop abusing their monopoly or the courts should actually take meaningful action against them. MS won't stop though, because they're making a fortune breaking the law. The courts won't act though, because MS is one of the largest contributors to both the Republican and Democratic parties and our government is absurdly corrupt.

Perhaps when making this statement, you should provide concrete examples on how exactly that is happening.

I did and I've elaborated upon them, but I find explaining antitrust abuse tedious. I've explained it on Slashdot a hundred times by now, but the vast majority of the people who respond have no understanding of the law or the purpose of the law. Somehow they missed that chapter in Econ 101. It isn't really all that complex, but I'm sick of explaining it over and over again. Five minutes with wikipedia and a reasonably intelligent person can see the obvious abuses from Microsoft and why they are detrimental/illegal. And yet, every time I post about MS's monopoly abuse someone has to respond with an analogy and those analogies always (and I do mean always) reference the actions of a company that is not a monopoly. Maybe these people are astroturfers, but I only have so much time.

Even your post, you compare IE to Firefox, but IE is bundled with Windows, which is a monopoly, while the Firefox team has no monopoly on anything. Why people can't understand how this changes things is beyond my understanding.

Re:What's wrong here

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

It's better than Windows, but that's like saying that being raped in the ass is better than being raped in the ass and the mouth at the same time.

That would make Linux being raped in the ass and the mouth, but it keeps slipping out of the mouth and jabbing you in the eye.

Yeah the OS X GUI sucks, except compared to all the other options.

Mac Apps, Partition software, etc

[green pizza]

You might be interested in iPartition. It's not free, but it's more flexible than /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility. There are others, but this is the only one that quickly comes to mind. Don't bother asking Powerquest/Symantic to make a Mac version of Partiton Magic, ports of existing Windows utilities generally suck on other platforms.
http://www.coriolis-systems.com/iPartition.php

As for other Mac Applications, there are several websites you can check out for various Mac apps. I have never found a shortage of Mac (or Linux) applications, once I avoided the pitfall of finding a "port" or "perfect replacement" for my favorite Windows applications. Things are a little different in the Mac and Linux world, so you might need to find similar, but significantly different applications to meet your needs.

Check out:
http://www.apple.com/downloads/macosx/
http://www.versiontracker.com/macosx/
http://www.macorchard.com/
http://www.macupdate.com/
And if you want games:
http://aspyr.com/product/product_listing
http://www.destineerstudios.com/macsoftgames/mac_l isting.html
http://www.feral.co.uk/
http://www.ambrosiasw.com/games/all.html
http://www.pangeasoft.net/index2.html
http://www.freeverse.com/
http://www.apple.com/games/
http://www.macgamefiles.com/

many google employees seems to be mac users

[quisxt]

It seems like every other Google employee I meet is using a Mac laptop. That probably has something to do with it.

Re:Macs...

[green pizza]

Macs were so sick of getting there ass kicked they made a good OS.I grew up with Macs sucking hardcore. I always believed that a mac was flashy and didn't do anything. My girlfriends brother in law showed me Mac OSX and it's so amazing it shouldn't count as a Mac OS.

That's because Mac OS X is more like NeXTSTEP 5.x than it is Mac OS 10.x.

Steve Jobs and his engineers took over when Apple bought NeXT* in 1997. First step was damage control, next step was marketing, and now we're finally seeing the sweet products and solid engineering. Apple was great in the 1980s, but that old hardware sucked on newer versions of Mac OS by the early 1990s, and the new machines then weren't much better. By 1996 the Mac OS world was a hellufa mess.

*Some people say NeXT bought Apple for negative $400M :)

iTMS + Ads = money, lots of mony!

[bWareiWare.co.uk]

We all now how hard Google wants to dominate video Ads, the way they dominate text. (to clarify I mean, adds appearing IN video content, not video format adds appearing in text content)

They are talking to the TV companies who currently control video distribution. But why tie yourself to yesterdays companies, it is iTMS (and possible YouTube) that are likely to control video content soon.

Google have already realised that keyword searching isn't a killer 'product' for video content, people just don't want to plug keyboards into their TV's. So the are looking at other ways to enter and dominate that ad market.

What surprises me is Google's (public) lack of contact with the big games companies. Obviously in-game advertising has significant potential, but it is also likely that the next gen winner will control a significant portion of the 'living room'. Why should a Blue-ray disc force you to sit though last months trailers when it is being played on a PS3 sitting on a nice fat broadband connection. Live may be for downloadable games now, but what would stop Microsoft using that network to push video (to your TV and/or Zune).

Mac = Google PC

[wandazulu]

I think the Mac really is the "Google PC" that has been rumored. The key thing is that I'll bet it will be more a symbiotic partnership instead of a re-badged Mac; the next version of OSX could ship with the entire suite of available Google Mac apps, Google says that the Mac works best for their software, maybe new apps and features that are not available on the Windows version, etc. I could also imagine .Mac taking on a more "Google" hue, with docs written in Writely or whatever available for sync on .Mac.

Even though their stuff is essentially web-based, Google still needs a delivery platform. As others have suggested, it's possible that the killer-apps of the future will be both on-and-offline and thus having both Apple and Google working on both sides of the equation, together they will provide enough benefit to take on Microsoft, who has proven time and again that they want the playground for themselves, alone.

If a Google/Apple partnership works out, they have a very real potential of hitting at both of Microsoft's profitable products: Windows and Office, upon which the MS empire rests.

Wither indie devs already bridging the gap?

[saddino]

If Singh's technical expertise and history of OS X wizardry any indication, we can hope for some cool Mac software from Google.

Although Singh's hiring is definitely a step in the right direction concerning Google's commitment to the Mac, it's been a long time coming. In the meantime, independent Mac developers have already started writing tools and utilities that bridge the gap between OS X and Google. Just a few examples (the first being a shameless plug, natch):

• Amnesty Generator – converts Google web page hosted gadgets into Dashboard widgets.
• Google Maps Plugin – integrates Apple Address Book with Google Maps and Google Earth.
• Dashalytics – gives you quick access to prettified Google Analytics stats in a widget.
• Spanning Sync – syncs iCal with Google Calendar.

I suppose the real question is: does Google's newfound enthusiasm for OS X simply mean rewriting all these existing tools in-house?

NeXTSTEP 8

[DECS]

You are forgetting that NeXTSTEP has improved at Apple. It was at v 4 when Apple bought NeXT in the final days of 1996.

Rhapsody, 10.0, 10.1 = v 5
10.2 = v 6
10.3 = v 7
10.4 Tiger = v 8

10.5 Leopard = v 9

Mac OS X gets the ten from its legacy of Mac versions leading up to it, but Apple uses the NeXTSTEP version numbering system to version Darwin, the core OS. The major version of ten indicates the version of the new platform (i.e. Tiger's Darwin is v 8, and todays' 10.4.8 is Darwin 8.8).

So when you see the version number system for Mac OS X, every number has meaning:

Tiger 10.4.8=

10th generation of Mac system software
4th major revision of this generation's platform, and the n revision of NeXTSTEP + 4 = 8th generation of NeXT's NS based platform.
8th minor revision.

It's all about iTV and Google Video Services

[iendedi]

Apple's new iTV gizmo coming out in January will be able to feed google and youtube video to your television in a nice handy way. I think the idea is to bring a new age of video to the masses via google and Apple.

This is the endgame that I think they are aiming for.

Is this a troll?

[Slur]

You are factually wrong on several points:

Single-user mode: Very easy, just hold down COMMAND-S at startup. With applejack installed repairs can be very quick. In a pinch archive-and-installing the system gets you back to where you were very quickly, preserving settings.

Context menus: Actually Mac uses them all over the place now, and they are comprehensive.

Mac Consistency: You're completely wrong about application behavior. For all applications, not just the Finder, only the clicked-on window comes to the front. An application that uses PALETTES (like Photoshop) shows them when one of its windows is active. The key-combination to hide apps is COMMAND-H for all apps that don't override it for legacy reasons. Adobe apps traditionally use Cmd-H for "Extras" so they change the hide key to COMMAND-CONTROL-H. In any case, you can always COMMAND-OPTION-CLICK any Dock icon to hide all other apps. Icons appearing under the Dock: It's so easy to avoid. Put the Dock on the side of the screen and make it smaller for the best experience.

Linux is getting better all the time though, I agree with that.

Re:All for it.

[macs4all]

No, there's absolutely NO support for PIC programming in OS X:

http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.20/20. 02/PICMicrocontroller/index.html

http://polarfront.org/archives/000537.html

http://blog.paddlefish.net/archives/2004/12/usb_pi ckit_tool.html

http://robrohan.com/projects/PIConOSX/

http://macslash.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/22/011123 8

http://www.teammojo.org/PICkit/pickit1.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GPUTILS

http://lawlor.cs.uaf.edu/~olawlor/projects/2003/mi crochip/

http://www.gnupic.org/

A new hope

[megaditto]

We have been looking at this all the wrong way. Microsoft is branded an Evil Empire while Google is exhaled, hence the hoopla about Google expansion (whoopie-doo, OSX can run Goog13). Perhaps it is time to consider the alternative?

Consider that Bill Gates puts his money where his mouth is in terms of giving the largest private donations to fight AIDS and poverty, not buying up party planes and grabass photoshoots like certain individuals in charge of a certain search enGine.

Secondly, Microsoft seems to be on the right track regarding user privacy (having been bitten in the ass by their prior lapses), while Google told us they will retain our personal search and email data indefinitely, and do with it whatever they like (and are proud of that).

Thirdly, Microsoft is waking up to the impact their busness practices have on people: they considered withdrawing from China if the current police-state policies persist there. Google, on the other hand, is happily doing business with a dictatorship that jails people for voicing unpopular opinions and executes tens of thousands of Chinese to harvest their body organs. Google has no problem going out of its way to filter the search results to please the Big Brother. MSN tries not to do that.

Wake up people. Google-the-Rebel is long gone; a new Evil Empire has emerged.

Re:Google Loves Apple

[kchrist]

When my SO started work there she was told that they'd be ordering her a Powerbook, followed by "unless you want to use Windows".

So yes, at least some parts of the company not only prefer Macs but use them by default.