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Google Leaves App Inventor In Limbo
theodp writes "Google took some heat for pulling the plug on App Inventor for Android, but all was good with the announcement that App Inventor would live on at MIT. But try to run the App Inventor Java test today and you'll be told that 'as of December 31, 2011, Google ended support of App Inventor', even though the Google-funded Center for Mobile Learning at the MIT Media Lab won't be able to provide a large scale App Inventor service for general public access until 'sometime in the first quarter of 2012.' Until then, schools offering App Inventor classes and others who desire continued access to the easy-to-use mobile development environment are advised to try to run their own App Inventor Services on Google App Engine using MIT's test JAR files, a seemingly daunting task, especially considering App Inventor's target audience. Any thoughts on why Google would unplug the old system before the new one was ready?"
They're evil?
rewriting history since 2109
Google truly has their head up their ass. They are reminding me of Microsoft more and more each day as one bone-headed maneuver after another is executed. [Disclaimer: I'm a Google fan boy.]
I object to power without constructive purpose. --Spock
should be the usual suspect.
Include flamebait targeting Apple here
The moment I read the headline, I got a mental image of "Google" scientists playing limbo with some guy and when they had him bent over backwards, they trapped him. Sorry... that's just weird... sorry about that.
Greed & Power.
Corporations don't do anything that isn't based on one or the other.
Banjo - The more I know about Windoze, the more I love *nix
This is not surprising at all. What is surprising is that they gave advanced notice. Google doesn't lay down any timelines or plans for any of their schtuff. They invent it, put it out there and at some point, turn it off. How can you expect them to keep things running when they seldom even write documentation for the stuff they have out there? If they do write documentation it is released way after the release of new features and often right before a new release nullifies that documentation.
Google's view is it's ours so we will or won't support it at our whim.
Because they don't give a shit about app inventor!
I don't mean this as criticism of Google, but it's a major company whose interest is making money. Something like this is pretty much irrelevant to its operations. Some other priority -- internally or externally -- got in the way of what they were doing, so they pulled the plug. Those who think Google (or any other company) does things just to be helpful are living in fantasy land. This is what's wrong with relying on free services. If a company can make money by offering you a service, that service will continue. If it can't -- and it some other interest gets in the way -- your service will be gone. If you truly care about something, pay for it from a provider who has a financial interest in keeping your business.
heh - slash should grab^Hlicense that grandpa simpson cartoon clip where he yells at the cloud.
(shakes fist) "damn you, cloud!"
each time I see someone trusting a 'cloud service' I think of that simpsons image. can't help it anymore, so might as well just associate any cloud-based story with that icon. text is actually optional as the image tells all you really need to know.
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I don't know about other people but I'm quite hopeful about app inventor. This software could be aimed at someone like me and when I used it I liked it, but was thinking it would be much better if I could see the code as well. With the code being open this can be added, It's tough for those using it for now, Google has let them down.
It seems obvious to me, that they are blatantly ignoring your sense of entitlement.
How dare Google for having the unbridled audacity to not keep their free experimental service and software project fully maintained and supported 100% of the time after donating it to the MIT Media Lab, until the Media Lab was able to deploy their service.
Sure, it could be a bit frustrating if you were a heavy user of it, but at the same time is it really fair to criticize them for not being quite generous enough and on your terms?
Could it be bevause you see it so often ??
It's a shame that AppInventor is having a rocky transition, and I'm definitely hopeful that it will emerge intact over at MIT.
In the meantime, I'd recommend that teachers check out Bootstrap [www.BootstrapWorld.org] for their classes. It's a full-blown curriculum that teaches kids to program their own videogames using *purely algebraic* concepts. It's a nice way of reinforcing math skills though programming, and it lives entirely in the cloud! Anyone with a web browser can write, run and share programs with friends, and the curriculum is polished enough for even 5th and 6th graders to start hacking.
Best of all, it's 100% free, and requires absolutely nothing to download or install.
Because App 'Inventor' is a pile of steamy crap?
No, really. Designing a mobile application is a tad more complex than just throwing together a few storyboards. And those apps that do fine just by somebody throwing together a few storyboards are simply not worth having.
Maybe these "schools" who offered "classes" in App Inventor should first have someone on hand who knows enough about computers to get the service up and running.
And maybe, just MAYBE they should have had that all set up already, considering they're (presumably) charging money for the class.
What's next classes on Minecraft? Oh wait...
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Google has been pulling the plug on a lot of their projects lately. This will make me think twice about alternatives when starting new projects on the cloud, especially if they are based on "free" services. There is hidden price there, which can hit you in the less expected moment...
Oh wait, this was a different story whining about how Google was dropping a FREE service. If this is indicative of the hot, daily Google news we get here, is there some way of filtering it out? Or better yet, is there a more succinct way of teaching people that Google drops projects left and right seemingly on a whim (i.e., business case) and should not be trusted with anything important (like the coursework for the Spring class you'll be teaching).
This post was generated by a Cadre of Uber Monkeys for Monkey-Man2000 (603495).
And those apps that do fine just by somebody throwing together a few storyboards are simply not worth having.
If this were true, then "Google Leaves App Inventor In Limbo" would be a non-story. For example, The Register wouldn't have reported on it. Let me put it another way: Even if having the "hello world" type apps that beginning computer science students come up with are not worth having, isn't the ability to create them worth having so that said students can eventually proceed to make worthwhile apps?
Come on guys, it's over. The whole Google culture of "wow! neato! invent! explore!" is coming to an end. Google's growing up and their Legos and Lincoln Logs are slowly being put in the back of some closet where they'll soon be forgotten. It may have been fun while it lasted but don't think for a second that Google axing apps that you like but aren't profitable will continue on in the future.
I'm honestly expecting them to pull the plug on Google+ in the next two years if there isn't an upswing.
Assume that any Google service that doesn't have ads is going away. They've discontinued everything from the Google search API to Google Scholar. Wikipedia has a full list, from Google Aardvark to Google Web Accelerator. Most of the no-revenue services are already gone.
Seriously. Microsoft and Google can't seem to stop abandoning new technologies. Oh yeah, they'll continue to be "supported" (wink, wink). Sure makes me want to invest my time in the latest whiz-bang language/API/Framework/etc.
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Google announced the dropping of App Inventor months ago. And it was announce in August that MIT was taking it over.
http://developers.slashdot.org/story/11/08/16/2048207/app-inventor-continues-life-at-mit
So, why is the story about Google dropping a service, and not about MIT properly preparing their service?
Especially if classes were being prepared for this, you would think that MIT would have gotten things up and running in 3 months. Or, were they just relying on Google to keep it up for another year?
seemingly daunting task, especially considering App Inventor's target audience
What the fuck is a school trying to teach the use of App Inventor for if the teachers can't do something as basic as set it up?
It might not be entirely straightforward but pretending to teach people how to write software while knowing fuck all about it yourself is disingenuous and borderline fraudulent.
Forgive my utter lack of sympathy.
Relevant: http://appinventoredu.mit.edu/faq-app-inventor-transition-mit
I've been involved with the App Inventor community for a while; anyone who has been using AAI has known this time was coming. The hard deadline was set by Google a while back, the target from MIT was to get an analogue to the appinventorbeta.com service up and running by 12/31. They're a little short of that goal for a few important reasons.
Most importantly, the original App Inventor engine (at google) ran on top of google-proprietary internals. That is to say, it was not possible to spin out the App Inventor backend (which handles building and packaging an APK file from the blocks program) onto MIT servers without doing what amounted to a complete rewrite to enable it to run on App Engine. Google supported this effort and handed it off to MIT, who have been working hard to get an up-and-running system ASAP. As for right now:
If you absolutely rely on App Inventor, you can now run your own parallel instance of the backend by deploying the system as linked in the OP. This works nicely, because now the system is completely under your control (and you can hack it if you choose). This is useful for people teaching classes that use AAI as a platform (as I will be doing later this semester), but isn't so great for hobby programmers.
If you want something that runs like the old appinventorbeta.com site, allowing you to write apps but not have to worry about putting up your own backend server, wait a few weeks. There will be something up on appinventoredu.mit.edu fairly soon.
The reason why this transition is taking so long is nothing so nefarious as Google or MIT being evil or bad citizens. It's simple, really: there's not that many people actually doing coding for the project, and there's been a lot of coding to do. It'll be out soon. Patience, young apprentices.
App Inventor isn't going away, and as a matter of fact, the list of new features and useful extensions that are targeted for the coming few years is exciting and compelling.
google is search and advertising. They also present a useful webmail service, since it has good search built-in.
All the rest is their omnipotence delirium.
Btw I think google peaked already. They are launching into this newish area of cloud computing, virtualized apps, SaaS, which in many cases is not in the users' interest, and this will slowly come to bite them in the ass.
Googlers can do search, and they can do advertising right. All the other crap they are getting into only gets them bad karma (and I bet huge costs with little return).
if people spent as much time fixing bugs as they do ranting on slashdot...
Bitten once again.
yes i know it was free, and its Google's right.. but it still shows that you cant trust something you don't have in your own grubby little hands.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Is that App Inventor is the brainchild of Professor Hal Abelson, not exactly somebody who deserves another slap in the face from Google.
Don't know who Professor Abelson is? Do some reading, kids.
you had me at #!
*cough* Google's App Inventer was never able to really build true applications anyway (the apps can't be submitted to the Android Marketplace and distributed in any way). Plus, there are better alternatives (available right now) for teaching development and easy app creation for Android, iOS, web and plenty more... Illumination Software Creator - http://radicalbreeze.com/
Some "free" brings people in for other services, much like a drug dealer. Or giving away 'free' programing tool kits that only run on your pay cloud. Or 'free' services that are covered in advertisements.
But if its just 'out there' and has no possible revenue source, then its nothing but an experiment and subject to vanish at any moment and should not be relied on.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
1. Google repeats recent history of RIM (who developed WebOS).
2. Google repeats recent history of HP (who bought RIM then killed WebOS ... they keep the RIM patents however!).
3. The IceCreamMan rules Google ... beware the IceCreamMan and his "Bubble" world.
Last time there was a story about App Inventor on Slashdot, I posted a comment that tried to make constructive suggestions about how to improve App Inventor rather than attacking Google, and one of the core App Inventor developers actually contacted me to solicit further suggestions. It was clear that he and the team *did* care about App Inventor, and they, as much as anybody else, thought it sucked that the plug was being pulled. The Googler that contacted me felt passionate about the need to provide a graphical programming environment (not just for Android), but felt that it still hadn't been done right. It was obvious to me that he really wanted to figure out the right way to do this. It was also clear to me that there was a *lot* of work needed to get App Inventor to run on top of non-Google infrastructure, and the team was working really hard to make the handover to MIT smooth -- but they weren't going to drop the ball before they had done the work they needed to do to make sure MIT had what they needed. I suspect that point has arrived, and now the ball is in MIT's court.
The best take on this was from Verity Stobb; characterising this as the 'API du jour'.
Because how many Cat Button Apps does the world need?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=8ADwPLSFeY8
At least if it is with MIT, then some people with brains will be creating somewhat usefull apps.
test message :p why aren't they shown?