Slashdot Mirror
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
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.
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."
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?
Neither do individuals.
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...
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
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?
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.
At least they can spell.
Oh yes?? You do know that Google's own name is a misspelling of a very large number? Seldom has a pedant been so completely and utterly wrong.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
A handful of them may be rotten to the core, but most of them are good.
What is "good" is relative depending on culture/religion. The hijackers who flew a plane into the twin towers thought they were doing good. A good portion of the world would probably disagree, but "good" can't be measured by popular vote either. From my (obviously pessimistic) point of view, a large number of people are NOT good, and there are very few who are. Again, just my opinion, but I agree with GP.
All the world's a CPU, and all the men and women merely AI agents
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.
They could get a trademark on Google.
oh yeah??
If you have a better source, the internet wants to know.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();