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Google Announces Android 4.3, Netflix, New Nexus 7, and Q Successor Chromecast
At a press conference dubbed "Breakfast With Sundar," Google announced two new pieces of hardware and a minor revision to Android. Complete stories and commentary are still coming in, but in the mean time you can skim a liveblog or two
First is the new Nexus 7. The hardware is slightly improved (full HD screen, better graphics, etc.). The specs managed to "leak" hours before the event through Best Buy opening preordering too early. On the software side, they've announced a minor revision to Android, 4.3. It features improved Bluetooth support (including Bluetooth 4.0), OpenGL ES 3.0, enhanced internationalization, enhanced DRM, and multi-user support. The multi-user support looks most exciting: now you can share a tablet with more than one person. One of the features Google focused on was restricted profiles: a device owner can create accounts that e.g. cannot make in-app purchases (Junior won't rack up a $3000 bill again). Bad news: Google is implementing stricter DRM for books and video, locking down the entire video stack. The consolation prize is that Netflix will work on more devices and at 1080p. Also demoed were a new version of Chrome that brings the tablet experience closer to the desktop, improved hangouts, and improved maps. Google also appears to be making a push into gaming, emphasizing tablet-only games that integrate into Google+. In addition to gaming, they have secured deals with five major textbook publishers to sell students presumably DRMed electronic textbooks that can be purchased or rented, enhanced with better search and highlighting (because PDF readers don't support those features already). As usual lately, all of the really nice additions to Android are proprietary and tied to Google services, further eroding the open nature of Android.
Finally, they announced a tiny $35 dongle named Chromecast that appears to be the successor of the Nexus Q. Running Chrome OS, it connects to any HDMI port, finds your Wi-Fi network, and Just Works (tm) for online video. The online and mobile Youtube and Netflix interfaces will allow you to hit a single button and forward the video to your television as well. Google Music streaming to the television is also supported. The Chromecast looks like a handy little device, hopefully it is turns out it can be reflashed. Of course, when using your browser as a remote, all of the commands go through The Cloud. An SDK and more details on the software side of things are slated for release later today, although conspiciously absent on their supported platforms list is GNU/Linux, listing only Chrome OS and Android. Update: 07/24 18:01 GMT by U L : The Chromecast SDK is out, but with an awfully restrictive license that requires written permission from Google to distribute any cast enabled applications, which appears to make it completely incompatible with Free/Open Source software.
Multiple user accounts have been available in Android for ages, this is just some enhancements. Same with sending YouTube and Netflix video from your phone/tablet to your TV - I can do that with my Panasonic Viera and Galaxy S3.
Features being tied to Google services is hardly new either.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
That's all fine and dandy, but what I'm the absolute most stoked about is that action bar is now supported back to API 7 http://developer.android.com/reference/android/support/v7/app/ActionBar.html
With Bluetooth 4.0, hopefully the Wahoo Blue HR can now be supported by runkeeper et al.
Glad I skipped this one.
The thing is $35, and (at least for now) includes 3 free months of Netflix (even for existing subscribers).
That means that if you want a 1080p Netflix box for your TV, this thing costs you $11... that's one heck of a lot cheaper than an AppleTV or Roku.
My parents have been complaining about how ridiculously slow Netflix is on their Samsung bluray player (the streaming works fine, the interface takes forever to load pages), so this might just be their solution...
How would that even work?
If you control the kernel you can have it lie and return whatever signature you want. If it tries to hash something, let it hash a copy of the signed kernel you backed up.
It doesn't matter if the encryption is solid or not. It could be a simple XOR if they wanted to. What matters is that the DMCA makes anyone who fiddles with it a criminal.
More Twoson than Cupertino
Looking at the 7" tablets, it seems like these devices are all quite similar:
All roughly $200. Front and back cameras, vaguely comparable processors. The Nexus has a higher screen resolution than the other two, but lacks the microSD slot that the other two have. The Samsung uses its own Samsung app store, while the Google and Lenovo use the Google Play store. Anything else different?
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Which is already how I play DVDs, so by now I must be a hardened criminal. Making normal people criminals is not good for society.
At this point I should probably just priate media since they don't even want to let me legally play it.
> "I got tired of the whole Google+-ification of every Google product."
Yeah, that got irksome (for me) starting with Picasa.
--- Mercutio was right.
So it streams video over WiFi and is controlled via the cloud. Do we want to start a betting pool on how long till the first hack to override the device and display Goatse.cx on everyone's TVs?
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
...now with tint control!!
.
Prisencolinensinainciusol. Ol Rait!
Details are a bit thin, and will presumably depend on the hardware; but Google has this to say:
"Android also now supports hardware-backed storage for your KeyChain credentials, providing more security by making the keys unavailable for extraction. That is, once keys are in a hardware-backed key store (Secure Element, TPM, or TrustZone), they can be used for cryptographic operations but the private key material cannot be exported. Even the OS kernel cannot access this key material. While not all Android-powered devices support storage on hardware, you can check at runtime if hardware-backed storage is available by calling KeyChain.IsBoundKeyAlgorithm()."
They don't explicitly say how the media DRM features are handled; but it would certainly appear that they've been busy supporting higher-than-kernel hardware mechanisms that would certainly have the capability to verify the system state and freak out if filthy 'owners' have the temerity to mess with the device.
(Google has also owned Widevine for some time now, a company that is studiously unhelpful about the details; but which, according to its patent portfolio and past press releases, has been doing set-top-box DRM for a while now, with a long list of chipset vendors on the client list. They have a lot of chatter about a 'Virtual Smartcard', which sounds software-like; but 'software' could include firmware baked into a system well below the level of being manipulated by the kernel, short of a successful attack against the firmware.)
That sounds,
Like Wifi refusing to connect some times until you turn it off and on again on the Nexus 4 and the older Nexus HSPA+ OR the camera getting stuck on in the background and turning the phone into a pocket heater while it drains the phone battery in less than 30 minutes.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Well, I guess I can leave android now. Any word on when firefox OS devices start shipping?
It was nice while it lasted.
Yes, the Nexus 7 actually get's updates instantly, Samsung might roll them out in a year or two.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Since when did Google promised anyone that it would be "open"? The only thing they offer is source code.
That allows you to do a lot, but as we saw with Tivo, open source does not mean open access, etc.
When will be Cyanogenmod and/or Ubuntu Touch be available for that device so we can really be the owners of it instead of google?
"I wish I could mod summaries as troll. Honestly, many of us here make our livings creating proprietary software. Whining that Google makes proprietary apps just makes us all look bad. Stop it."
No one is whining that Google makes proprietary apps. We are taking note of the disconnect between the credit they want us to give them, and what they actually put out.
If you feel like that makes you look bad, perhaps you have something on your conscience?
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
As a matter of principle I understand where you're coming from, but from a practical standpoint I just don't see it. I find it much easier to share stuff and interact with family members, especially the less tech savy, then I could if the services were separate.
"You can keep all your privacy invading products to yourself Sundar. My next phone is going to be either a Jolla or a FirefoxOS device. I got tired of the whole Google+-ification of every Google product."
It has gotten rather depressing. I was leaning toward Android because it was more open than the Apple ecosystem (and demonstrably, Apple's "walled garden" has driven many people away from iPhone).
Android's attempts at "lock-in" come at a time when it is increasingly STUPID for Google to be doing it. People are really, really, tired of the corporate control, tracking, and surveillance both corporate and government.
If Firefox OS were further along, I would be very tempted. But only if there is decent hardware to run it on. I am pretty sad that Motorola was picked up by Google. I don't want to see that Googlified either.
I don't understand. You can use android with the Google stuff disabled. You don't even need to use a Google account. All you really lose out on is the Google play store. But here's the best part: you can install other app stores! Like the Amazon one, or F Droid, or one of those porn ones that Steve Jobs griped about.
Hell, you could forego an app store altogether and just download apks from websites if you wanted. That's the beauty of Android. Ulike iPhones or Windows Phones, you're free to install what you want. It's like an actual PC in your pocket.
The Internet King? I wonder if he could provide faster nudity.
I have a good example of google's problem. I setup chrome remote desktop so that i could remote into a Win7 Home Prem box (no RDP). So i get it up and running and it works fine, but i have to be signed in to google, and it never gives me the IP so i can manually connect in case something goes wrong on google's end. Everything always HAS to flow through google, and its getting VERY old. Their google drive is about the worst possible way to implement remote files. I REALLY hate how google constantly tries to blur the edges of offline/online. No i dont want to 'make available offline' I want the file put HERE, now. Illusion of simplicity.
Good-bye
At a press conference dubbed "Breakfast With Sundar,"
Large blocks of text are hard to read.
If someone wants me to migrate away from Android to their pet OS, then not having Google+ will be the kilelr feature. (Having some God-awful Ubuntoid+ instead is not it though).
And No, I will not buy into the Apple world, either)
--
A million lemmings can't be wrong.
So tell me why you will not buy into the Apple world?
"Don't meddle in the affairs of a patent dragon, for thou art tasty and good with ketchup." ~ohcrapitssteve
Unless your TV is gigantic, you are probably better off getting a new TV. Besides the fact that an HDMI->Compenent converter is likely going to cost you a significant portion of a new TV's price, new devices, including Chromecast, not only want HDMI, they also support CEC over HDMI. CEC lets your TV pass remote control commands through the HDMI cable to control devices. I currently use it with XBMC on the Raspberry Pi, and it works awesome.
It's gotten to the point that I feel offended when someone implies I am a "consumer", as though I were a baby bird waiting, mouth agape, for some mama-bird "provider" to cough up some "product" for me to consume.
As a participant, not a mere "consumer", the extremism in the defense of international conglomerates' Intellectual Precious is a plague.
Hacker Public Radio is our Friend
Not being able to uninstall != lockin. Not being able to install a competitor is locking. Not being able to change the default handler is lockin, but you can do that.
Heck, even not being able to uninstall is a feature of the OEM not the OS. Nothing in the OS prevents those apps from being uninstalled- in fact various OEMs have shipped with many of those apps replaced. Samsung uses their own browser, and Verizon was using a different maps app for a while. The fact that it can't be uninstalled is a technical limitation in the fact its typically placed in system memory when shipped for ease of implementation by the OEM.
So yeah, no Android lockin here.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?