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Google Announces Project Ara Developer Conference, Shows Off First Prototype

Posted by samzenpus on from the save-the-date dept.

An anonymous reader writes Google today announced it will be hosting the second iteration of its Project Ara Module Developers Conference for its modular device project early next year. The first event will be in Mountain View on January 14, 2015, with satellite locations at Google offices in New York City, Buenos Aires, and London. The same agenda will be repeated in Singapore on January 21, 2015, with satellite locations at Google offices in Bangalore, Tokyo, Taipei, and Shanghai. The company also released a video showing off the first prototype from Project Ara. Until now, all we've seen so far are industrial design models. This one actually boots up.

1 of 66 comments (clear)

  1. only for nerds by ezakimak · · Score: 1, Interesting

    No one in the mass market will buy this. So many already can hardly handle a one-piece phone/tablet/laptop/computer/device. Women will not buy it simply because it's ugly.

    "Oh, but you can upgrade the camera" you say? Anyone that is so much into photography that they need a better camera will buy...... a *real camera*. You know, with interchangeable, actual high-quality, purposeful lenses.

    "Oh, but you can just upgrade the screen or processor" you say? Prediction: the upgrade path for any generation chassis will be limited to only one or two steps, then you need a new chassis. Just like with motherboards (because that's what the chassis is).

    Now, doing this for laptops... that's the real question--why haven't they done this *yet*. (And no, just because you can aggravatingly, pain-stakingly pry open a laptop to service it and in some cases interchange some parts does not qualify).

    This seems like such a step backwards. Are they going to go through the whole 1980/90s plug-and-pray interoperability nightmare again? This is one reason Apple became so dominant--they locked down the hardware, supported a canned set of options, and made their hardware compatibility issues mostly a non-issue. Their stuff *just worked*.

    Also, what about the additional avenue of security holes: counterfeit modules, hacked modules, modules swapped out when you're not looking, etc. The android security/permisisons model is already poor at best for the masses.