Out of the fat an into the fryer. We're fresh from the Google IO Day 1 keynote -- maybe you caught our liveblog -- and we're in the press briefing room for, well a press briefing. We're already spotting some names and faces -- Matias Duarte is sitting next to yours truly.
No liveblog for this one, but we'll update with any happenings after the break.
- Ice Cream Sandwich is the next big open source release. Held back Honeycomb for UI concerns.
- Will be bringing all the stuff you love in Honeycomb. It's the unification of all these APIs.
- On Music Beta: What you saw today becomes a very compelling platform to facilitate music distribution. It's in Google's plans to work with the music industry to sell artists' music. The deals just haven't worked out yet. But there are other ways to do distribution. And the majority in the music industry -- and individual artists, like what they saw.
- What Google launched today is a completely legal service.
- There will be no Honeycomb phone.
- On the 18-month upgrade cycle: Is there a minimum of how quickly phones will be upgraded? Not yet. To come. It's a logistics problem, Andy Rubin says.
- On Honeycomb use in business: It's definitely compelling to consumers and business. Added new encryption in Honeycomb, and more improvements in Android 3.1, especially on the calendar.
- Music Beta is a personal music use cloud service. Google "completely respects copyright."
- Everyone understands that users want updates. But there were no common expectations set. That's what we wanted to do. This impacts developers as well. It's in everyone's best interests. Rubin: We think of ourselves as just the coordinators for all this. ... Consumers want it.
- Why is Google Music Beta only in the U.S. right now? Starting small.
- Quality of the streaming music adjusts depending on your connection.
- You can sideload music just fine.
- Android @Home: It has to be an extremely low-cost add-on.
- Complexity of devices will depend on what you need them to do.
- On Music Beta and data usage: The good news is that not all networks are congested today. And it ebbs and flows. And there's always Wifi.
- On UI skins in Android 3.1 and above: The framework is smart enough to handle it, and still let third-party app developers do their thing. Rubin: I don't believe in having an open platform that somehow de-monetizes industries. It's an important selling point of Android.
Reader comments
Google IO post-keynote press briefing
"What Google launched today is a completely legal service." This is an argument and not a statement of fact. But if the music industry wants it to stay an argument, they'd better sue either Amazon or Google very, very quickly.
There are other services that offer functionality that appears more or less identical to the end user. Think Zune Pass and/or Orb. The difference here appears to be in their implementation. Then again, with the "people" in this industry it seems that nothing is really legal until the judges get sick of hearing the lawsuits and start throwing them out.
Sorry, but it's as much a statement of fact as anything is in civil law. Storing your own files in digital lockers has already held up (how could it not? You own the files!). The music industry can't prevent such storage, and they can no more stop Google and Amazon from creating an app to play your files from that storage locker then a book company can sue Adobe for creating Acrobat.
The music industry has already over-reached in terms of their public image when they actually had the law on their side with p2p sharing. Suing now would be laughable, and do nothing but cost them money and further erode public approval.
im sure they'll sue (and should) if google/amazon allows users to stream the same media to multiple devices at the same time. Since users only have one copy of each song.
Other than that, it acts like any other storage. If the music industry feels the service needs licensing to broadcast, google/amazon should just transfer the entire mp3 first to the device then play it.
I require Ice Cream Sandwich on my Nook Color and CM8 on my Droid Incredible! I might also require a real ice cream sandwich. At least I could get that one today...
Is WIFI only Xoom's included in 3.1 update coming out today?
I believe it should read
"Are Wifi only Xooms included in the 3.1 update coming out today?"
Only VZW Xooms for now
Typos aside, this is a valid question. I developing on a wifi only Xoom at work and I would like to know if it's going to get 3.1 or if I'm going to have to manually download and install it.
Will Google Music be completely limited to Android devices?
Any computer with a browser I believe (probably Chrome first). So I'd think that any smartphone with a decent browser could also use the service, although probably not with the caching.
Oops, I forgot, it won't be a browser client, it will be played on Flash in the browser (and of course with the native app on Andorid). This neatly cuts iOS devices out of the loop while letting it work on Macs.
Touche, Google and Adobe.
Looks like the Xoom is getting much love,Now what tab to buy?
i'm highly considering taking back the acer iconia i bought over the weekend for a xoom, after google movies i realized i'll probably need more internal storage and it seems like motorola is going to get the updates quicker. don't know how acer is about updates
Is the Sprint EVO 4G going to get an update to Gingerbread or will it be Ice cream sandwich? If the answer to that is no, then I may just have to make the Nexus S 4G my first phone upgrade since the Google phones always get the updates first. Of course by December, the Nexus S may be actually running Ice cream out of the box...
Does anyone know if Google have put this press briefing on youtube yet?