Developer Tools I won’t be spending much time on this one as it’s mostly technical and mostly minor. Instead, I’ll just give you a quick list of notable features. Android Studio Faster Gradle builds New memory profile Full editing/debugging for C++ Polymer 1.0 full release new elements does anyone even care? iOS CocoaPods for dependencies Testing Cloud Test Lab Search App Indexing puts apps into search results Google Cloud Messaging iOS support Topical subscriptions (i.e. channels) Web Web push notifications Webapps on android homescreen Universal App Campaigns Set your budget and let google advertise for you Google Play Increased statistics Experimental listings (test how different graphics affect downloads) Developer pages (A homepage for all your apps)

Google Cardboard It may seem odd for google to talk about updates to an ultra-cheap VR headset that was announced in passing at the end of last year’s I/O. At the time, it seemed like a fun little thing that Google wouldn’t follow up on and after 6 months and a handful of apps, it seemed like that was exactly the case. However, towards the end of last year, Google announced a new Unity sdk for writing cardboard apps. Additionally, they added a Cardboard compatible section to Google Play and introduced a Google Cardboard certified program for officially supported, 3rd party viewers. This made it clear that google actually plans to take cardboard further. I wouldn’t be surprised if eventually there were more premium models. At there were really two interesting things. A new version of Cardboard A new camera rig for 360 degree video. New version of cardboard Supports phones up to 6" New input button (not a magnet any more) iOS support Nothing here is that groundbreaking. Just more compatibility. Jump More interestingly, google announced an open source hardware design for a rig to shoot 360 degree videos. The whole project, called Jump, has 3 parts Custom camera rig Assembler Viewer Custom rig The custom rig consists of 16 cameras arranged in a circle which geometry that google claims is the best for stitching later. The design for the rig will be out there for anyone (but probably mostly companies) to build and play with. Additionally GoPro will be working with google to bulid and eventually sell a Jump ready rig that will handle the synchronization of the streams, exposure control, etc. Go Pro Rig: [image: 3pwoKPU.png?1] Assembler In order to actually get a 360 degree video, those 16 camera feeds obviously need to be stitched together. This is extremely expensive. “1000s of computers” says google. Google will be making it’s assembler available to a hand picked group of video makers this summer. It sounds like they will eventually make it available more broadly, but it was not entirely clear, although an open camera design seems weird if you need a google-scale assembler that you don’t have access to. We’ll have to wait and see. Viewer Lastly, in order to actually watch the videos, you need a viewer. Where would you watch videos related to Google? YouTube, of course. Youtube has already added a 360 degree video section on at least the Android App. You can watch the video and use your phone as a view port into the center of the scene. It feels a lot like a video version of a photosphere (I guess because it literally is…). It’s a neat little thing, although it’s not the VR I would expect. However, the keynote seemed hopeful. Clay Bavor kept using the term “VR Video” and talking about “stereoscopic video.” Therefore, we should expect to eventually see Cardboard-enabled video on YouTube, and then we’ll truly be able to step into the scene.

Google Photos A brand new product. Not to be confused with Picasa or Google+ Photos, those were totally different, guys. The logo is a pinwheel not an aperture [image: agwawweg.png] All jokes aside, Google Photos is a rather creepy extension on Google’s previous photo apps. In an exaggerated recount of the hundreds of pictures taken of his daughter’s kindergarten graduation, Anil Sabharwal points out a legitimately large flaw in our culture of documenting everything: organization. With thousands of pictures, we struggle to find that specific on from that one time 3 years ago. What to show someone the essence of your trip to the moon last weekend? Good luck finding a good representation! Sharing that album of all the mediocre food you’ve had in the last year is tricky when your friends are on instagram and you’re still on flickr. Google Photos addresses these shortcomings with 3 stated goals: To be a Home for all your photos & videos To automatic organize your photos Be easy to share and save (i.e. cross platform) Home In order to be a home for your media, Google is offering unlimited storage of High Quality photos and videos.* It’s not hard to see the implications of that much free† storage. * up to 16 megapixel pictures, 1080p video † “free” Organization Of course, just having storage is no better than our current solutions, but that’s where automatic organization comes in. Of course, starting out obviously, Google Photos can give you a timeline of your photos. By default, it will show highlights for individual days, however with standard zooming gestures, you can view by months or years. [image: z3JGOGs.png?1] [image: e7uL0Fh.png?1] [image: ENufyye.png?1] Where Google Photos truly shines (and becomes creepy) is in it’s more data-oriented aggregation: your photos will automatically be organized by people, places, and things: [image: HHqQ5WG.png?1] Google uses is image analysis expertise to make categories of your personal photos with, from what I’ve seen, surprisingly accurate results. Not only will it find all pictures of the same person, the thumbnail for it will be the best headshot of that person. People can even be recognized over time - all the way back to their baby pictures (that’s some crazy recognition). Is there a car in the background of your photo? You better believe that’ll show up if you search your pictures for “cars.” Snow? Yup. All knowing Google, mirite? Sure would make it easy to keep track of your nudes ;) Sharing In order to make sharing hassle free, you generate a link for an arbitrary collection of your photos and send it to your friend. Your friend can then view these photos on the internet without having to have any apps or be logged in to any services. If your friend is also on Google Photos, they will have a one button import, making it simple to send and receive photos for permanent storage. Sure would make it easy to leak your nudes ;) Editorial There’s no doubt that Google Photos is impressive and probably quite useful, but it brings up a privacy question - what is google doing with my photos? Obviously, they’re going to use it to improve train their image AI. But is that it? The audiences nervous, half-hearted clapping indicated that people are a little skeptical of this new service. But is it really that different? We already give Google a shocking amount of personal data. The visibly personal aspects of photos make it much more obviously invasive, but is it really significantly different information than before? I think it could be argued either way. Whether you buy into Google’s vision for you photos or not, you have to admit that their AI is really good.

Now on Tap Google now has been fairly good at location-based contextual awareness - what’s the weather? How long will it take to get to work? At the airport - where’s my boarding pass? All answered before you ask the question. More recently, Now can bring apps into the mix - At the airport -> order an uber. On the train -> here’s your music. Now on Tap takes that a step further and adds contextual awareness within apps. E.g. Listening to Skrillex? Ok Google, what’s his real name? - Sonny John Moore. E.g. Friend references a movie in an email? Hold home button and information about the movie shows up E.g. SO asks you to order dinner and pick up the drycleaning? Hold home button to get the restaraunts menu and set a reminder to pickup the drycleaning. [image: FaV9bNU.png?1] From the looks of it, Now on Tap can use your dynamic context to aid in searching. At the same time, they talk a lot about “indexing your app” which makes it sound like google now is using static information in your app. Or maybe your app exports context. It’s not entirely clear. Overall, Now on Tap builds upon Google’s contextual awareness by integration with 3rd party apps.

Brillo & Weave Of course, Google introduced it’s attempt to get into the automation game with Brillo, an android-based IoT OS, and Weave the communication protocol that will make it all work. Nest’s, err, Google’s ambitions go beyond the home and extend to larger things such as farm irrigation equipment, or even a cities public transportation. Brillo Brillo is a simplified Android OS for use in internet connected appliances. Pichai talks about door locks with enough computing power for WiFi and BLE. Oddly high powered devices for such a specific task. Weave Weave is the communication protocol Nest Google will use (too many standards? Make a new one!). This will take the form of a moderated schema that will define common actions across devices, making it sound much like Android’s current intent system. Of course, Android devices will natively support weave, but it will be cross platform. This looks standardized, right?? [image: 8NF5dR2.png?1] Coming Q4 2015. Yeah. That’s literally all the info we got.

Android Wear This is the part where I rage. Following the lead of Apple’s rediculously complex watch, Google too has fallen to the “Your watch can replace your phone” trap that they did a good job of avoiding last year. Despite their claim that glanceability dominated their thoughts, this year, Wear is not about more context, but more interaction. Launchers, gestures, Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth dominated over glances and hints. With Google Now’s goal of knowing what you need before you need it, I find this an unacceptable approach. No one wants to text on their watch. But hey, at least Android Wear isn’t fragmented. Always On Apps Please tell me real apps won’t look this bad. [image: Image%202015-06-19%20at%209.47.29%20PM.png] The time is not the only thing that can be persistent on your wrist. After launching an app, it will always on in a balck and white mode. It looks pretty awful. Wrist Gestures You can now “naturally” jerk your wrist around to navigate. It’s just awful. (Sorry the gfy is so huge) https://gfycat.com/ComfortableShamelessGermanshepherd Emoji Recognizer Draw emoji. OOOOooohh AAaaaAhhhhhhHHh [image: pEk4LiU.png?1] [image: Mtzl5uE.png?1] Fucking really? Launcher Vertical launcher. You can now scroll vertically to find facebook messenger to draw a fucking cocktail glass to send to Alice. “Ultimately, wearable apps should be glanceable, actionable, and effortless.” And that’s why we added a fuck ton of awkward interactions so you can spend more time interacting with your wrist than forgetting about the technology and staying in the moment. “Using Spotify, you can browse and control the music you want to hear.” “And on your way home, you’ll be able to adjust your living room temperature with nest” Shut the fuck up google. You’re going to ruin this the same way you ruined Glass by focusing on the camera rather than the HUD.

Android M Well, we know it won’t be called Milkshake… [image: Google-IO-2015-_0519.jpg] Android M’s addition to Android is mostly standardization, integration, and simplification. It’s not as much about new, flashy features as it is about making things work better and with less cognitive effort on the part of the user. Permissions [image: Image%202015-06-19%20at%209.04.23%20PM.png] App permissions are (finally) no longer all or none. In old version of android, before you could install an app, a dialog popped up asking you to agree to an onslaught of permissions that the app needed. For apps like Facebook that literally would buy your soul if it could, this comes out to 12+ permissions. Your choices were agree to them all, or don’t use our app. Basically Android peer pressured you into giving away your security and privacy. The “new” model has only 6 permissions: Location, Camera, Mic, Contacts, Phone, SMS, Calendar, Sensor In addition, apps no longer ask you to agree to them all at install time. The first time an app uses a permission, you are prompted as to whether you want to grant that permission. If you deny it, the app will not be able to use the permission. No longer is it all or none. Above, I said “new” in quotes for a reason. This isn’t really a fundamental change to the Android permssioning system, but rather a change to how the user perceives it. From a developers perspective, an app must request the exact same permissions in M as in any previous version. Instead, the user is prompted differently (at runtime, not install time) to grant the permissions. Apps targeting old versions of the app will simply use the old install-time prompt. An astute reader may have noticed an interesting omission in the list of permissions: Internet. Yes, that is correct, an app no longer needs to ask you for permission to access the internet. This may seem like a glaring omission (why the fuck would a flashlight need internet access?), but the Android team has clarified it as unnecessary. Since everything else is guarded behind a runtime permission request, an app with only internet can’t leak your data. While true, this is a little bit unnerving - could a flashlight use an exploit to leak data and upload it without you even knowing it is accessing the internet? I’m not entirely convinced this isn’t an issue, but it is a fairly minor one, at least. Chrome Custom Tabs In an interesting attempt to blur the lines between native and web apps, google introduced branded, custom chrome tabs. Pinterest App [image: Image%202015-06-19%20at%209.20.00%20PM.png] Pinterest Custom Tab [image: Image%202015-06-19%20at%209.20.27%20PM.png] The idea is that when a link is clicked from your app, rather than having to implement your own webview or do a full context switch to the web browser, you can embed open a branded chrome tab. This has the benefit of being faster than switching to the browser and retaining most of the feel of your app. To make it truly fast, the web content can be prefetched to allow native-like transitions (It was not clear if every link is prefetched). App Linking Along the same lines of Chrome Custom Tabs, Android M is blurring the line of native and web apps on the native side. If you’re familiar with Android Dev, there is a concept of an intent. An app can advertise that it can handle, say, document editing intents. Then, a different app can send out an intent to edit a document which then opens in the first. This is how you can click the share button and see a bunch of installed apps to share with. One of the issues is that if you open, say, a youtube link, Android will ask you whether to open it in the YouTube app or Chrome. To enhance this, apps can claim full ownership of links. Basically the app claims links to youtube. When you install the app, Android will go to youtube and look for a file containing the signature of the app. If it finds it, Android will automatically open youtube links in the youtube app without asking for user input. Apps can claim links to avoid the disambiguation dialog Android Pay Really isn’t much to say. This is Google Pay moved into Android rather than as a google app. On interesting thing is that when you add a card to Android Pay, it get’s a fake credit card number that is shared with the merchant. If an sketchy merchant abuses your info, you can just remove the card from google pay and the merchant has no access anymore. Fingerprint Standardized. Expect more phones with fingerprint readers (also easier access for devs) Doze Basically, when you don’t use your phone, wake ups for background tasks are take on exponential back off. Google claims up to 2x battery life in standby, which largely means if you leave your tablet on a shelf or don’t plug your phone in overnight, it won’t die. Kinda cool, mostly meh. Misc USB-C standard Text highlighting jumps to word boundaries forward (individual characters backwards) Lollipop volume controls are gone (back to the kind that actually fucking works) Dev preview is available on Nexus 5, 6, 9, player

Google I/O 2015 Overview Hey guys! I’m back once again with another I/O recap! (See the 2014 keynote here) So, I/O was actually like 3 weeks ago, but due to the combination of me being lazy and an underwhelming keynote, I struggled to actually get to reporting on it. Compared to the excitement of last year’s keynote, I/O 2015 was bland and, at points, frustrating. This year’s keynote was mostly about incremental updates with the improvements we expected only a few (actually kind of creepy) things we didn’t expect. We, predictably, heard about updates to Android, Cardboard, Wear, and developer tools. We Predictably heard about Google’s (Nest’s) entry to the smart home market. We somewhat predictably heard about an update to Google Now. And we surprisingly heard about a creepy Google Photos (minus google+). Overall a lukewarm review of the companies less-than-thrilling, yet still necessary achievements. For a full (read: editorialized) recap of each, check out the threads below. Android M Android Wear Brillo/Weave Now on Tap Google Photos Google Cardboard Developer Tools

#Cardboard Probably the weirdest part of I/O was the first gift to attendees. As Pichai was finishing up and announcing the gifts, he started out really vaguely with: “You’re all going to get a Cardboard, let us know what you think” [image: Cardboard.png] Turns out, this is actually pretty cool. The cardboard unfolds with a pair of lenses to form a head set like thing. Place your android phone in the holding portion and you’ve got a REALLY cheap VR headset. Google has demos for it as well as a VR toolkit so developers can make their own VR apps. If you didn’t attend I/O and still want to try out Cardboard, there are instructions on how to build your own. You need to buy some lenses (which run on amazon for about $18) to get the focal distance right, but otherwise all you need are some hosehold items! Check it out! [image: CardboardHeadset.png] home

I have just read that it will be using ultra sonic sound.

I’m kind of surprised that this is the thread that mostly flew under the radar. Android TV actually caught me a bit off guard and I was pleasantly surprised with what it is. First, the UI actually seems really well done. Being google and knowing context helps make the home screen work really well. Granted that I don’t use Google Play Movies, I’m not sure how much use I’d make of the content suggestions (or how accurate they would even be), but maybe it’d give me some inspiration to look up those titles on Netflix :P The second thing that I really liked about this was that google search is first class. Open menu -> “ok google” -> get whatever info you wanted. I could see myself using this all the time for when I think I recognize an actor from a different movie. Or even to get world cup group stats right on my TV! Third is casting. I like the idea of a chromecast, but I don’t know if I’d go out of my way to get one. If it’s part of my TV, though, I’d use that. One thing I didn’t mention in the original post is that Android TV does not need and Android phone. In the keynote, he controlled it with that beautiful red nexus 5 (:heart_eyes:), but he did mention that it needs “just a dpad and voice input”. I’d expect the TVs to come with these simple remotes. Definitely going to be considering one of these next time I’m looking for a TV (which probably won’t be for a few years)

It’s like cars that support onstar or services like that. The car has to have support for it, but I don’t expect having support to be a luxury service. The reason to do this over mounting your phone is that the UI is designed for the car. Things that you actually use in the car are up front. Interaction is also intended to be hands free as much as you’re willing to use voice commands. I don’t really see this as a big selling point for the cars, but if the car I as buying had it, I’d be happy with it.

I guess when you lift it up to your face, it ups the brightness, so maybe? LG said you can get up to 36 hours idle out of the gwatch. That’s 36 hours with the screen always on (probably at 30-40% brightness)

In the keynote I think it kept going. That might change by the time of release.

@Scuzz I think it’ll be a base for both oems and developers to branch from. Much like holo was.

Google I/O launched this morning with a really exciting Keynote. Among a few other things, Google announced a new design paradigm, the L version of android, 3 new niche android experiences, and a few small updates to current google products. The message of I/O 2014 was dominantly unification beyond phones. Google is pushing for consistent UI, contextual awareness, and voice/gesture controls across every aspect of technology in your life. As you’ll see, each of the new products google is rolling out has a familiar design while still adapting to specific devices and use-case. Google’s ecosystem is rapidly expanding, and, unlike Microsoft, they seem to be doing it correctly. This thread is mostly to coordinate by providing a table of contents and anything else that applies to all of my I/O threads. See each of the topics below for more info! Material Android L Android Wear Android Auto Android TV Misc Updates Cardboard