The formidable Android pill possibility Google tossed away
This wild Android pill idea may have fully modified the best way we work together with our units. Ready to pop the pink capsule?
geralt, modified by IDG Comm
To say that Android tablets have been a letdown may be the understatement of the century.
When you step again and give it some thought, the truth that Android tablets are such an underemphasized afterthought is nearly stunning. Android is the world’s hottest working system, in spite of everything — by a reasonably hefty margin. It’s simple to neglect generally, however extra people carry Android-powered smartphones than every other kind of gadget within the universe.
And but, for all of these benefits, Google has 12 months after 12 months failed to show Android tablets right into a compelling, sought-after kind of know-how that is greater than a mere blip on the mobile-tech radar. It’s reached the purpose the place I flat-out inform people to avoid Android tablets and think about convertible Chromebooks as a substitute — ‘trigger not like the standard Android pill, any Chromebook you purchase will really get updates. It’ll be supported with the most recent privateness, safety, and efficiency requirements for years after its buy. And it’s going to present a very nice all-around expertise.
Plain and easy, it’s going to carry all of the qualities you need from an Android pill right into a extra productivity-minded, work-friendly setup — one with loads of perks and with out all the usual Android pill disadvantages.
Here’s what’s fascinating, although: Android tablets did not should be this manner. Nearly 12 years in the past, Google purchased a buzzworthy software program startup that was doing extremely attention-grabbing issues with interface design. The firm had all types of untamed concepts about the way forward for large-screen contact interplay, and Google appeared destined to carry these ideas into the land of Android.
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This is the story of an alternate future for Android tablets — a future that would have seen Android-powered tablets charting new territory and shaking up the best way we considered large-screen computing experiences.
This is the story of the Android pill interface that would have been.
The Android pill origin story
Before we get into the meat of this zesty tech sandwich, we have to step again for a sec and set the scene of what was occurring with Google within the early a part of the 2010 decade.
The Android pill saga technically began within the fall of 2010, simply months after Apple launched its first Magical and Revolutionary™ iPad. At that time, for context, Google did not have a good way for Android to exist in a “big-screen” kind. (I put “big-screen” in quotes as a result of the earliest Android tablets weren’t a lot larger than our present Android telephones. Hey, it is all relative.) So with everybody and their mom all of the sudden gushing over Apple’s inaugural slate-shaped creation, Android device-makers who have been determined to compete scrambled to slap collectively their very own half-baked setup.
Most prominently, Samsung spewed out its first-ever Galaxy Tab — a 7″ slate that ran Android 2.2, labored precisely like a telephone, and even allow you to make and obtain calls with your personal SIM card in sure eventualities. So in different phrases, yeah: It was roughly only a large telephone.
Samsung
The 2010 Galaxy Tab 7.0, with the requisite promo-shot mirror impact at its backside.
Early the following 12 months, in 2011, Google got here out with its Android 3.0 Honeycomb software program — a tablet-only launch that launched a completely new basis and ready Android to exist in a large-screen kind. The first true Android tablets, together with the traditional Motorola Xoom, adopted.
Android 3.0 was really an admirable framework for a complete new form of mobile-tech expertise — one through which the core Android interface was fully reimagined to benefit from the newfound display house and create a extra efficiency-optimized, productivity-minded setting.
(Be certain to make a psychological bookmark of the title proven within the notification on that video thumbnail, by the best way. It’ll be related in a minute.)
But that mindset would not final for lengthy. Apple had already made a critical splash with its iPad, and Google did its traditional Google factor — first, failing to get builders on board rapidly sufficient to make a superb first impression with how apps operated in its newly scaled-up setting, then finally dropping its focus, pivoting away from its unique imaginative and prescient, and in the end simply letting the thought of the Android pill languish with none significant motion ahead.
By 2016, Google had by all counts given up on the thought of the Android pill. Android tablets nonetheless existed, in fact, however Google wasn’t doing a lot to advance or promote ’em.
And that is to say nothing of the Android pill risk that by no means made its solution to the floor or had any probability to shine.
An Android pill acquisition
Time to fly again now to May of 2010 — only a few quick months after Apple’s first iPad splashed its approach into the world. Google, presumably arduous at work on the early efforts round Honeycomb, quietly purchased an organization known as BumpTop. Rumor has it the deal price a cool $25 to $35 million — no small chunk of change, to say the least.
There was no formal announcement or fanfare from Google in regards to the acquisition, however BumpTop alerted its current customers that its present software program would not be bought or supported and that it might be taking the app “in an thrilling new route” inside Google’s famed partitions.
So what precisely was BumpTop? In quick, it was a dramatically totally different tackle the normal computing interface. The software program made your desktop look and act like a bodily desk, with all types of multitouch gestures and intelligent methods for interacting together with your stuff.
In a 2007 TED Talk, BumpTop’s founder, Anand Agarawala — do not forget that title from a minute in the past? — stated he believed we have been nonetheless in “the cave-painting period of pc interfaces” and that it was excessive time for somebody to strive one thing new.
“One form of data house I … take inspiration from is my actual desk. It’s a lot extra refined, a lot extra visceral — you already know, what’s seen, what’s not. And I’d wish to carry that have to the desktop,” he stated.
BumpTop advanced into a way more touch-centric interface within the months that adopted. And it is actually one thing you need to see to understand. This 2009 demo video reveals the fundamentals of the BumpTop desktop and the way the software program reinvented the act of getting round a pc:
Once BumpTop grew to become a Google entity, most folk assumed its strategy was sure to turn out to be the way forward for Android in its larger-screen kind. As Fast Company put it on the time:
Most upcoming tablets will probably be trying to Android. … But on an even bigger display, Android’s tough edges are fairly apparent. A pores and skin, like HTC’s Sense or Dell’s Stage, is one possibility, however BumpTop may be a greater answer. It’ll want some tweaking (it doesn’t have any of Android’s hallmark and fully important UI options, just like the notification shade or app drawer) but it surely has the potential to supply one thing actually totally different for an Android pill.
It made sense — nearly an excessive amount of sense.
But, as you may most likely think about, issues did not precisely play out in the best way anybody anticipated.
The Android pill path
Aside from the large BumpTop buy, one thing else vital occurred inside Google within the month of May 2010. Toward the top of that exact same month, only a few weeks after the BumpTop deal went via, a well-respected designer joined Google as its first person expertise director for Android.
That designer was none aside from Matias Duarte — the man who’d led growth of Palm’s webOS interface and earned accolades for his efforts on the Danger-made Sidekick (a.ok.a. the Hiptop) earlier than that.
And who had Duarte labored alongside at Danger? Major nerd factors if you already know the reply: It was a sure Andy Rubin, who co-founded the corporate after which went on to co-found Android and oversee its evolution inside Google during 2013.
Rubin’s legacy is now far more sophisticated, to place it mildly, however on the time, he was the grand commander of all issues Android — and Duarte was his new deputy entrusted with bringing a higher focus to design for the platform. Thus far, highly effective as Android had been, the software program had usually veered extra towards utility, with design taking a again seat to sheer energy and performance.
Under Duarte’s route, we noticed a noticeable shift. First got here the software program referred to as Honeycomb — although with its efforts already underway on the time of Duarte’s arrival, the seven-months-later Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich launch is usually thought of to be extra consultant of Duarte’s full affect.
Either approach, the ideas from BumpTop barely made a blip within the working system. You can see what appears to be a slight contact of BumpTop inspiration within the Honeycomb-era accordion widgets, which adopted an identical type of stacking and flipping mannequin to what we noticed all all through BumpTop…
JR
…however other than that, there is not a lot apparent inspiration from BumpTop anyplace in Android — at the least, outwardly — and it looks as if most of its ideas obtained misplaced over time.
As for BumpTop’s founder, Anand Agarawala, he labored at Google for about 4 and a half years, in accordance with his LinkedIn profile — beginning with the second of BumpTop’s acquisition and going during October of 2014. His profile signifies he performed some method of function in Android interface growth for the Android 2.3 Gingerbread launch that got here out in December of 2010 in addition to the next Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich updates. After that, he apparently frolicked engaged on “next-generation AR assistant purposes” at Google X in addition to on the Google+ cell apps and on the Google Photos “automated story creations” function.
Agarawala left Google in 2014 and has been heading up his personal new startup within the years since — an organization known as Spatial that brings some very familiar-feeling interface ideas into the realm of augmented actuality.
And BumpTop itself is now accessible as an open-source mission, with a notice from Agarawala that states:
We actually consider we’re simply scratching the floor of what is potential with the best way we work together with know-how. As contact and digital actuality interfaces quickly evolve, we predict a number of the concepts we explored may be related now greater than ever. The way forward for BumpTop is now in your palms, the group of passionate followers and builders of BumpTop who supported our mission of a daring new, bodily dimension of UIs for the reason that starting.
And so it goes.
The Android pill future
There’s yet one more fascinating footnote to this story — and, maybe, to the way forward for Android tablets and the place issues may go from right here.
In a transfer that appears to have gone largely unnoticed by the Google-watching lots, a fella by the title of Rich Miner seems to have joined Google final March as a way to tackle a brand new function with the title of “CTO, Android tablets.”
In case his title would not ring a direct bell, Miner was one of many unique co-founders of Android — proper alongside Andy Rubin. I interviewed him in 2016 for my (no-longer-publicly-available) podcast and heard all about his winding path via the mobile-tech universe. He performed a key function in Android’s delivery and helped form its route over the primary a number of years of its existence, and whereas he will not be a family title at the moment, his affect undeniably helped Android develop into what it is turn out to be.
(I attempted reaching out to Google to request additional information on the character of Miner’s new function and to see if he’d be accessible for an interview, however I by no means heard again. I’ve additionally tried to contact Agarawala a pair occasions over time with none response.)
Miner left Android in 2010 and went on to work at Google’s enterprise capital department. In 2016, he took a place heading up some mysterious new Google schooling mission which will or could not have in the end resulted in any tangible merchandise. And now, it appears he is come again to his roots to pursue one other new starting underneath the Android umbrella.
The story of Android tablets has already had greater than its share of twists, turns, and missed alternatives. But perhaps, simply perhaps, the story is not over but. Maybe one other chapter will emerge.
If there’s one factor you be taught from spending sufficient time watching Google, it is that you simply by no means really know what would possibly come subsequent.
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