This week the Google Chrome browser has been introduced for the iPhone. The Chrome browser started up Google I/O’s 2012 keynote on the second day of the event, with Chrome as a browser connecting with Chrome as a browser as an operating system being shown to connect across any number of devices. Of course we’d seen much of this in the past as Google Chrome has been connected in this Google accounts way for several months. This browser is able to rather able, as its been demonstrated today, to work from a laptop to a Chromebook to a smartphone to a Nexus 7 tablet and back.
The extreme speed at which the browser works back and forth between the operating system and the browser was shown off on stage in real time. The Chrome browser was shown off on two Apple systems as well – both the iPhone and the iPad.
The Chrome browser was demonstrated onstage with both the iPhone 4/4S as well as the iPad 3 with no less than the same syncing powers as the rest of the device universe. Now not only will you be able to work with Chrome on your Android and desktop systems, you’ll be good to go with iOS as well. Check it out on the iTunes store today!
Also check out the timeline below to see all sorts of recent Chrome news, and hit up our I/O 2012 portal for more news from Google’s developer conference all week!
While Google is beefing up its ecosystem, Apple is also planning some big changes to its iTunes platform according to Bloomberg. Sources inside the company claim, by the end of the year iTunes will undergo a major transformation seemingly designed to counter recent moves by Google. Key to the plans is iCloud. Cupertino’s cloud storage solution will be much more tightly integrated, allowing easier access to and management of media collections across devices. Another part of the online offerings will be content discovery. As Netflix has already discovered, and Google is trying to master, making accurate suggestions for new music and films is key to keeping customers coming back to a media market. Deeper social network integration is also part of finding and sharing new music. Apple is supposedly in negotiations with the record labels to allow users to send songs to friends for free — a feature both Spotify and Google Music already support. For a few more details check out the source.
Back before Apple announced the original iPad, the Modbook team set out to take existing MacBook Pros and turn them into standalone tablets. The idea was to take the internals and add a touchscreen into the mix, giving you a powerful yet relatively portable tablet running full blown OS X. Now the company is back, and has today announced the Modbook Pro, taking the current-generation 13-inch MacBook Pro and runs with the tablet conversion.
All the specs are what you would find on the current 13-inch MacBook Pro: Intel’s Ivy Bridge Core i5 processor clocked at 2.5Ghz, integrated HD 4000 GPU, up to 16GB of RAM, up to 1TB of hard drive space (plus a 960GB SSD option), SuperDrive, and WiFi b/g/n plus Bluetooth. The team has added is a Wacom digitizer to the 1280×800 display, with 512 levels of pressure sensitivity for the included stylus, with the screen also capable of registering 133 points per second.
Lots of attention has been paid to the housing of the Modbook Pro too. The tablet comes with a sloped edge design, and special grippy feet ensures the Modbook can be propped at a 50 degree angle without slipping. The usual array of ports are still onboard too, including Thunderbolt, USB 3.0, SDXC slot, and the MagSafe connector.
How much is all this going to set you back? Good question. The team hasn’t announced official pricing for the tablet yet, saying that it’s coming in the next few weeks with the tablet set to ship in the Fall. We doubt it will be cheap though, so if this strange hybrid has piqued your curiosity, you better start saving up those pennies.
Google’s IO 2012 keynote has been and gone, and while the developer event as a whole isn’t over, you can certainly tell where the focus is by what made it onto the opening agenda. I’d already laid out my expectations for IO over at the Google Developers Blog, but there have been some surprises along the way too.
Jelly Bean was the obvious inclusion, and Google balanced its enthusiasm about the new Android version from a technological perspective – with encrypted apps and the perfectly named “Project Butter” for smoothing out the UI – with features that will make more of a difference for end-users. The new notifications system should make a major difference to Android usability, meaning you spend less time jumping between apps, while the Google Voice Search should present an interesting challenge to Siri.
I’ll need to spend some proper time with “Google now” before I can decide whether it brings any real worth to the table. Proper understanding of context is sorely missing from the mobile device market- our handsets can do no shortage of tasks, but they still wait for us to instruct them – though there are potentially significant privacy concerns which I think Google will likely be picked up on sooner rather than later.
The Nexus 7 is a double-hitter of a device, the tablet response not only to concerns that Android developers were opting out of slate-scale app creation, but to Amazon’s strongly-selling Kindle Fire. $200 is a very competitive price, without cutting on specifications, and Jelly Bean comes with all the bells and whistles you need for a tablet OS.
Of course, OS support wasn’t what let Honeycomb and Ice Cream Sandwich down, it was the significant absence of any meaningful tablet application support from third-party developers. The Nexus 7′s low price should help get test units into coders’ hands, at least, though it will take more than a fanfare this week to decide whether Android can catch up on larger screen content with Apple’s iPad.
As for the Nexus Q, I’ll take some more convincing on that. $299 is a lot for a device that also needs an Android phone or tablet in order to work, and Google’s awkward presentation didn’t do a particularly good job of explaining why you’d rather have a Nexus Q than, say, an Apple TV, a Sonos system, or even just a cheap DLNA streamer.
The big surprise today was Google Glasses. Sergey Brin’s “surprise” interruption of the IO presentation, sporting Project Glass himself and then summoning a daredevil army of similarly-augmented skydivers, stunt bikers, abseilers and others onto the stage was a masterstroke of entertainment, and you could feel the enthusiasm and excitement in the auditorium. That the segment ended with a pre-order promise – albeit one at a not-inconsiderable $1,500 – was a suitably outlandish high-point, though we’ll have to wait until early 2013 to actually see Google make good on those investments.
Google Glasses are a long way off. More pressing is how the Nexus 7 holds up to the Kindle Fire (and, though it may not be quite a direct competitor, the iPad) and how quickly manufacturers can get Jelly Bean out to existing devices. Google may be putting a new system of early Android update access into place to speed that process for future iterations, but it looks to have come too late for Jelly Bean updates. We’ll have more from Google IO 2012 over the rest of the week.
LUMOback wants to show all those DIY posture dilitantes what’s what with its Smart Posture Sensor, an app and hardware combo that tracks your carriage and vibrates when you hunch. The thinnish 8.5mm sensor is worn like a belt, and on top of the tactile nagging, it provides detailed iPhone or iPad charting of the sitting, running and even sleeping you did, complete with an xkcd-like stickman video replaying all your crooked moves. So far the team is about a third of the way to its $100K mark, and a minimum $99 pledge will get you a jet-black model if it’s built, with a $125 chip-in letting you vote on a a second shipping color, to boot. If some of your activities consist of, say, blogging in front of a computer screen all day, check the video after the break for relief.
Traditional console makers have often sworn up and down that mobile doesn’t make money for game development. That might still be true for some developers, but you’ll get a very different answer if you ask Epic Games. Co-founders Tim Sweeney and Mark Rein have collectively described the currently iOS-only, Chair-developed Infinity Blade as the “most profitable game we’ve ever made” when considering the amount of money and time invested relative to the money coming back. Yes, that includes even the Gears of War series, which most consider Epic’s primary cash cow. Sweeney, like his long-time competitor Johh Carmack at id Software, is also taken aback by the power stuffed inside the latest generation of mobile devices — a 2012 iPad is nearer the performance of a PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360, he tells Gamasutra, and the pace is only picking up. Even more insights await in the interview with Sweeney; click below if you want a hint of what one of gaming’s pioneers has to say about where your tablets, phones and (yes) PCs are going.
Google’s own-brand entrance into the 7-inch tablet market with the Nexus 7 has refueled speculation about a so-called iPad mini, with Apple expected to face increasing pressure to compete at the tweener size. Rumors of a smaller iPad – which would slot into the mid-point between the existing, 9.7-inch model, and the 3.5-inch iPhone and iPod touch – have circulated for as long as the iPad has been on sale; however, the arrival of the new Nexus 7 running Jelly Bean is arguably the biggest motivator yet for Apple to make good on the heresay.
The Nexus 7′s more direct competitor in the slate market is Amazon’s Kindle Fire and Barnes & Noble’s NOOK Tablet range. Both of the rivals – which each run Android, albeit with heavy customization – fall into the same near-$200 price window, versus the iPad which starts at $499 for the latest model.
Apple was tipped to deliver a smaller model of tablet alongside its Retina Display third-gen iPad, though instead the company kept on the iPad 2 and lowered the sticker price by $100. Nonetheless, industry observers have continued to predict a new, smaller model, with talk that orders have already been placed and that the new iOS slate could ship in Q3 2012.
Whether Apple would choose to compete with Google (and the others) with direct price parity is questionable. The company has not been afraid to sticker up its products with a relatively premium tag, reflecting a preference to deliver a cohesive all-round device rather than make cuts for the sake of a price target. Nonetheless, the $200 segment could prove more tempting now that Google has waded into it itself.
This week at Google I/O we’ve gotten our first glimpse at Google+ for tablets, shown as a lovely streaming beast that’s looking rather different from any stream we’ve seen before. This application works in landscape mode primarily – or it was designed to do so, anyway, and is made specifically so that you can stream video with hangouts, first of all. This update brings hangouts to the tablet and makes the interface just as simple and workable as the basic version in the desktop-based app.
This update has a brand new bit of notification, a brand new profile selection series, and a wholly upgraded interface that basically looks like more fun to use than the web-based version. Check back at SlashGear soon to get a full review of both the iPad and the Android version – out now! This version has of course also been introduced for the betterment of the Nexus 7 tablet as well.
Google+ just got a makeover very recently, but it was still very much oriented towards phones — that’s been solved as of today. The social networking app is now optimized for Android tablets and the iPad, with a whole new navigation system and Hangout video chats suited to bigger screens. The layout is landscape-friendly and, if you have a new iPad, will take advantage of every pixel on that Retina display. Android users can get the update today; iPad owners will have to wait for a release coming “soon.” Android phone owners are getting some of the benefits of the supersized interface in their own, more modest screen sizes as well.
Check out our full coverage of Google I/O 2012’s opening keynote at our event hub!
Sure, you can put some art on your wall, but how about putting up some LED wall art that’s controlled via your iPad? That’s exactly what Greg Friedland did and I have to say that the results are pretty cool. It’s definitely a nice way of filling up an empty wall in an apartment.
Greg Friedland’s Aurora LED wall started out as an idea to put some art on a 6′×12′ wall in his living room. He created a grid of 544 LEDs that’s capable of 16 million colors, attached to a 4′×8′ wood board. The LEDs are controlled by a microcontroller, which in turn is controlled by a program running on a laptop. This software on his PC connects to an iPad, which allows interaction with the moving patterns. That seems like a lot of steps but I guess there’s no good way to control it directly from the iPad yet. There are also built-in modes that respond to music.
It’s something that I wouldn’t mind having on my empty living room wall. To find out how to make yours, check out Greg’s instructions here.
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
