Real Personal Computing

In a piece yesterday CNet reported that Android 4.4 (KitKat) is addressing Android fragmentation by decreasing the memory requirements of Android. Lowering the memory requirements allows for the possibility of installing Android 4.4 on older hardware.

I am skeptical that Google providing the ability to install Android 4.4 on older hardware means that the hardware OEMs will actually release the upgrade for their older phones. Google is even not doing this as they are not making Android 4.4 available for the Galaxy Nexus. The hardware companies would much rather have us buy new phones than continue upgrading our older phones.

Ars Technica has an article that I think provides a stronger case for how Android 4.4 is addressing fragmentation. In the article, Ars Technica reports that Google has merged the Android home screen/launcher with Google Search. Basically, Google Search is now the official Android launcher, and this is how Google has enabled Active Listening whenever the home screen is displayed. It is also how you can now swipe left to go to Google Now rather than either long pressing the Home button or swiping from the bottom to the top of the screen.

The Ars Technica article also suggests that it means one will be able to download the “stock” Android launcher from Google Play, and in fact, the Android 4.3 version of Google Search is in the Play store right now. What this means is that if you have a non-stock Android, such as the HTC One from AT&T, you will be able to convert the look and function of the HTC One to stock Android by downloading and installing Google Search.

• If this is true, it also means that if you have a phone running Android 4.3 you will likely get the new Google Search and Active Listening before the Android 4.4 upgrade is available for your phone.

What does this mean to HTC Sense and Samsung’s Touch Wiz? Assuming that HTC and Samsung don’t block the ability to install Google Search from the Play store, it means that users will have the ability to use either the standard Google UI for Android or keep the one they provide. Users win because they get to choose the UI they will use to operate their phone, but the OEMs could lose what they consider to be a key differentiator.

• It also means that the OEM experiences will have to survive based on their merits rather than being forced upon users. I wonder whether sales of the Play Editions of the HTC One and Samsung S4 have anything to do with this direction by Google.

I assume that Google will continue to provide ways for third party launchers to use Google Search otherwise Google will essentially kill such launchers and I expect neither Samsung or HTC will be happy. Considering the tweets from HTC today that they intend to provide Android 4.4 for all HTC devices, including carrier models, within 90 days, I got to believe Google is in fact providing a way for HTC to integrate Google search into Sense. An Android phone that does not have access to Google Search does not make any sense, and would be detrimental to the purpose behind Android.

In June I wrote an article here titled Where Is Google Taking Android? The article is an expansion of one written by JR Raphael on how Google has been deconstructing Android by separating apps like Gmail from Android and making them available in the Play store. The reason why Google has separated their apps is to address the pain caused by hardware OEMS when they don’t provide timely upgrades to Android, by providing a direct way for them to update functionality that people actually use. In the article I wrote:

Some key components of the Google Experience remain bundled with Android, and in order for the fragmentation issue to be completely resolved they will also need to be separated. The key components to look at are the Launcher and the Play store.

According to Ars Technica, I was right about the Launcher. It will be interesting to see whether Google takes the final step of providing a direct way for users to install the Play app on their phones as Amazon has done with with their app store.

Yesterday, on Halloween, Google released a new version of Android, which has been known as KitKat but is officially version 4.4. For a complete overview of all the new features in Android 4.4, read JR Raphael’s post at Computerworld.

While much of the focus of this new release will be on the improvements in memory usage, slight improvements in the UI, the updated phone dialer, and a new version of Hangouts, I think the most interesting change is with Google Now.

When Motorola, which is part of Google, launched the Moto X this past summer, we learned about a new feature known as Active Listening. The Moto X is constantly listening for you to say “Ok Google Now” and when it hears it you are prompted to enter a command or search term, just as you do with Google Now.

The question that Moto X raises is, is Active Listening a feature of Android or of Motorola? The Moto X has a separate processor dedicated to handling Active Listening, which we are told prevents it from having a huge impact on battery life. Based on the hardware dependencies, it would appear that for other Android phones to have full Active Listening it would need the same additional processing capabilities.

In Android 4.4, Active Listening is not available while the device is turned off, nor does it work while an app is running. Active Listening is available when you are on the home screen, if your phone uses the native launcher, and in Google Now, as it has always been. It remains to be seen whether Active Listening can be integrated with third party launchers, like HTC Sense that is on the HTC One.

What I think we see here is a compromise between providing some Active Listening capability, while keeping a competitive advantage for Motorola. The result in my mind raises a new question, does the Nexus 5 provide a full, pure, Google experience?

Up until now, the Google Nexus brand has been viewed as the line of products that provides “the” pure Google experience. Nexus phones and tablets run the Android UI and include apps that are developed by Google, unlike the UIs and apps provided by HTC (HTC Sense), Samsung (Touchwiz), and the carriers. Another key point about the Nexus brand is that updates to the OS came directly from Google and therefore their release is not slowed down by third parties who have to decide whether and how they are going to release the update. If you have a Nexus device you will get Android 4.4 in a matter of days from its release, while other devices probably will not get the update for several months.

Now that the Moto X exists, I think “Pure Google” really only applies to it, and the Nexus brand represents “Pure Android.” It may seem that I am mincing words, but I think it is an important distinction for the future of personal computing.

What distinguishes Real Personal Computing from legacy personal computing is the integration between hardware and software. Apple has been championing this cause since its beginning, but Microsoft has clearly adopted this point of view with the Surface tablets and buying Nokia, as has Google through its purchase of Motorola.

In my opinion, what is so significant about Moto X is that it has software dependent on specific hardware to provide a personal, you train the Moto X to recognize your voice, function. If the future of computing is to provide more functions tailored specifically to individuals, we are likely to see more hardware and software combinations in the future.

At their annual developers conference, going on right now in San Francisco, Evernote announced the Evernote Market, a store for an eclectic list of accessories and swag. From the market you can buy things like a Fujitsu Snapscan scanner and a Jot Script stylus that are logically paired with Evernote, and you can buy socks. Socks! Remember the last time a technology company sold socks?

I am sorry, but I don’t consider the fact that I can buy socks from Evernote to be a good sign, nor am I thrilled, as a long time Evernote user, that the Market is the big news from day 1 of the developer’s conference. Where is the update to Evernote for Android to puts it back on par with the iOS version?

Hopefully, not much developer resources at Evernote are not being spent on t-shirt and sock designs, but I am concerned with the idea that the company is spending any time at a developers conference announcing this stuff. What I want from Evernote are new features to their app that make me more productive.

For example, in light of the NSA revelations, how about providing a better way to encrypt entire notes or notebooks? I want to be sure the information that I put into Evernote is secure, I don’t care that I can buy a wallet with the Evernote logo embossed.

The Post-it note integration is the lone piece of news so far that is interesting to me as a user. The idea that I can take a picture of a Post-it note in Evernote and it automatically takes actions on the picture based on the color of the Post-it is a wonderful idea. It’s easier than the similar integration with Moleskin journals. It’s something I might actually use on a frequent basis. It’s also only available in the iOS version of Evernote.

Dave Winer’s attendance at the developers conference gives me hope that one day there may be an integration of his Fargo outliner, which I have grown to love, and Evernote, which I have loved for a long time. One thing that Evernote does not do well is provide structure, while Fargo is all about structure. I hope the integration is more than just flat publishing like exists with the Fargo integration with WordPress.

Today is the last day of the conference, so I hold out hope that at least they will release a new Android version, its frustrating that significant new features are released first on iOS. I am looking forward to reading what Dave Winer writes about the conference, as an outside developer he will have an objective view of the product’s direction.