Gadgetory

hey guys it's joe with pocketnow.com today we're going to talk about something that we don't talk about a lot here at Pocket now and that's tablets more specifically honeycomb on tablets let's go take a look so this is going to be more of an editorial and because I don't just want to show you you know my hands pointing at things on a screen with not a lot of action I'm going to do a little bit of talking up front so we can kind of dig right into the topic that topic is honeycomb now honeycomb is android version three point and it only came out for tablets I don't know of any smartphones that ran honeycomb there's kind of a reason for that honeycomb needed a bit more processing power than a lot of the smartphones of the day had not that they couldn't have but then weren't an awful lot already out there that could handle some of the stuff now that stuff primarily is a GPU and not just a lightweight one but kind of a a heavy can do an awful lot of cool stuff JP you now a lot of phones had GPUs in them before they just weren't all that powerful and Android didn't really utilize the GPU you had to write games specifically for the GPU in whatever phone and since there are lots of different platforms out there you had to write custom code to tie into the Jeep or the api's for all those different GPUs was it pain in the neck and of course that made appt writers not really want to write games for android because it really wasn't any one unified way to talk to that graphics processing part so kind of just SAT there underused well honeycomb came along and it changed all that honeycomb was the OS for tablets and it was really kind of pushed out my personal opinion here but it was pushed out by Google to compete against the tablets that were coming out from Apple that the ipad the ipad 2 and whatnot and google was really missing the boat they had to do something to stay in the game otherwise they weren't going to be able to keep up so honeycomb came along and it enabled developers you use the GPU using basically Android ap is very cool very nice you could use once at a code for your game for your app whatever and talk to the operating system which would then accelerate it and all you had to do was custom code a little teeny bit really one or two lines to say hey use GPU acceleration if it exists and your app was GPU accelerated was great was fabulous did a lot of cool things so that having been said they had it turned off by default and I don't know why not only that but the the OS itself the launcher and all the apps that come from google weren't really GPU accelerated so it was kind of laggy and it was kind of slow and it had hesitations and it had bumps and it really wasn't a pleasant experience now it was a lot nicer again my personal opinion then say gingerbread on a tablet and no qualms against Samsung hey samsung did a great job coming out with the original tab and making gingerbread run on it wow that that's impressive but still the operating system wasn't built for tablets it wasn't built for that extra screen real estate and doing all the extra things that you expect a tablet to do because really a tablet is just a small laptop without a keyboard right okay that may be an oversimplification but it's so much more than just a smartphone all right so all that having been said there are a couple other things that honeycomb did in addition to getting Google's foot in the door and getting tablet manufacturers to adopt honeycomb rather than adopt gingerbread and just start slapping on custom launchers and what not to try and make it work and I'm going to say it and fragment the platform even further they pushed everyone two words honeycomb and honeycomb did pretty well at doing what it was supposed to do so what was it supposed to do well let's go back just a little bit honeycomb also brought us what are called fragments not to be confused with fragmentation fragments now what a fragment is is it's a piece of a screen and on a smartphone you can have a piece of screen say a list and email list that has all the emails laid out in a list for you great you tap on one of those emails or an item in the list and it then opens up the view of that email the body that's another fragment on a smartphone you can't see both of them side by side because you don't have enough screen real estate but the two are coupled together it's one fragment of the same view essentially think of a mirror that you drop on the floor you have lots of different fragments they all go together just you have to look at them differently depending on if you're looking at them close up in your hand with a smartphone or kind of pushed away at more like a 24 inch view at arm's length like you would with the tablet so that's what fragments were on a tablet you can see the list on one side and you can see the contents on the other side really kind of cool and now we've got apps that are written to take advantage of that a lot of the early apps didn't because it didn't exist so you had to kind of build that on your own and you had at version 4 smartphone you had a version for tablet and then if you want a google TV that was something else entirely we're not even talking about that in the context of this video so lots and lots of stuff there but it was setting the stage okay so we've got all that sit down we're going to switch over to desktop operating systems all right how many of you remember Windows Vista raise your hand you in the bag with your hands up okay good Windows Vista sucked but Windows Vista was awesome and I know that's opposite ends of the spectrum what can I possibly mean well if you had a computer that you were trying to upgrade with windows vista it was terrible you had all of your hardware devices that didn't work right all of your old software didn't work right but if you've got a brand-new computer with them with windows vista on it already pre-installed with new software you've got a new printer and knew this and do that it were great not a problem at all it was only when you were trying to couple the old stuff there that you ran into problems now I come from a pc background I built them I troubleshot them I sold them I did all kinds of stuff for a local crazy guy in fact that's what everyone kind of calls him you can go look that up it's a whole nother story but when we did Vista the new computers worked great as long as you had new hardware that's where our company was different from everyone else we use name-brand hardware not cheap stuff but name-brand really good high-end components went into these computers not integrated not all that stuff so the drivers were there that's where Vista was different from everything before it to be able to grow past what Windows was what windows XP was and everything down underneath that Microsoft had to reinvent the hardware abstraction the drivers all kinds of sivan the security infrastructure especially the security infrastructure had to be bootstrapped from the ground up and the sound subsystem alone was brand new that meant all of the old stuff didn't work well luckily hardware is hardware all you have to do is have software that talks to the operating system that's called a driver and it works just fine unfortunately some of these manufacturers would rather not write new drivers for their old hardware and instead sell you new hardware that has the new drivers that work with it that was probably the biggest problem software wasn't all that big of a deal maybe a little bit but it was the drivers it was that the hardware compatibility just wasn't there but it was a necessary evil to be able to get us past the windows XP into windows 7 windows 8 which is a lot slimmer a lot faster a lot more compact and a lot more able to do stuff just with current technologies it was the old architecture that was holding windows back now a lot of you are going to argue with that and that's a lot of over generalizations on my part so please if you've got constructive comments about that leave it down below but realize you know if I said something a little bit technically simplistic know that it was for the sake of a broader audience okay so that's Windows Windows Vista as it compares to Windows 7 and Windows 8 which should be coming out pray soon and he'll be get all kinds of cool with tablets on it all right but that's another video let's get back to android so honeycomb was a necessary evil it had to be done to keep google in the game to keep basically android on devices now smartphones I think they'd still be running Android if we didn't have honeycomb that probably true fact like I said earlier no smartphones that I know of run honeycomb in fact cyanogenmod one of the biggest custom mods out there and probably my favorite custom rom out there skipped right over honeycomb entirely and I think Google did that on purpose they deliberately withheld the source code for android honeycomb from the development community until the same day that they released android ice cream sandwich so then released version 3 and version 4 at the same time version four is a unifying operating system it runs on not only tablets but it also runs on smartphones and we're starting to see some tablets come out with it built in and the number of smart phones that have ice cream sandwich still is kind of low that the Galaxy Nexus is really the flagship and it's the biggest one out there right now but we're going to see more and more start to to carry it new and of course we've got some really good OEMs you know who you are I don't have to list you my name that are putting ice cream sandwich on their phones thank you for that I appreciate it everybody else kind of needs to to not to mention any names samsung but please do that now why is that a big deal now that we're coming back to one core operating system one version if you will now everybody has one target to write for great apps are now writing to one unified set of AP is where you can have hardware acceleration GPU acceleration all that stuff fragments and at that point you have one app that's built for different views not different platforms if that makes sense so google went through a lot of work rethinking and taking apart android so that they could then put it all back together again honeycomb was where they did that and it caused a lot of pain then a lot of that pain has been growing pains and user interface stuff and you know they didn't have matias duarte back then maybe they did but he was just coming on but they didn't have a lot of his influence in the early phases you'd get the timeline down there i think i got it right but now they've got that foundation they went through that windows vista phase it had to be done to get passed that on to the next and the next is Ice Cream Sandwich and jelly bean and whatever is going to come after that but now that that foundation has been laid now that we've had all of those pain and that struggle we have a solid foundation to build upon and with that solid foundation now android is poised to be even bigger than well anybody else in all honesty but there's one you ready for this one catch Google TV now Google TV just came out with Google TV 2 point 0 awesome great and it's based on honeycomb why why okay it has to do with timing they were working on Google TV too way back before ice cream sandwich was available so that was the next step up and in all honesty they've got tighter control of the hardware I believe correct me if I'm wrong you google TV guys than they do with tablets so maybe they've got a little bit tighter control over the whole UI eventually I still predict we're going to have maybe Google TV 3 or maybe a little jump right up and call it four or five or whatever and it will be based on Ice Cream Sandwich so that'll be great we'll have one unified platform to develop for where right now you can kind of do it because remember Ice Cream Sandwich apps run on honeycomb just fine that just fine absolutely fine fact they even run on you guessed it on your bread and this stuff below it just not with as many bells and whistles and finesse if you will so now that we've got one platform Google's even released a style guide a recommendation for developers on how to write apps so that you can reuse common controls that can be themed that can be you know follow a common theme across the whole device and really how to use them properly so when the OS evolves into the next version your app will evolve with it without any extra coating being done that means apps are going to look more uniform all across them except for those who decide to break from the the standard not to mention any names I don't ways you know apps that have different interfaces that are custom built for who knows why I know why but that's again beyond the scope of this video but when we have that now we've got three different screens to build for we've got the handheld screen which is viewed you know this close in your hand we've got the tablet which just interviewed a little bit further away I look like I'm driving the car don't I and then you've got the TV the 10-foot experience it's way out there things are bigger but still as long as you have those fragments as long as you have the built right you can then see everything on the screen in that interface and it becomes the OS that handles how that app is displayed you don't have to as a developer custom code for it now my app that I right we'll work on smartphones it'll work on the tablets it'll work on TVs across the board that right there is nirvana that is what nobody else has yet Apple has Apple TV which is based on Mac it's not iOS you can't have one app that runs on your phone and on your iPad and on Apple TV you've got to have at least two different apps maybe three depending on how you write your app to work on your your iphone vs your ipad those are getting closer together but TV is still way out there great who's poised to change that Microsoft a Microsoft Windows 8 Windows 8 should run on ARM processors so that means we're going to be able to run on tablets like we have today that'll be interesting but then we've got Intel coming out with their new Medfield in there Adam line which is x86 and should run native you know x86 native windows 8 so that'll be great but windows seven if you remember and even windows vista had media center built into it it had a DVR built-in I've got to assume that Windows 8 is going to do the same thing and Windows 8 runs on desktop computers runs on laptop computers it'll run on tablets and it runs on TVs I've got media center running on my TV downstairs right now got it hooked into my computer by a DVI cable and I've got a bluetooth keyboard and mouse i watch TV on it i watch netflix on it it's right there all together what's the difference between that and google google has phones and Microsoft doesn't well they have phones just not running the same OS so you now have two different apps you have to run for desktop versus well not mobile but your smartphone and if you want to write an app that works in media center that's kind of different again so writing one app that works on Microsoft TV on microsoft desktop on microsoft tablet and Microsoft phone you've got to have multiple versions of that app if they were able to integrate all across the board and they're getting there with windows 8 I believe if they can build in the app construction they're doing with the core Windows 8 apps and build that into the TV they'll almost be there we just then need to be able to do that on the phone and Microsoft well they've got the monopoly and if that happens Google is the only competitor that's close and the only thing they're missing there is Computers Computers they've got Chromebook but it's anybody want to comment with your experiences with Chromebook it's kind of like a web browser on a laptop and that's it not all that great if it were Android on that platform it might make a little bit more sense but then again it's not supposed to be Android on a netbook or on a laptop it's supposed to be a web browser so it's doing what it's supposed to be it's just kind of leaving a hole there and I think Google's taking a gamble on that all right so long and rambling where we were where we are how honeycomb was a necessary evil I think google had to do it and I think amber had ice cream sandwich and the entire Android architecture the the whole environment is better for having honeycomb even though honeycomb was really really tough now I'm still running honeycomb on my zoom and my next experiment and we'll see if there's a follow up video to this one will be getting an Ice Cream Sandwich to run on this so make sure you tune in and watch that this of course has been an editorial and an awful lot of talking and it's not something that we normally do but we're interested to know if you like this format and kind of like a spoken article rather than just a long written article if you do make sure you give the video a big thumbs up if you don't give us constructive feedback and criticism in the comments down below if this is your first time watching the video make sure you subscribe to our channel it's free and that way you can keep up with all of our videos which we cover Android we cover iphone we cover windows if it has to do with mobile technology were there subscribe to our channel so you don't miss out and of course you want to make sure that you go out and visit pocketnow.com as well so you can see the articles that we have the news the tips and the solutions that we have out there as well make sure you do that we love your feedback and we want to see more of you so get involved in the community let us know what you like what you don't like and what do you want to see more of four pocket now and an editorial on why honeycomb was a necessary evil I'm Joe Levi you